NORTHUMBERLAND ELECTION BROADSIDE – H. T. LIDDELL REQUISITION NOTICE – Newcastle – 1826

Rare Northumberland election broadside issued in support of Henry Thomas Liddell during the celebrated 1826 county election, one of the most fiercely contested and expensive parliamentary elections of the Georgian period.

Printed at Newcastle by T. and J. Hodgson, the broadside announces that “The Hon. H. T. Liddell” had pledged himself to obey the call made upon him and allow his name to be put in nomination at the ensuing general election. It requests Northumberland freeholders to sign the requisition then lying at the offices of Messrs Fenwick, solicitors, Newgate Street; at the Exchange Coffee Room, Sandhill, Newcastle; and notes that subscription papers were also available at the bank of Messrs Chapman & Co.

The document is particularly valuable as evidence of the organisational machinery behind Liddell’s candidature. Rather than a general address to voters, it records the practical infrastructure of the campaign: requisition signing, solicitors’ offices, subscription papers, banking arrangements, and the use of prominent Newcastle commercial premises as political meeting and coordination points.

The Exchange Coffee Room at Sandhill was an important Newcastle meeting place, while the involvement of Messrs Fenwick and Chapman & Co. illustrates the close connection between electoral politics, professional networks, banking, and urban commercial society. The broadside therefore captures the pre-poll phase of the campaign, before the full intensity of the contest had developed.

The 1826 Northumberland election involved Henry Thomas Liddell, Matthew Bell, Lord Howick, and Thomas Wentworth Beaumont. It became notorious for its immense expense, prolonged canvassing, allegations of coalition, religious controversy, and extensive printed propaganda. Contemporary studies of the election record the fifteen days spent addressing electors and the unusual intensity of political mobilisation across the county.

Contemporary manuscript docketing to the reverse dates the notice to March 1826 and identifies it as a printed requisition relating to H. T. Liddell.

No institutional copy of this precise broadside has been traced in the British Library, Library Hub Discover, WorldCat, or the principal known digital collections of 1826 Northumberland election material. It therefore appears to be apparently unrecorded institutionally.

Single printed broadside. Sheet size approximately 28.1 x 22.6 cm.

Condition: Fold lines as issued, light creasing, some show-through from earlier printed material, minor age toning and handling wear consistent with original political use. Overall very good.

A scarce and historically significant survival of Georgian Northumberland election ephemera, especially notable for documenting the administrative, legal, financial, and urban infrastructure behind Liddell’s 1826 campaign.

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