Arrest and dirty tricks... from a bygone age

CAMPAIGNING has reached fever pitch in the run up to tomorrow’s Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election — but things were just as hotly contested more than 100 years ago.

Reader Kryshia Winkler has unearthed a special election edition of the Evening Chronicle with election results from November, 1885.

Liberal J T Hibbert and Conservative J M Maclean were returned to Parliament, with the third place candidate just 145 votes behind.

An agent was taken into custody after he accused Liberals of preventing Conservatives from voting at Werneth Mechanics’ Institute. There was a case of personation at the Wesleyan School, Busk Street, Chadderton, while a Tory brickmaker attempted to show one of his workmen how he should vote at St Paul’s Church.

But after an “exceptionally vigorous and energetic campaign” the polling was steady but quiet in most places.

Kryshia, from Higginshaw, found the paper, along with a Chronicle from 1890 and an Oldham Standard from 1889 — while helping her grandmother to move. She said: “She thinks they are from her mum. There is probably a reason why they have been kept, but we have no idea.”

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