‘What does it mean by faggot?’ asked my husband when I showed him a newspaper item headed ‘Champion faggot’. The cutting, from the Northern Daily Mail for 6 November 1897, was sent to me by the historian Andrew McCarthy who had found the headline when looking for something else, and had no idea what it meant either, until he sensibly looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary.
There it explains that (when votes depended on property), a faggot was ‘a vote for a particular candidate or party fraudulently contrived by nominally transferring sufficient property to a person who would not otherwise be qualified’.
The ‘champion faggot’ in the cutting refers to the Revd Washbourne West, who had died that year, managing at the age of 80 ‘to record votes for 17 Conservative candidates in different parts of the country in the 1892 election’.
Get Britain's best politics newsletters
Register to get The Spectator's insight and opinion straight to your inbox. You can then read two free articles each week.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in