Mid Surrey (UK Parliament constituency)

The constituency was created under the Second Reform Act for the 1868 general election, and abolished by the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 for the 1885 general election.

Political history

The seat elected a brief series of Conservatives.

Successor seats

The 1885 Act took from 2 to 16 the metropolitan seats in the north-east of the county — that is the zone north-east of Wimbledon and Croydon coming from 1889 into the newly formed County of London. It also founded six single-member county constituencies (seats) to cover the rump bulk of the county, commonly referred to at the time as the non-metropolitan county. The Act thus abolished the West, Mid and East Surrey divisions double seat-areas that comprised the county. As Surrey was now split into single-representative areas this met a Chartist objective, discouraging the frequent collusion between candidates or parties which had beset multi-member constituencies (specifically plurality-at-large voting, for which "bloc(k) vote" in Britain was the term used). These six distinctly county (non-metropolitan) divisions the Act numbered, named (and detailed as summarised in outline below):[1]

1. The North-Western or Chertsey Division (usually recorded as Chertsey, Surrey N.W. or North-West) - included Woking and Egham
2. The South-Western or Guildford Division (as style shown above) - included Godalming, Farnham and surrounds
3. The South-Eastern or Reigate Division (as style shown above) - included Dorking sessional division save for two parishes in No. 4.
4. The Mid or Epsom Division (as style shown above) - included Kingston's southern and eastern sessional division components
5. The Kingston Division (invariably Kingston or Kingston-upon-Thames) - included Richmond
6. The North-Eastern or Wimbledon Division (as style shown above) - included sessional division of Croydon except its core and north in the Metropolis; plus Caterham, Chelsham, Farley, Warlingham.

1868–1885: The Hundreds of Kingston, Reigate and so much of that of Wallington as lay to the west of the parishes of Croydon and Sanderstead, and so much of the Hundred of Brixton as lay to the west of the parishes of Streatham, Clapham and Lambeth.[2]

• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "S" (part 6)