On This Day

23 March 1832

The House of Commons passes the third reading of the Reform Bill by 355 votes to 239

After all the excitement of the previous year the event was something of an anticlimax. John Cam Hobhouse recorded that the bill passed ‘in a very thin House, amidst no cheers, at about one o’clock in the morning.’ There were more twists to come with defeat in the Lords, the resignation and return of the Whig government and the extraction of a pledge from a reluctant King William IV to create sufficient new peers to pass the bill before the bill finally became law.