The first Secret Ballot in St Helens 150 years ago today

But it did not go well – at least according to the Liverpool Mercury. The newspaper stated that many confused voters upon arriving at their polling station had sought out their chosen candidate's agent to learn how to vote.

And so it was easy to work out their voting intentions and by counting queues, calculate which candidate was in the lead.

Calling the municipal ballot a "perfect novelty", the Mercury also described how a number of voters had defeated the object of secrecy by writing their names on their voting slips. And others had placed their cross opposite the wrong candidate – believing they were crossing them out! One man even scrawled his “X” on a sample voting paper that had been stuck on the wall!

The St Helens Newspaper was unimpressed with the thinness of the voting paper used in the election. After a vote was cast, the slip was supposed to be folded and handed to the presiding officer who dropped it into a ballot box.

The Newspaper claimed that the thin paper meant the cross next to a candidate's name could be made out through the folded slip before it disappeared inside the box. But overall the press in St Helens were somewhat kinder to the new secret system of voting than their compatriots in Liverpool – as they'd been denouncing open voting for many years.

In 1863 the St Helens Newspaper had claimed that elections in the town were highly corrupt, writing: "Not only is bribery by drink carried on to a great extent, but personation and false representation are practised to a degree unknown in any other town and a great disgrace to this." Sir James Sexton served as the MP for St Helens between 1918 and 1931 and in his autobiography recalled his childhood in the late 1860s.

Copies of the new Ballot Act were advertised for sale in the St Helens Newspaper (Image: Submitted)

The Sexton family ran an umbrella repair business in Tontine Street in St Helens and in 1868 the boy had helped his father fix the vote at that year's general election.

Sir James wrote: "My job was to watch the return of the voting, which was posted up every hour at the grocer's shop, which was the polling booth, and carry the information to my father, whose task was to hunt up voters and ‘persuade’ them that it was worth their while to vote as he thought they should.

"If the figures showed any shrinking on our side, father assembled his forces and marched them into the shed, to be supplied with beer, tobacco, cards and bribes, and to remain there in readiness for any emergency."

And so it was hoped the introduction of the Ballot Act of 1872 would eradicate such corrupt practices. But the new law was controversial, with some arguing that voting in secret was "un-English".

There was also a fear that removing open voting would lead to a sharp decline in those casting their vote. That was because when voting was a public record, the candidate's team could put pressure on those yet to vote – as James Sexton so vividly described. However, the fears of a low turnout in the St Helens municipal election of November 1, 1872 failed to materialise and the decline in voting was very small.

On February 8, 1873 the Liverpool Mercury concluded that voting in secret was far better than open voting (Image: Submitted)

From our standpoint there are two remarkable facts contained within the election stats: a) the tiny electorate that then existed in spite of a recent enlargement; b) the extremely high percentage that voted. Only 1,199 persons in St Helens were eligible to vote in the elections of 1872 (not counting two uncontested wards) and, of this number, 1,133 ballots were cast on the day. So 94.5% of eligible voters voted in a local election, a figure that could only be dreamt of today.

But then if you were one of the 2 - 3% of the St Helens population privileged to have the vote, you placed far more value on it than many do today. In fact at the last St Helens council election in May 2022, the turnout was just 29%.

• Stephen Wainwright’s new book 'The Hidden History Of St Helens Vol 2' is now available from the St Helens Book Stop in Bridge Street and online from eBay and Amazon. Price £12. Volume 1 of 'Hidden History' is also still available.