Name, Residence, Vote and Occupation for the 1852 and 1857 Sheffield General Elections

The research project set out in 1985 to investigate the claim made by Martin J. Wiener in <i>English culture and the decline of the industrial spirit: 1850-1980</i> (Cambridge University Press, 1982) that Tory political support was inimical to the growth of industrial capitalism. An ancillary aim of the project was to explore the political allegiance of the membership of the Sheffield Club. In order to achieve both of these aims information from the poll books for the 1852 and 1857 Sheffield elections were entered into a database and then linked to occupational data from local commercial directories.