Note on presentation and sources

The registration returns for each borough and county in England and Wales are arranged by the date of each revision, rather than the year in which the electoral registers were mostly in force. The 1835 return, for example, gives the number of registered electors entitled to vote at a parliamentary election held between 1 November 1835 and 1 November 1836. The columns also provide the number of electors who polled in the 1832, 1835 and 1837 general elections. These are also arranged chronologically. The January 1835 election figures, for example, appear before the October 1835 registration return. Uncontested elections are indicated by n/c and blank entries indicate a lack of reliable information. There are no figures for 1838 as these returns are missing from the data compiled by the Home Office.

The Parliamentary papers (see bibliography) upon which these registration figures are based suffer from a number of imperfections, the most common being confusion over dates. When in November 1837 the Home Office clerks wrote to each constituency requesting a return of the number of electors registered for 1836 and 1837, for example, it was unclear whether they were referring to the registers in force for the greater part of those two years (i.e. the registers compiled in 1835 and 1836), or those which had been revised in October 1836 and October 1837.