On 18 October 1909 The Scotsman published a story on the upcoming Bermondsey by-election which began:

On the surface there seems little reason why the author should have singled out the Bermondsey vote for such special consideration. Indeed in many ways the Bermondsey by-election of 1909 seems a relatively unimportant affair. It brought to office one of the shortest-tenured MPs in modern British history. Elected in late October 1909, the Conservative candidate, John Dumphreys, only entered the House of Commons in November and held the seat for a few weeks before the dissolution of parliament before the general election of January 1910, at which he was defeated. Indeed, none of the candidates can be described as figures of very significant historical note. Dumphreys does not merit an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The Liberal candidate who came second, Spencer Leigh Hughes, did eventually get elected to the House of Commons from another seat in 1910, but remained an obscure backbencher. Only the third-place candidate, Dr Alfred Salter of the Labour party, ever achieved some prominence, though that happened decades later.