Whitby (UK Parliament constituency)

Whitby
Former Borough constituency for the House of Commons
1832–1885
Number of members	One
Replaced by	Whitby
Created from	Yorkshire
1885–1918
Number of members	One
Type of constituency	County constituency
Replaced by	Scarborough and Whitby
Created from	North Riding of Yorkshire and Whitby

Whitby was a parliamentary constituency centred on the town of Whitby in North Yorkshire. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, MP elected by the first past the post system.

History

The constituency was created by the Great Reform Act for the 1832 general election as a parliamentary borough, Whitby being at that point one of the most prosperous towns in England which had not previously been represented. (Whitby had been summoned to send members to the Protectorate Parliaments during the Civil War period, but never at any other time.) It consisted of Whitby itself and the adjoining townships of Ruswarp, Hawsker and Stainsacre, and had a population of just over 10,000.

Whitby's shipbuilding industry had been in decline even before the new borough was established, and by 1885 a separate MP for the town could no longer be justified. However, when the borough was abolished the county constituency which absorbed it was also named Whitby (strictly, the Whitby Division of the North Riding of Yorkshire): it contained all the easternmost part of the Riding apart from Scarborough (which remained a separate borough), stretching south-west to Pickering which was the only other town in the constituency.

The Whitby division was abolished for the 1918 general election, when it was partially replaced by the new Scarborough & Whitby constituency.

Members of Parliament

Election		Member	Party
	1832	Aaron Chapman	Conservative
	1847	Robert Stephenson	Conservative
	1859 by-election	Harry Stephen Thompson	Liberal
	1865	Charles Bagnall	Conservative
	1868	William Henry Gladstone	Liberal
	1880	Arthur Pease	Liberal
	1885	Ernest Beckett	Conservative
	1905 by-election	Noel Buxton	Liberal
	1906	Gervase Beckett	Conservative
	1918	constituency abolished: see Scarborough and Whitby

Election results

Elections in the 1900s

General Election January 1900 Electorate 10,740

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Ernest William Beckett	unopposed	n/a	n/a
	Conservative hold		Swing	n/a

Whitby by-election, 1905 Electorate 10,857

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Liberal	Noel Edward Buxton	4,547	52.6	n/a
	Conservative	Hon. William Gervase Beckett	4,102	47.4	n/a
Majority			445	5.2	n/a
Turnout				79.7	n/a
	Liberal gain from Conservative		Swing	n/a

General Election January 1906 Electorate 11,263

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Hon. William Gervase Beckett	4,780	50.4	+3.0
	Liberal	Noel Edward Buxton	4,709	49.6	-3.0
Majority			71	0.8	-4.4
Turnout				84.2	+4.5
	Conservative gain from Liberal		Swing	+3.0

Elections in the 1900s

General Election January 1910 Electorate 11,263

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Hon. William Gervase Beckett
	Liberal	James Willoughby Jardine
Majority
Turnout
	Conservative hold		Swing

References

• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "W" (part 3)