The Polling, Plate III: Four Prints of an Election

Between 1754 and 1755 British artist William Hogarth painted a series of scenes satirizing the British electoral process called The Humours of an Election. This engraving was made from the third of the series, entitled The Polling.

The engraving depicts a polling booth on the day of an election. A well-dressed, disabled soldier on the left side of the image is having his vote called into question by two bickering lawyers because he does not have a right hand to place on the bible for his pledge. The man voting in the center is depicted as being mentally unfit, manipulated by a man wearing a Tory rosette. The next man in line is depicted as, if not already dead, at least deathly ill. A blind man climbs the steps, raising the question of whether he also could be misled into casting the wrong vote. A brawl is taking place on the bridge in the background, referencing 1754 election incident on the Magdalen Bridge in Oxford where a Tory mob surrounded a Whig carriage to prevent its passengers from casting their votes. Between the bridge and the polls, a woman representing Great Britain is trapped in a broken carriage, ignored by her drivers (representing Parliament) who are busy cheating at cards.

While clearly exaggerated, Hogarth’s engraving provides an illustration of the rowdy and boisterous eighteenth-century electoral process.