1881 Preston by-election explained

The 1881 Preston by-election took place on 20 May 1881 after the death of the incumbent Conservative MP Edward Hermon. The Conservative candidate William Farrer Ecroyd campaigned on a fair trade platform and won the seat.^[1]

Further reading

• B. H. Brown, The Tariff Reform Movement in Great Britain, 1881–1895 (1943).
• S. Zebel, ‘Fair Trade: An English Reaction to the Breakdown of the Cobden Treaty System’, Journal of Modern History, 12 (1940), pp. 161–185.

Notes and References

1. A. C. Howe, ‘Ecroyd, William Farrer (1827–1915)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008, accessed 16 Jan 2014.