University of Hertfordshire Research Archive

        JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

        Browse

        All of UHRABy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitles

        Arkivum Files

        My Downloads
        View Item 
        • UHRA Home
        • University of Hertfordshire
        • Masters Theses
        • View Item
        • UHRA Home
        • University of Hertfordshire
        • Masters Theses
        • View Item

        Thomas Ward Blagg and the Abbey Parish Charities Scandal c.1827-1860

        View/Open
        Download fulltext (PDF, 4Mb)
        Author
        Langsdale, Simon
        Attention
        2299/20277
        Abstract
        St Albans in the early to mid-nineteenth century suffered from endemic levels of corruption. The borough was well known for the bribery that took place at its borough elections and was the subject of three parliamentary enquiries before it was eventually disfranchised in 1852. However, historians have largely focused on the forms that the bribery took without looking below the surface to identify the underlying causes of the corruption, the networks that allowed it to function or the wider repercussions. By concentrating on the activities of the town clerk Thomas Ward Blagg, I will examine the political and other motivations for corruption and look at how Blagg’s embezzlement of several of the Abbey parish endowment charities helped fund his attempts at controlling the borough. Through this study, it will become clear that key pieces of legislation from the Age of Reform such as the Great Reform Act 1832 and The Municipal Corporations Act 1835 increased levels of corruption in the borough rather than reducing them. What followed was a ‘golden age’ of corruption, which saw competing factions trying to fill the vacuum of power that had been created by the ending of aristocratic patronage. In effect Blagg and his contemporaries were participating in a ‘New Corruption’ that would take the best part of two decades to overcome. It took the combined efforts of leading figures within the Abbey parish and the emergence of legislation from Westminster that gave the authorities unprecedented powers of intervention to bring men like Blagg under control.
        Publication date
        2018-07-13
        Published version
        https://doi.org/10.18745/th.20277
        Other links
        http://hdl.handle.net/2299/20277
        Metadata
        Show full item record
        Keep in touch

        © 2019 University of Hertfordshire

        I want to...

        • Apply for a course
        • Download a Prospectus
        • Find a job at the University
        • Make a complaint
        • Contact the Press Office

        Go to...

        • Accommodation booking
        • Your student record
        • Bayfordbury
        • KASPAR
        • UH Arts

        The small print

        • Terms of use
        • Privacy and cookies
        • Criminal Finances Act 2017
        • Modern Slavery Act 2015
        • Sitemap

        Find/Contact us

        • T: +44 (0)1707 284000
        • E: ask@herts.ac.uk
        • Where to find us
        • Parking
        • hr
        • qaa
        • stonewall
        • AMBA
        • ECU Race Charter
        • disability confident
        • AthenaSwan