However, the Reform Bill was passed in 1832, and pocket boroughs were abolished. There had been thirty-seven places returning members with constituencies not exceeding fifty electors, and fourteen of those places had not more than twenty electors. There were three boroughs each containing only one £10 householder. One of the boroughs only paid in assessed taxes £3 9s., another £16 8s. 9d., a third £40 17s. 1d. But, luckily for the public, the Reform Bill did not abolish the fun of the flags, music, beer, and jokes of elections. The delicate attentions which could still be paid to candidates remained in full swing. Thus, we remember an election in the Isle of Wight: The father of one of the candidates for Parliamentary distinction, in the Conservative interest, had, in his youthful days, married a lady who, in a peripatetic manner, dealt in oysters. His rival, a Radical, paid him the compliment of sending him daily barrows and truck-loads of oyster-shells, which were, with his kind regards, discharged in front of the hotel where his committee was established, and from whose windows he addressed the electors. It was splendid fun, and calculated to impress the intelligent foreigner. It showed how highly the British public appreciated their elective franchise. Pleasantries had, indeed, always been the rule at election-time. When Fox, in 1802, canvassed Westminster, he asked a shopkeeper on the opposite side for his vote and interest, when the latter produced a halter, and said that was all he could give him. Fox thanked him, but said he could not think of depriving him of it, as no doubt it was a family relic. At an election at Norwich in 1875 the committee-room of the Conservative candidate was attacked, but the agent kept up the fire and had red-hot pokers ready, which, standing at the top of the stairs, he offered to his assailants, but they would not take them! In the same town the Liberals held a prayer-meeting, at which the Conservatives presented each man with one of Moody and Sankey’s hymn-books, with something between the leaves. In fact, the Reform Bill had not made elections pure. William Roupell obtained his seat for Lambeth by the expenditure of £10,000, ’and,’ said a man well able to judge of the truth of his assertion, ’if he were released from prison (to which he was sent for life for his forgeries) and would spend another £10,000, he would be re-elected, in spite of his having proved a criminal.’