William Gladstone’s Liberal government introduced voting by secret ballot five years after the Second Reform Act had substantially increased the size of the electorate. This realised one of the key points of the reforming ‘Chartist’ petition of 1838. Voting in secret was not uncontroversial. The proposal was fiercely contested by the House of Lords, which considered it ‘cowardly’ and ‘unmanly’. It was first employed at a by-election in Pontefract in August of the same year.