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'The House Wot Keeps Bad Hours', John Doyle, 18 July 1831 ÂĐ The Trustees of the British Museum

Time and the Commons

https://thehistoryofparliament...ime-and-the-commons/

The above John Doyle print of July 1831, ‘The House wot keeps bad hours’, shows the House of Commons in session with the clock showing seven o’clock in the morning. Members are crowded on the benches, asleep or half asleep; the clerk, barely conscious, is supporting his head with one hand. They are all being harangued, angrily, by the ultra Tory Sir Charles Wetherell, who with a group of allies had to the mounting irritation of the government majority, been conducting a rearguard action against the Reform bill by moving successive motions to adjourn the House.

The title might have been used at any time since then, for the Commons’ reputation for sitting longer and later than any other in the world has remained unchallenged. In the 1850s the journalist George Augustus Sala described a debate in the House of Commons at 2am, commenting.


 

Sleeping in Parliament is nothing new.

Django

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