This Day in History: 1893-07-01

On 1st July 1893, ‘The Spectator’ magazine reported: ‘Lord Randolph Churchill, speaking at Pontefract on Saturday last, made a very happy point by saying that Mr. Gladstone’s new financial resolutions would condemn Ireland to penal,—he meant, he said, “ financial,”—servitude for six years. This is, indeed, precisely what the Parnellites think of the step taken. They have issued an address to their Irish friends in the United States, imploring their support to resist and defeat this withdrawal of all financial power from the Irish Legislature for this long period, which they regard as fatal to any genuine kind of Home-rule……….
The Pontefract by-election ended in the return of the Gladstonian by the narrow majority of 32, Mr. T. W. Nussey receiving 1,191 votes, against 1,159 given for Mr. Elliott Lees, the Conservative.’