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1888 Mid Lanarkshire by-election

UK parliamentary by-election

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 31, 2026
Entity authorityQ16931917 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 1888 Mid Lanarkshire by-election was a parliamentary by-election held on 27 April 1888 for the UK House of Commons constituency of Mid Lanarkshire in Scotland.

Previous MP

The seat had become vacant in April 1888. The constituency's Liberal Member of Parliament, Stephen Mason resigned from his seat. He did this by being appointed Steward of the Manor of Northstead, a notional office of profit under the Crown, which is used to permit MPs to vacate their seats as Members of the House of Commons cannot technically resign from their seats.

Mason (1832–1890) was a Glasgow merchant, who had been the MP for the constituency since the 1885 general election. He was known for having written pamphlets on political topics, such as monetary and land questions, the Anglo-French treaty of 1860 and banking in Scotland.

Candidates

Three candidates were nominated. The list below is set out in descending order of the number of votes received at the by-election.

1. The Liberal Party candidate was John Wynford Philipps (30 May 1860 – 28 March 1938).

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1888 Mid Lanarkshire by-election” as uK parliamentary by-election. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1888, 1832, 1890, 1885—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Lanarkshire, by-election and parliamentary can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as uK parliamentary by-election. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16931917. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1888, 1832, 1890 and 1885.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “1888 Mid Lanarkshire by-election”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 1888 Mid Lanarkshire by-election primary sources, 1888 Mid Lanarkshire by-election archive and Lanarkshire research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1888 Mid Lanarkshire by-election”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1888 Mid Lanarkshire by-election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.