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Sunderland (constituency)

Parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom, 1832-1950

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 21, 2026
Entity authorityQ7639684 ↗
Source-derived summary

Sunderland was a borough constituency in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, created by the Reform Act 1832 for the 1832 general election. It elected two Members of Parliament (MPs) by the bloc vote system. It was split into the single-member seats of Sunderland North and Sunderland South for the 1950 general election.

Boundaries

1832-1918

Under the Parliamentary Boundaries Act 1832, the contents of the borough were defined as the Parish of Sunderland and the several townships of Bishop Wearmouth, Bishop Wearmouth Panns, Monk Wearmouth, Monk Wearmouth Shore, and Southwick.

See map on Vision of Britain website.

Minor change in 1868 to include a small part of the Municipal Borough not in the Parliamentary Borough.

1918-1950

The County Borough of Sunderland

The Urban District of Southwick-on-Wear.

Minor changes to align boundaries with those of local authorities.

Members of Parliament

Election results

Elections in the 1830s

Barrington resigned, causing a by-election.

Elections in the 1840s

Thompson resigned by accepting the office of Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds in order to contest a by-election at Westmorland, causing a by-election.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Sunderland (constituency)” as parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom, 1832-1950. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Sunderland, constituency and Parliamentary.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1832, 1950, 1918, 1868—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1832-12-08. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Sunderland, constituency and Parliamentary providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Sunderland (constituency)”, the useful work is to connect “parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom, 1832-1950” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7639684. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1832, 1950, 1918 and 1868.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Sunderland (constituency) primary sources, Sunderland (constituency) archive and Sunderland 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.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Sunderland (constituency)” 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.