Defining moment for what was once a byword for election bribery and corruption

LONG BEFORE they could plant fake news on Facebook, unscrupulous pollsters had to resort to the more traditional incentive of free booze to get voters to see matters their way – and after several centuries, a long-forgotten word coined for the practice has made its way into the dictionary.

Quilling, a custom of the 18th and 19th centuries, is said to have taken its name from a quill-like instrument used to draw alcohol from a barrel. It was an election ritual in many parts of Britain – though its name is said to be peculiar to Devon – and was notorious for inciting violence, said

Exeter University historian Dr Todd Gray, who asked for its inclusion in the latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

“We know from reports that it encouraged violence,” Dr Gray said. “Elections in the city were notoriously violent and contested. In 1761 a husband murdered his wife because they supported different parties. He subsequently attributed his actions to the ‘heat’ of the liquor.”

The dictionary now defines quilling as a historical term for the “practice of bribing electors in order to gain their votes, especially by providing free alcohol”.

The word was defined in papers from 1853 as “a very old term for social meetings of the electors at which there is drink, of course”.

Quilling was far from a clandestine practice. A hogshead of cider was commonly set up for electors outside St Lawrence’s Church, in Exeter’s High Street.

A blue flag hoisted on the church alerted people to the goings-on.

During a single evening of quilling at one public house two days before an election, 60 invited voters had 246 glasses of grog – while 25 quarts of beer were given to labourers who were unable to vote but who made a public show of support.

In 1841, Exeter was ridiculed for quilling by Monthly Magazine, which described the excessive amounts spent by one candidate on “the beef and pudding feed you gave the unwashed dolts” to be the “very Sodom and Gomorrah of political corruption”.