Balham & Tooting in the County of LondonA map showing the wards of Wandsworth Metropolitan Borough as they appeared in 1916.
Boundaries
The constituency, officially the Balham and Tooting Division of the Parliamentary Borough of Wandsworth, was created by the
Representation of the People Act 1918. The 1918 Act had the principal aim of reducing the growing
malapportionment due to electorate growth in geographical areas coupled with the subsidiary aim of realigning constituency boundaries so as to largely correspond with units of local government units (as created in
1889 and
1900). The new seat was one of five divisions of the
Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth in the parliamentary
County of London.[1]
The seat had previously formed part of the single-member
Wandsworth constituency, created in
1885.[2]
The constituency was defined in terms of
wards of the metropolitan borough as they existed in 1918: it comprised the entire
Tooting ward and the part of the
Balham ward which lay to the west and south of the centre of Balham Hill, Balham High Road, Ormeley Road, Cavendish Road and Emmanuel Road. The remainder of the Balham ward was in another of the Wandsworth divisions,
Clapham.[3]
In the redistribution which took effect with the
1950 United Kingdom general election the Tooting ward and part of Balham ward were included in the redrawn Wandsworth Central seat. The rest of Balham ward remained in the Clapham constituency.
^Youngs, Frederic A Jr. (1979). Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England, Vol.I: Southern England. London:
Royal Historical Society. p. 744.
ISBN0-901050-67-9.
^Schedule 4: New Boroughs, Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 (c.23)
^Schedule 9: Redistribution of Seats, Representation of the People Act 1918 (c.64)