Bristol Archives are grateful to the Friends of Bristol Museum, Galleries & Archives for their support. As part of this, we recently purchased a pair of mounted posters from opposing campaigns in Bristol in the general election of 1865.
The first poster ridicules Conservative candidate Thomas Fremantle. It advertises a “Wonderful curiosity!! For a short time only in Bristol, up the passage, to be seen alive, the excited gorilla of Wine Street”.
Fremantle lost to Liberal candidates Henry Fitzhardinge Berkeley and Sir Samuel Morton Peto in the election that year. The poster continues by saying that “this rare specimen is the largest alive in this city, and allowed to be the most self-conceited and ignorant in the kingdom” … “his roar at the mention of his conquerors is terrific, and only to be equalled by the Durdham Down lion”..
The second poster promotes Fremantle, in that same election. It asks “The radicals state that ‘Lord Palmerston’s Ministry has proved itself equal to all the wants and wishes of the country’ – Is this so?” It gives figures of government expenditure up to 1858 compared to the Conservative government of the 1840s. It finishes that “the stump advocates of Berkeley and Peto hopped about as bare and ridiculous as the deluded jackdaw. Fremantle for ever! Give him a plumper!”
These posters supplement other election documents throughout our collections, including poll books and electoral registers. The museums’ social history collections include an election flyer also referring to Fremantle as a gorilla. Together, these can enhance our understanding of the elections of the period, as well as the type of advertising and promotion used by candidates.
Graham Tratt, Archivist