The 1889 Cardiff County Borough Council election was held on Friday 1 November 1889 to elect councillors to

Cardiff County Borough Council Cardiff County Borough Council, known as Cardiff City Council after Cardiff achieved city status in 1905, was the elected local authority that administered the town (later city) and county borough of Cardiff, Glamorgan, Wales between 1889 and ...

Cardiff Cardiff (; cy, Caerdydd ) is the capital and largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Cardiff ( cy, Dinas a Sir Caerdydd, links=no), and the city is the eleventh-largest in the United Kingd ...

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

. These were the first all-Cardiff elections since the creation of the county borough. The previous full elections were to Cardiff Town Council in November 1888.

Background

Cardiff had become a

county borough County borough is a term introduced in 1889 in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to refer to a borough or a city independent of county council control, similar to the unitary authorities created since the 1990s. An equivalent te ...

on 1 April 1889 as a result of the

Local Government Act 1888 Local may refer to: Geography and transportation * Local (train), a train serving local traffic demand * Local, Missouri, a community in the United States * Local government, a form of public administration, usually the lowest tier of administrat ...

. With its municipal year running from November, the November 1889 elections were the first all-Cardiff elections in the town since becoming a county borough. Not all council seats were up for election, because councillors stood down for election in rotation. The next all-Cardiff election took place on 1 November 1890. In 1889 the council consisted of 30 councillors who were elected by the town's voters and ten

aldermen An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members the ...

who were elected by the councillors.

Overview of the result

Contests took place in only two wards, the West ward and the Canton ward, which both elected two councillors. There were contrasting results in these wards, which the ''South Wales Daily News'' put down largely to the winning side being better organised, generally with more vehicles available to carry voters to the polling stations. In the West ward, Conservative candidate Mr E.J. Smith was president of the local Lincensed Victuallers Association, so secured the support of every publican. The correspondent in the ''South Wales Daily News'' points to the recent South ward by-election, which had happened only five weeks beforehand and should have been a warning to the Liberals in the November election. The South ward by-election took place on 23 September in the docks area of the town and had been won by the Conservative candidate, their first representation in the ward since before 1886.

Ward results

Canton

West

* = 'retiring' ward councillor for re-election

References

{{United Kingdom local elections, 1889, state=collapsed Cardiff County Borough Council elections in Cardiff 19th century in Cardiff