Topic summary
Rotten Borough
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Rotten and pocket boroughs.
Rotten boroughs
The expression rotten borough is attested from the mid-18th century (with dictionary evidence from 1765), and was popularised by early 19th-century parliamentary reformers as a pejorative label for depopulated constituencies that retained representation. In practice, many such seats had very small electorates and could be maintained by the Crown or controlled by aristocratic patrons, making them vulnerable to bribery, coercion, and other forms of influence. The adjective rotten carried a strongly negative sense, implying both decay and moral wrongdoing.