A hustings in which a man stands on a flimsy platform beside a sloping gangway up which spectators (voters) are thronging to his booth as figures stand in the distance on a rival booth. Lithograph by John Doyle, 1831.

On the hotly contested Dorset election of 1831 when the Whig politician, John Calcraft, seen pulling a speech from his mouth, successfully carried the county of Dorset as a reformer against his Tory rival, George Bankes. Calcraft was a prominent and early reformer of the liquor trade but his mind became unhinged and he later killed himself at Whitehall Palace in September 1831