Pot-wallopers

Pot-wallopers (from pot, and wallop, 'to boil or bubble'), the popular designation of a class of electors forming the constituency of various English boroughs (e.g. Taunton, Preston) before the Reform Act of 1832, and defined in Sir James Stephen's Commentaries as 'such as cook their own diet in a fireplace of their own.' At Taunton in the 18th century 'several inmates or lodgers would, some little time before the election, bring out their pots, and make fires in the street, and boil their victuals in the sight of their neighbours, that their votes be not called in question' (Defoe's Town through Great Britain, 4th ed. 1748).