Twenty-four years after they were first set, Councillor Joseph Batten raised the matter of the inequality of electoral representation in the three wards of the Borough of Peterborough and proposed that the borough be redivided into four wards. It was pointed out that, currently, the east ward elected nine councillors, the north ward six and the south ward but three. No one disagreed that redistribution was necessary but politics and vested interests were involved. Nothing changed and five years later, in 1897, the 3,076 electors in the north ward still had 512 persons per councillor compared to the south ward's 217 voters and the east ward's 127. (Mellows, W.T., 'Peterborough Municipal Jubilee', Peterborough Standard, 1924)

Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.