Meanings of pocket borough in English

Thereafter, it was storekeeper Lincoln's pocket borough; its ruffians were his body-guard.

The Flats, mind you; our own little pocket borough of the Flats!

O'Donnell says it probably originated in that Banagher was a pocket borough notorious for its parliamentary corruption.

Sir Robert Peel began in the pocket borough of Cashel in 1809, a coming-of-age present from his mill-owning father.

Fox first entered Parliament for the pocket borough of Midhurst, and Sir George Trevelyan has described how it took place.

Too often a political office was granted from a pocket borough in which a restricted electorate could be bought at a trifling expense.

Let 'em quash every pocket borough to-morrow, and bring in every mushroom town in the kingdom-they'llonly increase the expense of getting into Parliament.

Tillietudlem was no poor pocket borough to be disposed of, this way or that way, according to the caprice or venal call of some aristocrat.

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Such towns were called "rotten boroughs," " pocket boroughs," "nomination boroughs."

Preston was often represented in Parliament by a Stanley, and was looked upon as a Pocket Borough.

In spite of pocket boroughs, family influence, and flagrant corruption, the reformers came back to Parliament with their majority increased to fully one hundred.