<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This article needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . (August 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> The Representation of the People Act 1867, 30 & 31 Vict . c. 102 (known informally as the Reform Act of 1867 or the Second Reform Act) was a piece of British legislation that enfranchised part of the urban male working class in England and Wales for the first time . </P> <P> Before the Act, only one million of the seven million adult males in England and Wales could vote; the Act immediately doubled that number . Moreover, by the end of 1868 all male heads of household were enfranchised as a result of the end of compounding of rents . However, the Act introduced only a negligible redistribution of seats . The overall intent was to help the Conservative Party, yet it resulted in their loss of the 1868 general election . </P> <P> For the decades after the Great Reform Act of 1832, cabinets (in that era leading from both Houses) had resisted attempts to push through further reform, and in particular left unfulfilled the six demands of the Chartist movement . After 1848, this movement declined rapidly, and elite opinion began to change . It was thus only 28 years after the initial, quite modest, Great Reform Act that leading politicians thought it prudent to introduce further electoral reform . Lord John Russell, who in 1861 became the first Earl Russell, attempted this in 1860; but the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, a fellow Liberal, was against any further electoral reform . When Palmerston died in 1865, however, the floodgates for reform were opened . </P>

When did the working class get the vote