The data set was created as part of the ESRC funded project Economic Policy and Political Myopia. The aim of the project was to study the degree of political myopia in public policy today and in the past both from an empirical and a theoretical perspective. The data on the number of voters in municipal boroughs in 1852-1884 was collected to investigate the link between spending on urban sanitation and the local voting franchise. The dataset contains information about the number of voters registered to vote in the elections for the borough councils in up to 215 municipal boroughs in 1852, 1865, 1871 and 1884. Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.