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The act extended the 1867 concessions from the boroughs to the countryside. All men paying an annual rental of £10 or all those holding land valued at £10 now had the vote. The British electorate now totalled over 5,500,000. An act a year later redistributed constituencies, giving more representation to urban areas (especially London).
Gordon of Khartoum 1885
Administrator of the Sudan between 1874 and 1880, General Charles Gordon was instrumental in the ending of the slave trade in the country. In 1882, Mohammed Ahmad (the Mahdi) objected to Egyptian control of Sudan and rose in revolt. His forces defeated an Egyptian army and cut off British garrisons in the central Sudan. Gordon was sent back to Sudan in 1884 to rescue the isolated garrisons but became cut off in Khartoum.After a ten month siege, the town fell and he was killed. Public opinion saw Gordon as a hero of Empire and blamed the British government under Gladstone for failing to send a relief column. Sudan remained under local control until Kitchener was successful at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898.
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