According to Henry Pelling the political gulf between the east and west divisions of Wolverhampton after 1885 requires little explanation. Wolverhampton East was ‘more uniformly working-class’ than other Black Country seats and therefore more anti-Conservative; Wolverhampton West was ‘rather middle-class’ in character and therefore leant strongly towards the Conservatives. There is., of course, something in this argument: Wolverhampton's ‘west end’ included large tracts of substantial suburban housing, while the ‘east end’ was dominated by heavy industry and considerable poverty. However, Pelling overlooks the fact that only one of the classic ‘east end’ wards (St James's) was actually in Wolverhampton East – St George's and St Matthew's were both part of the western division. St Peter's and St Mary's, the other two Wolverhampton wards in the eastern division were not dominated by the iron and coal industries of the ‘east end’. The town centre ward of St Peter's was now largely depopulated, and its electorate included a sizeable business vote which the Tories had tried to persuade the boundary commissioners to graft on to the marginal western division. St Mary's was largely a working-class ward, but the strength of the brewing interest (and of Catholicism) meant that it was far from hopeless territory for the Conservatives. In any case, as we have seen, nearly two-thirds of the electorate for Wolverhampton East came from the industrial villages and townships which had grown up between the two towns of Wolverhampton and Walsall. There seems little reason to believe that these communities were in fact more monolithically working class than other parts of the Black Country, such as Wednesbury or Dudley where Conservatism became a powerful force in the late nineteenth century.