The constituency, officially the
Balham and Tooting Division of the Parliamentary Borough of Wandsworth, was created by the
Representation of the People Act 1918. The 1918 Act had the principal aim of reducing the growing
malapportionment due to electorate growth in geographical areas coupled with the subsidiary aim of realigning constituency boundaries so as to largely correspond with units of local government units (as created in
1889 and
1900). The new seat was one of five divisions of the
Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth in the parliamentary
County of London. The seat had previously formed part of the single-member
Wandsworth constituency, created in
1885. The constituency was defined in terms of
wards of the metropolitan borough as they existed in 1918: it comprised the entire
Tooting ward and the part of the
Balham ward which lay to the west and south of the centre of Balham Hill, Balham High Road, Ormeley Road, Cavendish Road and Emmanuel Road. The remainder of the Balham ward was in another of the Wandsworth divisions,
Clapham. The constituency was surrounded by
Wandsworth Central to the north-west,
Battersea South to the north, Clapham to the north-east,
Streatham to the east and south-east,
Mitcham to the south and
Wimbledon to the west. In the redistribution which took effect with the
1950 United Kingdom general election the Tooting ward and part of Balham ward were included in the redrawn Wandsworth Central seat. The rest of Balham ward remained in the Clapham constituency. == Members of Parliament ==