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Thus the old Palace of Westminster was historically of great interest. But it had no pretensions to beauty. It was just an architectural patchwork, added to from time to time without any sense of order or unity of design. Interiorily, it was also confined and uncommodious. Yet the idea of pulling it down to give place to a building of nobler proportions and one more suitable to its great purpose was not relished. In the very last session of the Commons that was held in St. Stephen’s Chapel Joseph Hume proposed that new Houses of Parliament should be built in the Green Park. The motion was rejected. Four or five months later, as the buildings were enveloped in flames, one of the spectators wittily cried out: “There is Joe Hume’s motion being carried without a division.”
The great conflagration which destroyed the Palace was on the night of Thursday, October 16, 1834. The Whig Ministry, under Earl Grey, that carried the Reform Act of 1832, broke up in July on the question of appropriating a portion of the revenues of the Church in Ireland to secular purposes, and was succeeded by another Whig Administration with Lord Melbourne as Prime Minister. Parliament was prorogued on August 15th by King William IV in person. It was to meet again on October 23rd. When that day came the ancient Palace of Westminster was a thing of the past. At first it was thought the fire was the work of political incendiaries. But a Committee of the Privy Council found, after a long and searching investigation, that it was due solely to human stupidity. An immense quantity of old wooden “tallies” or notched sticks, originally used as receipts for sums paid into the Exchequer, had accumulated at Westminster, and, after the abolition of this barbaric mode of keeping the national accounts and the substitution of pens, ink and paper, in 1826, the sticks were used as firewood in the Government offices. As the room in which the remaining “tallies” were stored at Westminster was required for another purpose, two men were employed all day, on October 16, 1834, in getting rid of the sticks by burning them in the stove under the House of Lords by which that Chamber was heated. At five o’clock they went home. At half-past six the House of Lords was found to be on fire. The heat from the over-charged flues had ignited the panelling of the Chamber. The progress of the flames could not be stayed, and gradually the conflagration swept over the whole mass of buildings. Thus did the ancient Palace of Westminster disappear through an act of almost incredible carelessness. All that remained of the historic fabric were the cloisters of the old St. Stephen’s Chapel (or House of Commons), the crypt beneath the Chapel, in which the Speaker used to entertain Members at dinners and other social functions, and, happily, Westminster Hall, with its centuried associations of great men and historic deeds. Practically everything else was destroyed, including the Throne in the House of Lords and the Chair in the House of Commons.
On October 23, 1834, the day appointed for the reassembling of Parliament, the two Houses met for a brief and formal sitting amid acres of still smouldering ruins, the Lords within the charred walls of their library, and the Commons in an adjoining committee-room. It was decided temporarily to fit up the House of Lords for the use of the Commons, and the Painted Chamber for the use of the Lords, and a sum of £30,000 was voted for the purpose. A Royal Commission was also appointed to superintend the construction of a new Palace of Westminster. Parliament then adjourned. On November 14th King William dismissed the Melbourne Ministry, and Sir Robert Peel was commanded to form a new Administration. On the advice of the Prime Minister, the King dissolved Parliament on December 29th, and the new Parliament met on February 19, 1835, in the temporary buildings, which continued to be used till the completion of the present Palace of Westminster.