Eleven o'clock
The wealthy persons who owned these carriages ... The result of the poll was to be shown on an illuminated sign at the Town Hall , at eleven o'clock that night , and long before that hour a vast crowd gathered in the adjacent streets . About ten o'clock it began to rain , but the crowd stood its ground and increased in numbers as the time went by . At a quarter to eleven the rain increased to a terrible downpour , but the people remained waiting to know which hero had conquered . Eleven o'clock came and an intense silence fell upon the crowd , whose eyes were fixed eagerly upon the window where the sign was to be exhibited . To judge by the extraordinary interest displayed by these people , one might have thought that they expected to reap some great benefit or to sustain some great loss from the result , but of course that was not the case , for most of them knew perfectly well that the result of this election would make no more real difference to them than all the other elections that had gone before . They wondered what the figures would be . There were ten thousand voters on the register .