When the polls closed in Bishop's Waltham at 10 PM on May 4th, officials carried out the standard procedure of sealing the ballot boxes using hot wax. Somehow, ballot papers inside one box got set alight and smoke started coming out of the slit in the top of the box.
The obvious solution would have been to open the box and hoick out the papers that were burning, but that was not possible because the box was locked. So officials did the next best thing: they poured water into the slit. The upshot was that one of the boxes at the count was full of sodden and partly burned ballot papers.
To avoid holding the election in Bishop's Waltham again, the Returning Officer decided to make the best possible effort to recover these damaged ballot papers. Kitchen paper was laid out along long tables and all the ballot papers carefully laid out to dry over night in a sealed room.
The next morning nearly all the ballot papers could be counted in the normal way. Those that were partly burned were carefully inspected and counted if the voting intention was still discernible. The photo shows officials and candidates inspecting those burnt papers.
The final result showed that Independent Georgie Busher was 57 votes ahead of Conservative Roger Hockin, and there were 15 undecipherable fragments of ballot papers that could not be counted and which were estimated to amount to 9 irretrievably burnt ballot papers. The candidates thus agreed that Georgie Busher was the winner and everyone heaved a sigh of relief that we were spared having to run that election again.