It was won for all but three years by the Conservative candidate, the exception being the years 1906-1909 when that party, as a fellow Unionist party against Irish Home Rule and other devolution in a spell of widespread popular decline held a general meeting endorsing instead H. O. Arnold-Forster, a Liberal Unionist.

[1] He died in 1909 causing a by-election and his party, with its occasional candidates in the region, no longer stood for the Croydon seat nor its north–south successors after 1918.

By the time of the 1911 census more factories had been set up and a large artisan population had moved in so its core and north in particular was decidedly lower-income working-class.

The seat being a parliamentary borough made for a lower level of election expenses permissible and the usual office/status for the returning officer.

Grantham resigned after being appointed a judge of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice, causing a by-election.