It is to the early 19th-century reformer Major John Cartwright that we owe the innovation of having individual sheets of paper for mass petitions, which could be spread around the country – previously they’d always been on one long sheet (with obvious logistical difficulties). His tour of the country in 1813 gathered 130,000 signatures in support of a taxypayer franchise.
Although he didn’t have a lot of effective success – most of his petitions were dismissed by parliament as inadequately framed. “Petitioning continues to this day to be regulated by an act of 1661 agauinst ‘tumultuous’ petitioning, and by 18th-century notions of ‘decent and respectable language.
(From Edward Vallance, A Radical History of England, p. 297)
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