Constituency : Dundalk 1848-52, Great Yarmouth 1857, Finsbury 1865-85
In London the picture remained absolutely static with every seat remaining in the same party's hands.
William replaced William Cox at Finsbury.
William was an Irish barrister educated at Trinity College. In 1835 he was Assistant Commissioner of the Irish Poor Inquiry and he was a founder member of the Anti-Corn Law League. In 1846 he was private secretary to Labouchere in Ireland. He stood for Dundalk in 1847, lost and then was awarded the seat on petition. He abandoned it to contest Yarmouth in 1852 but had to wait until 1857 to be elected there. It was then his turn to be unseated on petition.
Once back William was a very active parliamentarian. In 1866 he introduced the Artisan and Labourer's Dwellings Bill on slum clearance which became known as the Torrens Act in 1868. It permitted local councils to put closing orders on, and order the demolition of , insanitary houses.
William was a leading "Tea Room" rebel who defeated Gladstone over his "Instruction" to defeat Disraeli's Bill on its second reading. He gave the Tories a list of Liberals who would vote against it. He was largely responsible for the £10 lodger franchise in the Second Reform Act. In 1869 he won a Select Committee on extradition. In 1874 he introduced and carried a Building Societies Bill.
William was a prolific writer with a number of published works including a biography of Lord Melbourne. He fretted about the urban underclass writing in 1880 , "it is wholly impossible that the population of even one portion or segment of the realm can be in a state of perennial discontent, destitution, and despair, without thereby becoming a well-head of danger, of distress and of deterioration to other more fortunate parts of the kingdom".
He died in 1894 aged 80 when he was knocked down by a hansom cab.
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