Constituency : Birmingham East 1885-6
William took the new seat of Birmingham East as Chamberlain's "caucus" made a clean sweep of the city's seats.
William started out as an apprentice in the pin and wire trade in Birmingham but set up his own business making tacks and shoe rivets. He made his name in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers from a very young age. He was elected to Birmingham Town Council and became chair of the Borough Health Committee. He was mayor in 1883-84. He taught in the early morning schools for the instruction of adults set up in the city.
William never spoke in Parliament. He supported allotments but did not endorse land confiscation.
Like Henry Broadhurst , William resisted moving to the Liberal Unionists but stayed to defend his seat in 1886 which he lost to the Conservatives. He retained his position on the the Borough Health Committee and became president of the Birmingham Liberal Association. He set up convalescent homes in Llandudno in connection with Birmingham's Hospital Saturday Fund .He stood unsuccessfully for Birmingham Bordesley in 1895.
In 1901 the Tory Birmingham Daily Gazette mounted a sustained attack on him describing him as "totally incapable of conducting a vigorous and efficient sanitary administration. His 25 years of office represent a dreary blank in the history of progress". He won a libel suit after the paper suggested he owned slum properties in the city.
William was knighted in 1906
He died in 1908 aged 63. A tuberculosis hospital was named after him. The paper shamelessly said he " probably helped in doing more for the betterment of the conditions under which the poorer classes live than any other man who has occupied a seat in the Council Chamber".
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