Constituency : Skipton 1906-18
William took over from Frederick Whitley-Thomson at Skipton.
William was educated at Keighley Trade School and Pannal College. He was a Wesleyan Sunday School teacher.
William was a moderate centrist Liberal but he once described the bishops in the House of Lords as "greedy and grasiping grabbers, alias the purse-proud presumptuous prelates".
William hung on by just 51 votes in December 1910. As he was leaving the count , a Tory woman hit him with an umbrella. He remonstrated with her and may or may not have hit her. Her solicitors asked for an apology and received it plus costs. A local barrister wrote to The Craven Herald describing him as "a vulgar hypocrite". He sued both man and paper but lost.
William aided in recruitment during the First World War.
William stood down in 1918.
He died in 1937 aged 74.
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