William Woodall
William Woodall | |
---|---|
Member of Parliament for Stoke-upon-Trent | |
In office 1880–1885 | |
Member of Parliament for Hanley | |
In office 1885–1900 | |
Personal details | |
Born | 15 March 1832 |
Died | 8 April 1901 | (aged 69)
Political party | Liberal |
William Woodall (Shrewsbury 15 March 1832 – Llandudno 8 April 1901), was a British Liberal politician, philanthropist and supporter of women's suffrage.
Life
He was the elder son of William Woodall, of Shrewsbury, and his wife Martha (née Basson). He was educated at the Crescent Congregational Schools, Liverpool. He thereafter trained as a gas engineer at the works of the Liverpool Gas Company. By 1857 he had become a gasworks manager for the Burslem and Tunstall Gas Company and, since the company never actually operated in Tunstall, this works must have been in Burslem.[citation needed]
Woodall married Evelyn, daughter of Burslem china manufacturer James Macintyre, in 1862. They lived at Longport in the 1860s, where Woodall was a Sunday School teacher. Woodall was later taken into a business partnership by his father-in-law, who operated a china works at the Washington Works at Burslem. Woodall became a senior partner in the firm, after James Macintyre's death in December 1868. William and his wife Evelyn had no children. Evelyn died in 1870, just two years after her father's death. Woodall remained a widower until his death.[citation needed]
Apart from his early business career in Burslem he was also: Chairman of the Burslem School Board from 1868 to 1880; Secretary of the Wedgwood Institute Committee during the time of its building and opening; and served as Chairman of the North Staffordshire Society for Promotion of the Welfare of the Deaf and Dumb.
In 1880 Woodall entered Parliament as an M.P. for
Obituaries also state that he acted as a Justice of the Peace for Staffordshire, and was at one time a Chief Bailiff of Burslem. Woodall became the Chairman of the Sneyd Colliery Company in North Staffordshire, one of the oldest coal mines in the UK, which he was said to own. One of his hobbies was the collecting and appreciation of oil and water-colour pictures and Continental pottery. He was also a great traveler, and was one of the first to enter Paris after the Siege of Paris (1870–1871), which is recorded in his book Paris After Two Sieges (1872). He used his influence as an M.P. to lobby prominent people of the day to lecture at the Wedgwood Memorial Institute in Burslem.
Woodall died at Llandudno, in North Wales.
Writings
- Paris After Two Sieges: Notes of Visits During the Armistice, and Immediately After (Tinsley Bros., 1872).
References
- Lee, Sidney, ed. (1912). . Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). Vol. 3. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs