Joseph Powell Williams

The Right Honourable Joseph Powell Williams
The Rt. Hon. Joseph Powell Williams PC
Born	(1840-11-18)18 November 1840 Shrewsbury, England
Died	7 February 1904(1904-02-07) (aged 63) London,England
Cause of death	Apoplexy (probably stroke)
Occupation(s)	British businessman and politician.
Spouse	Susannah Redford
Children	Rowland Powell-Williams Winifred Ethel Williams Mary Dorethy Williams Francis Powell-Williams

Joseph Powell Williams was a British politician and a close political associate of Joseph Chamberlain.

Early and Working Life

Born in Shrewsbury, he attended Hazlewood School, Birmingham, which was founded by his father's cousin Thomas Wright Hill. On leaving school he worked for Graham & James of Ludgate Hill, Solicitors, Birmingham. Business with this firm led him to travel to the United States where he was to represent this and other Birmingham interests. He considered staying but the outbreak of the Civil War led him to return to Britain. He was also a partner in the firm of Hill, Evans & Co., vinegar manufacturers, which, along with Lea & Perrins, and Royal Worcester, were industrial mainstays of the city of Worcester.

On his return from the United States he accepted an appointment to the Post Office which, under the guidance of Rowland Hill (Joseph's second cousin), was undergoing a substantial revolution in the way it worked. While in the Post Office he worked in the district to which Anthony Trollope was surveyor. It is said that he struck up a friendship with Trollope and read many of the proofs of his novels.

In his later life, alongside his political career in Birmingham and Westminster, he held a number of positions including the chairmanship of the Midland Railway Carriage & Wagon Company.

Political Life

On the death of his father in 1873 he returned to Birmingham. He had long associated himself with the Liberal Party in Birmingham and in 1877 he was elected as Councillor of St. Thomas's Ward. He joined Birmingham Council during the Mayoralty of Joseph Chamberlain and he was to shape his political career alongside Chamberlain. During this time he was Honorary Secretary to the Birmingham Liberal Association and, later, to the National Liberal Federation, and Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Birmingham City Council.

In 1885 Joseph Powell Williams entered Parliament for Birmingham South as a Liberal. He joined a group of mainly Birmingham based MP's, led by Joseph Chamberlain, who disagreed with William Gladstone on a number of issues, particularly his Irish policies, and had created the Liberal Unionists in 1886. He served in the Unionist administration of Lord Salisbury as Financial Secretary to the War Office from 1895 to 1901 and was sworn of the Privy Council in November 1901.

He is said to have played a key roll in Chamberlain's success in Birmingham and one source states that he was and Jesse Collings acted as Chamberlain's "political bodyguards". He is quoted as acting a 'ghost' for Chamberlain's proposals on the Irish question and his article on the 'Radical Programme'. He was liked for his humour on the floor of the Commons, and reported by The Times to be "greatly esteemed by lobby journalists and officials.", he was probably more at home in the committee room and the back lobbies. His time as Financial Secretary to the War Office was not always a success and the Daily Chronicle stated that he was a "square peg in a round hole","blunders and bulls" but good humoured about them. Despite his early uneasiness about the alliance between the Liberal Unionists and the Conservatives, he is quoted by the Birmingham Post that "He kept the Liberal Unionist seats going and the alliance with the Conservatives alive."

In February 1904 Powell-Williams suffered a stroke in the lobby of the House of Commons from which he later died, aged 63.

References

• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs
• Hill Evans & Co
• Article on Joseph Chamberlain at 1911encyclopedia.org
• Egbastonia, A Monthly Local Magazine, Nov 1891, details his earlier life more fully