William Harris (Birmingham Liberal)

Harris was articled to a Birmingham architect, Isaac Newey, at the age of 15. On completion of his articles in 1847, he established his own architectural practice. He was the first architect in Birmingham to practise as a quantity surveyor, and came to specialise in this branch of the profession.^[5]


In the late 1850s, he entered into a professional partnership with John Henry Chamberlain: it was short-lived, but the two remained friends, and in later life Harris would marry (as his second wife) Chamberlain's widow.^[5][6]


In 1876 he began a partnership with Henry Martin, and in 1879 these two were joined by Harris's son, Arnold Elsmere Harris (1854–1929), the firm subsequently practising as Harris, Martin and Harris.^[7] Notable commissions included: in 1878–79, 24 Priory Road, Edgbaston, a house for J. T. Bunce;^[8] in 1888, the Rolfe Street public baths, Smethwick, now re-erected at the Black Country Living Museum;^[9] in 1881–84, an extension to the headquarters building of the Birmingham Banking Company in Bennetts Hill, Birmingham;^[10] and, for the same company in 1883, the "Old Bank" (now a branch of HSBC) in Stratford-upon-Avon, which was decorated with 15 terracotta panels of Shakespearean scenes by Samuel Barfield (1830–1887) of Leicester.^{[11][12][13][14][15]} The Old Bank is described by Chris Pickford for the Pevsner Architectural Guides as "Stratford's best Victorian building".^[16] Martin left the partnership in 1889, and William Harris retired in 1895.^[7]


Combining his professional expertise with his enthusiasm for municipal reform, Harris served from 1877 to 1908 as clerk to the Birmingham, Tame and Rea District Drainage Board, at a time of major investment and improvement in the infrastructure of drainage and sewage disposal in Birmingham.^[17][18][19]


He was a founder-member of the Birmingham Architectural Society in 1850, and was afterwards active in its affairs.^[7][20]

Politics[edit]

As a young man, Harris was greatly impressed by the charismatic nonconformist minister, George Dawson, who preached the doctrine of social improvement and enlightened municipal reform subsequently known as the "Civic Gospel". He became a founder-member of Dawson's non-denominational chapel, the Church of the Saviour, in 1847, where fellow-members included George Dixon, J. T. Bunce, J. A. Langford, Robert Martineau, Samuel Timmins, A. Follett Osler, and Joseph Chamberlain.^[21][22][23] With many of these same individuals, he honed his political and reformist ideas at meetings of the Birmingham and Edgbaston Debating Society, of which he served as President in 1864–5.^[24][25] He spoke publicly in support of Lajos Kossuth and the nationalist cause in Hungary, Garibaldi's republican struggle in Italy, and the liberation movement in Poland; and in criticism of the British government's conduct of the Crimean War.^[26][27]


In 1865 he became a founder-member of the Birmingham Liberal Association.^[28][29] After George Dixon, the first secretary, was elected to parliament in a by-election in 1867, Harris succeeded him as secretary in 1868, and oversaw the Association's reorganisation in preparation for the general election of that year. He remained secretary until 1873, when he was succeeded in turn by Francis Schnadhorst. He subsequently held office as the Association's Vice-President and President, finally retiring from the latter position, for reasons of ill-health, in 1882.^[30][31][32]


Also in 1865, he was himself elected to Birmingham Town Council, representing the united wards of Deritend and Bordesley. In the autumn of 1869 he headed the deputation that persuaded Joseph Chamberlain to stand for the Council, so launching the latter on a stellar political career.^[33] However, in 1871, when addressing a Council meeting, Harris suffered a minor paralytic stroke. Although he made a full recovery, he was sufficiently concerned about his health to stand down as a councillor, and his own political career thereafter tended to be more that of a backstage manager and strategist.^[34][35] The Yorkshire Post described him in 1884 as "of so modest and retiring a temperament that he is never seen or heard, and uninitiated people 'do not believe that there is any such person as Mr Harris', although he is the chief wire-puller".^[36]


He was an ardent campaigner – again, alongside Dawson, Chamberlain, Dixon and others – for a system of free, compulsory, and non-sectarian elementary education. He was joint honorary secretary of the Birmingham branch of the National Public School Association, established in 1850 but short-lived; sat on the committee of the Birmingham Education Society established in 1867; and, when this evolved in 1869 into the National Education League, continued to be a committee-member and a significant participant until 1877, when the League was wound up and absorbed unto the National Liberal Federation.^{[37][38][39][40][41]} He tried to adapt his "Vote as you're told" scheme (see The Caucus below) to elections to school boards in 1870; but here the complexity of the voting system defeated him, and his strategies met with only limited success.^[42]


He was a member of the Arts Club, which existed from 1873 to 1880 for the purpose "of facilitating the daily social intercourse of gentlemen professing Liberal opinions, who are engaged or interested in the public life of Birmingham".^[43][44][45]