Researching Arthur Williams

Born at Penryn Park, Port Hope in Upper Canada in 1837, a member of the Williams family of Caerhays and Burncoose. He was the eldest son of John Tucker Williams and his wife Sarah, daughter of Judge Thomas Ward (1770–1861) of Port Hope. He studied at Upper Canada College and the University of Edinburgh before travelling throughout Europe. He studied law but was not called to the bar, instead he 'delighted in calling himself a farmer', managing Penryn Park, the estate he'd inherited from his father. He was president and founder of the Midlands Loan and Savings Company and a director for the Midland Railway of Canada.

In politics, he represented Durham East in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1867 to 1874 and in the House of Commons of Canada as a Conservative member from 1879 to 1885.

Williams was captain in the local militia, later becoming lieutenant-colonel. In 1885, he led the Midland Battalion which helped put down the North-West Rebellion. Shortly after the Battle of Batoche, he became ill and died of fever on a steamboat on the North Saskatchewan River in 1885. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography writes,

Colonel Williams was the only nationally known figure to die in the northwest campaign and his body was brought home in state. A huge funeral was held in Port Hope where citizens erected a statue in his honour. Parliament voted his orphaned children a special pension. Then, like most heroes, he was gradually forgotten. To Charles Arkoll Boulton, a contemporary, Williams "represented what might be termed Young Canada"; to posterity, he reflects a model of the patriotic landed gentleman, using his wealth and position for dignified public service, accepting payment in the currency of honour and prestige. In short, Arthur Williams was an anachronism.

Williams married Emily, the daughter of Senator Benjamin Seymour of Port Hope. They were the parents of General Arthur Victor Seymour Williams.

A collection of his North-West Rebellion Medal with Saskatchewan bar and his son's Second Boer War, and World War I medals were auctioned by Plato Auctions in April 2010.

Born in Islington, London, Williams initially went into business as a law stationer but soon left to take up acting in 1861 when he was 17. He travelled to Gravesend, Kent, where he made his stage début as Alfred Martelli in "The Corsican Brothers". He made his London stage debut at the St James's Theatre in 1868, where his roles included Thomas in The Secret, Baron Factotum in a burlesque of Sleeping Beauty, and Moses in The School for Scandal. After playing in dramas in the 1870s, he appeared in comic operas in the 1880s, in which he created the roles Sir Mincing Lane in Billee Taylor, Sir Whiffle Whaffle in Claude Duval, Amaranth CVIII in Lord Bateman, his most famous role, Lurcher in Dorothy and Corporal Bundy in The Red Hussar.

In the last decade of the century, he appeared in The Shop Girl, The Circus Girl and A Message from Mars, by Richard Ganthony, among others. In 1902, he began a long association with the hit musical A Chinese Honeymoon and went on to appear in a further six musicals and plays including The Belle of Mayfair (1906) and A Waltz Dream (1908). Later roles included Cornelius Scroop in The Girl in the Train in 1910 and Touchstone in As You Like It the following year. One of his last roles was in 1914 as Perkyn Middlewick in Our Boys. He died the following year at the age of 70.

Williams was born in 1834 to Dr John Morgan Williams. Arthur John Williams was one of the trustees of the land that the village of Williamstown was built upon and that took his family name. Privately educated, Williams studied law and was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1867. Williams served as an honorary secretary to the Law society and the Legal Education Association.

His first foray into politics occurred in 1880 when he unsuccessfully contested the seat of Birkenhead. In 1885 he was elected as a Liberal member of South Glamorgan and held the seat until 1895. He campaigned for proportional representation and the abolishment of Hereditary Peers in the House of Lords. Along with David Lloyd George, he campaigned for the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales.

Williams was born in Paddington, New South Wales and was the son of a hotel broker. He was educated at the Marist Brothers' School, Paddington and qualified as an accountant, opening his own accountancy company and specialising in the auditing of trade unions. Williams was elected to the parliament as the Labor member for Ryde at the 1940 by-election caused by the resignation of the United Australia Party member, Eric Spooner who successfully contested the seat of Robertson at the 1940 federal election. He defeated the UAP candidate by 220 votes. At the 1941 election, following an unfavourable redistribution Williams chose to contest the safer seat of Georges River. He defeated the sitting UAP member Cecil Monro and held the seat until the 1953 election when, after a further redistribution, he successfully contested the new seat of East Hills. Williams retired from public life at the next election in 1956. He did not hold party, parliamentary or ministerial office.

Williams came from a family of ten children and grew up in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. He variously posed as a doorman, a messenger or a Vietnam War veteran, offering pleasantries before pulling a gun and taking cash and other property from his victims, most frequently in an elevator, earning him the moniker the "Elevator Bandit".

After being paroled from Green Haven Correctional Facility in June 1974 after serving two years of three-year sentence, Williams was arrested the following September and charged with 40 separate holdups, with as many as 100 victims including a deputy United States Attorney and a Legal Aid Society lawyer. In one of the incidents in the spree, Williams dressed as the doorman of an Upper West Side apartment building, greeted residents in the lobby and then robbed them in the elevator. Precincts across Manhattan had reported similar incidents that were traced to Williams. In other crimes, he and a female accomplice, both well dressed, would enter a building and join residents on the elevator, with the woman pulling a gun out of her purse and Williams taking the belongings. Over the objections of prosecutors, New York State Supreme Court Justice James J. Leff sentenced Williams to 10 to 20 years in jail after Williams pleaded guilty to each of the 84 robberies he was charged with. New York County District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau argued that Williams was a "persistent felony offender" and should have been sentenced to a longer term in prison, but Leff said he would not "be badgered or harassed" and that the 10-year sentence was sufficient, noting that Williams had never physically assaulted any of his victims.

He was born in Santa Cruz, a town in Jamaica's Saint Elizabeth Parish and graduated from Mico Teachers’ College in 1934. He taught for several years and then worked as a political organiser for the Farmers' Party in the 1950s before returning to teaching.

In 1967, Williams was elected to the Parliament of Jamaica as an MP for the Jamaica Labour Party and represented South Manchester almost continuously until 1983. He served at various times as Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Education, and acting Minister of Education.

In 2000, he was awarded the Order of Distinction by the Government of Jamaica.

His son, Arthur Henry Winnington Williams, Jr., sits in the Jamaican Senate.

Williams was educated at Truro Cathedral School and served in the First World War; he was a prisoner throughout 1918. He was ordained in 1922 after a course of study at the College of the Resurrection, Mirfield. After curacies at St Clement's, Barnsbury and St Mary, Penzance he was Vicar of Stratton from 1932 to 1939 when he became a Chaplain to the Forces. In 1945 he returned to St Mary's and served as its Vicar until his Archdeacon's appointment.