Researching William Shaw

Shaw was the son of Thomas Shaw and his wife Elizabeth Rawson. His father was chairman of the family firm of John Shaw & Sons who owned the Brookroyd Mills, and was MP for Halifax. In 1881 his father endowed the Rawson Shaw Scholarships in Halifax to commemorate his coming of age.

On the death of his father in 1893, Shaw was elected as Member of Parliament MP for Halifax in West Yorkshire. He was re-elected in 1895 but resigned his seat in 1897.

Shaw moved to Rustington, Sussex, where he was Chairman of Arundel County Bench for 14 years and active in community activities.

Shaw married Mary Josephine Crook, only daughter of Joseph Crook, MP for Bolton on 25 April 1888. They had a daughter and a son Kenneth who became a pilot in World War I.

He was born in Simonds parish, Saint John County, New Brunswick, of Irish descent, and was educated there. Shaw married Isabella Wooten. He served as alderman for Saint John and as chairman of the Public Works department. He died in 1922 at Saint John.

Born in Moy, County Tyrone, Shaw was connected with the Young Ireland movement, and studied at Trinity College, Dublin without taking a degree. He then studied theology at Highbury College in Middlesex. He served as a Minister at an independent church in Cork from 1846 to 1850, then married and left his post to move into business.

Shaw stood as a Liberal Party candidate in Bandon, at the 1865 by-election and subsequent general election, but was defeated on both occasions. He stood in the same seat at the 1868 general election, and was elected as an independent Liberal. While generally supportive of William Ewart Gladstone, he became active in the new Home Government Association, and in 1873, he presided over the convention held to found its successor, the Home Rule League.

At the 1874 general election, Shaw was elected unopposed for County Cork, and with Mitchell Henry, often deputised for Home Rule Party leader Isaac Butt. He remained loyal to Butt, and when Butt died in 1879, Shaw was selected as the new party chairman.

Shaw held his seat at the 1880 general election, but lost an election for the party chairmanship, to Charles Stewart Parnell. Parnell distanced the Home Rule League from the Liberal Party, but Shaw continued to sit on the Liberal benches in the House of Commons, and was appointed to the Bessborough Commission to examine Irish land tenure. Shaw opposed the Irish Land League, formally left the Irish party group in early 1881, and resigned from the moribund Home Rule League in December.

Shaw devoted increasing amounts of his time to his chairmanship of the Munster Bank, and did not stand for Parliament at the 1885 general election. Later in the year, the Munster Bank collapsed, and Shaw was declared personally bankrupt. He moved to London and worked with various newspapers in the last years of his life.

Shaw died on the 19th September 1895 in Enniskerry, County Wicklow. He died from Cardiac Failure aged 72.

Shaw studied at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied mathematics; he was Wrangler and earned a B.A. in 1980. In 1981 he won the Mayhew Prize for his performance on the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos. In 1984 he received a D.Phil. (PhD) in mathematical physics from Wolfson College, Oxford. From 1984 to 1987 he was a research fellow at Clare College, Cambridge and C.L.E. Moore Instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1987 to 1990, he worked for Smith Associates in Guildford, and ECL in Henley-on Thames. From 1991 to 2002 he was a lecturer in mathematics at Balliol College, Oxford. In 2002 he moved to St Catherine's College, Oxford, where he was University Lecturer in financial mathematics. In 2006 he moved to a Professorship at King's College London and in 2011 to a Professorship at UCL. He returned to the financial industry in 2012 and remained a visiting professor at UCL until 2017.

Shaw worked as a busboy on a US Army transport ship to pay his passage to Manila, arriving in 1901 and never leaving hence. He eventually became part owner of Atlantic, Gulf & Pacific. He also served as President of the Rotary Club of Manila in 1925–1926. Shaw Boulevard (in Mandaluyong and Pasig) and The William J. Shaw Theater (Greenbelt, Ayala Center, Makati) were named after him.

Shaw is most known for the Wack Wack Golf and Country Club. Shaw started Wack Wack in 1930 – because he was disgusted that Larry Montes, a caddie who had won the 1929 Philippine Open tournament at the Manila Golf Club, of which Shaw was a member, had been asked to leave the tournament celebration, by virtue of a rule against the presence of caddies inside the Manila Golf Club.

Shaw was a member of the board of the Boy Scouts of America Philippine Islands Council No. 545.

A small monument of Shaw's stands along Shaw Boulevard, Mandaluyong.