William Henry Butler
Mayor of Oxford, January–October 1836
William Henry Butler (1790–1865) was born on 24 February 1790. He was the ninth of the ten children of James and Jane Butler of All Saints parish in Oxford. His father James had also been baptised at All Saints Church forty years before on 10 October 1750, and his grandparents (James and Martha Butler) were buried at that church on 4 May 1781 and 14 December 1796 respectively
Butler and his siblings were baptised as follows:
- Sarah (baptised at All Saints Church on 29 December 1784)
- John (baptised at All Saints Church on 28 July 1786)
- Elizabeth (baptised at All Saints Church on 5 November 1787)
- Lucy (baptised at All Saints Church on 27 November 1791)
- Lydia (baptised at All Saints Church on 25 October 1793)
- Charles (baptised at All Saints Church on 17 April 1796)
- Robert (baptised at All Saints Church on 18 April 1798; buried there 15 February 1818
- William Henry (baptised at All Saints Church on 26 March 1790)
- Thomas (baptised at All Saints Church on 31 August 1800).
Butler became a wine merchant in the middle part of Oxford’s High Street that lies in All Saints parish. He first came on to the Common Council on 30 September 1815, and was elected Senior Chamberlain in 1819 and Senior Bailiff in 1824.
On 13 February 1817 Butler married Elizabeth Briggs (youngest daughter of the late Alderman Briggs of Northampton) at St Giles' Church, Northampton. Their first four children were baptised at All Saints Church in Oxford:
- Edwin (24 February 1818)
- Jane Elizabeth (1 March 1819)
- Robert Jackson (19 July 1820)
- Lucy Ann (22 December 1821).
In the baptismal register, Butler is described as a wine merchant in the High Street in 1818 and 1819, but as a wine merchant of St Martin’s parish in 1820 and 1821. This indicates that around the beginning of 1820 he moved into his new premises at Carfax, on the corner of St Aldate’s Street and Queen Street. (This site had since 1710 been occupied by the butter bench, but after 1774 traders sold their butter in the new covered market instead.) His older brother Charles, who died at the age of 45 in 1842, may have lived and worked with Butler, as he is described as being of Carfax in the burial register of St Martin's Church.
The side pillars and railings of William Butler’s shop can be seen opposite the old Town Hall in this engraving (left) of 1822. Robson’s Commercial Directory of 1839 lists its address as 2 St Aldate’s Street.
In 1843 Oxford Police Station was built on the site of William Butler’s shop. When the police moved to Kemp Hall in 1870, Boffin’s Bakery took over the premises. The Abbey National building now stands on the site
When Butler’s mother Jane died at the age of 65 in 1820, her address was given as the High Street; but when his father James died at the age of 75 on 23 April 1825 he was living in St Michael’s parish.
From 1823, Butler and his wife had their five youngest children baptised at St Martin’s Church:
- George Morant (5 May 1823)
- Mary Ann (26 July 1825)
- Caroline (25 July 1827, died aged 7 months)
- Octavia (31 October 1828)
- Catherine Adelaide (7 November 1830, died age 6 months).
Butler was the election agent of W. Hughes Hughes, who unsuccessfully contested the City of Oxford at the general election of June 1826.
After the passing of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, Butler was elected Councillor for the West Ward on 26 January 1835, and just five days later was made an Alderman for six years. He was elected the first Mayor under the new system on 1 January 1836, and therefore only served for ten months.
A good picture of Butler’s shop (on a bill-head of 1837) can be seen on p. 60 of the book Oxford Shops and Shopping. The bill-head reads:
Next Town Hall
O x f o r d
BOUGHT OF W. H. BUTLER
Importer of Foreign Wines & Spirits
and Dealer in
British Compounds & London Bottled Porter
Casks, Bottles & Hampers if not returned will be charged 1s. per gallon
Empty casks & Bottles to be kept tight corked
Soon after serving as Mayor, Butler retired to a large house in Old High Street, Headington that was then known as Linden House, but now as the Priory. He is listed there in the 1841 census with his wife and three of his nine children (Edwin, Lucy, and Mary) and two servants. His older brother Thomas, who had been a carver and gilder and printseller in a shop in Oxford’s High Street, had already retired to Headington and lived in the Manor House with his wife Selina (the daughter of Rudolph Ackerman, who introduced lithography into Britain). Mrs Selina Butler opened a ladies' seminary at the Manor House in about 1836, and Butler’s daughter Octavia was boarding there as a pupil in 1841..
Butler’s first wife Elizabeth Briggs died in Headington on 14 February 1844 at the age of 55, and was buried at St Martin’s Church in Oxford.
Butler’s business in Oxford continued to operate after he retired to Headington, and in September 1847 he was granted a council lease of nine wine vaults (formerly five), together with a counting house.
On 7 October 1847, Butler is described as being "of Headington" in the marriage notice in The Times of his daughter Lucy Ann and the architect William Wilkinson Wardell at St Mary’s Catholic Church, Moorfields.
At the time of the 1851 census Butler, described as a magistrate and alderman, was still a widower and living in Headington. Two of his unmarried children were living with him: Edwin (aged 33 and described as a wine merchant) and Octavia (aged 22). The last mention of Butler in Headington is in a directory of 1854.
In the third quarter of 1855 (vol. 1c, p.335) William Henry Butler married again at the age of 65. His bride was (confusingly) Elizabeth Gibbs, aged 31. She was the daughter of the stonemason John Gibbs and his wife Alice of George Street (now Cave Street) in St Clement’s, Oxford. She had been baptised at St Clement’s Church on 7 May 1824, followed by her brothers John (1826) and Henry Wilkins (1831).
William and his second wife Elizabeth, who married in Shoreditch in London, appear to have had a daughter called Bessie, born in Chelsea in 1854/5 before their marriage. By 1857 they had moved to Hanborough in Oxfordshire and their only son, William Henry Gibbs Butler, was baptised there on 28 June 1857.
In the 1861 census Butler (71) is described as a J.P. and an Alderman of Oxford). He is living at Park Cottage in Hanborough with his second wife Elizabeth (34), their children Bessie (6) and William (4), and two servants.
Butler remained on Oxford city council (where he was the senior member) until his death in Hanborough on 11 October 1865 at the age of 75. He was buried in the churchyard of St Martin's Church at Carfax in the grave of his first wife Elizabeth and their two daughters who died in infancy. Their tombstone is one of the few that remains at Carfax following the demolition in 1896 of the church (apart from its tower), and it lies in what is now the outdoor eating area of the Carfax café.
The inscription reads:
Blessed are they that are in the Lord
Here lies the body of Elizabeth
Wife of William Henry Butler
Born 6 March 1786
Died February 14th 1844
Also of
Caroline and Catherine Adelaide
Infant children of the above
William Henry Butler
Alderman of this City
Born February 24th 1790
Died October 11th 1865
Butler’s obituary in Jackson’s Oxford Journal read as follows:
DIED, Oct. 11, at Handborough, near Oxford, William Henry Butler, Esq., Alderman of this city, in his 76th year. He had been a member of the City Council more than half a century, having been elected one of the Common Council on the 30th of September 1815; Chamberlain in 1819; Bailiff in 1824; and the first Mayor under the Municipal Reform Act in 1836, and at the time of his death he was the senior member of the Council.
Butler's widow and youngest son
Within five years of Butler’s death, his second wife Elizabeth had married again: her new husband was Duncan Greening Anderson, a printer thirteen years her senior. In 1871 the Andersons and William Henry Butler junior, then 14, were living at 22 Walton Crescent in St Thomas’s parish, and Elizabeth no longer had any servants. Ten years later they were living at 118 Bullingdon Road in Oxford. William Henry Butler junior, a commission agent of 24, was still living with them, but by the end of the year he was a librarian in Birmingham, where he married Sarah Elizabeth Gardner of 24 Charles Street, Oxford on 27 December 1881. By 1891 Duncan Anderson had retired, and he and Elizabeth (now respectively 79 and 66) were living at North View in New Marston.
See also:
- Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 15 February 1817: Announcement of Butler’s first marriage
- Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 14 October 1865, p. 5a: Short obituary of Butler
- Account book of W.H. Butler when he was election agent of W. Hughes Hughes in 1826 (Bodleian Library MS.Top.Oxon.c.327)
- 1841 Census: Oxford (Headington), 877/01/36
- 1851 Census: Oxford (Headington), 1727/217
- 1861 Census: Oxford (Hanborough), 904/78
- 1871 Census: Oxford (St Thomas’s), 1441/033
- 1881 Census: Oxford (St Clement’s), 1498/11
- 1891 Census: Oxford (Marston & Headington): 1163/038