Sir William Phipson Beale, 1st Baronet, KC (29 October 1839 – 13 April 1922) was a British barrister and Liberal Party politician.
Family and education
The family of which William Phipson Beale was a member was a well-established merchant family in Birmingham by the late 18th century. They produced lawyers, businessmen and politicians. They had commercial interests in banking, railways and ironworks and were associated through business, marriage or politics to many other well-known Birmingham figures; his brother Charles, was uncle to Neville Chamberlain.[1]
He did not contest a seat at the general elections of 1895 or 1900 but he was selected as candidate for the marginal seat of South Ayrshire in time for the 1906 general election when he was finally elected to Parliament. Whilst an MP he voted in favour of the 1908 Women's Enfranchisement Bill.[14] He held the seat until 1918 when he stood down.[15]
Politics was in the Beale family DNA. Beale's uncle was Samuel Beale (1803–1874), Mayor of Birmingham in 1841 and Liberal MP for Derby from 1857 to 1865.[16] His younger brother, AldermanCharles Gabriel Beale (1843–1912), was Lord Mayor of Birmingham three times in the period between 1897 and 1905.[17]
On Beale's death at Dorking in April 1922, aged 82, the baronetcy became extinct. His funeral took place at Golders Green Crematorium on 19 April 1922 attended by family members, politicians and representatives of scientific organisations.[20]
References
^Andrew Rowley, Beale family in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, OUP online, 2004-12