William Turner

Who was William Turner?

William Turner was an English Liberal Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1832 to 1841.

Turner was the youngest of four sons of a family that arrived in Blackburn at the beginning of the nineteenth century and opened a calico printing works at Mill Hill. Turner married his cousin Jane and acquired an estate at Shrigley Hall in Cheshire. He served as High Sheriff of Cheshire in 1826. In 1827 his only daughter Ellen was tricked into eloping with Edward Gibbon Wakefield, an unscrupulous fortune hunter. They married in Gretna Green. The case was known as the Shrigley abduction, and the marriage was later annulled by the House of Lords. Wakefield was jailed for 3 years.

The Turners were popular in Blackburn and William was much liked as an employer. At the 1832 general election, he ran for the newly created constituency of Blackburn, “almost like a bomb shell, offering himself to the Free and independent electors of both parties”. He made an election speech outside the Old Bull Hotel to a large crowd of working men, saying, “Gentlemen, They said I wouldn’t come; but I am come, and will be here at the day of the election. I’ll stand the contest.