William Leader Maberly

Who was William Leader Maberly?

William Leader Maberly spent most of his life as a British army officer and Whig politician.

He was the eldest child of John Maberly, a currier, clothing manufacturer, banker and MP, who had made and lost a fortune in a lifetime.

He became a Member of Parliament, initially for Westbury, then Northampton, then Shaftesbury and finally for Chatham 1832–1834.

In 1831 he was Surveyor-General of the Ordnance and in 1832 Clerk of the Ordnance. In 1836, He was appointed as joint secretary to the General Post Office, where he strongly opposed the introduction of the penny post, a plan championed by Rowland Hill to charge a fixed price for postage. One of Maberly's principal secretaries during his time at the Post Office was the novelist Anthony Trollope, who later parodied Maberly as Sir. Boreas Bodkin in the novel Marion Fay.

In 1865, the Canadian Post Office Department Secretary William Dawson LeSueur named the settlement of Maberly, Ontario in Maberly's honour.

He had married the Irish novelist the Hon. Catherine C Prittie in 1830. Their only child William Anson Robert Maberly died at the age of 29 in the Isle of Wight.