Harry Wrightson

Who was Harry Wrightson?

Harry Wrightson was a British Conservative politician. He was elected Member of Parliament for Leyton West in 1918 General Election, but died before Parliament met.

Wrightson was born in 1874, the son of the Reverend W.G. Wrightson, of Hurworth-on-Tees. During the First World War he served as Lieutenant-Colonel in the Essex Royal Army Service Corps.

He was elected Conservative MP for Leyton West in the 1918 UK General Election. Within days of the declaration, Wrightson contracted influenza, which deteriorated to pneumonia, and he died early in 1919, aged 44, six days before the new Parliament met. It is likely he was a victim of the Spanish Flu pandemic.

He thus became one of only a handful of elected British MPs never to have taken their seats.