William McArthur - businessman & politician - Our Space 83
At the Bishop Street/ Diamond corner, now ‘Diamond Night Club’, William McArthur (22) launched a striking commercial and political career - apparently the only person elected to both Londonderry Corporation and the City of London Corporation.
Malin-born and apprenticed, aged 12, to an Enniskillen woolen draper, in 1831 William and a partner started exporting woolens from the Diamond.
Elected four times, starting 1841, to Londonderry Corporation, in 1843 he married Coleraine woman Marianne McElwaine.
By 1852 he was secretary of the Londonderry Improvement Association.
After 1841 William’s brother Alexander in Sydney sold William’s woollen goods across Australia. The brothers became wealthy and in 1857 William moved to London.
By the mid-1860s he was a director of an insurance company and two banks. In 1868 he became Liberal MP for Lambeth and, in 1880, Lord Mayor of London. A committed Methodist, he forbade wine, cards or dancing in the Mansion House, and supported empire missionary work and reform organisations. He funded a girls’ residence for Methodist College, Belfast, to make it co-educational.
In 1881 he became the first president of London Chamber of Commerce.
Sir William died suddenly on the London Underground near Paddington in 1887. He left almost £500,000 (now c£50m), much of it to Methodist charities.
In 2012 Dublin-born aviation giant Willie Walsh unveiled William’s blue plaque in The Diamond. When Willie Walsh had become president of London Chamber of Commerce, he was mistakenly lauded as its first Irish president. They had forgotten about William McArthur 131 years earlier.