Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/684

 expenditure of the Canal Company, up to 1 Jan. 1897, was about 15,170,000l., in which are included, however, nearly three millions for the purchase of the Bridgwater canals and the Mersey and Irwell navigation and for interest on capital during construction. Leader Williams, who was knighted on 2 July 1894, took charge of the canal until 1905; he then became its consulting engineer, and practised privately until a few years before his death.

He was elected a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers on 7 Feb. 1860, and served on the council from 1895 until his retirement in 1907—the last two years as a vice-president. He became a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1883. In 1895 he was president of the Manchester Association of Engineers. He died at Altrincham on 1 Jan. 1910.

Leader Williams, who was of commanding presence, with a genial manner and abundant energy, courage, and patience, married (1) in 1852 Ellen Maria (d. 1860), daughter of Thomas Popplewell of Gainsborough, and (2) in 1862 Catherine Louisa, daughter of Richard Clinch of Northwich, who survived him. He had five sons and five daughters.

In addition to the two papers already mentioned, Leader Williams contributed to the ‘Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers’ (lxx. 378) in 1882 a paper ‘On the Recent Landslips in the Salt Districts of Cheshire,’ and he wrote the larger portion of the article on ‘Canals and Inland Navigation’ in the supplement to the ninth edition of the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica.’  WILLIAMS, GEORGE (1821–1905), founder of the Young Men's Christian Association, born at Ashway Farm, Dulverton, on 11 Oct. 1821, was youngest of the seven sons of Amos Williams, farmer, by his wife, Elizabeth. After being educated at a dame's school in Dulverton and then at Gloyn's grammar school, Tiverton, he was apprenticed in 1836 to one Holmes, a draper at Bridgwater. His parents were church people, but he came under religious impressions at the congregational chapel in Bridgwater, of which he became a member on 14 Feb. 1838. He took the ‘teetotal pledge’ in the Friends' meeting-house at Bridgwater in 1839, and was thenceforth an earnest temperance advocate, and a vigorous opponent of gambling and tobacco.

In 1841 he entered the employ of Messrs. Hitchcock & Rogers, drapers, then of Ludgate Hill, and afterwards of St. Paul's Churchyard, and was subsequently made ‘buyer’ in the drapery department. He soon became the most prominent employé in the house and was made a partner—the firm being thenceforth known as Hitchcock, Williams & Co. In 1853 he married Helen, daughter of the head of the firm, George Hitchcock.

From his arrival in London he devoted his leisure to evangelistic and temperance work. He was influenced by the severely puritanical preaching of an American evangelist, Charles G. Finney, but his views were soon modified by the more generous teaching of Thomas Binney (1798–1874) [q. v.], of the old Weigh House chapel in the City of London, where he became Sunday school secretary. He took part, too, in ragged-school work and open-air preaching. A small prayer-meeting which he early formed among his fellow-employés developed into a great organisation. At the end of 1842, when the members numbered nearly thirty, his master George Hitchcock joined Williams in establishing in the house a mutual improvement society and a young men's missionary society (1842). On 6 June 1844 twelve men, all but one being employés of Hitchcock, met in Williams's bedroom and established the Young Men's Christian Association, with the idea of extending the work to drapery houses throughout the metropolis. In October a room was taken at Radley's Hotel, Bridge Street, for the weekly meetings. Early in 1845 the first paid secretary, T. H. Tarlton, was appointed, and by Hitchcock's help premises were taken in Serjeant's Inn.

A similar institution had been started by David Nasmith [q. v.] in Glasgow as early as 1824, and branches had been opened in London, France, and America. But Williams worked independently of his predecessor's example, and his association grew on a wholly unprecedented scale. It attracted, at an early stage, men ready to work on inter-denominational lines, such as Thomas Binney [q. v.], Baptist W. Noel [q.v.], and Samuel Morley [q. v.]. In order to emphasise the ‘mutual improvement’ side of the work, popular lectures (1845), which afterwards became known from their place of delivery as the ‘Exeter Hall lectures,’ were arranged. They were published and had an annual