Sir William Foot Mitchell (26 June 1859 – 31 July 1947) was a

Conservative Party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...

politician in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Mitchell was Managing Director of

Royal Dutch Shell plc Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New Yor ...

, an Anglo–Dutch multinational oil and gas company, from 10 March 1903 to 31 December 1938, including the year that Royal Dutch Petroleum and the Shell Transport and Trading Company came together to form a petroleum company in 1907. He spent much of his early career in the East, largely in Japan and China, before settling in the UK, buying Quendon Hall,

Quendon Quendon is a linear village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Quendon and Rickling, in the Uttlesford district, in the county of Essex, England. Quendon is located on the B1383 (formerly the A11 trunk road) between Saffron Walden and ...

, in 1907.

Political career

He was elected to the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

at the

January 1910 general election The January 1910 United Kingdom general election was held from 15 January to 10 February 1910. The government called the election in the midst of a constitutional crisis caused by the rejection of the People's Budget by the Conservative-dominat ...

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

(MP) for

Dartford Dartford is the principal town in the Borough of Dartford, Kent, England. It is located south-east of Central London and is situated adjacent to the London Borough of Bexley to its west. To its north, across the Thames estuary, is Thurrock in ...

, beating the sitting Liberal-Labour MP James Rowlands. However, Rowlands regained the seat at the

December 1910 general election The December 1910 United Kingdom general election was held from 3 to 19 December. It was the last general election to be held over several days and the last to be held before the History of the United Kingdom during the First World War, First Wo ...

. Mitchell did not contest the 1918 general election, but at the 1922 general election he was elected as MP for

Saffron Walden Saffron Walden is a market town in the Uttlesford district of Essex, England, north of Bishop's Stortford, south of Cambridge and north of London. It retains a rural appearance and some buildings of the medieval period. The population was 15, ...

. He held the seat until he stood down at the 1929 general election. He was knighted in 1929 by

King George V George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936. Born during the reign of his grandmother Que ...

References

External links

* 1859 births 1947 deaths Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies UK MPs 1910 UK MPs 1922–1923 UK MPs 1923–1924 UK MPs 1924–1929 {{England-Conservative-UK-MP-1850s-stub