William Frederick Danvers Smith, 2nd Viscount Hambleden
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
businessman and politician.
He was involved in the management of the family business, W H Smith
W H Smith
WHSmith plc is a British retailer, headquartered in Swindon, Wiltshire, England. It is best known for its chain of high street, railway station, airport, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers, and entertainment products...
, which was founded by his grandfather, William Henry Smith.
In 1891, he succeeded his father William Henry Smith as Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
for the Strand constituency
Strand (UK Parliament constituency)
Strand was a parliamentary constituency in the Strand district of the City of Westminster. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.-History:...
, holding the seat until January 1910.
Smith's rapid succession to the seat his father held in Parliament may have played a role in one of the odder events of Frederick Smith's life. By suddenly rising to public prominence he was targeted for blackmail by the notorious Canadian-American-British poisoner Dr. Thomas Neill Cream
Thomas Neill Cream
Dr. Thomas Neill Cream , also known as the Lambeth Poisoner, was a Scottish-born serial killer, who claimed his first proven victims in the United States and the rest in England, and possibly others in Canada and Scotland...
, who (writing under an assumed name) claimed to have proof that Smith had poisoned a prostitute. This was one of three known attempts at blackmail that may have been the real motive for Cream's string of poisonings in the Stepney and Lambeth areas of London from October 1891 to April 1892. They played a small role in the final arrest, prosecution, and conviction of Cream at the Old Bailey in October 1892, and his execution the following month.
Smith was commissioned Lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
in the 2nd Buckinghamshire Rifle Volunteers (Eton College) in 1885, but resigned in 1887. In 1891 he was commissioned Second Lieutenant
Second Lieutenant
Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces.- United Kingdom and Commonwealth :The rank second lieutenant was introduced throughout the British Army in 1871 to replace the rank of ensign , although it had long been used in the Royal Artillery, Royal...
in the Royal 1st Devon Yeomanry. He was promoted Lieutenant in 1892, Captain
Captain (British Army and Royal Marines)
Captain is a junior officer rank of the British Army and Royal Marines. It ranks above Lieutenant and below Major and has a NATO ranking code of OF-2. The rank is equivalent to a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and to a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force...
in 1895, Major
Major
Major is a rank of commissioned officer, with corresponding ranks existing in almost every military in the world.When used unhyphenated, in conjunction with no other indicator of rank, the term refers to the rank just senior to that of an Army captain and just below the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...
in 1902, and Lieutenant-Colonel in 1914. He served with the Imperial Yeomanry
Imperial Yeomanry
The Imperial Yeomanry was a British volunteer cavalry regiment that mainly saw action during the Second Boer War. Officially created on 24 December 1899, the regiment was based on members of standing Yeomanry regiments, but also contained a large contingent of mid-upper class English volunteers. In...
during the Boer War
Boer War
The Boer Wars were two wars fought between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics, the Oranje Vrijstaat and the Republiek van Transvaal ....
.
He succeeded his mother, Emily Smith, as Viscount Hambleden
Viscount Hambleden
Viscount Hambleden, of Hambleden in the County of Buckinghamshire, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1891 for Emily Danvers Smith, in honour of her deceased husband, the businessman and Conservative politician William Henry Smith...
following her death in 1913. Smith was succeeded by William Henry Smith
William Smith, 3rd Viscount Hambleden
The Rt. Hon. William Henry Smith, 3rd Viscount Hambleden , was a British peer and descendant of the founders of stationery group W H Smith. Lord Hambleden was educated at Eton College and Oxford University...
.
Smith was made Honorary Colonel
Colonel
Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...
of the Royal Devon Yeomanry Artillery
Artillery
Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...
in 1922.
Smith was the main sponsor of the Victoria County History
Victoria County History
The Victoria History of the Counties of England, commonly known as the Victoria County History or the VCH, is an English history project which began in 1899 and was dedicated to Queen Victoria with the aim of creating an encyclopaedic history of each of the historic counties of...
from 1909 until 1931.