William Henry Ashurst 1792 - 1855

William Henry Ashurst Snr 1792 - 1855 was a British Solicitor who founded Ashurst Morris Crisp at 6 Old Jewry Street, a radical ideologist, who, with his son William Henry Ashurst Jnr, supported every progressive cause from the 1832 Reform Bill onwards, including Antislavery, Chartism, Poor Relief,  the Postal Service, Feminism, the Peace Movement in Britian, and Nationalist Movements abroad, and homeopathy.

William Henry Ashurst was the father in law of James Stansfeld, and a friend of John Epps, Giuseppe Mazzini,

William Henry Ashurst founded the Friends of Italy Society and the People’s International League.

Ashurst Morris Crisp was the law firm for James Morrison of the Fore Street Warehouse (the ’Napoleon of Shopkeepers’), who on his death in 1854 left a personal fortune second only to Nathan Rothschild,

William Henry Ashurst was on the Medical Council of the Hahnemann Hospital at 39 Bloomsbury Square, and he was a colleague of John Epps, and a member of The Association for the Protection of Homeopathic Students and Practitioners (address 6 Old Jewry Street), a member of the English Homeopathic Association,

William Henry Ashurst supported Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in her right to be seated at the American Convention in 1840, and his daughter, Elizabeth A Ashurst 1820? - 1850, also accompanied him to Antislavery meetings.

William Henry Ashurst and his family also supported Giuseppe Mazzini, through whom he met Thomas Carlyle,

William Henry Ashurst was born in London 11 Feb. 1792. His father had led an aimless existence, under the impression — due to rumours about his infancy and his likeness to the eminent judge of the name — that he would be some day recognised as belonging to a distinguished family…

Of interest:

William Henry Ashurst 1819 - 1879, son of William Henry Ashurst,

Ashurst Solicitors is still in existence, and offering graduate recruitment today: