William Henry Burgess Piddington

  General Notes:

WILLIAM HENRY BURGESS PIDDINGTON (1856-1900) was born in Brisbane on 24 April 1856 and educated chiefly at Newington College, Sydney. He worked for the Commercial Banking Co. of Sydney from 1872 and he was branch manager at Walcha in 1894, when he won the local Legislative Assembly seat in support of free trade and Reid. In parliament he showed concern for effective management of parliamentary finance and equitable taxation. Reid's failure, as Piddington saw it, to achieve these goals, led to an increasing breach between back-bencher and government. To this degree, the elder brother was no less radical than Albert. On Federation, however, the two diverged. W. H. B. Piddington was secretary of the New South Wales Federal Association, which organized the State campaign in support of the Federation bill. This led to association with (Sir) Edmund Barton, whom he supported against Reid in the 1898 election. His vote helped to replace Reid with (Sir) William Lyne as premier in September 1899. In June 1900 he raised in parliament Reid's co-operation with Joseph Chamberlain in altering the Federation bill. Following Piddington's sudden death from apoplexy on 27 September, Barton and Lyne but not Reid attended the funeral. Piddington was survived by his wife Florence Louise, née Bennett, whom he had married on 12 January 1881, and five children.

William married Florence Louise Bennett on 12 Jan 1881 in Orange, NSW Australia. (Florence Louise Bennett was born in 1859 in Orange, NSW Australia and died in 1933 in Sydney, NSW Australia.)