William Laslett: The Worcester MP who dressed like a tramp

He is best remembered today – if remembered he is at all by most people, as he was no Woodbine Willie or Edward Elgar – for a group of alms houses in Friar Street which bear his name.

But they only scratch the surface of the Laslett legend.

For this man, who dressed like a tramp and didn’t wash much, was the city’s MP  for more than 20 years and the greatest benefactor it has ever known. The son of a local banker, he was a solicitor in the early 19th century, which proved to be a golden age for lawyers, as several other local families made fair sized fortunes at the same time.

Laslett’s offices were at 50 Foregate Street and it was from here he would walk the streets “in a top hat and clothes only a ragman would want”, according to one description, while another scribe observed: “Laslett did not study physical necessities much and appearances not at all”.

William Laslett in his Sunday Best for the portrait painter

His parsimony was well known. He once stripped to the waist and did the job himself rather than pay workmen 2s 6d a day to dig a saw pit at his home Abberton Hall, near Pershore.

When elected Worcester’s MP he used to boast the journey to London and back, apart from his fare, only cost 3d, as he breakfasted before he started and only ate a 1d bun and drank a glass of ale. 

Exterior of the old city jail

But his pockets were deep when it came to public service. He bought the old city jail in Friar Street, complete with prisoners’ treadmill,  for £2,250 in 1867, which was a snip considering it had cost £12,000 to build 45 years before, and adapted the cells to provide free accommodation for old married couples.

In 1912  new alms houses were built on the site and they still stand today.

Laslett also gifted to the city Astwood Cemetery, 20 acres of land with two mortuary chapels, which was consecrated in 1858. However, despite his generosity, Laslett was better known in his lifetime for his odd behaviour, which was frequently ungracious.

A 1975 photograph of Laslett’s Alms Houses

There was no better example of this than during his peculiar marriage to Maria Carr, the daughter of the Bishop of Worcester. When Bishop Carr died he was £100,000 in debt, but Laslett paid this off on the understanding, so rumour went, that he could take Maria for his bride.

Nuptials did indeed follow, but so did six unhappy years, with the couple openly at war and seemingly hating each other. The bride expressed contempt for her husband, while he carried on regardless with his bizarre behaviour. They proved a very ill match, although Thomas Southall, another solicitor who knew them both, reckoned the fault was not all on one side.

Despite his apparent personality by-pass, William Laslett stood as the Liberal candidate for Worcester in 1852 and was elected unopposed. Not only that, he proved a feisty constituency MP, won four more elections and altogether served for 22 years.

But when defeat came, it was crushing. At the 1874 election, as the sitting member, Laslett came bottom of the poll. He never stood again and suddenly civic life in the city seemed rather more mundane. He died 10 years later and left an estate worth, in today’s money, £1.5 million, not much having been spent on new clothes.