William Hazlewood Phillips

William Hazlewood Phillips (22 September 1825 - 25 February 1911) was a businessman and politician.

Phillips was the son of Richard Phillips, an auctioneer, and his wife Louisa née Mucklow, and was born in the parish of St Luke's, to the north of the City of London. He was born into a family of Radical reformers, and at the age of 18 attended an Anti Corn Law demonstration at Covent Garden where he met Richard Cobden and John Bright.

In 1851 he travelled to Italy, where he was so enraged by the brutality of the regime of Ferdinand II that he became a spy for the forces led by Giuseppe Garibaldi. In his autobigraphy he stated that "in Italy I risked my liberty daily and my life once".

He returned to England where he entered business as a coal factor, and was a member of the London Coal Exchange. In 1862 he led a campaign to bring the plight of Lancashire textile workers caused by the "Cotton Famine". In a series of letters to The Times under the soubriquet "A London Lad" he called for donations which he arranged to be distributed in the effected areas.

By 1882 he was living in Eltham and was elected to the London School Board to represent Greenwich.

He took a great interest in Irish Home Rule, and in 1887 he moved temporarily to Ireland where he became a magistrate at Leenane (now Leenaun) in County Galway.

He retained his links with London, and was one of the founders of the Municipal Reform League which sought to have the government of the capital placed under a democratically elected authority. When the first elections to the London County Council he was returned as one of two Progressive Party councillors representing Deptford.

Phillips served a single three-year term on the county council, retiring at the 1892 elections. However he remained active in public life and politics as a supporter of trade unionism and women's suffrage. He was also a regular contributor to Punch. He retired from public life in 1906, and published his autobiography Sixty Years of Citizen Work and Play in the following year.

He died in Hove in 1911 aged 85, and was buried in Golders Green Cemetery.