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Obituaries

Obituary: Bill Williams

Manchester's 'honorary Jew' who pioneered oral history in Britain

April 20, 2018 10:25
Bill Williams
2 min read

For over 40 years Bill Williams, who has died aged 86, imbued the Manchester Jewish community with his tremendous knowledge of its history. Although not Jewish himself, he was founder and Life President of the Manchester Jewish Museum and a pioneer of oral history in Britain. Bill was often described by his admirers as an ‘honorary Jew’.

Brought up a Catholic by his father, Welsh Methodist socialist historian, Bill and his Catholic mother Dorothy, he grew up in Llandudno and Llangollen before being sent to Stonyhurst, a Catholic boarding school in Lancashire. He gained an Exhibition to Trinity College Cambridge, and read history. 

After teacher training in Cardiff, he eventually became head of history at Manchester Polytechnic, having abandoned Catholicism and the idea of the priesthood. At the Polytechnic he was commisioned by a Jewish publication committee to write the history of the community. This culminated in The Making of Manchester Jewry, 1740-1875 (published 1976) and described by Rabbi Dr Michael Hilton as having “awakened the need for archival rescue and oral history.”

The book boosted the establishment of the Manchester Studies Unit at the Polytechnic of which he was the director. The unit focused on Jewish working lives and Manchester’s working class history.