In April he severed all connexion with the paper because of its support of the League of Nations which he opposed. He died at Jacksonville, Fla., Dec. 22 1921. He was the author of Old London Town (1910); History of the Manhattan Club (1915) and " Marse Henry": an Autobiography (1919).
WATTS, SIR PHILIP (1846- ), British naval architect, was
irn in Kent May 30 1846, and was educated at the College of
'aval Architecture, becoming a constructor to the Admiralty up
1885. From 1885 to 1901 he was director of the War Shipping
ipartment of Armstrong, Whitworth & Co. at Elswick (subse-
lently returning as a director of the company in 1912); but in
- poi he was appointed Director of Naval Construction at the
iralty. This post he held until 1912, when he was succeeded Sir Eustace Tennyson d'Eyncourt (b.i868) and became Ad- T to the Admiralty on Naval Construction. In this capacity played an important part when the World War came, and it as his fate, as the designer of the first " Dreadnought," to see ie use that was made of the fleet which he had brought into ing in previous years. He was a member of the royal commis- >n on the Supply and Storage of Liquid Fuel (1912), and of the luncil of the Royal Society. He was created K.C.B. in 1905.
WATTS-DUNTON, [WALTER] THEODORE (1832-1914), English man of letters (see 28.422), died at Putney June 6 1914.
WAY, SIR SAMUEL JAMES, 1ST BART. (1836-1916), Austra-
lawyer and politician, was born at Portsmouth April 1 1 1836.
went to Australia in 1853 and was called to the South Austra-
bar in 1861, becoming Q.C. ten years later, Attorney-
neral in 1875 and Chief Justice of S.A. in 1876. He entered
House of Assembly 1875, and in 1890 was lieut.-govcrnor.
administered the government of the Colony ten times be-
- en 1877 and 1890, and in 1897 became the first representative
f the Australasian Colonies on the Judicial Committee of the ivy Council. He was created a baronet in Aug. 1899. He did .uch to help Australian sheep-breeding, and introduced the iproved Shropshire sheep into Australia. He died Jan. 6 1916.
WEAVER, JAMES BAIRD (1833-1912), American lawyer
d political leader (see 28.439), died at Des Moines, Iowa,
'eb. 6 1912.
WEBB, SIR ASTON (1849- ), English architect, son of
[ward Webb, a distinguished engraver and painter, was born
London May 22 1849. His architectural education was in
che office of Banks & Barry (the latter the son of Sir Charles
Barry), but it was to his own self-study and in particular to
his power of sketching during his many travels, rather than to
iiis pupilage instruction, that his expression in design and plan-
ling are to be ascribed. One of his earliest commissions, on
stablishing himself in practice, was the restoration of the impor-
tant Norman church of St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield (1880), a
(work which lasted through several years. But Webb's peculiar
listinction lies in the large number of important buildings for
vhich he has been responsible. Many of these were the result
)f competitions and include the Victoria Courts at Birmingham,
- he Assurance offices in Moorgate St., and the Christ's Hospital
chool at Horsham, all carried out in partnership with Mr. ingress Bell. His roll of important buildings is a long one, and [nay well be headed by the completion of the Victoria and Ubert museum, South Kensington, and its close neighbours he Royal College of Science and the Imperial College of Tech- liology. The first of these was the successful design in a very Leenly contested competition. The plan has the merit of being imple and easy to grasp; the long vistas it presents, the octagon lall, and the galleries are treated boldly and with dignity of >roportion. The Admiralty entrusted to Sir Aston the new iritannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, and, in conjunc- ion with Mr. Ingress Bell, he carried out the Royal United Serv- ce Institution building, Whitehall, and that for the university >f Birmingham. The National Monument to Queen Victoria, ipposite Buckingham Palace, was, again, the result of a competi- ' ion, and included a fine but simple lay-out of the Mall and ither approaches to the site occupied by the central feature vhich embodies the noteworthy sculptural work of Mr. Brock. The unworthy setting and background offered to this fine monument presented by the cement-fronted elevation of Buckingham Palace, for which John Nash and, later, Blore were respon- sible, led to the long talked of recasting of the front toward the Mall, and this work was placed in the hands of Sir A. Webb. He also designed the entrance from Charing Cross to the Mall, which is ingeniously masked by a building with curved front- ages, in order that the change in the line of access at this point may not be noticeable. He was responsible for a large number of private houses including Yeaton-Pevery, Shrewsbury and for churches both new and restored in Worcester, Burford and Witley, and the French Protestant church, Soho. In 1902 Webb was elected president of the Royal Institute of Brit- ish Architects, and in 1905 was presented with the institute's gold medal. He was made a Royal Academician in 1903, re- ceived his knighthood in 1914, and in 1919, on the death of Sir Edward Poynter, was elected president of the Royal Acad- emy. This was an unusual honour to be awarded to an arch- itectural member, and one for which in the long history of that society there had only been one precedent that, of James Wyatt in 1805, and even in his case the election was never officially confirmed.
WEBB, SIDNEY (1850- ), British Socialist and author
(see 28.455). From 1909, when Mr. Webb, with his wife, Beatrice, was actively organizing opinion in favour of the Minority
Report of the Poor Law Commission, he continued to play an
influential part in the Labour and Socialist movement. He
became one of the commissioners under the Development Act
in 1913. His election upon the national executive of the Labour
party in the early part of the World War brought him into a
still closer connexion with the responsible leaders of Labour,
and two years later the entire constitution of the Labour party
was remodelled and a programme constructed (Labour and the
New Social Order), which was closely in accord with Mr. Webb's
views and policy. During the war Mr. Webb and his wife
served on numerous departmental and other committees. In
opposition to the majority report of the War Cabinet Committee
on Women in Industry, Mrs. Webb put forward a Minority
Report which was afterwards (in 1919) published separately.
At the general election of Dec. 1918 Mr. Webb stood unsuccess-
fully as Labour candidate for London University (in which he
held the professorship of Public Administration), being second
in the poll. In the coal crisis of the spring of 1919 he was ap-
pointed a member of the Coal Industry Commission and also
put forward in evidence a complete scheme of nationalization of
the coal-mines. In the same year he was appointed to the
Central Committee set up under the Profiteering Act of 1919.
Among the publications of Mr. and Mrs. Webb after 1906, the
following were the most important: English Local Government:
The Manor and the Borough (1908); The Break-up of the Poor
Law and The Piiblic Organization of the Labour Market (1909);
English Poor Law Policy (1910); The State and the Doctor (1910);
The Story of the King's Highway (1913); The History of Trade
Unionism (new and revised ed. 1920); A Constitution for the
Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain (1920) and The Con-
sumers' Cooperative Movement (1921). Mr. Webb also produced
Grants in Aid (1911); How to Pay for the War (1916); The Works
Manager To-day (1917); and The Story of the Durham Miners
(1921). Mr. and Mrs. Webb were concerned in the founding
of the weekly New Statesman in 1913, and have been since 1895
active movers in the development of the London School of
Economics and Political Science (university of London).
WEBER, SIR HERMANN (1823-1918), British physician,
was born at Holzkirchen, Germany, Dec. 30 1823, the son of a German father and an Italian mother. He studied medicine at Fulda, Marburg and Bonn, where he took his M.D. degree in 1848. His residence at Bonn brought him into touch with the English colony there, and through this connexion he received the position of house physician at the German Hospital, Dalston, London. When this appointment came to an end, he started in private practice, having become a naturalized British subject, and studied at Guy's Hospital with the object of obtaining an English qualification (1855). Weber came into great promi-
