Harold Wilson Wiley

Harold Wilson Wiley

Harold Wilson Wiley. Obituary – The Times, 27 June 1997

Wilson Wiley, Clerk to the Worshipful Company of Founders for 50 years, died on June 4 aged 93. He was born on May 8, 1904.

Wilson Wiley became Clerk to the Founders’ Company in 1936, and served for as long as any clerk this century in the City of London, his record being equalled only by Monier Williams of the Tallow Chandlers’. His abiding interests, however, were the stage and the breeding of boxer dogs.

Harold Wilson Wiley was educated at Marlborough and New College, Oxford, where he acted with Emlyn Williams, Tyrone Guthrie and Robert Speight — and incidentally read law. After graduating in 1925, he worked as a bus conductor in the General Strike, with a driver who apparently aspired to be a racing driver. In 1929, he qualified for the somewhat more staid occupation of a solicitor, and joined his father’s practice.

In his early days, hospitality in the City was, one might say, Satisfactory. When Wiley was sworn in as Clerk of one of the oldest of the City Companies, the menu comprised oysters, clear turtle soup, fillets of sole, jarret de volaille, saddle of mutton, sorbet au_ kirsch, pheasant, bombe Edward VII, croute meurice, dessert and coffee, accompanied by chablis, punch, sherry, moselle, two kinds of champagne, port, brandy, benedictine and other beverages.

Wiley had been well advised by his Oxford tutor about the laying down of wines. Much taken with the burgundies of 1923, he banded together with Pat Rathcreedan and other friends to buy as big a stock as possible, to their subsequent gratification.

During the war, he organised -fire-watching for the company, before being called up into the RAF, working in intelligence at Flight Command HQ, Bently Priory, and handling communiqués at the Air Ministry.

On being demobbed, he returned to his solicitor’s practice in the West End, while continuing his service to the company. Wines he bought then, as part of a two-man committee, laid the basis of the company’s post war cellar.

In 1948 Wilson and his wife Connie acquired Max, an intractable boxer who was to be the first of many. In 195] a red puppy bitch of theirs became champion at the British Boxer Club open show, and so began the “Wardrobes” kennel, named after their hamlet. Up until 1973, when they stopped showing, they bred 427 animals and won 52 champion titles and 217 Kennel Club challenge certificates. Wiley also gave long service to the committee of the Kennel Club.

H.