Champion town crier – Horsham’s Billy Law

This week in 1912 Horsham’s last town crier became the first champion town crier of Great Britain during a competition in Devizes, Wiltshire.

William Law, known as Billy, issued the challenge to the other town criers in the UK with a view to setting up the championship.

He rang his bell in the streets of Horsham for more than 20 years and decided on the competition “not in any spirit of boastfulness but to prove his mettle as a town crier and to convince Horsham Urban Council that they were wrong in grudging him the cost of a uniform”.

While the Council were happy to recognise Billy in his role (which didn’t cost the ratepayers any money) they weren’t going to fork out for a uniform.

So on February 23, only three weeks after the challenge was issued, the great contest was staged in front of a crowd of 8,000. Out of an entry of 36 Mr Law proved champion and secured the championship bell and a £5 prize, along with being ‘one up’ on the council.

Such was the excitement back in Horsham at the news of Billy’s success that a vast crowd gathered outside the railway station. The Town and Recreation Silver Bands combined forces and to the tune of a triumphal march the conquering crier was carried shoulder high through the town.

One report records William Law’s address to the council following his triumph:

Oyez! oyez! OYEZ! Gentlemen all,

I perceived that tonight ye appear rather small.

I was quite unimportant when last our thoughts met,

And only cold shoulder from you I could get.

But now all the world knows my fortune has turned,

No longer I stand in the boots of the spurned,

For my rise from obscurity into Swank,

I am come noble Councillors, all you to thank.

Thus did William Law have the satisfaction of saying,

“I told you so.”

Although the whole issue came out of William Law’s lack of a uniform, in fact he secured one before the contest as the result of the generosity of supporters and the sale of verses created from the whole saga.

The uniform consisted of blue cloth, with large gilt buttons, red plush breeches, yellow stockings, low silver-buckled shoes and a broad-rimmed, gold-banded pot hat.

The bell that Billy used on a regular basis and was handed down from crier to crier is now part of Horsham Museum & Art Gallery’s archive (not currently on show). Called ‘The big bell of Bosham’ it was presented to the town by a former Duke of Norfolk. Unfortunately, many years ago it was dropped and cracked.

As a result of his success, William Law, who reputedly had a fine tenor voice, secured an engagement to appear at music halls for 12 weeks at a salary of £5 per week.

He retired from the role in the mid 1920s and moved from his Brighton Road home to live with his daughter at Tarring. He died there, aged 76, in April 1936.

No one has since taken up the role and so William Law remains Horsham’s last town crier.