When the Essex County Council was set up in 1889, he was unanimously elected its first chairman, an office he occupied well into advanced years, resigning only in 1916.
His service of 27 years in the chair has never been equalled, and his portrait holds pride of place in Committee Room no2 of the present council.
[4] Johnston was a keen exponent of teetotalism, and founded the Wilfrid Lawson Temperance Hotel at Woodford, where he lived.
[6] The amplest account of his later life is to be found in Richard Morris, The Verderers and Courts of Waltham Forest in the County of Essex 1250-2000, Loughton 2004.
This article about a Liberal Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom representing an English constituency is a stub.