Sir James William McCraith, JP (19 March 1853 – 9 July 1928) was a local politician who served as the Conservative and Unionist Party Leader in Nottingham.
His elder brother was Sir John Tom McCraith, a prominent Unionist on Nottingham City Council who was knighted for his political service in 1904.
McCraith was a founding member of the Nottingham Incorporated Law Society in 1875 and was elected its president in 1891; he became a Justice of the Peace the following year and served as French Vice-Consul for Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire.
In this capacity he ran many of the city's Unionist meetings and met the likes of Arthur Balfour, Stanley Baldwin and Winston Churchill.
[3] In 1876, McCraith married Marie Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Dickinson, of Holly Mount in Nottinghamshire, and had a daughter and three sons:[1] Douglas (1878–1952), who was a solicitor and long-serving City Councillor who received his own knighthood in 1939;[4] Major Bernard McCraith Royal Engineers (1880–1919), who died of pneumonia; Kenneth York; and Violet Muriel.