William Hepworth Dixon

William Hepworth Dixon (30 June 1821 – 26 December 1879) was an English historian and traveller from Manchester.

[1][2] Dixon travelled in 1861 to Portugal, Spain and Morocco, and then in 1863 eastwards, returning to help in founding the Palestine Exploration Fund, of which he became an executive committee member and eventually chairman.

On the tour he lit upon a collection of state papers, originally Irish, in the public library at Philadelphia, which had been missing since the time of James II; on Dixon's suggestion it was passed to the British government.

[1][3] In the autumn of 1867 Dixon travelled in the Baltic provinces, then in the latter part of 1869 spent some months in Russia and in 1871 mostly in Switzerland.

[1] At the general election of 1868 Dixon declined an invitation to stand for Marylebone, though he often addressed political meetings.

He supported a number of similar projects aimed at providing low-cost dwellings of decent standard for the families of labourers, and was a member of the first School Board for London (1870), working intensively on it in the first three years of its existence.

Opposing Lord Sandon, he managed to carry a resolution establishing military-style foot drill as a form of physical education in all rate-paid schools in London.

To this the prime minister Benjamin Disraeli assented, and on public holidays Dixon personally conducted crowds of working men through the building.

[1] However, his youngest daughter, Ella Hepworth Dixon, became a writer, editor and novelist of repute.

Before the end of 1878 he visited Cyprus, where a fall from a horse broke his shoulder bone and left him an invalid.

He was revising the proof sheets of the final volumes of Royal Windsor and on Friday 26 December 1879, made an effort to finish the work.

[1] In 1852 Dixon published a life of Robert Blake, Admiral and General at Sea, based on Family and State Papers.

[1] Some of Dixon's Athenæum papers led to publication of the Auckland Memoirs and of Court and Society, edited by the Duke of Manchester.

He brought a libel action against the Pall Mall Gazette, which had made the charge in a review of Free Russia.

During 1876 he wrote in the Gentleman's Magazine "The Way to Egypt" and two other papers recommending the government to purchase its Egyptian suzerainty from the Ottoman Empire.,[1] In the same year 1876 he wrote a series of 5 articles about how and why Jew can and should recover Palestine, the articles are: 1- "!- Holy land and City" 2- "II - The Temple" 3- "III - Underground Jerusalem" 4- " Foundations of Zion" 5- " Scenarios of the Baptism" In 1872 under the pseudonym Onslow Yorke he published an exposé of the International Workingmen's Association, The Secret History of "The International" Working Men's Association.