William Lee (1812–1891) was an English civil and sanitary engineer.
He was one of the inspectors recruited by Edwin Chadwick in promoting his General Board of Health.
[1] He wrote numerous contributions to Notes and Queries on Defoe: George Saintsbury found Lee's attributions impressionistic; they brought the number of works credited to Defoe to 254, of which 64 were novel attributions.
[4] William Peterfield Trent wrote that Lee's researches were set off by the discovery of correspondence showing that Defoe had worked as a government agent.
[5] Furbank and Owens state that Lee was motivated by the dislike he had for the radical Defoe portrayed by Walter Wilson.