William Stott Banks

At the age of 11 he started his working life as office-boy to John Berry, a local solicitor.

On the formation of the Wakefield Borough Commission in March 1870 he was elected clerk to the justices, an office which he retained until his death.

It was used as the main source on the Wakefield dialect by Alexander John Ellis in his work On Early English Pronunciation,[2] and was also used as a reference for several words in Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary.

In the North-east,' which had previously appeared in weekly instalments in the columns of the Wakefield Free Press.

Shortly before his death he issued a companion volume, Walks in Yorkshire: Wakefield and its neighbourhood.

Title page , Walks in Yorkshire: Wakefield and its neighbourhood , published shortly before the author's death
Frontispiece , Walks in Yorkshire, I. in the northwest, II. in the north east , published at London , 1866