Frederick Caesar Linfield

Frederick Caesar Linfield (1861 – 2 June 1939) was a British Liberal politician. He was originally in trade as a corn-merchant.

Linfield first entered politics at local government level. He was a member of Worthing Council in West Sussex, having been one of the first councillors when Worthing was newly incorporated as a Borough in 1890 and was Mayor of Worthing twice from 1906-08. He was also an Alderman of the Borough.

In 1907, during his Mayoral term, he formally welcomed General William Booth of the Salvation Army to Worthing. He recalled that during the days when the Salvation Army was first campaigning there in the mid-1880s, it was deeply unpopular because of all the undesirables who were attracted to its banner for moral and physical sustenance. He told General Booth that he had himself hidden two Salvationists from the hostile crowds for two weeks.

Linfield stood for Parliament at the general election of December 1910 as the Liberal candidate in Horncastle in Lincolnshire but he was defeated by 524 votes by the sitting Conservative MP Lord Willoughby d’ Eresby, who had held Horncastle at each election since 1895. Linfield was soon given another chance at Horncastle however when, only days after the general election, Lord Willoughby succeeded to the peerage on the death of his father, Lord Ancaster. Linfield was formally re-adopted as Liberal candidate on 5 January 1911 in opposition to the new Conservative candidate Captain Archibald G Weigall, who had fought the nearby seat of Gainsborough at the December 1910 general election. The by-election was called for 16 February 1911 but Linfield was not expected to win, given the Unionist hold on the seat in recent times and an analysis of the past results and new voters on the roll enabled the correspondent of The Times newspaper to forecast correctly that the Unionists would hold the seat,.

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