William Bold

William Ernest Bold (6 May 1873 – 25 November 1953) was an influential and long-serving municipal clerk of Perth, Western Australia. He is generally acknowledged to be the founding father of urban planning in Western Australia.

Bold was born at Birkdale near Southport, Lancashire. After education in Lancashire and the Haberdashers' School in London he was an apprentice electrical engineer on the Forth railway bridge at Queensferry, Scotland, in 1888 to 1890. After returning to London he taught himself shorthand and worked as a clerk-typist with an Australian mercantile firm in the Baltic Exchange. He migrated to Western Australia in 1896 at the suggestion of a relative living in Fremantle.

In Perth Bold worked briefly with a merchant, and in the same year of his emigration he was clerk-typist to the town clerk of the city of Perth. He became acting town clerk on 27 November 1900, after H. E. Petherick was forced to resign. The council initially rejected his application for the vacant office and appointed a Melbourne candidate, who resigned ten days later. Bold's reappointment in an acting capacity in April 1901 was approved only after long debate and a close vote. On 30 September he was appointed town clerk, the youngest in any Australian capital.

Bold used as a model the technically efficient Birmingham of Joseph Chamberlain and expanded the size and improved the quality of city staff and streamlined its operations. He became a driving force in policy formation, preparing detailed reports for councillors and intervening in council debates. By 1905 some regarded him as the real mayor. Bold is described in the Australian Dictionary of Biography as an advocate of “municipal socialism”:

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