William Henry Wilkins

William Henry Wilkins (1860–1905) was an English writer, best known as a royal biographer and campaigner for immigration controls. He used the pseudonym W. H. de Winton.

Born at Compton Martin, Somerset, on 23 December 1860, he was son of Charles Wilkins, farmer, of Gurney Court, Somerset, and later of Mann's farm, Mortimer, Berkshire, where Wilkins passed much of his youth. His mother was Mary Ann Keel. After private education, he was employed in a bank at Brighton. Entering Clare College, Cambridge in 1884, he graduated B.A. in 1887, and proceeded M.A. in 1899.

Initially considering holy orders, at the university Wilkins developed literary tastes and interested himself in politics. A Conservative, he spoke frequently at the Cambridge Union, of which he was vice-president in 1886.

After leaving Cambridge, Wilkins acted for a time as private secretary to the Earl of Dunraven. In 1891 Dunraven and Arnold White set up the Association for Preventing the Immigration of Destitute Aliens (APIDA), and Wilkins acted as its secretary. White and Dunraven had been active against immigration from at least 1886, and had hoped for parliamentary action. There was an "anti-alien" campaign by the London Evening News, and support from local MPs, and clergy including George Sale Reaney in Stepney. There lacked any serious local support in the parts of east London most affected, and the public at large was indifferent. APIDA ceased to function in 1892.

Wilkins then made a literary career in London. He died unmarried on 22 December 1905 at 3 Queen Street, Mayfair, London, and was buried in Kensal Green cemetery.

In 1890 Wilkins wrote in the National Review that British workmen should be protected from "hordes of destitute Jews". In 1891 he wrote about the immigration issue in the USA, in The Nineteenth Century. He also did some field work in the East End of London, observing hiring practices for recent immigrants in Goulston Street (Aldgate, covered by the Whitechapel area). Proposals of the Earl of Dunraven for restricting immigration were written up by Wilkins in The Alien Invasion (1892), with introduction by Robert Billing, in the "Social Questions of Today" series by Methuen & Co. The recommendations in the book bore some relation to later measures in the Aliens Act 1905.

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