William Watson-Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong

William Henry Armstrong Fitzpatrick Watson-Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong, DL, Hon. DCL (3 May 1863 – 16 October 1941), was a British benefactor.

Born William Watson, he was born at 65 Eccleston Square, London, the son of John William Watson, of Adderstone Hall, Belford, Northumberland, son of Sir William Henry Watson, Baron of the Exchequer, and Anne Armstrong, daughter of William Armstrong, a corn merchant and Mayor of Newcastle upon Tyne, whose son William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong was the founder of the Armstrong Whitworth manufacturing empire. His mother was Margaret Godman Fitzpatrick, daughter of Patrick Persse Fitzpatrick, of Bognor Regis, Sussex. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1889 he assumed by Royal licence the additional surname of Armstrong.

Watson-Armstrong served in the Northumberland Hussars, where he was promoted Major on 12 April 1902. He was High Sheriff of Northumberland in 1899, and was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of Northumberland in 1901.

In 1900 he succeeded to the vast fortune of his great-uncle, Lord Armstrong. The following year he gave £100,000 (equivalent to £9,790,855 in 2015), for the building of the new Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne, for which the city conferred upon him the honorary Freedom in July 1901. The original 1753 infirmary building at Forth Banks near the river Tyne were inadequate and impossible to expand.

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