William Lorimer (politician)

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William Lorimer was a United States Senator and congressman from the State of Illinois; He was born in Manchester, England on April 27, 1861.

His family immigrated to the United States in 1866, first settling in Michigan and then moving to Chicago in 1870. Lorimer was self-educated, although apprenticed to a sign painter when he was ten. He worked in the Chicago meat-packing houses and for a street railroad company.

Lorimer was elected to three consecutive terms as a Republican in the U.S. Congress, beginning in 1895. He lost his re-election campaign in 1900, but won election again in 1902, serving for another three consecutive terms until his resignation on June 17, 1909 to take up his seat as a U.S. Senator. The Chicago Tribune published the admission by Illinois Assemblyman Charles A. White that Lorimer paid $1,000 for his vote for U.S. Senator. [1] The Seventeenth Amendment would not be ratified until 1913, removing the selection for Senator from the state legislatures to the popular vote of each state. He only served in the Senate until July 13, 1912, when, after a Senate investigation and acrimonious debate, the Senate adopted a resolution declaring "that corrupt methods and practices were employed in his election, and that the election, therefore, was invalid." He was the president of La Salle Street Trust & Savings Bank from 1910 to 1915 and then entered the lumber business. Lorimer died in Chicago on September 13, 1934.