page_title: Bill Denny
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Bill Denny / Later life
caption_attribution_description: English: A sepia portrait of Captain William Joseph Denny MC MP in uniform
context_page_description: William Joseph "Bill" Denny, MC was a South Australian journalist, lawyer, politician and decorated soldier who held the South Australian House of Assembly seats of West Adelaide from 1900 to 1902 and then Adelaide from 1902 to 1905 and again from 1906 to 1933. After an unsuccessful candidacy as a United Labor Party member in 1899, he was elected as an "independent liberal" in a by-election in 1900. He was re-elected in 1902, but defeated in 1905. The following year, he was elected as a ULP candidate, and retained his seat for that party until 1931. Along with the rest of the cabinet, he was ejected from the Australian Labor Party in 1931, and was a member of the Parliamentary Labor Party until his electoral defeat at the hands of a Lang Labor Party candidate in 1933.
  Denny was the Attorney-General of South Australia and Minister for the Northern Territory in the government led by John Verran. In August 1915, Denny enlisted in the First Australian Imperial Force to serve in World War I, initially as a trooper in the 9th Light Horse Regiment. After being commissioned in 1916, he served in the 5th Division Artillery and 1st Divisional Artillery on the Western Front.
context_section_description: In September 1936, Bill's brother, the Catholic priest Reverend Denny, and his sister, Mary Catherine Denny, were involved in a vehicle accident in which Mary received fatal injuries. Reverend Denny suffered from an illness that resulted from the accident which contributed to his death in June 1941. Denny wrote a further autobiographical book, A Digger at Home and Abroad, which was published in 1941. He continued to practice law until his death, despite difficulties associated with rheumatoid arthritis. He died on 2 May 1946 of a heart attack which developed at his home on Osmond Terrace, Norwood, after he returned from his office in Adelaide. He was survived by his wife, one son and three daughters. He was accorded a state funeral, and was buried at West Terrace Cemetery.
  Denny was the patron of the West Adelaide Football Club for 20 years ending in 1930. He enjoyed diving for crayfish under the rocks at the back of Rosetta Head near Victor Harbor on Encounter Bay, and was often accompanied by Ephriam "Brownie" Tripp, an Aboriginal man from the Point McLeay Aboriginal Mission. According to his entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, "his preferred reading was Shakespeare and the Bible and he quoted liberally from both. His integrity, versatility and wide knowledge were unquestioned, and he was proud of the democratic legislation he had sponsored."
caption: Captain W.J. Denny, MC
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