William Nathaniel Massey

William Nathaniel Massey (3 June 1809 – 25 October 1881) was a British barrister, writer and Liberal Member of Parliament.

Early life Massey studied law, being admitted as a student at the Inner Temple in November 1826, and was called to the bar in January 1844. He married firstly in 1833, Frances Carleton, daughter of Rev John Orde. Massey practised on the Western Circuit and in 1852 was appointed recorder of Portsmouth and in 1855 of Plymouth. He was a member of the Athenaeum Club; and was chairman of St John's Hospital for Diseases of the Skin. He died at his London home, 96 Portland Place, in October 1881. He also wrote:

Common Sense versus Common Law. London, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1850.

Family His first wife was Frances Carleton Orde (3 November 1806 – 11 July 1872) daughter of John Orde and Frances Carleton, and their son was Charles Carleton Massey (23 December 1838 –29 March 1905), the famous writer on spiritualism, psychic phenomena, mysticism and theosophy.

In 1880, shortly before his last illness, Massey married Helen Henrietta, youngest daughter of the late Patrick Grant, Esq., Sheriff-Clerk of Inverness.