Sir Alfred William Yeo (13 October 1863 – 14 April 1928) was a British Liberal politician, self-made businessman and public servant. Family and education Alfred William Yeo was the son of George Yeo, a native of the county of Devon who struggled to make a living as a house-painter. The family moved to Kent. There is conflicting evidence about Alfred's place of birth which is given as Devon in his obituary in The Times but is stated to be London in a source provided by the Yeo family. He was educated at Marner Street and High Street Schools, Bromley. In 1886, he married Mary Ann Brown. They had one son. Mary Ann Yeo died in 1911 and Alfred was married again that same year to Florence Jane Stevens from Poplar, London. In religion Yeo was a strong Nonconformist and a supporter of the National Brotherhood Federation. Career By the end of his career, Yeo could be described as wealthy and a self-made man but he started at the very bottom. After schooling, Yeo found work in an iron foundry. He told one of the London newspapers that at the age of eleven he had had to work for 84 hours a week, or 14 hours a day, for six days a week. He later worked for thirty years in business in the music trade dealing in musical instruments, notably pianos. Local government service Yeo immersed himself in local administration in Poplar over many years. He served as a member of Vestry, an early form of local government in London. He was later a member of the Board of Works and for nine years served as Progressive Party member for Limehouse on the London County Council. He was an elected member of the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar for 25 years. He served as a member of Poplar Board of Guardians, the body charged with administering the English Poor Laws for ten years, for six years of which he was Chairman. He also worked in other areas of social and unemployment relief being for ten years Chairman of the Poplar Distress Committee, a body set up under the Unemployed Workmen Act of 1905 to provide grants to create jobs. In 1903–04, Yeo was elected Mayor of Poplar. Parliament Poplar In February 1914, the Liberal MP for Poplar, Sydney Buxton was appointed Governor-General of South Africa and stood down from the House of