A Black Country iron master and banker, Fryer was elected as Wolverhampton’s first MP in 1832. During his only Parliament, he was an early campaigner against the corn laws which he asserted ‘were brought by the devil from hell’. A Radical Reformer, Fryer was forthright in his criticisms of ‘bastard Tories, born on a dunghill’ and ‘degenerate, apostate Whigs’.