Career
Nicholls started life as a farm labourer and smallholder. He was elected as Member of Parliament for North Northamptonshire at the 1906 general election, but was defeated at the January 1910 general election. After his defeat he stood for Parliament again in Faversham at the December 1910 general election, and in Newmarket at a by-election in May 1913, but was unsuccessful on both occasions.
He was elected to Peterborough town council in 1912, and became the towns"s mayor from 1916 to 1918.
He was awarded the Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire and served as a Justice of the Peace. After World War I, he stood unsuccessfully for Parliament on six further occasions.
As a Labour Party candidate in Camborne at the 1918 general election, he narrowly lost to the sitting Liberal Member of Parliament Sir Francis Dyke Acland. He then stood as a Liberal Party candidate in Peterborough at the 1922 general election, in Warwick and Leamington at the 1923 and 1924 general elections, in Bury Street Edmunds at a by-election in January 1925, and in Harborough at the 1929 general election.
