Sir James Augustus Grant, 1st Baronet

Sir James Augustus Grant, 1st Baronet (3 March 1867 – 29 July 1932) was a British Conservative Party politician.

Early life

Born in Jalandhar, India, he was the son of the Scottish explorer James Augustus Grant and his wife Margaret Laurie.[1] He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford in 1886.[2]

After university, Grant worked in South Africa on the Kimberley–Bechuanaland railway. He accompanied Joseph Thomson on his final expedition of 1890.[3] At this point he was working for the British South Africa Company and Cecil Rhodes, a contact of his father.[4] With Frank Elliott Lochner of the Bechuanaland Police and Alfred Sharpe, Thomson and Grant went to visit Msiri of Garenganze, seeking mineral rights.[5]

Politician

Grant was Member of Parliament (MP) for Egremont from January 1910 until the constituency was abolished for the 1918 general election. He was then elected as MP for Whitehaven, but lost that seat at the 1922 general election to Labour Party candidate Thomas Gavan Duffy. Grant was strongly opposed to extending the franchise to women. During a parliamentary debate on the bill which became the Representation of the People Act 1918 he said: "We are controlled and worried enough by women, and I have heard no reason why we should alter the present state of affairs."[6]

Grant did not contest the 1923 general election, but returned to the House of Commons at the 1924 general election as MP for South Derbyshire. He retired from Parliament at the 1929 election, having been made a baronet, in July 1926, of Househill, Nairn.[7]

The baronetcy became extinct on Grant's death in Gloucester in 1932, aged 65.

Family

Grant married in 1896 Nina Frances Kennard, daughter of Arthur Challis Kennard and his wife the novelist Nina H. Kennard (1844–1926).[1][8] Their daughter Nina Margaret Sophie in 1924 married Sir Anselm Guise, 6th Baronet, of Elmore Court, Gloucestershire, and they had two sons and a daughter, including Sir John Grant Guise, 7th Baronet (1927–2007).[9] A younger daughter Hester, born 1899, married in 1923 Arthur Darley Bridge of the Coldstream Guards.[10]

References

1. Walford, Edward (1860). The county families of the United Kingdom; or, Royal manual of the titled and untitled aristocracy of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Dalcassian Publishing Company. p. 564.
2. Foster, Joseph (1888–1892). "Grant, James Augustus" . Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource.
3. "Colonial Discourses: Series Two: Imperial Adventurers and Explorers: Part 2". ampltd.co.uk.
4. Casada, James A. (June 1974). "James A. Grant and the Royal Geographical Society". The Geographical Journal. 140 (2): 252. doi:10.2307/1797081. JSTOR 1797081.
5. Rotberg, Robert I. (1990). The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the Pursuit of Power. Oxford University Press, USA. p. 330. ISBN 978-0-19-506668-5.
6. Gillett, Francesca (29 April 2018). "Women's suffrage: 10 reasons why men opposed votes for women". BBC News. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
7. "No. 33191". The London Gazette. 13 August 1926. p. 5371.
8. Kemp, Sandra; Mitchell, Charlotte; Trotter, David (1997). Edwardian Fiction: An Oxford Companion. Oxford University Press. p. 221. ISBN 978-0-19-811760-5.
9. Burke’s Peerage, volume 2 (2003), p. 1703
10. Debrett's Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage, and Companionage. Dean & Son, limited. 1931. p. 347.

Sources

• Craig, F. W. S. (1983) [1969]. British parliamentary election results 1918-1949 (3rd ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. ISBN 0-900178-06-X.
• Leigh Rayment's list of baronets
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sir James Augustus Grant