A PIONEER MOTORIST

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 212, 4 June 1929, Page 10

A PIONEER MOTORIST

TOOK KING EDWARD FOR FIRST RIDE Dominion Special Service. London, April 18. Lord Montagu, of Beaulieu, who died this week, was the second Baron, succeeding his father in 1906, and a member of the family of which the Duke of Buccleuch is the head. He has been prominent in public life as an automobile pioneer, and an authority on transport problems and aircraft service. He was born in 1866, and educated at Eton and New College, Oxford, where he devoted himself to engineering and scientific studies. His interest in automobilism, aviation, road construction and all forms of transportation was deep and practical. In 1898 he drove a 6 h.p. Daimler car, and obtained third place in the Paris-Ostend race. It was Lord Montagu who took King Edward VII for his first motor ride, and who first drove a motor-car into Palace Yard, Westminster. After leaving Oxford he went into the shops of the London and South-Western Railway, then at Nine Elms, and at lathe and bench, and afterwards on the footplate, he became a thoroughly competent mechanic and motor engineer. In Parliament he was the champion of the motorist, and it was largely owing to him that the Motor-Car Act of 1903 was amended in favour of motorists in many details. He was a member of the institute of Transport, president of the Marine Motoring Association, an associate member of the Institutions of Civil Engineers and Mechanical Engineers, and a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society. Lord Montagu was one of the first to realise the need of experimental work in connection with aircraft, having a deep conviction that it was to the Air Service we must look in the future for the real defence of the country. He Was an original member of the Road Board, and made many helpful suggestions in regard to road construction and other matters for meeting the new er. of motor transport after the war.