VISCOTJNTY.

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 127, 3 June 1929, Page 10

VISCOTJNTY.

:JE. W. C. BRIDGEMAN, former First Lord of the Admiralty. Viscount; Bridgeman, who was educated at Cambridge, where he was open classical scholar in 1887, gained his first political experience as private secretary to the late Lord Knutsford at the Colonial Office, and afterwards to the late Viscount St. Aldwyn (then Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) at the Treasury. He made two unsuccessful attempts to enter Parliament before he was returned for Oswestry in 1906, a seat which he has held since. After serving as an Opposition Whip he became a Junior Lord of the Treasury in 1915 and afterwards held an appointment in the War Trade Department, mainly concerned with contraband. Two Parliamentary secretaryships were followed by his appointment to the new Department of Mines, which was followed by his first big office —the Home Secretaryship—in the last Tory Government. While at the Home Office he achieved notoriety by ordering the arrest and deportation of a large number of Irish men and women. Virtually all the deportees were afterwards released by the Free State and in subsequent litigation recovered heavy damages against the Crown. Ho became First Lord of the Treasury in 1924. Viscount Bridgeman is now 65 years old.