Willoughby Dickinson, 1st Baron Dickinson

Willoughby Hyett Dickinson, 1st Baron Dickinson KBE, PC (9 April 1859 – 31 May 1943), was a British Liberal Party politician.

Dickinson was the son of Sebastian Stewart Dickinson, Member of Parliament for Stroud. He was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge.[1] He was Member of Parliament for St. Pancras North from 1906 to 1918 and was an assiduous supporter of women's suffrage, promoting a number of measures in Parliament to get the vote for women.[2][3] Dickinson was made a Privy Counsellor in 1914 and in 1930 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Dickinson, of Painswick in the County of Gloucester.

He was later secretary-general of the World Alliance for International Friendship, and from 1931 chairman of its International Council.[4]

Family

He married Elizabeth, daughter of General Sir Richard John Meade,[5] in 1891. They had three children, one of whom was Frances Joan Dickinson, Baroness Northchurch. Lord Dickinson died in May 1943, aged 84, and was succeeded in the barony by his grandson Richard, his only son the Hon. Richard Sebastian Willoughby Dickinson having predeceased him.

Notes

  1. ^ Dickinson, Willoughby Hyett in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
  2. ^ from March 1907 to the Representation of the People Bill of 1913. During World War I the Speakers Conference on electoral reform included two influential Liberal suffragists, Sir John Simon and W. H. Dickinson, who helped ensure that it recommended granting the vote to women.[1]
  3. ^ Summary of 1912 Conciliation Bill debate; Dickinson quoted as I regard this question of the women's franchise as part of the movement of civilisation.
  4. ^ Mentioned in Nobel Peace Prize speech 1930, by Nathan Söderblom.
  5. ^ ThePeerage.com - Person Page 7400 at www.thepeerage.com

References

Political offices
Preceded by
Lord Welby		 Chairman of the London County Council
1900 – 1901		 Succeeded by
Andrew Mitchell Torrance
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Edward Robert Pacy Moon		 Member of Parliament for St Pancras North
1906 – 1918		 Succeeded by
John William Lorden
Peerage of the United Kingdom
New creation Baron Dickinson
1930 – 1943		 Succeeded by
Richard Clavering Hyett Dickinson