Edwin Scrymgeour

Edwin Scrymgeour
Member of Parliament
for Dundee
In office
15 November 1922 – 8 October 1931
Preceded byWinston Churchill
Alexander Wilkie
Succeeded byFlorence Horsbrugh
Dingle Foot
Personal details
Born(1866-07-28)28 July 1866
Dundee, Scotland
Died1 February 1947(1947-02-01) (aged 80)
Dundee, Scotland
Political partyScottish Prohibition
EducationWest End Academy

Edwin Scrymgeour (28 July 1866 – 1 February 1947) was a British politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Dundee in Scotland.[1] He is the only person ever elected to the House of Commons on a prohibitionist ticket, as the candidate of the Scottish Prohibition Party. He was affectionately known as Neddy Scrymgeour.[2]

Life

A native of Dundee, he was educated at West End Academy. He was a pioneer of the Scottish temperance movement and established his party in 1901 to further that aim.[1]

In 1896 he is listed as a clerk, living at 42 Kings Road in Dundee.[3]

He served on Dundee City Council and began contesting elections in the 1908 Dundee by-election, which saw Winston Churchill first elected for Dundee, and Scrymgeour continued to fight at every election thereafter and increased his vote. That was in part because of his popularity, generally left-wing sympathies and history with the labour movement. Churchill's stance against suffragettes may have had an impact in a city that had many women as breadwinners and many men as "kettle-boilers" (househusbands).[4]

In 1910 he was living at 92 Victoria Road in Dundee.[5]

In the 1922 election, Scrymgeour and the Labour candidate, E. D. Morel, jointly ousted Winston Churchill, who had represented the city as a Liberal (to then a Coalition Liberal).[6] Scrymgeour remained an MP for Dundee until the 1931 general election,[1] when he was ousted by Florence Horsbrugh.

Out of Parliament, Scrymgeour worked as an evangelical Chaplain at East House and Maryfield Hospital in Dundee.[1] Scrymgeour was a leader of the unsuccessful opposition to disbanding the Scottish Prohibition Party in 1935.

He died at his home in Dundee on 1 February 1947,[7] followed by his wife Margaret on 28 May. Both were interred alongside Scrymgeour's father James in Dundee's Eastern Cemetery.

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Scrimgeour, Edwin". Who Was Who (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2007. Retrieved 16 February 2013. (subscription required)
  2. ^ The Dundee Book, Billy Kay
  3. ^ Dundee Post Office Directory 1896
  4. ^ "Scottish National Dictionary, 2005 Supplement, KETTLE, n.1.". Dictionary of the Scots Language. Retrieved 30 January 2015.
  5. ^ Dundee Post Office Directory 1910
  6. ^ "Discontent, War & the Impact of Revolution in Dundee". Archives, Records and Artefacts at the University of Dundee. University of Dundee. February 2012. Retrieved 17 March 2016.
  7. ^ Kemp, John (23 September 2004). "Scrymgeour, Edwin (1866–1947), prohibitionist and politician". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 1 (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/61325. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Dundee
1922–1931
With: E. D. Morel 1922–1924
Tom Johnston 1924–1929
Michael Marcus 1929–1931 		Succeeded by