Stanley Baldwin

                                                                        EARLY LIFE

Stanley Baldwin was born at Lower Park House (Lower Park, Bewdley) in Worcestershire, England on August 3, 1867.

His parents were English businessman and Conservative Party Member of Parliament, Alfred Baldwin and Louisa Baldwin, daughter of Reverend George Browne Macdonald, a Wesleyan minister.

His uncle was Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir Edward Burne- Jones.

Stanley Baldwin was a first cousin of the writer and poet Rudyard Kipling, whose mother was Baldwin’s aunt on his mother’s side. The two cousins were close for their entire lives.

Stanley was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, where he studied history at Trinity College.

After receiving a third-class degree in history, Stanley went into the family business of iron manufacturing. 

Baldwin proved to be adept as a businessman, and acquired a reputation as a modernizing industrialist. 

He inherited £200,000 and a directorship of the Great Western Railway on the death of his father in 1908.

                                                                   POLITICAL CAREER

In 1908, Baldwin was elected to Parliament from the Bewdley division of Worcestershire, representing the Conservative party. 

He was financial secretary of the treasury (1917–21), president of the Board of Trade (1921–22), and Chancellor of the Exchequer (1922–23). 

Stanley Baldwin gave 20% of his fortune to help pay off the government's debts from World War I. He did this in 1919, in a letter to The Times newspaper. In the letter, he wrote that he felt it was his moral obligation to help the country recover from the war, and that he hoped his donation would encourage others to do the same.

Baldwin in 1920

When Andrew Bonar Law retired through ill health as prime minister in 1923, Baldwin succeeded him. He was ousted in January 1924 after having proposed a protective tariff. 

Baldwin was re-elected in 1924 when Ramsay MacDonald’s minority Labour government fell. He remained prime minister for over five years. 

When Britain’s workers went out on general strike in 1926, Baldwin steadfastly refused to meet their demands and in 1927 took steps to curb the power of the trade unions. 

In 1927 Baldwin visited Canada, becoming the first incumbent prime minister to visit an overseas dominion. 

He resigned in June 1929, after a Labour victory in a general election. 

In September 1931, he became lord privy seal and was again prime minister from 1935 to 1937. 

His win in 1935 was the last time a UK party gained more than 50 per cent of the popular vote.

Baldwin retired in 1937 and was made 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley. 

He was the only UK Prime Minister to hold the office under three monarchs: George V, Edward VIII, George VI.

Baldwin was one of the foremost British political figures of his time, although he has been criticized for ignoring the preparations Germany was making for World War II.

                                                                      PERSONAL LIFE

Baldwin married Lucy Ridsdale on September 12, 1892 in her village of Rottingdean, on the Sussex coast.

They first met on a cricket field. Lucy Ridsdale was a member of the White Heather Club, the first women’s cricket club.

Following the birth of a still-born son in January 1894, the couple had six surviving children.

Their oldest son Oliver considered himself a committed socialist. At the 1924 general election Oliver Baldwin unsuccessfully contested the seat of Dudley for the Labour Party, attracting press comment. He served two terms as a Labour Member of Parliament between 1929 and 1947.

Baldwin lived at Astley Hall, a country house in Astley near Stourport-on-Severn, Worcestershire from 1902 to his death there in 1947.

Astley Hall By ViennaUK 

Baldwin wrote many books, including Peace and Goodwill in Industry (1925), The Classics and the Plain Man (1926), This Torch of Freedom (1935), Service of Our Lives (1937), and An Interpreter of England (1939). 

                                                            LAST YEARS AND DEATH

During the war, Winston Churchill consulted Baldwin only once, in February 1943, on the advisability of his speaking out strongly against the continued neutrality of Éamon de Valera's Ireland.

He died in his sleep at Astley Hall, near Stourport-on-Severn, Worcestershire, on December 14, 1947. 

Baldwin was cremated in Birmingham, and his ashes were buried in Worcester Cathedral.

Source Funk & Wagnells Encyclopedia