George Shaw-Lefevre, 1st Baron Eversley

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George John Shaw-Lefevre, 1st Baron Eversley PC, DL (12 June 1831 – 19 April 1928) was a British Liberal Party politician. In a ministerial career that spanned thirty years, he was twice First Commissioner of Works and also served as Postmaster General and President of the Local Government Board.

Background and education

Eversley was the only son of Sir John Shaw-Lefevre and Rachel Enid, daughter of Ichabod Wright. He was the nephew of Charles Shaw-Lefevre, 1st Viscount Eversley, Speaker of the House of Commons. He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was called to the Bar, Inner Temple, in 1855.^[1]

Political career

Eversley stood unsuccessfully as the Liberal candidate for Winchester in 1859 but was successfully returned for Reading in 1863, a seat he held until 1885.^[2] He carried a vote in House of Commons for arbitration of the Alabama Claims in 1868.^{[citation needed]} He entered the government under Lord Russell as Civil Lord of the Admiralty in 1866, a post he held until the government fell the same year, and later served under William Gladstone as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade from 1868 to 1871, as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department from January to March 1871, as Parliamentary Secretary of the Admiralty from 1871 to 1874 and again in 1880, and as First Commissioner of Works from 1881 to 1885. He entered Gladstone's cabinet in November 1884 when he was appointed Postmaster-General. He relinquished the post of First Commissioner of Works in February 1885 but continued as Postmaster General until the Liberals lost power in June 1885.

Eversley lost his seat in parliament at the 1885 general election and consequently did not serve in Gladstone's brief 1886 administration. He was able to return to the House of Commons in April 1886 when he was elected for Bradford Central in a by-election, which constituency he represented until 1895.^[3] He once again became First Commissioner of Works and a member of Gladstone's cabinet in 1892. When Lord Primrose became Prime Minister in 1894 he was appointed President of the Local Government Board, which he remained until the following year. In 1897 he was elected a member of the London County Council as Progressive for the Haggerston Division.^{[citation needed]} He was sworn of the Privy Council in 1880^[4] and in 1906 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Eversley, of Old Ford in the County of London,^[5] a revival of the Eversley title held by his uncle. He made his last speech in the House of Lords in 1913.^[6]

Other public positions

Eversley was also a Commissioner to negotiate a Convention on Fisheries with French Government in 1858, a member of Sea Fisheries Commission in 1862, President of the Statistical Society of London between 1878 and 1879 and Chairman of the Royal Commissions on the Loss of Life at Sea in 1885 and on the Agricultural Depression between 1893 and 1896. In 1866 he founded the Commons Preservation Society.^{[citation needed]} He was appointed a Bencher of the Inner Temple in 1882.^[1]

Family

Lord Eversley married Lady Constance Moreton, daughter of Henry Reynolds-Moreton, 3rd Earl of Ducie, in 1874. They had no children. He died in April 1928, aged 96, when the barony became extinct. Lady Eversley survived him by a year and died in February 1929.^[1]

External links

• Photograph of Lord Eversley at thepeerage.com

References