Hubert Carr-Gomm

Hubert Carr-Gomm
MP
Hubert Carr-Gomm MP
	Hubert Carr-Gomm in 1919
Member of Parliament; for Rotherhithe
	In office; 1906–1918
Preceded by	John Macdona
Succeeded by	John Lort-Williams
Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister
	In office; 1906–1908
Prime Minister	Henry Campbell-Bannerman
Preceded by	position established
Succeeded by	Geoffrey Howard
Personal details
Born	Hubert William Culling Carr-Gomm; 20 June 1877; India
Died	21 January 1939 (aged 61); Tenerife
Political party	Liberal
Spouse(s)	Kathleen Rome (m. 1906–1913, divorce) ; Eleanor Russell (m. 1916)
Education	Eton College
Alma mater	Oriel College, Oxford
Occupation	Publisher
Military service
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Branch/service	British Army
Years of service	1898–1907 and 1914–1918
Rank	Captain
Unit	Volunteer Battalion of the Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey) ; 2/22nd Battalion, The London Regiment (The Queen's)
Battles/wars	First World War

Hubert William Culling Carr-Gomm (20 June 1877 – 21 January 1939) was a British Liberal politician and publisher.^[1]

Early life and family

Carr-Gomm's family came from Farnham Royal in Buckinghamshire but his father, Francis Culling Carr (1834–1919) was a member of the Indian Civil Service and District Judge of Tinnevelly so Hubert was born in India.^[2] In the year that he was born, his mother, Emily Blanche Carr, was bequeathed by her aunt, Lady Elizabeth Ann Gomm (1807-1877), all the estates of her late husband, Field Marshal Sir William Maynard Gomm (1784-1875), on the proviso that the family assumed the name of Gomm in addition to Carr.^[3] Upon the death of his mother in 1909 he inherited these estates.^[4] Hubert was educated at Eton and Oriel College, Oxford where he graduated with an MA in Modern History in 1900. Between 1898 and 1907 he served in the Volunteer Battalion of the Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey).^[5] In 1909 he was appointed a Justice of the Peace for Buckinghamshire^[6] In 1906 he married Kathleen Rome. This marriage ended in divorce in 1913 because of his wife's adultery with Eliot Crawshay-Williams, Liberal MP for Leicester, who was married with two children. It was a considerable scandal not least because, according to the poet and writer Lucy Masterman, the wife of another Liberal MP, Charles Masterman, Carr-Gomm and Crawshay-Williams had been friends at school, college and in politics. It ruined Crawshay-Williams’ political career.^[7] Carr-Gomm was remarried in 1916 to Eleanor Russell the daughter of a barrister of the Inner Temple.

Politics

Carr-Gomm was for a time Secretary of the London Liberal Federation and in the 1906 general election he was elected Liberal MP for Rotherhithe. He held the seat until 1918. From 1906 to 1908 he was Assistant Private Secretary to Liberal Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. At the 1918 general election Carr-Gomm was again adopted by the Rotherhithe Liberals but was not one of those candidates favoured with the government coupon. This was instead bestowed on his Conservative opponent John Rolleston Lort-Williams who was successfully returned. Carr-Gomm fought Rotherhithe once more in 1922 but again lost to Lort-Williams. In the 1923 general election he switched to being Liberal candidate for Paddington South but lost to the sitting Unionist MP, Douglas King.

Carr-Gomm continued to take an interest in political questions after leaving Parliament. In 1922 he wrote to The Times, perhaps unsurprisingly condemning the then David Lloyd George-led government as being a coalition around one man or one set of men rather than around established parties and ideas.^[8] In 1936 he privately published a pamphlet calling for a system of proportional representation to be used in municipal elections in London where local government wards were ideal for its introduction.^[9]

Military service and publishing

In the Great War, Carr-Gomm served in France and Salonika as a Captain in the 2/22nd Battalion, The London Regiment (The Queen's). After landing in Salonika in 1917, Carr-Gomm was appointed to command the Second Entrenching Battalion.^[10] In 1921, the publisher John Lane who had been the co-founder of the imprint Bodley Head set up a successor company and Carr-Gomm became one of the directors.

Death & papers

In later life Carr-Gomm and his second wife lived at Tile House, Seaford, East Sussex. While travelling in the Canary Islands he contracted pneumonia and died on 21 January 1939 in Tenerife, aged 61.^[5] A small collection of photo-copied papers consisting of recollections of Parliament, three letters from Winston Churchill and a note by Carr-Gomm on his father and the treatment of the Indians by the rubber companies in Putumayo, Peru are deposited in the archive of the London School of Economic and Political Science.^[11]

References

^ Who was Who, OUP 2007
^ The Times, 25 January 1906
^ The Gomm Estate - Its Constitution & Policy, 1947
^ The Times, 23.1.19
^ ^a ^b The Times, 24.1.39
^ Visitation of England and Wales By Joseph Jackson Howard, Frederick Arthur Crisp, England College of arms, College of Arms (Great Britain), 1909
^ J Graham Jones, Champion of Liberalism: Eliot Crawshay-Williams in Journal of Liberal History, Issue 59 – Summer 2008
^ The Times, 20.1.22
^ The Times, 10.1.36
^ The Times, 27.11.18
^ The collection of GOMM HUBERT WILLIAM CULLING CARR 1877-1939 MP at LSE Archives

Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs

External links

Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Hubert Carr-Gomm
1919 Portrait of Carr-Gomm

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by John Macdona	Member of Parliament for Rotherhithe 1906 – 1918	Succeeded by John Lort-Williams
Preceded by Office established	Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister 1906–1908	Succeeded by Geoffrey Howard

[1] Who was Who, OUP 2007

[2] The Times, 25 January 1906

[3] The Gomm Estate - Its Constitution & Policy, 1947

[4] The Times, 23.1.19

[autogenerated1-5] The Times, 24.1.39

[6] Visitation of England and Wales By Joseph Jackson Howard, Frederick Arthur Crisp, England College of arms, College of Arms (Great Britain), 1909

[7] J Graham Jones, Champion of Liberalism: Eliot Crawshay-Williams in Journal of Liberal History, Issue 59 – Summer 2008

[8] The Times, 20.1.22

[9] The Times, 10.1.36

[10] The Times, 27.11.18

[11] The collection of GOMM HUBERT WILLIAM CULLING CARR 1877-1939 MP at LSE Archives

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v t e Parliamentary Private Secretaries to the Prime Minister
Prime Minister's Office
to Henry Campbell-Bannerman	Carr-Gomm 1906–1908
to H. H. Asquith	Howard 1908–1909 Lyell 1908–1915
to David Lloyd George	Barran 1916–1918 D. Davies 1916–1918 Sutherland 1916–1918, 1919–1920 Astor 1918 Sassoon 1920–1922
to Bonar Law	Davidson 1922–1923
to Stanley Baldwin	Herbert 1923–1924, 1924–1927 Rhys 1927–1929 Geoffery-Lloyd 1935 Dugdale 1935–1937
to Ramsay MacDonald	Weir 1924, 1929–1931 R. Morrison 1929–1931 Markham 1931–1932 Glyn 1931–1935 Worthington 1931–1935
to Neville Chamberlain	Douglas-Home 1937–1940
to Winston Churchill	Bracken 1940–1941 Harvie-Watt 1941–1945 Soames 1952–1955
to Clement Attlee	de Freitas 1945–1946 Moyle 1946–1951
to Anthony Eden	Carr 1955 Allan 1955–1956
to Harold Macmillan	Barber 1957–1959 K. Cunningham 1959–1963
to Alec Douglas-Home	Pearson 1963–1964
to Harold Wilson	Fernyhough 1964–1967 Shore 1965–1966 H. Davies 1967–1970 Varley 1968–1969 Hamling 1974–1975 Marks 1975 Tomlinson 1975–1976
to Edward Heath	Kitson 1970–1974
to James Callaghan	J. Cunningham 1976–1977 Stott 1977–1979
to Margaret Thatcher	Gow 1979–1983 Alison 1983–1987 Hamilton 1987–1988 Lennox-Boyd 1988–1990 P. Morrison 1990
to John Major	Bright 1990–1994 Ward 1994–1997
to Tony Blair	Coffey 1997–1998 Grocott 1997–2001 Hanson 2001–2005 Hill 2005–2007
to Gordon Brown	Austin 2007–2008 Smith 2007–2009 Trickett 2008–2010 Snelgrove 2009–2010
to David Cameron	Swayne 2010–2012 Gyimah 2012–2013 Williamson 2013–2016
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to Keir Starmer	Twist 2024–