Croydon Marks

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George Croydon Marks (later Lord Marks of Woolwich) (9 June 1858 - 24 September 1938) was a British engineer, patent agent and Liberal (later Labour) politician[1].

Marks was born in Eltham in Kent. He was educated at a private day-school in Eltham and at the Royal Arsenal School; his father William Marks had worked at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich. He completed his education at King's College London. In 1881 he married Margaret Maynard. They never had children. Marks worked for a number of engineering companies until establishing himself as a consulting engineer and patent agent in Birmingham in 1887. In 1889 he went into partnership with Dugald Clerk and they developed a number of cliff railways and steep-incline tramcar systems. The company became big enough to move its headquarters to London in 1893, with branches in Birmingham and Manchester and an office in New York. He was a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and an Associate Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers[2].

In 1906, Marks was elected as MP for Launceston and North Cornwall in the Liberal landslide general election victory. He received a knighthood in 1911, served at the Ministry of Munitions during the First World War and was awarded the CBE for work as a commissioner for the dilution of labour. He held his Parliamentary seat until 1924. In 1929, he left the Liberals and joined Ramsay Macdonald's Labour Party. His almost immediate reward was a peerage, becoming one of the first two Labour peers to be created[3].

He continued his engineering and business activities and died at his home in Poole, Dorset in 1938. As he had no children, his peerage did not survive him.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Michael R. Lane, ‘Marks, George Croydon, Baron Marks (1858–1938)’, rev., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
  2. ^ Who was Who, OUP, 2007
  3. ^ The Times, obituary, 26 September 1938