22 Facts About Ernest Marples

Ernest Marples both oversaw significant road construction and the closure of a considerable portion of the national railway network with the Beeching cuts.

In later life, Marples was elevated to the peerage before fleeing to Monaco at very short notice to avoid prosecution for tax fraud.

Ernest Marples was born at 45 Dorset Road, Levenshulme, Manchester, Lancashire.

Ernest Marples's father had been a renowned engineering charge-hand and Manchester Labour campaigner, and his mother had worked in a local hat factory.

Ernest Marples worked as a miner, a postman, a chef and an accountant.

In 1937 Ernest Marples married Edna Florence Harwood, the daughter of a Nottingham businessman.

In 1956 Ernest Marples married his former secretary Ruth Dobson, who on his elevation to the peerage in 1974 became Lady Ernest Marples.

Ernest Marples joined the Conservative Party and in 1945 was elected as Member of Parliament for Wallasey.

On 2 June 1957, Ernest Marples started the first draw for the new Premium Bond scheme.

Ernest Marples retired from the House of Commons at the February 1974 general election.

When he was made Minister of Transport in October 1959, Ernest Marples undertook to sell his shareholding in the company as he was now in clear breach of the House of Commons' rules on conflicts of interest.

Ernest Marples had not done so by January 1960, at which time the Evening Standard reported that Marples Ridgway had won the tender to build the Hammersmith Flyover and that the Ministry of Transport's engineers had endorsed the London County Council's rejection of a lower tender.

In 1959, shortly after becoming minister, Ernest Marples opened the first section of the M1 motorway.

When Lord Denning made his 1963 investigation into the security aspects of the Profumo affair and the rumoured affair between the Minister of Defence, Duncan Sandys and the Duchess of Argyll, he confirmed to Macmillan that a rumour that Ernest Marples was in the habit of using prostitutes appeared to be true.

The diaries reported the transport minister's fetish for being whipped while dressed in women's clothing, as described in great detail by one of the prostitutes who had provided these services to Ernest Marples, and confirmed at the time by her detailed knowledge of the interior of Ernest Marples' home where the events took place.

Ernest Marples left just before the end of the tax year, fearing that he would otherwise be liable for a substantial tax bill.

Ernest Marples left by the night ferry with his belongings crammed into tea chests, leaving the floors of his home in Belgravia littered with discarded clothes and possessions.

Ernest Marples claimed he had been asked to pay nearly 30 years' overdue tax.

The flight came at a time when Ernest Marples was facing problems on several fronts.

Ernest Marples's departure came in the wake of the failure of a plan to avoid paying tax on his properties by involving a Liechtenstein-based company with which he had been involved for more than ten years.

Ernest Marples died in Princess Grace Hospital Centre, Monaco, on 6 July 1978.

Ernest Marples is buried in a family plot in Southern Cemetery, Manchester.