10 Facts About Thomas Berridge

Sir Thomas Henry Devereux Berridge, KBE was a British Liberal politician and solicitor.

Mrs Thomas Berridge suffered from heart problems in later life and while apparently in good health and spirits was taken ill suddenly at a dance in Kensington and died in a few minutes in February 1909.

Thomas Berridge went into the law and was articled to Maskell Peace, solicitors of Wigan, who were the solicitors to the Mining Association of Great Britain.

Thomas Berridge was a member and later Master of the Court of the City of London Solicitors' Company of which David Lloyd George was a member.

Thomas Berridge was some time Chairman of the Law and Parliamentary Committee of the Board of Works for the St Giles District in London and he wanted a full-time career in politics.

Thomas Berridge remained the local Liberal candidate after the by-election and when the new Liberal prime minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman announced the dissolution of Parliament on 16 December 1905 and called a general election for January 1906, Warwick and Leamington Liberal Association was quick to adopt Thomas Berridge formally as Liberal and free-trade candidate at a meeting on 18 December.

Thomas Berridge remained MP for Warwick and Leamington for four years until the general election of January 1910 when he was defeated by the Conservative Ernest Pollock.

In March 1910 Thomas Berridge gave his constituency party notice that he was unlikely to contest the next election after his defeat but he did in fact agree to stand at the December 1910 general election although he again lost to Pollock.

Thomas Berridge was knighted in 1912 and made a KBE in 1920 for his war work, in particular for his chairmanship of the executive committee of the Royal Flying Corps later the Royal Air Force Voluntary Hospitals between 1916 and 1919.

Thomas Berridge died in a nursing home at Sandgate, Kent at the age of 67 on 24 October 1924.