Thomas Shaw, 1st Baron Craigmyle

Thomas Shaw, 1st Baron Craigmyle PC (23 May 1850 – 28 June 1937), known as The Lord Shaw from 1909 to 1929, was a Scottish radical[1] Liberal Party politician and judge.

Thomas Shaw

Baron Craigmyle

Headstone commemorating Thomas Shaw, Baron Craigmyle (1850–1939)

The son of Alexander Shaw of Dunfermline, Fife, Craigmyle was educated at the Dunfermline High School and at Edinburgh University. He was appointed an advocate in 1875 and became a Queen's Counsel in 1894. He gained an LLD from St Andrews University in October 1902[2] and from the University of Aberdeen in 1906 and was also Hamilton Fellow in Mental Philosophy at Edinburgh University.

Craigmyle sat as Member of Parliament (MP) for Hawick Burghs from 1892 to 1909[3] and served as Solicitor General for Scotland from 1894 to 1895 and as Lord Advocate from December 1905[4] to 1909. He resigned from parliament and ministerial office and was created a life peer as Baron Shaw, of Dunfermline in the County of Fife, on 20 February 1909,[5] so that he could sit in the House of Lords and serve as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. He retired from this office in 1929 and was made an hereditary peer as Baron Craigmyle, of Craigmyle in the County of Aberdeen, on 7 Mar 1929.[6]

Lord Craigmyle married Elspeth, daughter of George Forrest, in 1879.[7] He died in June 1937, aged 87, and was succeeded in the hereditary barony by his son Alexander. Lady Craigmyle died in 1939.