George Darell Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys

George Darell Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys KCB KCVO CMG DL (8 March 1878 – 19 December 1960), was a British military commander and Conservative Member of Parliament.

Early life

Jeffreys was the son of the Conservative politician Arthur Frederick Jeffreys, of Burkham House in Hampshire. He was educated at Eton and Sandhurst.

Military

He served in the British Army for 41 years and was mentioned in dispatches nine times during World War I, holding several decorations, including foreign awards. In his long military career, he served in numerous missions including:

*The Grenadier Guards on the Nile expedition, 1898;
*Khartoum campaign in 1898
*The Boer War 1900-1902; the battle of Mons 1914;
*Commander of the 2 Bn Grenadier Guards 1915 (where he was briefly the commanding officer of Winston Churchill);
*Commander, 58 Brigade, 57 Brigade and 1 Guards Brigade 1916-1917;
*19th Division 1917-1919;
*Light Division, Army of the Rhine, Germany 1919;
*London District 1920-1924;
*Wessex Area and 43 (Wessex) Division Territorial Army 1926-1930.

In 1932, he was appointed as General and Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Command in India until 1936. He retired from the Army in 1938.

Jeffreys was a councillor and alderman of Hampshire County Council from 1926 and was a Deputy Lieutenant of the county. He chaired the Hampshire Territorial Army Association. In a 1941 wartime by-election, he was elected to the House of Commons for Petersfield in Hampshire, a seat he held until his retirement in 1951. The following year he was raised to the perage as Baron Jeffreys, of Burkham in the County of Southampton. In December 1960, he died aged 82, and was succeeded in the barony by his grandson Mark, his son Captain Christopher John Darell Jeffreys having been killed in action in May 1940.

Personal life

Lord Jeffreys married Dorothy, daughter of John Postle Heseltine and widow of Lionel Charles Cranfield Sackville-Viscount Canetlupe, in 1905.