Charles Henry Roberts 1865  



The Times, Friday, Jun 26, 1959                   OBITUARIES

MR. C. H. ROBERTS

FROM THE COMMONS
TO CUMBERLAND

    Mr. Charles Roberts, who played a leading part in the public life of Cumberland after a notable career as a Liberal M.P. in the early years of the century, has died at the age of 93.
    Charles Henry Roberts was born on August 22, 1865, the son of the Rev. A. J. Roberts, vicar of Tidebrook, Sussex, and was educated at Marlborough and Balliol of which he was a scholar.     Elected a Fellow of Exeter in 1889 he taught there until 1894 when he left Oxford to seek political life as a Liberal.     Unsuccessful at Wednesbury in 1895 and at Lincoln in 1900, he was elected for Lincoln in 1906 and held the seat till 1918.     He sat again for Derby in 1922-23, but after that he shared in the general eclipse of Liberalism, and after three defeats retired from politics to a very active public life in Cumberland.
    In the Commons, he was conspicuous for his advocacy of votes for women and of temperance (as a licensing justice he was once described as the Torquemada of the Trade).     He presided to good effect over the Putumayo inquiry.     As Under-Secretary of State for India at the opening of the 1914-1918 War it fell to him to announce the immense voluntary contributions of men and money made to the war by the Indian States.     He felt the fascination of India and was among the first Englishmen of position to win the friendship and feel the greatness of Gandhi.     He became about this time the president of the Aborigines Protection Society, and 		one of the earliest supporters of the League of Nations movement.     He was offered a Privy Councillorship but asked that it might be conferred instead upon a colleague whose work seemed to him to deserve special recognition.     He was chairman of the National Health Insurance Joint Committee in 1915-16 and thew comptroller of the Household in the same years.
    On retiring from politics he threw himself with immense vigour and public spirit into meeting the challenge of unemployment in the late 1920s in Cumberland.     He took on, at his own risk, collieries in the Hallbank gate district which had been given up as hopeless by the lessees, and by winning the close confidence of the men kept them successfully working.     He started brickworks, limeworks, and quarries, which undoubtedly saved the whole district from becoming a derelict area.     At the same time he gave a lead in farming and agriculture, and farmed on a very large scale himself.     There is indeed hardly any public activity in Cumberland in which Roberts did not take a leading place.     As chairman of the county council (1938-58) and some of its committees, such as education and public health; chairman of the Cumberland branch of the National Farmers Union; chairman of the county war agriculture committee;chairman of the Brampton R.D.C. and itssuccessor, the Border R.D.C., he imparted his own life and generous spirit into all these bodies.     He retained his bodily strength and mental energy to an advanced age, and it has been sometimes said "Roberts is Cumberland."
    He married, in 1891, Lady Cecilia Maude Howard, daughter of the ninth Earl of Carlisle, whose hospitality and beneficence added greatly to her husband's influence.     She died in 1947.     He leaves a son, Wilfrid Roberts, M.P. for North Cumberland from 1935 to 1950, and two daughters.