Robert Chorley, 1st Baron Chorley

Robert Samuel Theodore Chorley, 1st Baron Chorley QC (29 May 1895-27 January 1978), was a British legal scholar, public servant and Labour politician.

Chorley was the son of Richard Fisher Chorley of Kendal, Cumberland, and his wife Annie Elizabeth (née Frost). He was educated at Kendal School and Queen's College, Oxford, and served in the Foreign Office and Ministry of Labour during the First World War. He was called to the Bar, Inner Temple, in 1920, and was a Tutor at the Law Society's School of Law from 1920 to 1924, a Lecturer in Commercial Law from 1924 to 1930, Sir Ernest Cassel Professor of Commercial and Industrial Law at the University of London from 1930 to 1946 and Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of London from 1939 to 1942. During the Second World War Chorley served as a Principal at the Home Office between 1940 and 1941, as Assistant-Secretary to the Minister of Home Security from 1941 to 1942 and as Deputy Regional Commissioner for the Civil Defence (North-West Region) from 1942 to 1944.

He stood unsuccessfully as a Labour candidate for Northwich in July 1945, but in November of that year he was raised to the peerage as Baron Chorley, of Kendal in the County of Westmorland. He then served under Clement Attlee as a Lord-in-Waiting (government whip) in the House of Lords between 1945 and 1950.

Lord Chorley married Katharine, daughter of Edward Hopkinson, in 1925. They had two sons and a daughter. He died in January 1978, aged 82, and was succeeded in the barony by his eldest son Roger. Lady Chorley died in 1985.

References

*Kidd, Charles, Williamson, David (editors). "Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage" (1990 edition). New York: St Martin's Press, 1990.
* [http://www.angeltowns.com/town/peerage/ Leigh Rayment's Peerage Page]
* [http://www.thepeerage.com/ www.thepeerage.com]
* [http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search2?coll_id=5212&inst_id=1 Summary of Chorley's career]