Harold Thomas Cawley

Captain Harold Thomas Cawley (12 June 1878 – 23 September 1915) He was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1902 and went to the Northern Circuit, working in Lancashire.

Career

In 1910, Cawley entered the British House of Commons for Heywood, and a year later he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Home Secretary Reginald McKenna.

On the outbreak of World War I in 1914 he served with his Territorial Force battalion (now the 6th Battalion, Manchester Regiment and became aide de camp to Major-General William Douglas, the officer commanding 42nd (East Lancashire) Division. Before his death, he sent a letter to his father, at that time representative of Prestwich in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

It was in memory of Harold and two other sons – Oswald and John – who died in the war that their father endowed a ward at Ancoats Hospital, Manchester, in 1919 at a cost of £10,000.

All three brothers are commemorated on the Parliamentary War Memorial in Westminster Hall. Harold and Oswald, on Panel 8, are among the 22 MPs that died during World War I to be named on that memorial. John, included on the memorial as the son of an MP, appears on Panel 2 of the memorial. Harold Cawley is one of 19 MPs who fell in the war who are commemorated by heraldic shields in the Commons Chamber.

A further act of commemoration came with the unveiling in 1932 of a manuscript-style illuminated book of remembrance for the House of Commons, which includes short biographical accounts of the life and death of the Cawley brothers.