Roderick Kedward

Rev. Roderick Morris Kedward (14 September 1881 – 5 March 1937) was a Wesleyan minister and a Liberal Party politician in the United Kingdom.

Early life Roderick Kedward was born at Westwell in Kent, one of fourteen children of a local farmer, originally from Hereford but resident in Kent since the 1870s. He became a minister in 1903 having trained at Richmond College. In 1906, he married Daisy Fedrick and they had three sons and three daughters.

In 1908, Kedward was made minister of three Wesleyan congregations in Hull and earned the nickname 'the fighting parson' for physically protecting a woman from her wife-beating husband.

During the First World War, Kedward served in Egypt and France. He was invalided out of the army in October 1916 with 'trench fever' but served as president of ex-servicemen's associations after the war.

Political career Kedward unsuccessfully contested the Kingston upon Hull Central constituency at the 1918 general election, losing by a long way to a Conservative who had been favoured with the Lloyd George coalition 'coupon'. By then he had established a considerable local connection with Hull having been a minister of religion in the city for seven years and having founded the Kings Hall Brotherhood.

His grandson Rod Kedward was a historian of 20th-century France.