Sidney Peel

Colonel Sir Sidney Cornwallis Peel, 1st Baronet, (1870–1938), was a British Army officer, barrister and financier. He was also for the coalition government term 1918–1922, a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP). For the 19 years until death he was a celebrated chairman of the Export Credits Guarantee Department Advisory Committee.

Background and marriage Peel was born on 3 June 1870, the third son of Arthur Peel, 1st Viscount Peel, Speaker of the House of Commons, the youngest son of Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. His mother was Adelaide, daughter of William Stratford Dugdale. Schooled at Eton College he was there a King's Scholar and Newcastle Scholar in 1889, winning a scholarship at New College, Oxford, where he won first-class honours in Greats and was elected a Fellow of Trinity in 1893. Shortly after he became Secretary to the Licensing Committee (chaired by his father).

Peel married Lady Adelaide Margaret Delia, daughter of Charles Spencer, 6th Earl Spencer, in 1914.

Career In 1898 he was called to the bar. In 1900, he served in the Boer War as a trooper in the 40th (Oxfordshire) Company, 10th battalion, Imperial Yeomanry, for which bestowed the Queen's South Africa Medal with three clasps. In February 1902 he was commissioned into the Bedfordshire Yeomanry as a Captain.

He reported on Egypt for a newspaper and befriended Ernest Cassel. This led to chairmanship of the London Committee of the National Bank of Egypt and vice-presidency of the Morocco State Bank. In 1901, he was an official in the National Discount Company, then director in 1911 and chairman in 1922. In 1911 he was appointed to Oxford Chest by Lord Curzon, and in 1922 became Deputy Steward of the University.

His contributions to national-level politics were: a written question in 1919, as to whether a cash-on-delivery system of household goods would be permitted in law, to which the reply was no;

Personal legacy He died at 26 Hill Street, Mayfair, London, on 19 December 1938, aged 68, with the baronetcy becoming extinct. Lady Peel, who was 19 years younger than her husband, died in January 1981, latterly of Barton Hall, Barton Turf, aged 91. His probate was resworn in 1939, at .; his widow's was sworn in 1981, at .

Works Trooper 8008 - embodies his experiences in the Boer War. The Binding of the Nile and the New Sudan. Gutenberg O.C. Beds Yeomanry - World War I memoir, 1935