Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Ninian Edward Crichton-Stuart (15 May 1883 – 2 October 1915) was a Scottish senior officer in the British Army and Member of Parliament. He was killed in action in the First World War. The second son of the Honourable Gwendolen Mary Anne Fitzalan-Howard and John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, he entered the army in 1903 and served in the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders and the Scots Guards as a lieutenant. After marrying he began a career in politics, serving first as a councillor on Fife County Council, Scotland. His family having close connections to the city of Cardiff in Wales, he fought and lost the January 1910 election there as a Liberal Unionist candidate. The resulting hung parliament led to a second election in December 1910, in which Crichton-Stuart won the seat.
In 1912, he took command of the 6th (Glamorgan) Battalion, The Welch Regiment. Upon the outbreak of the First World War, he volunteered his unit for service and joined the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front. After eleven months on the front line, he was shot in the head and killed when leading his men in an attempt to repel a German counter-attack on 2 October 1915 during the Battle of Loos. He was one of 22 MPs that were killed during the conflict and the only serving MP from Wales to be killed.
The home ground of Cardiff City F.C. was named Ninian Park after Crichton-Stuart offered to be a guarantor for the football club's rental of the site. After his death, a statue of Crichton-Stuart was erected in Cathays Park in Cardiff.
Early life
Crichton-Stuart was born at Dumfries House in Ayrshire, Scotland. He was the second son of John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, and his wife, the Honourable Gwendolen Mary Anne Fitzalan Howard, daughter of Edward Fitzalan-Howard, 1st Baron Howard of Glossop. Through his father, he was an illegitimate descendant of the House of Stuart.
He was educated at Harrow School, showing promise in mathematics and foreign languages, and was expected to enter the diplomatic service. To further his studies, he travelled to Kiev in the Russian Empire and became a proficient Russian speaker. However, he was forced to return home after contracting a severe fever and instead attended Christ Church, Oxford once he had recovered. His family's estate included numerous properties and considerable land in Cardiff, including Cardiff Castle, and Crichton-Stuart frequently visited the city, including accompanying his father on visits to Bute docks. He also learnt to speak Welsh. Crichton-Stuart later chose to enter the army and was commissioned in 1903 into the 3rd Battalion of the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders and then served for two years in the 1st Battalion, the Scots Guards as a 2nd lieutenant.
Marriage, philanthropy and political career
In 1905, Crichton-Stuart met the Honourable Ismay Preston, the only daughter of Jenico Preston, 14th Viscount Gormanston and Georgina Jane Connelan, at the wedding of his brother John Crichton-Stuart and Augusta Bellingham where he was best man and Preston was a bridesmaid. The couple announced their engagement in January 1906 and married six months later, on 16 June, at her family estate at Gormanston Castle. Following their marriage, Crichton-Stuart transferred into the Army Reserve and decided to enter politics in order to be closer to his wife and manage his family's estate in Falkland, Fife.
Crichton-Stuart first served on Fife County Council in his native Scotland and took a keen interest in local agriculture, becoming president of Fife Agricultural Society. He was later named as a member of a committee appointed by the president of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries to study the rights of tenant farmers when their land was sold or their landlords died. Crichton-Stuart also held the office of Justice of the Peace (JP) for Fife.
Crichton-Stuart's family had a history of serving in parliament for the Cardiff area, his great uncle Lord Patrick Crichton-Stuart having held the post on two occasions. In August 1907, at a meeting of the Cardiff Conservative Association, Crichton-Stuart was invited by Herbert Cory and his supporting panel to be the Unionist candidate for the United Boroughs of Cardiff, Cowbridge and Llantrisant. Soon after his selection, he and his wife had their first child, named Ninian Patrick Crichton-Stuart, on 31 October 1907.