Edward Alderson (parliamentary clerk)

Sir Edward Hall Alderson, KCB, KBE (2 June 1864 – 7 March 1951) was a British public servant and Clerk of the Parliaments from 1930 to 1934.[1]

Alderson came a legal family; his grandfather, Sir Edward Hall Alderson, was a Baron of the Exchequer (whose daughter married Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury), and his great-grandfather, Robert Alderson, was Recorder of Norwich, Yarmouth and Ipswich. Born on 2 June 1864, he attended Brasenose College, Oxford, before he was called to the bar in 1890. He practised on the South-Eastern Circuit only briefly, being appointed private secretary to Lord Halsbury in 1895. Five years later, he was appointed Reading Clerk and Clerk of Outdoor Committees of the House of Lords. Promotions followed: in 1917 to Clerk-Assistant, and in 1930 to Clerk of the Parliaments. He retired in 1934.[1][2]

Appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1919, Alderson went on to receive two knighthoods, as a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire six years later, and then as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1931.[1] He died on 7 March 1951; his wife, Mary Emily (daughter of Sir Cosmo Bonsor, 1st Baronet), had died in 1935 but two children from their married survived him.[2]