Edwin Scrymgeour (28 July 1866 – 1 February 1947) was a British politician who served as a
Member of Parliament
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...
(MP) for Dundee in Scotland. He is the only person ever elected to the
House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...
on a
prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcohol ...
ist ticket, as the candidate of the
Scottish Prohibition Party
The Scottish Prohibition Party was a minor Scottish political party which advocated alcohol prohibition.
The party was founded in 1901. In its early years, Bob Stewart acted as the party's full-time organiser.Dundee, he was educated at West End Academy. He was a pioneer of the Scottish
temperance movement
The temperance movement is a social movement promoting temperance or complete abstinence from consumption of alcoholic beverages. Participants in the movement typically criticize alcohol intoxication or promote teetotalism, and its leaders emph ...
and established his party in 1901 to further that aim.
In 1896 he is listed as a clerk, living at 42 Kings Road in Dundee.
He served on
Dundee City Council
Dundee City Council is the local government authority for the City of Dundee. It was created in 1996 under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994.
History
Dundee City became a single-tier council in 1996, under the Local Government e ...
and began contesting elections in the
1908 Dundee by-election
The Dundee by-election was a Parliamentary by-election held on 9 May 1908. The constituency returned two Members of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post voting system.
Vacancy
The Li ...
, which saw
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
first elected for Dundee, and Scrymgeour continued to fight at every election thereafter and increased his vote. That was in part because of his popularity, generally left-wing sympathies and history with the labour movement. Churchill's stance against suffragettes may have had an impact in a city that had many women as breadwinners and many men as "kettle-boilers" ( househusbands).
In 1910 he was living at 92 Victoria Road in Dundee.Dundee Post Office Directory 1910
In the 1922 election, Scrymgeour and the Labour candidate,
E. D. Morel
Edmund Dene Morel (born Georges Edmond Pierre Achille Morel Deville; 10 July 1873 – 12 November 1924) was a French-born British journalist, author, pacifist and politician.
As a young official at the shipping company Elder Dempster, Morel ob ...
, jointly ousted
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
, who had represented the city as a
Liberal
Liberal or liberalism may refer to:
Politics
* a supporter of liberalism
** Liberalism by country
* an adherent of a Liberal Party
* Liberalism (international relations)
* Sexually liberal feminism
* Social liberalism
Arts, entertainment and m ...
(to then a Coalition Liberal). Scrymgeour remained an MP for Dundee until the 1931 general election, when he was ousted by Florence Horsbrugh.
Out of Parliament, Scrymgeour worked as an evangelical Chaplain at East House and
Maryfield Hospital
Maryfield Hospital was a hospital in Stobswell, Dundee, Scotland. Originally a poorhouse hospital it became Dundee's second main hospital after Dundee Royal Infirmary. It closed in the 1970s following the opening of Ninewells Hospital.
Histor ...
in Dundee. Scrymgeour was a leader of the unsuccessful opposition to disbanding the Scottish Prohibition Party in 1935.
He died on 1 February 1947, followed by his wife Margaret on 28 May. Both were interred alongside Scrymgeour's father James in Dundee's Eastern Cemetery.