James Walter Grimston, 4th Earl of Verulam (17 April 1880 – 29 November 1949) was a British peer,

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and businessman, sometimes identified with the fringes of the

intelligence service An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy objectives. Means of informatio ...

. Verulam was the son of

James Grimston, 3rd Earl of Verulam James Walter Grimston, 3rd Earl of Verulam (11 May 1852 – 11 November 1924), known as Viscount Grimston from 1852 to 1895, was a British Conservative Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1885 to 1892. He inherited his peerage in ...

, and Margaret Frances Graham. He married Lady Violet Constance Maitland Brabazon (1886–1936), younger daughter of

Reginald Brabazon, 12th Earl of Meath Reginald Brabazon, 12th Earl of Meath, (31 July 1841 – 11 October 1929) was an Irish politician and philanthropist. The Honourable Reginald Brabazon was born into an old Anglo-Irish family in London, the second son of William Brabazon, 11t ...

. He founded

Enfield Cables Ltd Enfield Cables Ltd was a British manufacturer of electric cables. The company was founded in 1913 by James Grimston as the Enfield Electric Cable Manufacturing Co Ltd, located on the River Lea in Enfield Lock. In 1959, as Enfield Cables Ltd, it w ...

and had many business interests in oil and telecommunications, including as a director of

British Thomson-Houston British Thomson-Houston (BTH) was a British engineering and heavy industrial company, based at Rugby, Warwickshire, England, and founded as a subsidiary of the General Electric Company (GE) of Schenectady, New York, United States. They were kno ...

. He reputedly allowed

MI6 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...

the use of some of the premises on his estate and was a business associate and personal friend of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

internee

Robert Liversidge Robert William Liversidge (11 June 1904 – 30 September 1994), formerly Jacob (Jack) Perlsweig, was a British businessman whose activities sometimes attracted the attention of the police and intelligence services. He was also a reputed spy and th ...

. Verulam died in November 1949, and was succeeded in his titles by his son, James Brabazon Grimston.

References

Bibliography

* *Kidd, Charles, Williamson, David (editors). ''Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage'' (1990 edition). New York: St Martin's Press, 1990. {{DEFAULTSORT:Verulam, James Grimston, 4th Earl of 1880 births 1949 deaths 4

James James is a common English language surname and given name: *James (name), the typically masculine first name James * James (surname), various people with the last name James James or James City may also refer to: People * King James (disambiguat ...

British electrical engineers 20th-century British businesspeople