Thomas Cassells (7 August 1902 – 16 June 1944) was a Labour Party politician in

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

who served as

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 of ...

(MP) for

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from 1936 to 1941. He won the seat at a

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...

in March 1936, when his predecessor

resigned Resignation is the formal act of leaving or quitting one's office or position. A resignation can occur when a person holding a position gained by election or appointment steps down, but leaving a position upon the expiration of a term, or choos ...

to become

Governor of Burma The colonial governors of Burma were the colonial administrators responsible for the territory of British Burma, an area equivalent to modern-day Myanmar. As a result of the Second Anglo-Burmese War, Burma was initially setup as a province o ...

. A solicitor by training, Cassells held the seat until his appointment in 1941 as a

Sheriff-substitute In the Courts of Scotland, a sheriff-substitute was the historical name for the judges who sit in the local sheriff courts under the direction of the sheriffs principal; from 1971 the sheriffs substitute were renamed simply as sheriff. When res ...

of Inverness, Elgin and Nairn, when he was succeeded at a

Adam McKinlay Adam Storey McKinlay (27 December 1887 – 17 March 1950) was a Scottish Labour Party politician. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1929 to 1931, and from 1941 to 1950. McKinlay was born in Govan, Glasgow in December 1887 to Hugh McKinlay ...

. He also served as

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for the Burgh for Falkirk. Thomas Cassells was educated at

Hamilton Academy Hamilton Academy was a school in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Scotland. The school was described as "one of the finest schools in Scotland" in the Cambridge University Press County Biography of 1910, and was featured in a 1950 Scottish Seconda ...

where one of his teachers had been Robert Gibson, himself a former pupil of the school, and who was also to serve as a Labour MP (for Greenock) and over the same period, 1936–41. From the academy, Cassells studied at both

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

and Edinburgh universities. He was McFarlane Scholar in Law at Glasgow.

References

article
mentions his by-election win * *Who Was Who, 1941–50. A. & C. Black, 1967
Hansard, parliamentary debate, 16 Dec. 1936
Thomas Cassels and Robert Gibson, reference to Hamilton Academy. Retrieved 2011-01-11

External links

* 1902 births 1944 deaths Scottish Labour MPs UK MPs 1935–1945 People educated at Hamilton Academy Alumni of the University of Edinburgh {{Scotland-Labour-UK-MP-stub