Alfred Critchley

Who was Alfred Critchley?

Brigadier-General Alfred Cecil Critchley, CMG, CBE, DSO was an entrepreneur and politician in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He served as a Conservative Member of Parliament from 1934 to 1935.

Critchley was born in Calgary, Canada in 1890 and brought to England at the age of nine. His first career was a military one, initially in a Canadian military regiment and towards the end of the First World War, in the Royal Flying Corps whose training he organised. By the end of the war he had become the youngest Brigadier-General in the British Imperial armies at the age of only 27 and had married Maryon Galt, the cousin of the wife of the press baron Sir Max Aitken, later Lord Beaverbrook.

After the war Critchley involved himself in a number of business ventures in Central America before returning to the UK where he became a director of Associated Portland Cement. In 1926 he formed the private company, the Greyhound Racing Association. Under the auspices of this company he became a significant sporting entrepreneur in the UK. He introduced greyhound racing to the UK in Belle Vue, Manchester in 1926.