Sir Douglas Hall, 1st Baronet

Who was Sir Douglas Hall, 1st Baronet?

Sir Douglas Bernard Hall, 1st Baronet was a British Conservative Party politician.

The son of Bernard Hall, a justice of the peace of Burton Hall, Petworth, Sussex, he was educated at Charterhouse School and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1890 he married Caroline Montgomery of New York State. A prominent landowner and lord of the manor of Barlavington, Burton and Crouch, he was appointed High Sheriff of Sussex for 1907.

In January 1910 he was elected to the House of Commons as Member of Parliament for the Isle of Wight, unseating the sitting Liberal member, Godfrey Baring. He held the seat until the 1922 general election.

Hall was a yachtsman, and on the outbreak of the First World War used his vessel in patrol work in the Solent and English Channel while the British Expeditionary Force was being moved to the continent. Later in the war he was president of the British Water Ambulance Fund and assisited the evacution of injured soldiers via the River Seine. When the organisation was taken over by the War Office he received a commission as lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve. By the end of the war he had moved to High Explosives Department of the Ministry of Munitions, with the rank of captain in the Royal Engineers. He was created a baronet in 1919.