George Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys

Who was George Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys?

General George Darell Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys, KCB, KCVO, CMG, DL, was a British military commander and Conservative Member of Parliament.

Jeffreys attended Eton and Sandhurst before being commissioned into the Grenadier Guards. He saw action in Africa and in the Boer War as a young officer, and went to France with his battalion at the start of the First World War. He served on the Western Front throughout the war, rising to command the 2nd Grenadier Guards, then a series of infantry brigades, before being promoted to command 19th Division from September 1917 until the end of the war. Following the Armistice, he commanded a division in the forces occupying Germany, and then held various commands until he retired from the Army in 1938.

From 1925 onwards he served as a magistrate and county councillor in Hampshire, and after retirement increased his involvement with local administration. He chaired a series of local bodies, and in 1941 was elected to the House of Commons for the constituency of Petersfield. He retired from Parliament at the 1951 election, and was created a peer the following year, as Baron Jeffreys. He continued to sit in the House of Lords until his death in 1960.