Lancelot Curran

Who was Lancelot Curran?

Major Sir Lancelot Ernest Curran was a Northern Ireland High Court judge and parliamentarian.

He was elected as Ulster Unionist Member of Parliament for Carrick in the Stormont Parliament serving from 1945 till 1949, and was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance. Curran was Attorney General for Northern Ireland, the youngest in the history of that parliament. He was a member of the Orange Order and became a member of the Privy Council of Northern Ireland.

Curran had three children including Patricia and Desmond, a barrister and latterly a Roman Catholic convert and missionary. In 1952, Patricia, was murdered, being found in the driveway of the Curran home, Glen House, Whiteabbey, County Antrim, having been stabbed thirty-seven times. She was nineteen and a student at the Queen's University, Belfast. In 2000, Iain Hay Gordon, the man convicted of her murder had his sentence overturned after the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal found it to be unsafe. Scapegoat, a BBC Northern Ireland drama about the conviction of Iain Hay Gordon, was broadcast in 2009.