Chorley , Robert Samuel Theodore , 1895 - 1978 , 1st Baron Chorley , lawyer and conservationist

Robert Samuel Theodore Chorley, 1895 - 1978, was born in Kendal and educated at Kendal School and Queens College, Oxford. During World War I, he served in the Foreign Office and Ministry of Labour. Although he was called to the Bar in 1920 he spent most of his early life teaching law. He was a tutor at the Law Society's School of Law 1920 - 1924 and Lecturer in Commercial Law 1924 - 1930, the Sir Ernest Cassel Professor of Commercial and Industrial Law at the London School of Economics 1930 - 1946, Dean of the Faculty of Laws at the University of London 1939 - 1942, and was made an honorary fellow of the London School of Economics in 1970. He was involved with the Association of University Teachers from 1938 to 1965. After the war he contested Northwich Division for Labour in the 1945 General Election. He became interested in penal reform and was a vice president of the Howard League for Penal Reform in 1948, president of the National Council for the Abolition of the Death Penalty 1945 - 1948, chairman of the Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency, 1950 - 1956 and president 1956 - 1976. His other main interest was the countryside, serving as vice-chairman of the National Trust, honorary secretary of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England 1935 - 1967, vice-president and president of the Fell Rock Climbing Club of the English Lake District, and a member of the Friends of the Lake District.