Charles Beattie
British politician (1899-1958)
Charles Beattie (3 August 1899 – 10 March 1958) was a Northern Irish farmer and auctioneer. Active in the Ulster Farmers' Union and in Unionist associations, he achieved senior office in the Orange Order and the Royal Black Institution and served on Omagh Rural District Council from 1952 until his death. He is principally known for an exceptionally brief career as a Member of the United Kingdom Parliament representing Mid Ulster; he did not win an election, but was declared elected when his opponent was disqualified. However, a few weeks after he took his seat, he was discovered to be holding an "office of profit under the Crown" which disqualified him.
Working life
Beattie was born on 3 August 1899 and the birth was registered as Charles Beatty In the mid-1950s he was farming a 120-acre (0.49 km2) farm and living at Ashgrove House in Dunbreen, County Tyrone, together with his wife Eileen, one son (Robin) and two daughters (Betty and Pearl). In addition to his farming activity, Beattie went into business as an auctioneer in about 1944, with premises at 53 High Street in Omagh. He advertised the property he was auctioning weekly in local newspapers circulating in County Tyrone, including the Nationalist Ulster Herald.
Unionism
For many years an active member of Unionist associations, Beattie was appointed a representative of Dunmullan on North Tyrone Unionist Association in August 1946. From November 1949 he was a delegate to Mid Ulster Unionist Association; and became a member of the Association's executive committee in June 1950. On his re-election in July 1952, he was also named to the Association's delegation to that year's Conservative Party Conference in Scarborough.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles Beattie” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.