Harry Crookshank
British politician (1893-1961)
Harry Frederick Comfort Crookshank, 1st Viscount Crookshank, (27 May 1893 – 17 October 1961), was a British Conservative politician. He was Minister of Health between 1951 and 1952 and Leader of the House of Commons between 1951 and 1955.
Background and education
Crookshank was born in Cairo, Egypt, the son of Harry Maule Crookshank and Emma, daughter of Major Samuel Comfort, of New York City. On his father's side, he descended from Alexander Crookshank, of County Longford, Ireland, who represented Belfast in the Irish House of Commons and served as a Justice of the Court of Common Pleas in Ireland. He was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford. In the First World War, he joined the Hampshire Regiment and served as a captain in the Grenadier Guards. On one occasion he was buried alive by an explosion for twenty minutes, and on another in 1916 he was castrated by shrapnel, requiring him to wear a surgical truss for the rest of his life. He was awarded by Serbia the Order of the White Eagle and Gold Medal for Valour.
He joined the Diplomatic Service in 1919 and worked at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., until 1924.
Political career
Crookshank was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Gainsborough in 1924, a seat he held for the next 32 years.
The public source identifies “Harry Crookshank” as british politician (1893-1961). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Harry, Crookshank and British.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q333345. VIAF identifies the subject as 52788437. The Library of Congress control number is nb2004302330. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1893, 1961, 1951 and 1952.
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This entry incorporates text from “Harry Crookshank” 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.