The New York Times - June 30, 1937

LORD CRAIGMYLE

BARON CRAIGMYLE
EX-LORD OF APPEAL

British Jurist, Who Rose From Baker's Boy to the Bench,
Is Dead at 87

SETTLED BIG DOCK STRIKE

Advised Carnegie on Disposal of $20,000,000 In Scotland
Had Lectured Here

Wireless to The New York Times.

LONDON, June 29. - Lord Craigmyle, who was one of Great Britain's most noted lawyers and jurists, died in Glasgow yesterday at the age of 87. As Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, he held the title of Lord Shaw of Dunfermline in the life peerage until he resigned from the bench in 1929.  He then became a member of the house of Lords and took his new title.

He scandalized the British legal profession in 1909 by suddenly dropping an important case and hurrying to London to urge Prime Minister Asquith to appoint him a Lord of Appeal. Although he obtained office chiefly because of his political services to Mr. Asquith, he later regained the respect of the bar.

Delivered Rolls for Father

Lord Craigmyle was born Thomas Shaw, the son of Alexander Shaw, a Dunfermline baker, for whom he delivered rolls in the morning. At Edinburg University he won the Lord Rector’s prize in history and the Hamilton fellowship In mental philosophy and supported himself by working in a lawyer's office.

Having known what it was to be impecunious student he later found it a congenial task to advise Andrew Carnegie, a fellow townsman of Dunfermline on how to dispose of the $20,000,000 he gave for the benefit of the Scottish universities.

He served as Solicitor General of Scotland in 1894 and from 1905 to 1909 as Lord Advocate of Scotland. In 1906 he was admitted to the Privy Council.

As a member of Parliament from the Hawick district from 1892 to 1909.

He served as chairman of several royal commissions and as president of a court of Inquiry into the claims and conditions of dock labor in 1920. About his settlement of the dockmen's strike, when all British shipping was threatened, he later said:

"The moment it was clear to all concerned that no consideration was at issue except the truth and a square deal, progress was remarkable."

Lectured on Marshall Here

On Aug. 9, 2922, he was the principal speaker at the annual convention of the American Bar Association in San Francisco, and delivered several other lectures here.

In 1932 he made a second trip to the United States as visiting legal professor to deliver lectures on John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States, under the auspices of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

In 1933 Lord Craigmyle's book, "John Marshall in Diplomacy and in Law," was published. He was also the author of "Letters to Isabel," "The Law of the Kinsmen," "Darnley: A History," "The Other Bundle," "The Trial of Jesus Christ" and "Leicester: A History."

The New York Times - September 30, 1944

LORD CRAIGMYLE,
LONDON EX-SHERIFF

Former Director of the Bank of England
Had Served on Government Boards

LONDON Sept. 29 (AP) - Lord Craigmyle, a former director of the Bank of England, died today at his home in Selkirkshire. His age was 61.

Lord Craigmyle, a member of Parliament from 1915 to 1923 and chairman of the P. & O. Navigation Company and British India Steam Navigation from 1932 to 1938, was the second Lord of Craigmyle, a title to which he succeeded in 1937 on the death of his father, better known as Lord Shaw of Dunfermline, a noted British jurist.

Lord Craigmyle, until he assumed the title Alexander Shaw, held several important Government posts. He was chairman of the Special Arbitration Tribunal on Wages of Women Munitions Workers in 1917-18, a member of the Enemy Aliens Repatriation Tribunal In 1919 and he also served on, the Disabled Sailors and Soldiers Compensation Committee in 1918 and on the Imperial Shipping Committee in 1931.

He was private parliamentary secretary to Sir John Simon in 1915, while the latter was Home Secretary, and to Sir Albert Stanley in 1917-18, when Sir Albert was president of the Board of Trade. He also was secretary to the Royal Commission on landing arms at Howth in 1914. He had been High Sheriff of the County of London, a Lieutenant of the City of London and a Deputy Lieutenant of Selkirkshire.

Lord Craigmyle was a veteran of the first World War. With a commission in the Royal Marine Artillery, he served throughout the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

He was educated at George Watson's College, Edinburgh; Edinburgh University and Oxford. In 1905 he was president of the Oxford Union Society. He practiced law in the early part of his career. He married Lady Margaret Cargill Mackay, a daughter of the first Earle of Inchcape, shipping executive, in 1913.

Lord Craigmyle was the author of several articles on social and economic problems. His clubs were the Royal, Reform, Automobile and Roehampton.

Gerard Noel, Obituary: Lord Craigmyle., Independent, 05-12-1998, pp 18.

AN AMERICAN who created a name for himself at the post-war Oxford Union thus began his maiden speech: "After a term and a half, Mr President Sir, I feel I have made it. I am on first-name terms with the Editor of the Isis and the Lord Craigmyle."

The fact that Donald Craigmyle - "Craigie" to most of his many friends - was distinctly one of the "personalities" of the Oxford of this period represented the successful resolution of a serious personal problem. He was torn between acute shyness and anintense love of people and life. He suffered from this, far from rare, conflict in a much more painful sense than do most people, and it never really left him. The successful manner, however, in which he came to terms with it was the key, at least to agreat extent, to his many considerable achievements in later life.

Thomas Donald Mackay Shaw was born in 1923, and became the third Lord Craigmyle on the death of his father in 1944. (The first, ennobled in 1929, had been another Thomas Shaw, a former Lord Advocate of Scotland.) The previous year, on leaving Eton, hehad joined the RNVR as an ordinary seaman and he took his seat in the House of Lords, in 1945, in his bell- bottomed naval uniform.

At Oxford, where he read Modern History at Corpus Christi College, he was occasionally visited by his mother, to whom he was very close and to whom he was doubly indebted. Through her, a Mackay, the daughter of the first Earl of Inchcape (eminentshipowner and chairman of P & O), he came into an enormous fortune. But he also inherited, in full measure, his mother's wealth of gentleness and charm.

Blessed by a total absence of snobbery and a splendid gift for mimicry, Donald Craigmyle was invariably the centre, at Oxford gatherings, of a convivial knot of laughing friends. This was especially the case when his mother was present. As she sat in achair he would crouch or kneel at her side while introducing his friends. His constant fingering of his trim but vigorous red beard was the only outward sign of his nervousness, while his infectious bursts of laughter were famous throughout theuniversity. His beard, moreover, contributed to his jaunty air, somewhat belied by a slightly sad look in his fine-set eyes when his face was in repose. Few suspected his inner struggle and most presumed he was naturally gregarious.

No successful coming to terms with so pronounced an extrovert-introvert private conflict can be achieved without some paying of a psychological price. So it was with Craigmyle in the post-war years; but his resilience, strengthened by faith, wasrewarded by his love-match with Anthea Rich, the gifted artist daughter of the High Anglican Canon Edward Rich. They were married in 1955, Donald following Anthea into the Roman Catholic Church in 1956. Their marriage was a singularly successfulpartnership in every sense. They had four sons and three daughters; to be the head and centre of a closely knit family was a source of lifelong joy to him.

His distinctly non-combative and sensitive nature would not have fitted him for a conventional business career. But the happy combination of financial flair with his other qualities had an important result. His formation in 1959, with a friend, of Craigmyle & Co, marked the beginning of Britain's most successful and longest-established fund- raising consultancy.

By the world at large, however, Donald Craigmyle is best remembered for his extensive involvement in charitable activities, predominantly of a Roman Catholic nature. He was also, in his private capacity, spectacularly generous on a scale unknown to mostof his friends and even, sometimes, to his own family.

Among the many charitable associations with which he was involved, as chairman, director, active member or substantial contributor, there were at least a dozen in the Roman Catholic field, and an equal number in the secular world. Some of theseactivities overlapped into both groups such as the Linacre Centre, the Pro-Life Group and the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child. He was, from 1989 to 1995, President of the British Association of the "Sovereign Military Order of Malta" -that order of the Knights of Malta whose existence in Britain has been likened to Voltaire's description of the Holy Roman Empire as "neither holy, Roman nor an empire". In 1993 he was awarded the prestigious papal honour of Knight Commander with Starof the Order of Pius IX.

His long service on the board of management of London's Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth and his presidency of the St Thomas Fund for the Homeless (to say nothing of his work with the St John's Ambulance Brigade) contributed to his ease of mannerwith the sick and dispossessed. It is no exaggeration to say that his rapport with such men and women was truly remarkable.

He was a long-serving member and ultimately President of the Catholic Union of Great Britain, a body monitoring public affairs within a Roman Catholic and general socio-moral context. This usefully complemented his work, for over half a century, asspokesman on such matters in the House of Lords.

The fact that his London home was also his office (he also had a house in Knoydart, in the West Highlands) enabled him to combine work with spending as much time as possible with his family, whose members frequently accompanied him on workingpilgrimages to Lourdes and elsewhere. His large and lovely house in the Boltons was also the venue of many notable social and charitable events.

There were many examples, on such occasions, of the same winning ways he had exhibited at Oxford. A guest who felt momentarily out of things might suddenly have a sausage or canape popped into his or her startled but delighted mouth by an ever-vigilanthost.

Thomas Donald Mackay Shaw, philanthropist: born 17 November 1923; succeeded 1944 as third Baron Craigmyle; chairman, Craigmyle & Co 1959-98; Secretary- General, British Association, Sovereign Military Order of Malta 1979-83, Vice-President 1983-89,President 1989-95; President, Catholic Union of Great Britain 1993-98; married 1955 Anthea Rich (three sons, three daughters, and one son deceased); died London 30 April 1998.

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