Douglas Clifton Brown, 1st Viscount Ruffside

Colonel Douglas Clifton Brown, 1st Viscount Ruffside, PC, JP, DL (16 August 1879 – 5 May 1958) was a British politician. He served as Speaker of the House of Commons from 1943 to 1951.

Brown was born on 16 August 1879.He was the fifth of ten children born to Amelia (née Rowe) Brown and Colonel James Clifton Brown, a Liberal Party Member of Parliament.His elder brother was Howard Clifton Brown

His paternal grandparents were Alexander Brown and his wife Sarah Benedict Brown. His great-grandfather was the banker and merchant Sir William Brown, 1st Baronet, and his uncle was Liberal politician Sir Alexander Brown, 1st Baronet.

Brown was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Clifton Brown was a lieutenant in the Lancashire Artillery when on 26 March 1902 he was commissioned a second-lieutenant in the 1st Dragoon Guards, serving in South Africa during the end of the Second Boer War. He advanced to major in the regiment, and later became a lieutenant-colonel in the Volunteer force.

Political career

Clifton Brown was the Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Hexham from 1918 to 1923 and from 1924 to 1951. He was a Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons from 1938 to 1943 and Speaker of the House of Commons from 1943 to 1951. He was sworn of the Privy Council in 1941 and raised to the peerage as Viscount Ruffside, of Hexham in the County of Northumberland, in 1951.

In 1907, Ruffside was married to Violet Cicely Kathleen Wollaston (1882–1969), daughter of Frederick Eustace Arbuthnot Wollaston.They were the parents of one child:

• Audrey Clifton Brown (1908–2002), who married Harry Hylton-Foster, who became Speaker of the House of Commons. Audrey was created a life peeress as Baroness Hylton-Foster in honour of her husband in 1965.

Ruffside died in May 1958, aged 78.As there were no surviving male issue from the marriage, the viscountcy became extinct. His widow, the Viscountess Ruffside, died in November 1969, aged 87.