Sir Ellis Ellis-Griffith, 1st Baronet

Sir Ellis Jones Ellis-Griffith, 1st Baronet PC KC (23 May 1860 – 30 November 1926), was a British barrister and radical Liberal politician. He was born Ellis Jones Griffith.

Born in Birmingham, Griffith was the son of Thomas Morris Griffith, a master builder. He was educated at University College, Aberystwyth, the University of London and Downing College, Cambridge, where he read law and was President of the Cambridge Union. Ellis-Griffith married Mary, daughter of Robert Owen, in 1892. They had two sons and one daughter.

He was called to the Bar, Middle Temple, in 1887 and worked on the North Wales and Chester Circuit. He was a Recorder of Birkenhead from 1907 to 1912 and was appointed a King's Counsel in 1910.

Griffith unsuccessfully contested West Toxteth in 1892 but in 1895 was successfully returned to Parliament for Anglesey. He was returned unopposed in 1900.

Upon his appointment as Recorder of Birkenhead in 1907 he was required to re-submit himself to his electorate at Anglesey and was returned unopposed. Whilst an MP he voted in favour of the 1908 Women's Enfranchisement Bill. He was returned unopposed in December 1910. He served in the Liberal administration of H. H. Asquith as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department from 1912 to 1915, in which position he played an important role in steering the Welsh Disestablishment Bill through the House of Commons, and was sworn of the Privy Council in 1914. In 1918 he was created a baronet, of Llanindan in the County of Anglesey and changed his surname to Ellis-Griffith.

He was narrowly defeated at Anglesey in the 1918 general election by the Labour candidate Owen Thomas. He then unsuccessfully contested the University of Wales constituency in 1922.

He returned to the House of Commons in 1923, when he was elected for Carmarthen, but resigned the seat the following year.

He died in Swansea suddenly in November 1926, aged 66, and was succeeded in the baronetcy by his only surviving son Ellis. Lady Ellis-Griffith died in 1941.

Election results

He was returned unopposed in 1900.