Humphrey Slade

Humphrey Slade EBS (4 May 1905 – 10 August 1983) was a Kenyan lawyer and politician who served as a member of the Legislative Council and later the National Assembly between 1952 and 1970.[1] He was the inaugural Speaker of the National Assembly, from 1967 to 1970.[2]

Humphrey Slade

EBS
Speaker of the Kenyan National Assembly
In office
1967–1970
Preceded byPosition established
Succeeded byFred Mbiti Gideon Mati
Speaker of the Kenyan House of Representatives
In office
1963–1967
Preceded byPosition established
Succeeded byPosition abolished
Speaker of the Kenyan Legislative Council
In office
1960–1963
Preceded byFerdinand Cavendish-Bentinck
Succeeded byPosition abolished
Personal details
Born4 May 1905
London, England
Died10 August 1983 (aged 78)
Nairobi, Kenya
Political partyIndependent
Alma materEton College
Magdalen College, Oxford

Biography

Slade was born in Kensington, London to George Slade, a solicitor, and his wife Edith Beale. He was a King's Scholar at Eton College and later read jurisprudence at Magdalen College, Oxford.[3] He completed his articles with Gibson and Weldon and qualified as a solicitor in 1930.[4]

He migrated to Kenya in October 1930 and practised as a lawyer with Hamilton Harrison and Mathews in Nairobi.[5] When the Second World War broke out in 1939, he was made Deputy Judge Advocate of the East African Forces, remaining in the position until 1941.[6] In 1945, whilst still in Kenya, he came of the roll of solicitors in England and Wales in order to gain a call to the bar at Lincoln's Inn.[7]

In 1952, he was elected to the Legislative Council from the Aberdares constituency.[8] He served as speaker of the Legislative Council from 1960 until Kenyan independence in 1963. He then served as speaker of the newly established House of Representatives between 1963 and 1967, and that latter year he was unanimously elected as the inaugural Speaker of the National Assembly of Kenya.[9][10] He retired from public life in 1970 and died in Nairobi in 1984.

He was an experienced mountain climber, and may have been one of the climbers referred to by John Hunt when he wrote that there were likely Commonwealth candidates for the 1953 British Mount Everest Expedition from Kenya and New Zealand.[11]

References
  1. The Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, Volume 6, Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, Incorporated, 1983, p.2004
  2. Opalo, Ken Ochieng' (20 June 2019). Legislative Development in Africa: Politics and Postcolonial Legacies. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108579964 – via Google Books.
  3. The Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, Volume 6, Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, Incorporated, 1983, p.2004
  4. The Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, Volume 6, Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, Incorporated, 1983, p.2004
  5. Hilary Sunman, A Very Different Land: Memories of Empire from the Farmlands of Kenya, I.B.Tauris, 21 Aug 2014
  6. The Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, Volume 6, Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, Incorporated, 1983, p.2004
  7. The London Gazette, 27 February 1945, 1153
  8. The Weekly Review, Stellascope Limited, 1983, p.150
  9. "Humphrey Slade." The Times (London, England), Thursday, Aug 18, 1983; pg. 10; Issue 61614. Retrieved 22 February 2015.
  10. Hilary Sunman, A Very Different Land: Memories of Empire from the Farmlands of Kenya, I.B.Tauris, 21 Aug 2014
  11. Hunt, John (1953). The Ascent of Everest. London: Hodder & Stoughton. p. 26.
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