If there were a poll for the unluckiest MP ever, the winner would probably be Alfred Dobbs.
He gained Smethwick for Labour in the party's landslide on 26 July 1945. The following day he was killed in a road accident when, attempting to avoid a child, his car was in collision with a military vehicle in Doncaster.
You might think he holds the record for the shortest service as an MP. But according to Wikipedia the Irish Nationalist Thomas Higgins, who won North Galway in 1906, contrived to die between the close of the poll and the declaration of the result.
That same Wikipedia names three other MPs who died between the close of the poll and the declaration. Remarkably, two of them also managed this feat at the 1945 election. However, they were all defending seats for which they had previously been elected. Higgins is the only newly elected MP to die in this narrow corridor of time.
1 comment:
If Alfred Dobbs's death took place on the following day it must have been in the early hours thereof, as I believe he was driving back from the count at the time.
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