Charles Walter Starmer

Sir Charles Walter Starmer (12 July 1870 – 27 June 1933) was a British newspaper proprietor and Liberal politician.

Charles Starmer was born in Haltham, near Horncastle in Lincolnshire but while he was still a child he moved with his family to the Cleveland area of the North Riding of Yorkshire. In 1893 he married Ada Cornforth and they had a daughter. Ada Starmer died in 1923 after a long illness and Starmer was married again in October 1929 to Mary Cecilia Willink, the daughter of John Wakefield Willink, Dean of Norwich. Lady Starmer was awarded the OBE in 1948 and served as a Justice of the Peace surviving him until 1979.

Starmer was a career journalist and went on to become one of the biggest newspaper proprietors of his day. He joined the commercial staff of The Northern Echo in West Hartlepool in 1899 working his way up to be its manager by 1908. Later he took over control of the Sheffield Independent, Birmingham Gazette, and other papers. As managing director of the Birmingham Gazette Ltd, the North of England Newspaper Co. Ltd, the Bradford and District Newspaper Co. Ltd and the Nottingham Journal, Ltd, he eventually controlled the publication of 30 provincial daily and weekly newspapers. At his death he was owner of the Westminster Press Group, also known as the Starmer Group. The company included the liberal newspaper the Westminster Gazette which had merged with the Daily News in 1928. He was a patron of the London School of Journalism

Starmer was knighted for his public services in 1917. His newspaper businesses, political service and interests in labour questions and the condition of the north east of England, were all mentioned in the context of his knighthood.

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