Claude Lowther

Colonel Claude William Henry Lowther (1870 – 16 June 1929) was an English Conservative politician.

Lowther was the son of Francis William Lowther and Louise Beatrice de Fonblanque; Francis William was the illegitimate son of the Earl of Lonsdale and an opera singer, and received £125,000 on the Earl's death.

He was educated at Rugby School and had a brief diplomatic career as honorary attaché at Madrid from 1894. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Westmorland and Cumberland Yeomanry of the British Army on 17 May 1899. Following the outbreak of the Second Boer War later that year, he signed up for service with the Imperial Yeomanry, where on 3 February 1900 he was appointed a Lieutenant in the 8th Battalion. During a skirmish at Faber's Put on 30 March 1900, he and two troopers rescued two wounded men while under heavy Boer Fire, an act for which he was unsuccessfully recommended for the Victoria Cross (VC) by Sir Charles Warren.

In October 1900, at the "Khaki Election", he was elected Unionist Member of Parliament for Eskdale. During the last months of the Boer War on 10 July 1901, Lowther made a speech advocating extracting reparations from the Transvaal, using mineral deposits to compensate for high British taxes needed to pay for the war.

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