Donald Crawford

Donald Crawford KC FRSE LLD (1837–1 January 1919) was a Scottish advocate who became a United Kingdom Liberal MP. He sat for the constituency of Lanarkshire North-East from 1885 to 1895.

He was born on 3 May 1837 the son of Robert Crawford of Aros on the Isle of Mull and his wife, Sibella Maclean. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy 1847 to 1854. He attended Glasgow, Oxford and Heidelberg Universities.

He was made an advocate in 1862 and from 1880 to 1885 served as Secretary to the Lord Advocate of Scotland.

In 1873 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Robert William Thomson, Thomas Croxen Archer, Francis Deas and John Hutton Balfour.

In 1884 the Liberal President of the Local Government Board, Sir Charles Dilke, appointed Crawford to the Boundary Commission for Scotland, which was responsible for the redrafting of constituency boundaries in the wake of the Third Reform Act. Crawford, at the time, was the political secretary to Sir John Balfour, then the Lord Advocate. Crawford, in addition, was the distant relative of Dilke's. The Conservative Leader in the House of Commons, Sir Stafford Northcote, objected to Crawford's appointment on these grounds, noting that Crawford was "a keen Liberal with a thorough knowledge of Scotland."

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