George May, 1st Baron May

George Ernest May, 1st Baron May of Weybridge KBE (20 June 1871 – 10 April 1946), known as Sir George May, 1st Baronet, from 1931 to 1935, was a British financial expert and public servant.

May was the younger son of William May, a grocer and wine merchant, of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, and his wife Julia Ann Mole. He was educated at Cranleigh School. At the age of 16, he joined the Prudential Assurance Company as a clerk. He was to remain with this firm until his retirement in 1931, serving as the Company Secretary from 1915 until 1931.

On 15 October 1903, George May married Lily Julia Strauss OBE (b. 1887; d. 15 Jan 1955), the second daughter of Gustave Strauss, a wealthy Bohemian glass merchant of 2 West Bolton Gardens, Kensington, London. The marriage took place in the Theistic Church in Swallow Street, Picadilly, London, and was officiated by Charles Voysey, a freethinking Yorkshire vicar who was deposed for publishing heretical sermons and for denying the doctrine of everlasting hell. Lily’s elder sister and suffragist, Florence Annie Strauss, had married MP and barrister-at-law Charles Augustus Vansittart Conybeare in the same church seven years earlier. George and Lily May had three children: John Lawrence May, Elizabeth Frances May and Patrick W. May.

May quickly made his mark as a financial expert. During the First World War, he was Manager of the American Dollars Securities Committee from 1915 to 1918. This committee was set up by the government to oversee the collection of securities held by British firms in the United States, and to make them available to the British government in aid of the war effort. For his services, May was made a KBE in 1918.

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