Birkenhead, Frederick Edwin Smith, 1st earl

Birkenhead, Frederick Edwin Smith, 1st earl of

(born July 12, 1872, Birkenhead, Cheshire, Eng.—died Sept. 30, 1930, London) British politician. Elected to the House of Commons in 1906, he became noted as an orator and soon became a leader of the Conservative Party. As attorney general (1915–18), he successfully prosecuted Roger Casement. As lord chancellor (1919–22), he secured passage of the Law of Property Act (1922) and subsequent real-property statutes (1925) that replaced a convoluted system of land law. He also helped negotiate the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.