Alfred Roberts

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Alfred Roberts (1892 – 1970) was an English grocer, local preacher, and politician.

He served as Alderman of Grantham from 1943 to 1952, as Mayor of Grantham from 1945 to 1946.

Margaret, his second daughter, was the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Early life

Roberts was born in Ringstead, Northamptonshire, England. He was the fifth child of seven children. Benjamin Ebenezer Roberts (28 December 1857 – 17 September 1925), of a Ringstead family, and his mother, Ellen Smith (1890 – 1 May 1935), was born in Kenmare, Ireland, and his father, Catherine Sullivan (28 November 1857 – 1 May 1935). Ellen's eldest two known siblings were both born in Ireland and in England in 1852. The age of Alfred's aunt Mary and his uncles of about nine years corresponds with the Great Famine, and it more likely means that other siblings died as a result of starvation or other illnesses. His ancestors may have left Kenmare in 1849-51, and the destitution of England has caused the loss of two million more. This and the family's difficult times may have a lot to do with the reluctance to acknowledge his children's being part Irish.

Roberts' poor eyesight meant he was unlikely to work in shoemaking, which would not allow him to enter the family trade. He left school at the age of thirteen to help his families and is listed in the 1911 census as a boarder in Oundle, Northamptonshire, and as a grocer's assistant. He later moved to Grantham, Lincolnshire, where he worked as an apprentice in a greengrocers; he had aspired to become a teacher. Roberts, "a deeply patriotic man" who died on 1914, applied to enlist in the British Army six times, but was refused because of his poor eyesight.

Roberts married Beatrice Ethel Stephenson (24 August 1888: 104 ) at Finkin Street Methodist Church, which he attended every Sunday, four years after moving to Grantham. They married in Grantham on May 28th and had two children, two of whom were born in Grantham: Muriel Cullen (24 May 1921 – 8 April 2013) and Margaret Hilda (13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013). Roberts opened a second store in 1923, and they purchased the supermarket in 1919.

Personal life

Roberts retired and sold his company in 1958, but he continued to preach and was still active in the Rotary Club. Beatrice died in 1960.

Roberts married again on November 26th in Long Bennington, Lincolnshire, England; his second wife was Cissie Miriam Hubbard (née Freeston), born 16 March 1896.

Roberts died on February 10, 1970, four months before the general election in which Edward Heath became Prime Minister, but it was four months before. Heath named Margaret to the cabinet shortly after her win, thereby starting her own ministerial career in 1979.

Professor Bernard Crick's article in 1997 published a study claiming that Roberts had been involved in multiple sexual assaults on women, including one from a suspected perpetrator. Crick had attempted to bring the allegations into the public domain before both the 1987 and 1997 elections, but various publications had rejected the bid. In the 1937 satire of Grantham, Rotten Borough, Roberts was considered a source for a lecherous character as a local councillor and grocer. These allegations, according to John Campbell, the biographer of Margaret Thatcher's daughter, were unsubstantiated and dismissed by people familiar with him, and the fact in Rotten Borough was a parody of another prominent councillor at the time.

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