BRIDGEMAN, Rt Hon 3rd Viscount (1930 - 2026)
Henry W
He was 95 years old and still making a contribution to public life, the common good, and the protection of the vulnerable.
R.I.P.
Richard R
sven_me...@web.de
https:/www.LeighRayment.com.au
Tim
1. Hon. Valentine Henry Ralph Orlando Bridgeman (b. 1999) - elder son of 4th Viscount
2. Hon. Felix William Orlando Bridgeman (b. 2002) - brother of 1
3. Hon. Esmond Francis Ralph Orlando Bridgeman (b. 1974) - brother of 4th Viscount
4. Samuel Orlando Lucien Bridgeman (b. 2005) - son of 3
5. Hon. Orlando Henry Geoffrey Bridgeman (b. 1983) - brother of 4th Viscount
6. Hugo Orlando Barclay Bridgeman (b. 2024) - son of 5
BREMENMURRAY
David Beamish
sven_me...@web.de
Henry W
My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death of the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, on Friday 10 April. On behalf of the House, I extend our condolences to the noble Viscount’s family and friends.
colinp
Lord Bridgeman, hereditary peer who served on the Tory front benches in the Blair years
He left the City after the 1999 House of Lords reforms to devote himself to being a working peer and Conservative whip
The 3rd Viscount Bridgeman, who has died aged 95, was a City businessman elected in 1999 as one of the 92 hereditary peers to be kept on in the House of Lords after the Blair government’s reforms; as a working peer and Conservative whip, he loyally toed the party line, departing on rare occasions when it conflicted with his Catholic faith.
Robin Bridgeman served on the front benches until 2010, as shadow minister for, at various times, local and devolved government affairs, home affairs and Northern Ireland. In later years he was a staunch backbench supporter of Baroness Cox’s campaign on the vulnerability of Muslim women in unregistered Islamic marriages and before sharia councils in England. He also argued that independent hospices were grossly underfunded, despite their value to the NHS.
Outside politics he was a director of the Bridgeman Art Library, founded in 1972 by his wife Harriet and now the world’s leading commercial art library, which retains the rights to reproduce some 300,000 artworks and 750,000 historical photographs. This interest led to him contributing in the Lords on issues such as metadata, orphan works and copyright licensing.
He accepted that the hereditary principle as a route into the Lords had run its course, while warning in his final speech to the House in 2025 that a wholly appointed chamber carried constitutional risks of its own.
Robin John Orlando Bridgeman was born on December 5 1930, the eldest of four children and only son of Brigadier Geoffrey Bridgeman, a younger son of the Conservative MP William Bridgeman, who had been Home Secretary under Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin, and was created Viscount Bridgeman in 1930 [….]
At Eton Robin was the fifth Bridgeman to be Captain of the Oppidans, after his grandfather, two uncles and father [….]
Taking his seat in the Lords after the death of his uncle in 1982, he enjoyed making friends across the political divide, building on common interests such as Northern Ireland or Catholicism, to which he had converted by the 1990s. Keenly musical, he was a founding member of the Parliament Choir.
From 1999 to 2007 he was chairman of St John and St Elizabeth, the Catholic hospital in St John’s Wood, and its neighbouring free hospice. He also chaired Coress (Confidential Reporting System in Surgery), which seeks to extend to the medical profession the culture of no-blame reporting that has improved safety in the aviation industry.
He was a trustee of Hammersmith Hospital, the Friends of Lambeth Palace Library, and Music at Winchester; and treasurer of the Florence Nightingale Aid in Sickness Trust, and the New England Company, a Christian grant-giving charity.
At home he was a keen breadmaker, reassuring those eating his bread that kneading was a splendid way to clean one’s fingernails after gardening. He attributed his longevity to a cold bath every morning, the Royal Canadian Air Force 5BX exercises, bicycling to the Lords and trampolining in a shell suit, all into his nineties.
In 1966 he married Harriet Turton, who survives him with three of their sons; another son predeceased him.
Lord Bridgeman, born December 5 1930, died April 9 2026