The second son of Mary Emmeline Eden Drummond, daughter of General Henry Drummond, and Colonel Edward Harris Steel, Steel-Maitland was educated at Rugby and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a classical Scholar and Eldon Scholar in 1899. He gained first class honours in classics and law, and became a Fellow of All Souls College in 1900. He was Secretary, Junior Treasurer and President of the Oxford Union Society, and rowed against Cambridge in 1899. His brother, Col. Richard Steel, was concerned with MIO during the war.
Steel-Maitland served under David Lloyd George as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1915 to 1917. The latter year he was created a Baronet, of Sauchie in the County of Stirling.[5] He then held office under Lloyd George as Secretary for Overseas Trade in his capacity as Head of the Department of Overseas Trade (Development and Intelligence) from 1917 to 1919. In 1924 he was sworn of the Privy Council[6] and appointed Minister of Labour under Stanley Baldwin, with a seat in the cabinet, a post he retained until the government fell in June 1929.
Steel-Maitland married Mary, daughter of Sir James Ramsay-Gibson-Maitland, 4th Baronet, of Barnton and Sauchie, in 1901. He died in March 1935, aged 58, and was succeeded in the baronetcy by his son, Arthur.
References
^"Appointments". The Times. No. 36901. London. 17 October 1902. p. 8.