Henry Austin Bruce, 1st Baron Aberdare GCB, PC, JP, DL, FRS, FRHistS (16 April 1815 – 25 February 1895), was a British Liberal Party politician, who served in government most notably as Home Secretary (1868–1873) and as Lord President of the Council.

[4] In 1805, Aberdare's father changed his surname from Knight to Bruce when he reached the age of majority and inherited the Llanblethian estates.

[2] Shortly after he had begun to practice, the discovery of coal beneath the Duffryn and other Aberdare Valley estates brought his family great wealth.

[12] During the 1850s and 1860s, however, the population of Aberdare grew rapidly, and the franchise changes in 1867 gave the vote to large numbers of miners in that valley.

After losing his seat, Bruce was elected for Renfrewshire on 25 January 1869, and was made Home Secretary by William Ewart Gladstone.

In 1873 Bruce relinquished the home secretaryship, at Gladstone's request, to become Lord President of the Council, and was elevated to the peerage as Baron Aberdare,[2] of Duffryn in the County of Glamorgan, on 23 August that year.

[11] Being a Gladstonian Liberal, Aberdare had hoped for a much more radical proposal to keep existing licensee holders for a further ten years, and to prevent any new applicants.

The defeat of the Liberal government in the following year terminated Lord Aberdare's official political life, and he subsequently devoted himself to social, educational and economic questions.

[5] In 1888 he headed the commission that established the Official Table of Drops, listing how far a person of a particular weight should be dropped when hanged for a capital offence (the only method of 'judicial execution' in the United Kingdom at that time), to ensure an instant and painless death, by cleanly breaking the neck between the 2nd and 3rd vertebrae, an 'exacting science', eventually brought to perfection by Chief Executioner Albert Pierrepoint.

In the Lords he spoke at some length to the Home Affairs Committee chaired by Arthur Balfour about the prison rules system.

The defeat of the Licensing Bill by the Tory 'beerage' and publicans was drafted to limit hours and protect the public, but it persuaded a convinced Anglican forever more of the iniquities.

Lord Aberdare, who in 1885 was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, presided over several Royal Commissions at different times.

Anti-vivisectionist Frances Power Cobbe noted Bruce's contradictory behaviour, as he had publicly spoken against the abolition of vivisection and voted against it.

His large family plot is surrounded by a chain, and his gravestone is a simple Celtic cross with double plinth and kerb.