Sir Edward William Salt was a Conservative member of parliament (MP) for the Birmingham Yardley constituency from 1931 to 1945. He was the son of Ashton Trow Salt, a surgical instrument maker in Aston, and his wife Emily. He was educated at Camp Hill Grammar School in Birmingham. In 1910, he married Alice Elizabeth, daughter of John Joseph Pratt Edmunds of Hawkesley Hall, King's Norton, and had a son and three daughters.