Edward Ponsonby, 8th Earl of Bessborough

"The Viscount Duncannon": Edward Ponsonby, 8th Earl of Bessborough
(caricature by Leslie Ward (Spy) in Vanity Fair , October 6, 1904)

Edward Ponsonby, 8th Earl of Bessborough KP , CB , CVO , KGStJ , DL , JP (March 1, 1851 - December 1, 1920 in Birmingham , Warwickshire ) was a British peer and politician who served as Chairman of the Board from 1908 to 1920 of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB & SCR) railway company .

Life

Family origin

Ponsonby was the eldest of eight children of Walter William Brabazon Ponsonby, 7th Earl of Bessborough from his marriage to Lady Louisa Susan Cornwallis Eliot, a daughter of Edward Eliot, 3rd Earl of St. Germans . As apparent marriage of his father, he carried the courtesy title Viscount Duncannon from 1895 .

His younger sister Maria Ponsonby died unmarried in 1949 at the age of 97. His younger brother Cyril Walter Ponsonby was temporarily Lieutenant of the Tower of London . The second brother, Granville Ponsonby, served as chief of police in St. Lucia in the Caribbean . The third brother was Arthur Cornwallis Ponsonby. His sister Ethel Jemima Ponsonby was married to George Somerset, 3rd Baron Raglan , who was among other things Undersecretary in the War Department between 1900 and 1902 and Vice Governor of the Isle of Man from 1902 to 1919 . His fourth and youngest brother Walter Gerald Ponsonby was a barrister . The third and youngest sister, Sara Kathleen Ponsonby, was the wife of Major Charles Lancelot Andrews Skinner.

Career

After attending school, he completed an officer training course in the Royal Navy and rose to the rank of lieutenant in 1874 .

After studying law , he took up a job as a barrister in 1879 , but changed to the civil service in 1880 and acted as secretary to Lord Richard Grosvenor between 1880 and 1884 , who was parliamentary secretary in the treasury between 1880 and 1885. In 1884 he took on the role of Secretary of the Speaker of the House of Commons , Arthur Wellesley Peel , and held this until the end of Peel's tenure in 1895. On May 3, 1895 he was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath ( CB) excellent.

He was one of 1897 to 1900 the Council of the County Kilkenny as a member and was also 1898 Sheriff of County Carlow . He served intermittently as Justice of the Peace of Middlesex , Kilkenny and Carlow Counties , and as Deputy Lieutenant (DL) of County Kilkenny. On August 22, 1902, he was named Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO).

When his father died on February 24, 1906, he inherited his Irish nobility titles as 8th Earl of Bessborough , 9th Viscount Duncannon and 9th Baron Bessborough , as well as his British titles as 8th Baron Ponsonby and 5th Baron Duncannon of Bessborough. A seat in the House of Lords was associated with the latter two titles .

In February 1908 Ponsonby broke Thomas Fremantle, 2nd Baron Cottesloe as CEO of the railway undertaking London, Brighton and South Coast Railway from (LB & SCR). He exercised this function as chairman of the so-called "Brighton Line" until his death and was subsequently replaced by Charles C. Macrae. He was accepted on August 10, 1908 as Knight of Grace in the Order of Saint John (KGStJ). On May 28, 1915 he was also beaten to the Knight Companion of the Order of St. Patrick (KP).

He died on December 1, 1920 and was buried on December 7, 1920 in Pilltown, County Kilkenny.

Marriage and offspring

Edward Ponsonby married Blanche Vere Guest, daughter of MP Sir John Josiah Guest, 1st Baronet , on April 22, 1875 . From this marriage there were three daughters and three sons:

The eldest daughter Lady Olwen Verena Ponsonby was married to Geoffrey Browne, 3rd Baron Oranmore and Browne , and died in a car accident on June 7, 1927, from the consequences of which her husband died almost three weeks later on June 30, 1927. The second eldest daughter, Lady Helena Blanche Irene Ponsonby, was the wife of Major John Congreve, an officer of the Westmorland and Cumberland Yeomanry , who later was, among other things, Deputy Lieutenant of County Waterford . The eldest son, Vere Brabazon Ponsonby , was a member of the House of Commons for a few months in 1910 and from 1913 to 1920, inherited Edward Ponsonby's title of nobility as 9th Earl of Bessborough and served as Governor General of Canada between 1931 and 1935 . He was married to Roberte de Neuflize, the daughter of the French baron Jean de Neuflize. The second oldest son, Cyril Myles Brabazon Ponsonby, served as a major in the Grenadier Guards and died on September 28, 1915 in the First World War . He was married to Rita Narcissa Longfield, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Mountifort John Courtenay Longfield. Edward Ponsonby's youngest son Bertie Brabazon Ponsonby was captain of the Buckinghamshire Yeomanry (Royal Buckhamshire Hussars) and worked as a barrister. His wife Constance Evelyn Meyer was the daughter of the clergyman Horace Rollo Meyer. Ponsonby's youngest daughter, Lady Gweneth Frida Ponsonby, died in 1984 at the age of 96 and was married twice, from 1913 until his death in 1922 with Windham Baring, a director of the Argentine railway company Ferrocarril del Sud and son of Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer . In her second marriage, she married Ralph Henry Voltelin Cavendish, who died in 1968 in 1926, who served as a captain in the Grenadier Guards in the First World War and as a colonel in the British Home Guard in the Second World War , and who became Deputy Lieutenant of Kent in 1952.

Web links

• Mr Edward Ponsonby at Hansard (English)
• Bessborough, Earl of (I, 1739) in Cracroft's Peerage
• Peerage: Bessborough in Leigh Rayment Peerage
• Edward Ponsonby, 8th Earl of Bessborough on thepeerage.com

Individual evidence

1. ↑ London Gazette . No. 26621, HMSO, London, May 3, 1895, p. 2552 ( PDF , accessed July 2, 2016, English).
2. ↑ London Gazette . No. 27467, HMSO, London, August 22, 1902, p. 5461 ( PDF , accessed July 2, 2016, English).
3. ↑ London Gazette . No. 28166, HMSO, London, August 11, 1908, p. 5895 ( PDF , accessed July 2, 2016, English).
4. ↑ KNIGHTS OF ST. PATRICK in Leigh Rayment Peerage

predecessor	Office	successor
Walter Ponsonby	Earl of Bessborough 1906-1920	Vere Ponsonby