Part 1 - Tragic ends of the Beresfords

1 p.; clipping

A clipping of an article titled ‘Tragic ends of the Beresfords / Lord Marcus dead / The Curraghmore legend’. The article was published in the ‘Irish Independent’ (18 December 1922). The article refers to the death of Lord Marcus de la Poer Beresford, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat who, as a personal attendant to the British Royal Family, served as an Equerry, responsible for the management and training of horses belonging to both King Edward VII and his son George V. He was the fourth son of John Beresford, 4th Marquess of Waterford, a leading Irish peer and Anglican clergyman.

The Marquisate of Waterford was originally created in 1789 for George Beresford, 2nd Earl of Tyrone. The family seat is Curraghmore House in County Waterford. The Beresfords would go on to become one of the most decorated Anglo-Irish families, producing a succession of notable politicians, churchmen, naval officers, and soldiers. This newspaper article reflects upon Marcus Beresford’s life and outlines in somewhat lurid detail a supposed ‘curse’ which afflicted many generations of his family.

The 3rd Marquess was killed when he fell from his horse while hunting in 1859; the 5th Marquess committed suicide in 1895, worn down by years of suffering from injuries caused by a hunting accident which left him crippled; the 6th Marquess, having narrowly escaped being mauled by a lion while hunting in Africa, drowned in a river on his estate in 1911 when he was 36. The 7th Marquess died in 1934 (aged 33) in a shooting accident in the gun room in Curraghmore. As the article notes, several lesser-known members of the family also met untimely ends such as Lord Delaval James Beresford (Marcus’s younger brother) who was killed in a railway accident in Texas in 1906. Although much of the history associated with the ‘curse’ is based upon folklore, it is believed to have originated from the family of a young man reputed to have been hung by a Marquess of Waterford during the Penal era.