A TRAGIC FAMILY HISTORY

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXII, Issue LXII, 29 January 1912, Page 3

A TRAGIC FAMILY HISTORY

, The recent death, by., drowning of Henry de la Poer. Beresford, sixth marquis of Waterford, brings to mind a singularly tragic family history. A strange legend about the family has always found credence among the peasantry of Minister. The story goes that in the dark days of the penal period a young Catholic • peasant was dragged one day in chains into the courtyard at Curraghmofe-by the order of the then head of the Beresford clan. He was ordered to be flogged and put to death. He was flogged in the presence of his widowed mother, who went on her knees to the Beresfords and begged for mercy. That mercy was refused and the boy was put to death. Thereupon the mother, in the agony of her grief, uttered an awful prophecy that not one of the heads of the Beresford clan would die in his bed. Be that as it may, the nobleman whose dead body was found in the Clodagh last 'Saturday is the fourth successive Marquis of Waterford to die a violent death. The third' Marquis of Waterford was hunting with the Waterford hounds in county Kilkenny, and jumped his horse over a' fence on the public road, the" Marquiss being picked up dead/ His neck! was broken. The fourth Lord Water-1 ford, who had been a Protestant clergy- i man iii his early., days/" spent most of his time roaming about the beautiful grounds of the demesne. One day he I was missing, and after some days his dead body was found in a little shooting box in a, remote part of Curragh-i ■more. The mystery of his death was never properly cleared up, but it was stated to have been.' caused by poison-' ing consequent upon eating diseased shellfish. The fifth Marquis of Waterford, father of the late holder of the! title, perished by his own hand in 1895. In the land war in the early eighties, the County Waterford peasants objected to certain landlords hunting with Lord Waterford's hounds. They did not object to Lord. Waterford himself, who was reputed to be a good sportsman and a fair landlord, but Lord Waterford, who was a strong-minded man and a Unionist, sternly refused to submit to popular agitation, broke up his great hunting establishment in the country, and went away to England. One day, when out hunting in England, Lord Waterford rode for a gate which was held open by a small branch of a tree. A sheep, frightened by the horse, dashed through the gate before him, knocking away the branch, and the gate, being liberated, began to close, as Lord Waterford galloped through, his foot was caught by the gate, and he was pulled out of .the saddle. He remounted, but after the day's hunting had to be lifted out of the saddle a cripple for life. His spine had been so badly injured that for years he did not get off his back. At last his life of pain became unbearable to him, and one day he crawled to the gunroom at Curraghmore, and, taking a gun from its rack, loaded it, and blew out His brains. Among other members of the family who have died violent deaths were Lord Delaval Beresford, who was killed in a railway accident at El Paso, Texas, four years ago, and Captain C. C. de la Poer Beresford, who lost his life at Aldershot last year while gallantly attempting to stop a runaway.