Edward William Bootle-Wilbraham 3rd Earl of Lathom

  Notes:

From Ann G-P research, in which name hard to read.

Clarification from Anthony Bateman; It might be of interest that my father's Tunzleman cousin was married off by her mother to the Earl of Lathom. Google reveals that Edward William Bootle-Wilbraham (16 May 1895 - 2 Jun 1927), 3rd Earl of Lathom, 4th Lord Skelmersdale married Marie Xenia de Tunzleman (Countess of Lathom, born Singapore, divorcee). The good Earl was Noel Coward's first patron but lived the good life, spent the family fortune and was considered to be a rather risque gay aristocrat.

Baron Skelmersdale, of Skelmersdale in the County Palatine of Lancaster, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1828 for Edward Bootle-Wilbraham, a former Member of Parliament for Westbury , Newcastle-under-Lyme , Clitheroe and Dover . His grandson, the second Baron, was a Conservative politician and served in the Tory administrations of Disraeli and Lord Salisbury . In 1880 he was created Earl of Lathom, in the County Palatine of Lancaster. However, the Earldom became extinct on the death of his grandson, the third Earl, in 1930 . The Barony passed to the late Earl's kinsman, the fifth Baron, a grandson of a younger son of the first Baron. On his death the title was inherited by his cousin, the sixth Baron. His son, the seventh and present Baron, served in junior ministerial positions in the Conservative administrations of Margaret Thatcher . Lord Skelmersdale is still a member of the House of Lords as one of the ninety elected hereditary peers allowed to remain after the passing of the House of Lords Act of 1999.

From Lathom Park Trust website;
For the Bootle Wilbraham family interest in the theatre was at its highest in the 1920s during the tenure of the 3rd Earl of Lathom, Edward William Bootle-Wilbraham. He was a true Victorian dilettante with a passion for the theatre that many feel went well beyond reason and good sense.
His mother Wilma, Countess of Lathom, started performing as a musician at the age of 11 as a member of her mother Helen, Lady Radnor’s, string orchestra. She continued, on occasion, to perform on concert and amateur stages during the rest of her life. The 3rd Earl’s earliest experiences included weekends of theatrical entertainment at home and visits to theatres in London.
He was Noel Coward’s first patron providing personal and professional finance and support for the rising young star and backing Andre Charlot’s first Coward revue London Calling. He underwrote numerous theatrical productions at theatres in Southport, Liverpool, London and New York. His generosity to his friends, who knew him as Ned Lathom, was legendary.
He spent much of his short life trying to establish himself as a playwright. Six of his plays were published most of which were perfomed in London and New York using young and established stars . He formed a theatre club called The Venturers who performed in London theatres on Sunday evenings when West End shows rested. Performing under the auspices of a club had the advantage that the Lord Chamberlain was not required to provide a licence to perform and censorship was therefore avoided. Many of the 3rd Earl’s productions were considered very risque for their day dealing with themes of love, marriage, infidelity, kept women and men and ladies of the night.
Each January from 1920 to 1922 he attracted a coterie of Bright Young Things from the London theatres to appear on the stage of the converted World War I hut that became The Lathom Club a place of rest and relaxation provided by the Earl for estate staff.
The Earl’s extravagant spending on theatrical activities and a lavish lifestyle finally spent all that the Lathom Estate could provide through income or mortgage. In 1923 he sold the entire Lathom estate to Mr. Debenham a banker who then lived on the estate and arranged for the sale of all holdings and contents by auction at four sales held in 1924.
The Earl continued to finance plays, mainly his own, in London and New York until his death from Tuberculosis in St. John’s Wood, London at the age of 35. His last words to the actress Marie Tempest were: “Mary, how lovely it is to be without possessions.”

Elswhere; lived at Blythe Hall, Lancs, where he entertained Noel Coward and Ivor Novello.

From Wendy H; Times Mar 18 1927; Forthcoming Marriages; The engagement is announced, and the marriage will shortly take place, between the Right Hon the Earl of Lathom, of 65 Mount Street, SW, and Mrs.Xenia Morison, of 25 Elvaston Place, Queen's Gate.

From Wendy H; Times Obit Feb 08 1930; Lord Lathom, whose death in London at the age of 34 was announced in our later editions yesterday, was an ambitious, and, for a time, a fairly prolific playwright, who will be remembered in the theatre rather as one who genuinely loved it.
In an introduction to one of his volumes of plays he confessed that while he was still a child, seeing Miss Julia Neilson and Mr Fred Terry perform Sweet Nell of Old Drury at Liverpool, he determined to write for the theatre. In this determination he persisted, in spite of failure, loss and every sort of discouragement. Before 1925 he "had written 10 glorious, and, to my mind, splendid dramas and comedies, but luckily for myself on second thoughts they found their rightful home."
<Cut some descriptions of his early plays>
It is very plain that parts of his writing had unusual vitality ; he had an unquenchable enthusiasm for the theatre, and an active, perhaps too active, desire for theatrical effect; nothing that he wrote was, in consequence, ever altogether flat and dead. But he struggled towards a naturalism for which his vision did not equip him. If he had ever escaped from the confusion of ideals which dragged him, now towards the shock-tactics of morality, and now towards an attempt to amuse those whose amusement is least worth the energy of a moralist ; if he had, in short, ever so far broken free from a fashionable rut as to write purely fantastic wit, he might have done memorable work in the genre of The Importance of Being Earnest. As it was, he followed more nearly in the solemn, flase and glittering tradition of Lady Windermere's Fan, though he lacked Wilde's saving lightness of touch.
Edward William Bootle-Wilbraham, third Earl of Lathom and fourth Baron Skelmersdale, was the head of an ancient and honourable family of Cheshire. His grandfather, the first Eal, Lord Chamberlain of the Household, was long a notable figure at the Court of Queen Victoria. He was born on May 16, 1895, the only son of the secon earl, and his mother was Lady Wima Pleydell-Bouverie, dau of the fifth Earl of Radnor. She married, secondly, Lt-Gen Sir H.M.Lawson. As Lord Skelmersdale, he went to Eton, to Mr.C.M.Well's house, in 1907. In 1910 he succeeded his father in the earldom, and in 1913 he left Eton and went up to Christ Church, Oxford. The war broke out in the following year and he served as Captain in the Lancashire Hussar Yeomanry in France. He was for some time an extra ADC to the Governor of Bombay (Lord Willingdon). Lord Lathom married in 1927, Mrs. Marie Xenia Morrison, dau of Mr.E.W. de Tunzelman, late of Singapore. He leaves no issue. The earldom becomes extinct, but the barony of Skelmersdale passes to his first cousin, once removed, a great-grandson of the first baron, Capt. Arthur George Bootle-Wilbraham, MC, RE (SR) who was born in 1876 and served in the War from 1914. The late Lord Lathom was a nephew of Lady Florence Cecil, wife of the Bishop of Exeter, and of Lady Bertha Dawkins, Woman of the Bedchamber to the Queen. His eldest sister, Lady Helen, wife of Maj-Gen H.W. Newcome, died last August. He leaves two sister surviving - Lady Barbara, widow of Lt Francis Seymour KRRC who was KIA in 1915, and Lady Rosemary Wilma Bootle-Wilbraham. A memorial service will be held in St Martin-in-the-Fields on Monday at 11 o'clock.

Edward married Marie Xenia de Tunzelman, daughter of Edward W. de Tunzelman MB and Maud Agatha Bateman, on 2 Jun 1927. (Marie Xenia de Tunzelman was born in 1893 in Singapore and died on 5 Sep 1974.)