George Seymour, 7th Marquess of Hertford

Biography

In the 1890s he was sent to Australia by his family "for the good of his health and the country", due to his blatant behaviour. He settled in Mackay, growing sugar cane and bananas, but quickly created great animosity, due to being a dishonest employer: he was sued by a labourer (who won the case) for underpayment, and boasted tricking kanakas who purchased his chickens into thinking gold sovereigns were less valuable than silver half crowns. He was noted for all-male house parties at his isolated residence 'The Rocks' near Mackay, and achieved notoriety for "skirt dancing" in a sequinned outfit with butterfly wings, as one newspaper phrased it: "gyrating in the fluffy serpentine dance before a Kanaka audience...His legs being tough and skinny his audience show little inclination to pot him as long pig." When he returned to England in 1897, a Mackay newspaper noted the citizens were "more interested in his departure" than his arrival.

Bankrupt in 1900, he married heiress Alice Cornelia Thaw on 27 April 1903. At the wedding he extorted her parents to increase the dowry under the threat he would not go through the marriage. The marriage was annulled in 1908 due to non-consummation. Lord Hertford died in 1940, aged 68 and childless, and his titles passed to his nephew, Hugh Seymour.