Hayes St Leger, 4th Viscount Doneraile (1 October 1818 – 26 August 1887) was a member of the Peerage of Ireland who was an Irish representative peer in the British House of Lords between 1855 and his death.[1]

Family

Doneraile was the son of Hayes St Leger, 3rd Viscount Doneraile and Lady Charlotte Esther Bernard. He married Mary Ann Grace Louisa Lenox-Conyngham, the daughter of George Lenox-Conyngham and Elizabeth Holmes, on 20 August 1851.[2] Their daughter Emily Ursula Clare St Leger married Bernard FitzPatrick, later 2nd Baron Castletown; their other children, Hayes and May, died as infants in 1852 and 1867.[2]

Career

Doneraile succeeded his father as Viscount in 1854.[2] After Viscount Lorton's death later that year, the Irish peers elected Doneraile a representative in his place on 2 May 1855,[1] and he took the oaths at Westminster on 10 May.[3] He was a Conservative and a member of the Carlton Club.[4] Rarely present in Parliament, he voted by proxy for the Earl of Derby's 1857 resolution condemning the conduct of the Second Opium War.[5] He was High Sheriff of County Cork for 1845,[6] a Deputy Lieutenant for County Cork,[7] and an Honorary Colonel of the North Cork Militia[8] and the 9th Battalion, King's Royal Rifle Corps.[2] Doneraile was a prominent and frequent fox hunter, and was Master of Fox Hounds at the Burton Hunt in Lincolnshire and President of the Duhallow Hunt in Mallow.[9]

Rabies death

Doneraile kept a pet vixen, which bit him and his coachman, Robert Barrer, on 13 January 1887 and was found to have rabies.[9] At the urging of his son-in-law, Castletown, Doneraile and Barrer travelled to the Pasteur Institute in Paris to receive an experimental post-exposure vaccine.[9] Louis Pasteur was travelling and there was a delay before he was reached in Naples. Doneraile's doubts over the vaccine's risk caused him to vacillate further before allowing Jacques-Joseph Grancher to administer two doses, on 24 January and 21 February.[10][11][12] While Barrer survived, Doneraile began to feel unwell on 22 August and to suffer convulsions and delirium on 25 August, dying the following morning at home in Doneraile Court.[9][13] The relatively late and mild onset of symptoms was attributed at the time to the partial effect of the vaccine.[13] An apocryphal tale is that Doneraile was deliberately smothered as a mercy killing.[12][14] The death of such a notable fed the controversy over the vaccine.[15] Pasteur in the British Medical Journal blamed its failure on the delay in starting and the fact that Doneraile accepted only a "simple treatment" rather than the recommended "intensive course".[10] Victor Horsley said Doneraile "refused to go through the treatment ordered";[15] later accounts suggest Doneraile cut short his treatment through boredom or impatience.[16][12]

References

  1. 1 2 "No. 21709". The London Gazette. 8 May 1855. p. 1787.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Burke, Bernard; Burke, Ashworth P. (1915). A genealogical and heraldic history of the peerage and baronetage, the Privy Council, knightage and companionage (77th ed.). London: Harrison. p. 655.
  3. ↑ "Minutes". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Vol. 138. HL. 10 May 1855. col. 289. Retrieved 5 June 2023.
  4. ↑ Dod's Parliamentary Companion (33rd ed.). London: Whittaker. 1865. p. 30.
  5. ↑ "China. Resolutions Moved. Resumed Debate (Second Night)". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Vol. 144. HL. 26 February 1857. col. 1386.
  6. ↑ "New Irish Sheriffs". The Armagh Guardian. 4 February 1845. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  7. ↑ Thom's Irish Almanac and Official Directory of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Dublin: Alexander Thom. 1870. p. 332.
  8. ↑ Burke, Bernard (1880). A Genealogical & Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage & Baronetage (42nd ed.). London: Harrison. p. 384.
  9. 1 2 3 4 "Our Van". Baily's Magazine of Sports & Pastimes. London. 48 (332): 208–209. October 1887.
  10. 1 2
    • Pasteur, Louis (17 September 1887). "M. Pasteur On The Death Of Lord Doneraile". The British Medical Journal. 2 (1394): 642–643. ISSN 0007-1447. JSTOR 20213015.
    • quoted in Priestley, Mrs (August 1888). Agnew, John Holmes; Bidwell, Walter Hilliard (eds.). "Pasteur". The Eclectic Magazine. New York: Pelton. 48 NS (2): 218, footnote.
    • reprinted from Nineteenth Century
  11. ↑ Sleeman, Paddy (6 September 2016). "Lord Doneraile's tame fox and rabies". The Irish Times. Retrieved 30 May 2023.
  12. 1 2 3 Evans, Alun (1995). "The fate of Lord Doneraile and his coachman". Ulster Folklife. 41: 62–69.
  13. 1 2 "Death of Lord Doneraile from Hydrophobia". The Irish Times. 27 August 1887. pp. 5 col. 2. Retrieved 30 May 2023.
  14. ↑ Leland, Mary (17 October 1999). "Doneraile Court gains a facelift but loses its lifeblood". Sunday Independent. Dublin. p. 6. Retrieved 30 May 2023 – via British Newspaper Archive. Hayes St Leger, 4th Viscount, the MFH who was bitten by a pet fox, got rabies and died — some say he was smothered by a group of friends when hydrophobia developed here at Doneraile
  15. 1 2 Horsley, Victor (16 February 1889). "On Rabies: Its Treatment by M. Pasteur, and on the Means of Detecting it in Suspected Cases". The British Medical Journal. 1 (1468): 342–344. doi:10.1136/bmj.1.1468.342. ISSN 0007-1447. JSTOR 20218700. PMC 2154701. PMID 20752593.
  16. ↑ Bence-Jones, Mark (1987). Twilight of the Ascendancy. Constable. p. 68. ISBN 978-0-09-465490-7.
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