Place Name
Originally Snead’s Court. Francis Charles Seymour-Conway (March 11, 1777 – March 1, 1842) was 3rd Marquess of Hertford, but more pertinently for this street was also the Earl of Yarmouth who lived at 104 Piccadilly, near here. He was a Tory Member of Parliament from 1797 representing numerous constituencies Orford, Lisburn, Antrim and Camelford. And when, in 1809, Viscount Castlereagh, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, had a duel with the then-Foreign Secretary and future Prime Minister George Canning, he acted as his second. Yarmouth died at Dorchester House in Park Lane, having spent his final years years, it was said, with a retinue of prostitutes. He was said to have a mental instability which afflicted several members of his family. The Every Woman Dreams website says: “He was nicknamed Red Herrings because of his red hair and whiskers. Known for his appetite for sensual pleasures, he was once described by a colleague as ‘a man without one redeeming quality in the multitude of his glaring, damning vices.’ Toward the end of his life, a critic said of Seymour-Conway, ‘[He was] the debauched sensualist, the heartless roué, the gamester – he who never envinced a latent spark of virtue among the his glaring vices, revelling in crime even in his impotent old age and dotage.’ He died at Dorchester House, Park Lane. His mother Lady Hertford, had been the mistress of George IV.
