Notes
His biography on the college website states: ‘George Francis Augustus Venables was the son of George William Henry, 7th Baron Vernon and Frances Margaret Lawrence. The daughter of a rich New York banker, Lady Vernon became mentally ill after the birth of her second son in 1889 and went to live in the South of France. In 1898 George William Henry died prematurely at the age of 44 and George Francis Augustus, then only ten years old, succeeded him as 8th Baron Vernon. He became a ward of his aunt the Honourable Adele Anson, was educated at Stone House College and Eton. He was a pageboy at King Edward’s coronation, astonished the village of Poynton, Cheshire, by leading a life of lavish entertainment and was frequently fined for speeding with his new motor car.
Leaving behind his extravagant lifestyle he went into the diplomatic service was the Honorary Attach at Constantinople in 1908 and attached to the Legation at Munich from 1909 until the outbreak of war. Lord Vernon enlisted in August 1914 as a Captain in the Derbyshire Yeomanry serving in Egypt and Gallipoli. He caught dysentery in the Gallipoli campaign and died in Malta on 19 November 1915, where he was buried.