DAMER, Lionel Seymour William Dawson (1832-1892), of Came Abbey, Dorchester, Dorset and 2 Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square, London, Mdx.

Damer was the son of Colonel George Lionel Dawson Damer, MP for Portarlington, 1835-47, and Dorchester, 1847-52, and the grandson of John Dawson, 1^st earl of Portarlington.1His father had adopted the surname of Damer in 1829, and his son was most commonly referred to by this name. He was born at Brighton, educated in England, and entered the army in November 1849 as an officer in the Scots Fusilier Guards. He served in the Crimea, distinguishing himself at the battles of the Alma and Inkerman in September 1854, and bore a medal with four clasps, a Turkish medal, and fifth class Medjidie.2Hart’s Army List (1856), 160; Sir F. Maurice, The History of the Scots Guards. From the Creation of the Regiment to the Eve of the Great War (1934), ii. 53, 79, 84, 98, 306; Daily News, 19 Dec. 1892. Presented at court by the duke of Cambridge in March 1855, he was decorated by the Queen that May: Daily News, 15 Mar. 1855; Aberdeen Journal, 23 May 1855. He left the army, 15 Jan. 1856, and was appointed as a lieutenant in the Queen’s Own Dorsetshire yeomanry cavalry, 20 April 1858.3Dod’s Peerage (1865), 479; F. Boase, Modern English Biography, ii. 1590.

Nicknamed ‘Hippy’, Damer was described as genial and ‘blessed with an appreciation of the good things of this life’.4Vanity Fair, 18 Nov. 1871. In April 1855 he had married the daughter of Lord Rokeby, to whom he had served as aide-de-camp in the Crimea.5Hampshire Telegraph & Sussex Chronicle, 28 Apr. 1855; Daily News, 1 Jan. 1855. With the backing of local landowners and the influence of his uncle, the 3^rd earl of Portarlingon, he was returned to Parliament as ‘a Liberal Conservative’ for the pocket borough of Portarlington at the 1857 general election, defeating the sitting Liberal-Conservative member.6Morning Chronicle, 11 Mar. 1857; Freeman’s Journal, 19 Mar. 1857; Liverpool Mercury, 20 Mar. 1857. He voted against Lord Palmerston’s ministry on the conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858, and supported Lord Derby’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859. He was re-elected unopposed in 1859, but remained largely inactive. His name was more commonly associated with rifle shooting competitions, yachting regattas, and ‘aristocratic pigeon handicaps’, than with parliamentary politics, and he is not known to have spoken in the House.7Freeman’s Journal, 3 May 1859; The Era, 9 June 1861; Caledonian Mercury, 27 June 1861; Morning Chronicle, 9 Aug. 1861. He supported the Derby ministry on the address, 10 June 1859, and remained an orthodox Conservative, opposing the repeal of paper duties, 12 Mar. 1860, 30 May 1861, the ballot, 20 Mar. 1860, and the abolition of church rates, 27 Feb. 1861, 14 May 1862. Having opposed the abolition of the Oxford tests, 16 Mar. 1864, and the borough franchise bills, 11 May 1864, 8 May 1865, he voted against the ministry on the Schleswig-Holstein question, 8 July 1864. In the spring of 1865 he served on select committees on the management of the River Thames, and the waterworks bill.8PP 1865 (399) xii. 611; PP 1865 (401) xii. 445. He made a lacklustre effort to keep his seat at the 1865 general election, standing for ‘a fair measure of tenant-right – not a bill for the spoliation of property’. He was unexpectedly defeated by the Liberal attorney-general for Ireland, James Lawson, who attacked him for failing to support the removal of parliamentary oaths for Catholics, and being unable to point to ‘any signal parliamentary services’ rendered on behalf of his constituents.9Freeman’s Journal, 13, 15 July 1865. He did, however, oust Lawson from Portarlington in 1868, and held the seat until 1880.10Freeman’s Journal, 21 Nov. 1868. In March 1889 he succeeded his cousin Henry John, as 4^th earl of Portarlington, but as an Irish peer did not take a seat in the House of Lords. The proprietor of a 20,000 acre estate, he was largely resident at Emo Court, Queen’s County, where he was a benevolent and popular landlord, and was active in local administration.11P.F. Meehan, The Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly (Queen’s and King’s Counties), 1801-1918 (1983), 105; Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 19 Dec. 1892. The estate lay chiefly in Queen’s County, with 4,000 acres lying in King’s County, and Tipperary. He also owned nearly 5,000 acres in Tyrone: J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 142.

Portarlington died of pneumonia while convalescing at Portland Lodge, his Bournemouth residence, in December 1892, and was buried in the churchyard of Came, the Dorset home of his family.12Meehan, Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly, 105; The Times, 19 Dec. 1892; Daily News, 19 Dec. 1892. He was succeeded in the earldom by his eldest son, Lionel George Henry Seymour (1858-1900), an officer in the Scots Guards and a Conservative in politics.13G.E.C., Complete Peerage, x. 581. His will was proved at £9,764.