Francis Needham, 2nd Earl of Kilmorey

Francis Jack Needham, 2nd Earl of Kilmorey (12 December 1787 – 20 June 1880), known as Viscount Newry from 1822 to 1832, was an Anglo-Irish peer and Member of Parliament.

Biography He was the son of General Francis Needham, 1st Earl of Kilmorey. He was elected to the House of Commons for Newry in 1819 (succeeding his father), a seat he held until 1826. In 1832 he succeeded his father in the earldom but as this was an Irish peerage it did not entitle him to a seat in the House of Lords. He served as High Sheriff of Down for 1828.

He married Jane Gun-Cuninghame in 1814, they separated in 1835 and she died in 1867. He married his second wife, Martha Foster (1838-1908), on the 20 November 1867. No issue.

Lord Kilmorey scandalised Victorian society by eloping with his ward, Priscilla Anne Hoste (26 June 1823 – 21 October 1854), when he was in his late fifties and she was 20. Priscilla Hoste was the daughter of Admiral Sir William Hoste and his wife Lady Harriet Walpole. Her father died when she was a small child and her mother allegedly was careless of her relations with Lord Kilmorey.

A year after their elopement, in July 1844, they had a child, Charles, who Lord Kilmorey acknowledged as his son and to whom he gave his surname. He set up his mistress in an adjoining house with a tunnel between the two.

Legacy Kilmorey was succeeded in his titles by his grandson Francis, his eldest son Francis Needham, Viscount Newry, having predeceased him.

Charles Needham, despite being illegitimate, was said to be his father's favourite – the "apple of his eye". He was two years younger than his half-nephew, the eventual 3rd Earl of Kilmorey. On 25 February 1874 he married in London a Dutch heiress called Henriette Amélie Charlotte Vincentia barones van Tuyll van Serooskerken (known as Amy), the third daughter of Vincent Gildemeester baron van Tuyll van Serooskerken, who had made a fortune out of the tin concessions on the island of Billiton in the Dutch East Indies. Charles and Amy had two daughters, Evelyn and Violet.

Violet Needham (1876–1967) was the author of 19 books for children published between 1939 and 1957. Although she came to writing late – she was 63 when her first book, The Black Riders, was published – her books achieved immediate and lasting popularity with young readers.