On 2 February 1920, his father was created Earl of Midleton and the Viscount Dunsford, of Dunsford in the County of Surrey. Thereafter, and until his father's death in 1942, he was referred to by the courtesy title of Viscount Dunsford.[5]
Lord Midleton was married three times to three actresses, but did not have any children from any of his marriages.
First marriage
His first marriage was to the stage actress Margaret "Peggy" Rush,[a] a daughter of J. Rush, of Cromer, Norfolk, on 23 June 1917.[9] They divorced in March 1925[10] before he succeeded to the Earldom.[2]
Second marriage
On 28 July 1925, when he was known as Viscount Dunsford, he married Guinevere Jeanne (née Sinclair) Gould (1885–1978) at the American Presbyterian Church in Montreal.[11] Guinevere, an actress at the Gaiety Theatre, was the widow of George Jay Gould,[12] and a daughter of Alexander Sinclair of Dublin.[b] Her grandfather was Sir Edward Burrowes Sinclair, King's Professor of Midwifery in the School of Physic of the University of Dublin,[15] and her cousin was Sir George McMunn, High Commissioner of Palestine.[11] They were divorced in 1975.[2]
Third marriage
In the 1950s he met film actress Irene Lilian Creese (1911–1993), better known by her stage name Rene Ray, who was born in London and made her London acting debut at the Savoy Theatre in 1930.[16] Lord Midleton and Ray, whose first husband was composer George Posford, moved to Jersey together in 1963. Immediately after his 1975 divorce from his second wife, Guinevere, he married for the third, and final, time to Ray on 24 April 1975.[2]
^Peggy was born in Chicago, Illinois, in around 1898. Her parents relocated to England, when she was just three months old. In 1915 she began her stage career as a member of a musical comedy chorus, that appeared at the Maxine Elliott's Theatre.[7] A photograph of her by the Bassano studio (1923) can be found in Britain’s National Portrait Gallery.[8] "Miss Rush had a sense of humor... She once said that she never knew whether to refer to herself as American or English. She quipped that she felt safest calling herself a Chicagoan".[7]
^Guinevere had been the mistress of George Jay Gould before the death of his first wife, fellow actress Edith Kingdon, in 1921.[13] Sinclair married Gould on 1 May 1922 and had three children with him, George Sinclair Gould (1915–2003), Jane Sinclair Gould (1916–1948), and Guinevere Gould (1922–1968).[14]
