Lord Richard Cavendish
(1812-1873)
15 May 1861

Volume 3, page 241, sitting number 3645.

Richard Cavendish was born posthumously on 3 July 1812, the son of the Honourable William Cavendish and the Honourable Louisa née O’Callaghan. When his elder brother William succeeded as 7th Duke of Devonshire on 18 January 1858, Richard was granted the rank of a duke’s younger son.

He appears on the 1861 census living at Compton Place in Eastbourne with his widowed mother, the Honourable Louisa Cavendish, and his elder brother Lord George Henry Cavendish, who was the Member of Parliament for North Derbyshire. Also present on the night of the census were eleven live-in servants, including a butler, an under-butler, a footman, a coachman and a valet. 

Lord Richard Cavendish died, aged 62, on 19 November 1873 at 16 Savile Row, London, leaving an estate valued at £90,000. 

A short obituary appeared in the Illustrated London News (29 November 1873). 'Lord Richard Cavendish, who died on the 19th inst., was the youngest son of William Cavendish, Esq., by Louisa, his wife, eldest daughter of Cornelius, first Lord Lismore, and was grandson of George Augustus Henry, who was created Earl of Burllington, Sept. 10, 1831. He was thus brother to William, present Duke of Devonshire, K.G. (father of the Right. Hon. Marquis of Hartington, M.P., Chief Secretary for Ireland); and to Lord George Henry Cavendish, M.P. for North Derbyshire. Lord Richard was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated M.A. 1834, and proceeded LL.D. In 1837 he was raised by patent to the rank of a Earl's son, and in 1858 was accorded the precedence of the son of a Duke. His Lordship was never married.'