Lord Ralph Kerr
(1837-1916)
8 January 1861

Volume 2, page 147, sitting number 1888.

Born on 11 August 1837, Lord Ralph Drury Kerr was the third son of John William Robert Kerr, 7th Marquess of Lothian, by his wife Lady Cecil née Chetwynd-Talbot, daughter of the 2nd Earl Talbot of Hensol. 

On 24 July 1878 he married Lady Anne Fitzalan Howard, daughter of the 14th Duke of Norfolk. Their marriage produced six children. 

He entered the 10th Hussars as a Cornet on 24 November 1857, reaching the rank of Major-General in 1890. He served with distinction in the Afghan War 1878-1879, including the action at Futtehbad (mentioned in despatches, medal, and C.B.). From 1891 to 1896 he commanded the Curragh District (Army and Navy Gazette, 13 February 1897).

He died, aged 79, on 18 September 1916 at his residence at Woodburn, Dalkeith. A short obituary appeared in the Aberdeen Press and Journal (19 September 1916). 'Major-General Lord Ralph Drury Kerr died at Dalkeith yesterday, aged 79. He was a military K.C.B. and late colonel of the 10th Hussars. He saw service in the Afghan campaign in 1879, and retired in 1898. He was son of the 7th Marquis of Lothian and uncle and heir-presumptive of the present peer.'

Various newspapers reported on his funeral, which took place on 21 September 1916 at St David's Roman Catholic Chapel at Eskbank, Dalkeith, where 'for the last twenty years [the deceased] had been the principal lay member in that congregation. [...] The service consisted of a solemn Requiem Mass, at which the celebrant was the Rev. Ralph Kerr from the London Oratory, a nephew of Lord Ralph Kerr' (The Scotsman, 22 September 1916). 

[The bronze on the desk behind the sitter is a scale model of one of the Marly Horsemen by Guillaume Cousteau, commissioned by Louis XV in 1739 and now at the bottom of the Champs-Elysées.]