{"id":1143,"date":"2013-09-27T10:00:56","date_gmt":"2013-09-27T10:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/54.229.91.100\/libraryandarts\/library\/ehistory\/?p=1143"},"modified":"2013-09-27T10:00:56","modified_gmt":"2013-09-27T10:00:56","slug":"once-a-labourer-now-an-earl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/once-a-labourer-now-an-earl\/","title":{"rendered":"ONCE A LABOURER, NOW AN EARL"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>THE LEINSTER LEADER 13 May&nbsp;1939<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><strong><font size=\"4\">ONCE A LABOURER<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><strong><font size=\"4\">NOW AN EARL<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><strong><font size=\"4\">LORD NAAS&#8217;S ROMANTIC CAREER<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Earning 45s. a week as a builder&#8217;s labourer at Croydon, 49-year-old Lord (&quot;plain Bourke without the mister&quot;) Naas&nbsp; has become the ninth Earl of Mayo. Lord Naas, ex-Kenya coffee planter, former film actor, married two years ago, succeeds his father, the eighth Earl&nbsp; of Mayo, who has died at his Maidenhead (Berkshire) home at the age of 79.<br \/>As a labourer Lord Naas was known as Ulick Henry Bourke \u2015 the family name. &quot;Otherwise plain Bourke without the mister, that&#8217;s me,&quot; he said at the time. &quot;I would rather be a bricklayer and be a free man than be pushed into a cushy job to be continually under the thumb&nbsp; of other people,&quot; he said. &quot;Why not this job? I admit it hasn&#8217;t been easy. There was a time when I had only one meal a day.&quot;<br \/>Lord Naas, when a bricklayer, lived in a Pimlico boarding-house room. Now he lives in Chesham Place, Belgrave&nbsp; Square. He studied a film course for six months, and appeared on the screen for one minute in the film &quot;The Gap.&quot; He had to&nbsp; register horror. Then, in 1937, he married Miss Noel Haliburton Wilson at a London registry office. He shared the wedding ring that&nbsp; day. A wide gold ring was sliced horizontally, the bride and bridegroom each wearing half.<br \/>Lady Naas stated at the wedding reception: &quot;Lord Naas is independent and ambitious. He did not want to marry money.&quot;She said to me today: &quot;Since our marriage my husband has gone in for business. He is now interested in a rifle&nbsp; invention, which he hopes the Government will take up.&quot;<br \/>The new earl&#8217;s father, a chartered civil engineer and land agent, was on the chief engineer&#8217;s staff during the&nbsp; construction of the Forth Bridge, and was resident engineer on the Manchester Ship Canal during its construction.<br \/>A few years ago he devised a scheme for the storing of the Thames flood waters in four lake reservoirs. He estimated&nbsp; that it would cost &pound;3,400,000. He was twice married. His first wife, whom he married in 1887, was Miss Ethel Freeman, of Rockfield, Herefordshire.&nbsp; She died in 1913, and three years later he married Miss Margaret Scott.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><strong><em>Lord Naas was once a builder&#8217;s labourer in Croydon. An article from the Leinster Leader of 13 May 1939<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p align=\"justify\"><strong><em>Lord Naas was once a builder&#8217;s labourer in Croydon. An article from the Leinster Leader of 13 May 1939<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newspaper-articles"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kildare Local Studies","author_link":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/author\/localstudies\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}