Victor Spencer, 1st Viscount Churchill
Major Victor Albert Francis Charles Spencer, 1st Viscount Churchill (23 October 1864 – 3 January 1934), known as the Hon. Victor Albert Spencer until 1886 and as The Lord Churchill between 1886 and 1902, was a British peer and courtier. He was from the Spencer family. Background. Spencer was born at 32, Albemarle Street, London, the son of Francis George Spencer, 2nd Baron Churchill (6 October 1802 – 24 November 1886), and his wife Jane. He was a Page of Honour to Queen Victoria from 1876 to 1881, and in 1886 he succeeded to his father's  title of Baron Churchill. He was a grandson of Francis Spencer, 1st Baron Churchill. Educated at Eton College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards in 1884 as a lieutenant, staying in the Guards until 1889. He was a colonel in the Home Defense from 1915 to 1918. For Edward VII's coronation he served as lord chamberlain, and at the coronation of George V, he was Master of the Robes. He was acting Master of the Buckhounds between 1900 and 1901 during the tenure of Charles Cavendish, the office holder, while Cavendish was  in South Africa. Political career. Spencer was a Lord in Waiting from 1889 to 1892 and 1895 to 1905 in both of Salisbury's governments and was created Viscount Churchill, of Rolleston, in the County of Leicester, on 15 July 1902 (it had already been announced in the Coronation Honours list the previous month that he would be created a Viscount). Business career. He was chairman and director of several transport companies, including the Great Western Railway 1908–34 and was the longest serving chairman of the company. He was also a director of the British India Steamship Company, P&O and  the Grand Union Canal. Family. Lord Churchill married Lady Verena Maud Lowther, daughter of Henry Lowther, 3rd Earl of Lonsdale, at Cottesmore, Rutland, on 1 January 1887. They had four children. When she wished to divorce Lord Churchill, King Edward forbade it, to avoid a scandal among his social circle. Instead she disappeared in 1909 taking their son, aged 19, and two daughters, aged 13 and 8, with her. Lord Churchill placed an anonymous advertisement seeking information about his family's whereabouts, but the scandal soon became public. In 1927 he obtained a divorce on the grounds of desertion. Churchill  married as his second wife Christine McRae Sinclair. They had two children. He died of pneumonia on 3 January 1934.