Captain Otway Cuffe, benefactor, Gaelic revivalist, twice mayor of Kilkenny and a founder of businesses and organisations to profit the local people, is born in London on January 11, 1853.

Cuffe is born the Honourable Otway Frederick Seymour Cuffe to John Cuffe, 3rd Earl of Desart, and Lady Elizabeth Lucy Campbell. He has an older sister and two older brothers. After the death of his eldest brother William Ulick, 4th Earl of Desart, his seecond eldest brother, Hamilton, becomes the 5th Earl of Desart. As the 5th Earl has no male heirs himself, Cuffe is nominally his heir. However, as he also dies without heirs, the line becomes extinct upon the death of the 5th Earl.

Cuffe marries Elizabeth St. Aubyn on July 22, 1891. She is the daughter of John St. Aubyn, 1st Baron St. Levan of St. Michael’s Mount, Cornwall, England, and Lady Elizabeth Clementina Townshend. When he becomes the heir to the Kilkenny-based title he moves to Ireland and lives nearby the main house, in Sheestown Lodge, Kilkenny, County Kilkenny. He has been in the British Army, serving as aide-de-camp to Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, in 1880–81. He is Groom of the Privy Chamber to Queen Victoria from 1893 until her death in 1901 and Gentleman Usher to both King Edward VII from 1901 until his death in 1910 and King George V until 1911. His rank in the army is Captain in the Rifle Brigade.

Dedicated to ensuring a strong Irish identity in the area, Cuffe works with his sister-in-law, Ellen Cuffe, Countess of Desart. He joins Conradh na Gaeilge soon after his arrival in Kilkenny. He is elected president of its Kilkenny branch in 1904 and remains so until his death. He is replaced by Lady Desart. Together they open the theatre in Kilkenny in 1902 and he is the first President of the Kilkenny Drama Club. He also performs on stage.

Cuffe is first elected Mayor of Kilkenny in 1907 and again in 1908. With Lady Desart, he builds the Kilkenny Woollen Mills, Desart Hall, the Talbot’s Inch model village and the Kilkenny Woodworkers factory. He lays the foundation stone for Kilkenny’s Carnegie library. He is also President of the Irish Industrial Association.

Cuffe is a friend of William Morris whom he had met on a trip to Iceland. He believes in the Arts and Crafts movement and tries to implement it in the projects which he drives. He is also a friend and supporter of Standish James O’Grady and helps him found the weekly radical conservative paper The All-Ireland Review and runs it between 1900 and 1906.

In 1911, Cuffe becomes ill and is forced to move to warmer climates until he recovers. He decides to go to the south of Europe but then a visit to Australia seems appropriate. However, on the journey there he contracts pneumonia and dies at Fremantle in Western Australia on January 3, 1912. He is buried at Perth, carried to his grave by Kilkenny hurlers. The Kilkenny Moderator calls his death “a thunderbolt to the people of Kilkenny.” He is remembered as a visionary who made a permanent impact on the physical landscape of Kilkenny.