His father owned large plantations in Ceylon and was made a Hereditary Baron of the Austrian Empire by Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria.

[1] His maternal grandfather was a West Indian merchant, whose fortune Lord Pirbright inherited indirectly through his uncle George Samuel.

[3] De Worms served as Conservative Member of Parliament for Greenwich from 1880 to 1885 and for Liverpool East Toxteth from 1885 to 1895 and held office under Lord Salisbury as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade from 1886 to 1888 and as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1888 to 1892.

He was British Plenipotentiary and President of the Conference on Sugar Bounties in 1888,[4] and later served as a Commissioner for the Patriotic Fund.

[citation needed] His publications include England's Policy in the East, The Earth and its Mechanism, The Austro-Hungarian Empire and Memoirs of Count Beust.