THE tenth Earl of Shaftesbury, who disappeared in southern France two weeks ago, had dedicated himself to lifting vulnerable young women out of hostess bars and helping them to change their lifestyles, his lawyer said last night.

Maître Thierry Bensaude said he feared for the safety of a man whose generosity and naivety had sucked him into the shady social circle that gravitates around the night scene on the French Riviera.

Lord Shaftesbury lavished money and affection on the women, Maître Bensaude said.

The lawyer raised the alert when the earl, whose full name is Anthony Ashley-Cooper, vanished earlier this month. He was due to return to Britain from the Côte d’Azur on November 10, but failed to make the journey.

Last week police in Nice began an investigation and appealed for information about the earl. They said that he was an eccentric character who was likely to have changed his plans on a whim.

But last night Maître Bensaude said: “It’s true he was capable of buying an airline ticket for a distant destination at the drop of a hat. But wherever he was, he always stayed in touch with his relations.”

The earl telephoned Maître Bensaude three times on November 4. The next day he met his third wife, Jamila Ben M’Barek, in Cannes. On November 6 he stayed, alone, in the £200-a-night Noga Hilton on the Croisette. He has not been seen since, and has not made contact with his children in Britain or his sister in France.

Their fears are growing that Lord Shaftesbury had become involved with disreputable acquaintances through his relations with bar hostesses.

“He is a true count,” said Maître Bensaude. “He has the distinction and the presence of an aristocrat. But he tried to cross the social barrier and entered a circle whose rules he did not know. When you go into a hostess bar in this region, you do not necessarily think you are in danger. They are not seedy places.

“He was not someone who went from one female conquest to another. He thought he was able to help these women and to have a genuine relationship with them.”

Lord Shaftesbury inherited his title and the 9,000-acre family estate at Wimborne, Dorset, at the age of nine. He met Madame M’Barek, the daughter of Tunisian immigrants, in Paris, where she was working as a bar hostess. She had two children from her first marriage. She lives in a £500,000 flat in Cannes and the name on the door is “Shaftesbury Ashley-Cooper”. However, the earl does not live there. Instead, he visits her on his regular trips from his home in Britain.

Yesterday Mme M’Barek said: “I am very worried about him and very troubled by all this. I love him.”

According to the regional newspaper, Nice Matin, he had also formed a relationship with a 33-year-old woman whom he had met in a bar in Cannes.

She told the newspaper: “Despite the difference in our ages we were building something. We met simply. He told me his life story and I told him mine. For me and my children he was a form of security after some difficult years. I don’t know any single woman who would not have followed a man as attentive and generous from every point of view as him. Our relationship was sincere.”

Staff at the Noga Hilton said Lord Shaftesbury was a regular in the bar. One said: “He is a strange man. He is often unshaven and in jeans and always comes in with a woman, sometimes old, sometimes young.”

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