Dundalk (UK Parliament constituency)

For other uses, see Dundalk (disambiguation).

Dundalk
Former Borough constituency
for the House of Commons
1801 (1801)–1885 (1885)
Number of members	One
Replaced by	North Louth

Dundalk was a parliamentary borough constituency in Ireland, which returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was an original constituency represented in Parliament when the Union of Great Britain and Ireland took effect on 1 January 1801, replacing the Dundalk constituency in the Parliament of Ireland.

Boundaries

This constituency was the Parliamentary borough of Dundalk in County Louth.

History

The constituency was one of the two member borough constituencies in the Parliament of Ireland, which became a single member United Kingdom constituency when the union of Great Britain and Ireland took effect on 1 January 1801.

The first member of the United Kingdom House of Commons was to be selected from the area's two MPs in the Irish Parliament, by drawing lots. However both members resigned so the seat could not be filled by co-option and a by-election was necessary. The by-election took place on 28 February 1801. The Right Honourable Isaac Corry, a quite prominent political figure, was elected the first United Kingdom MP for Dundalk.

Corry was associated with what came to be called the Tory Party after the death of William Pitt the younger in 1806. Up until the extension of the franchise in 1832, the borough was strongly Tory in representation. The fact that no Tory or Conservative was elected after 1832 may say something about the unrepresentative nature of the old franchise.

Dundalk had a population of 9,256 in 1821. Walker records that the electorate in 1831 numbered 36. The population in 1831 had increased to 10,750. All the elections in the borough between 1801 and 1831 were unopposed returns.

The 132 general election was conducted on a new franchise. The registered electorate, under the new system, numbered 318. At the borough's first contested election of the century 295 people voted (Liberal 167, Conservative 128).

From 1832 to 1885 the constituency returned members who were Liberals or who belonged to a series of Irish based groups (the Repeal Association, the Independent Irish Party and the Home Rule League). The Liberals elected in Dundalk tended to have nationalist leanings.

The last MP for the constituency was the prominent Liberal lawyer-politician, Charles Russell. An Irish born Catholic, Russell was to be the lead Counsel for Charles Stewart Parnell during the inquiry into allegations which had appeared in The Times. In March 1887 it had been suggested that Parnell was complicit in the murders of the Chief Secretary for Ireland Lord Frederick Cavendish and the Permanent Under-Secretary for Ireland, T.H. Burke. Letters were produced to support the allegations. As a result of Russell's masterly cross-examination of Richard Pigott, the forger of the letters, the Commission of Enquiry vindicated Parnell.

Members of Parliament

Election		Member [1]	Party	Note
	1801, January 1	seat vacant	...	Both members in the Irish Parliament had resigned
	1801, February 28	Rt Hon. Isaac Corry	Tory
	1802, July 15	Richard Archdall	Tory
	1806, November 22	John Metge	Tory	Resigned (appointed Escheator of Munster)
	1807, January 20	Josias Dupré Porcher	Tory	1807, May: Also returned by and elected to sit for Old Sarum
	1807, August 4	Patrick Crawford Bruce		Resigned
	1808, July 27	Thomas Hughes		Died
	1812, February 21	Frederick Trench	Tory
	1812, October 26	John Metge	Tory	Resigned (appointed Escheator of Munster)
	1813, January 2	Lyndon Evelyn	Tory
	1818, June 29	Gerrard Callaghan	Tory
	1820, March 24	John Metge	Tory	Resigned (appointed Escheator of Munster)
	1820, June 29	George Hartopp	Tory	Died
	1824, May 5	Sir Robert Harry Inglis, Bt	Tory
	1826, June 12	Charles Barclay	Tory
	1830, August 14	Hon. John Hobart Cradock	Tory
	1831, May 13	James Edward Gordon	Tory
	1832, December 19	William O'Reilly	Liberal
	1835, January 14	William Sharman Crawford	Liberal
	1837, August 2	Thomas Nicholas Redington	Liberal	Appointed Under-Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant
	1846, July 31	Daniel O'Connell, Jnr	Repeal Association
	1847, August 6	Charles Carroll MacTavish	Repeal Association	Unseated on petition
	1848, March 20	William Torrens McCullagh	Liberal	Declared duly elected, on petition
	1852, July 15	Sir George Bowyer, Bt	Liberal	Became a member of the Independent Irish Party
	1852		Independent Irish	Re-elected as a Liberal candidate
	1857, April 2		Liberal
	1868, November 21	Philip Callan	Liberal	Re-elected as a Home Rule League candidate
	1874, February 5		Home Rule League	Also returned by County Louth, but elects to sit here
	1880, April 2	Charles Russell	Liberal	Last MP from the constituency
1885		Constituency abolished

Elections

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Notes

1. ^ Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "D" (part 4)

References

• The Parliaments of England by Henry Stooks Smith (1st edition published in three volumes 1844-50), 2nd edition edited (in one volume) by F.W.S. Craig (Political Reference Publications 1973)
• Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801-1922, edited by B.M. Walker (Royal Irish Academy 1978)