TOTTENHAM, Charles (1807-1886), of Ballycurry, co. Wicklow and New Ross, co. Wexford

Tottenham came from a leading family of New Ross property owners and corporators (nominally headed by their kinsmen the marquesses of Ely), who since the Union had taken turns with the Leighs of Rosegarland to nominate the borough’s Member. His father had sat there from 1802 until July 1805, when he retired in favour of his uncle Ponsonby Tottenham. At the 1830 general election Tottenham appears to have broken ranks with his family and subscribed £100 towards the return of Henry Lambert as a reformer for county Wexford. Wexford Herald, 7, 18 Aug. 1830. At the 1831 general election he came forward for New Ross, where it was his father’s turn to nominate, with the support of Lambert and was returned unopposed. The local press assumed that he had been sent ‘into Parliament for the avowed purpose of supporting’ the Grey ministry’s reform bill, for which he voted at its second reading, 6 July, but on the 9th he took the Chiltern Hundreds, apparently because his father wanted a ‘thorough-going Tory’. Wexford Independent, 13 May; Dublin Evening Post, 26 May; Wexford Herald, 17 Aug. 1831. He offered again in 1835 as a Conservative, but was beaten by a Liberal, and sat from 1856 to 1863, when he retired in favour of his son Charles George Tottenham (1835-1918). Tottenham died at Ballycurry in June 1886. The Times, 4 June 1886.