Co. Tipperary

Economic and social profile:

Economic and social profile:

The first return to Westminster for Clonmel after the Union was delayed owing to a transaction between John Bagwell I and the proprietors Lord Mountcashell and Stephen Moore, whom Bagwell bought out. Moore and John Dennis, the sitting Members, did not ballot for the seat and Bagwell returned his son William. The latter held the seat until 1819 when, on obtaining the county seat, he substituted his brother-in-law, having since 1816 been patron in succession to his father.

Richard Pennefather, whose family had been proprietors of this close borough since the early 18th century, was its parliamentary patron from 1787 until his death in 1831. After the Union, he occupied it for only a few months himself and then as a stopgap, preferring to sell it. The paying guest at the Union, Richard Bagwell, made way for his younger brother John in 1801, but from 1802 Pennefather sold the seat to the government, though John Bagwell was ready to bargain with him for it in 1806 and 1812.

Clonmel, a ‘prosperous’ crossing point on the banks of the navigable River Suir, connected by bridges to an island (Long Island), straddled the border between counties Tipperary to the north and Waterford to the south. There was a considerable export trade in corn and an ‘extensive’ cotton manufactory employing about 200 operatives. The streets were paved and from 1824 the town was lit by gas.

Cashel, a small city ‘of one principal street’, possessed ‘no considerable manufacture’ and a ‘great number of poor persons in a state of distress’, who were ‘very inadequately supplied with water’. The representation continued to be ‘exclusively’ controlled by Richard Pennefather, Member, 1818-19, the patron and treasurer of its self-elected corporation of 18 aldermen (one of whom was annually elected mayor), two bailiffs and a theoretically unlimited number of honorary freemen, whose admission was in practice carefully controlled.