GALWEY, John Matthew (c.1790-1842), of 72 Jermyn Street, Duckspool, Dungarvan, Co. Waterford

Galwey came from a prominent Catholic family who had long been engaged in trade.2For Galwey’s ancestry see H. Blackall, ‘Correspondence. O’Connell and the Repeal Party’, Irish Historical Studies, 12:46 (1960), 139-43. A wealthy merchant, shipowner and land agent to several landowners, including Lords Cremorne and Donoughmore, and to the large Cork porter brewery of Beamish and Crawford, he owned ‘considerable property’ in county Cork and was a part proprietor of the town of Dungarvan, where he was a substantial employer of labour. He was described as ‘a kind of combination of the Irish catholic squire and a general dealer in trade’.3Morning Chronicle, 20 Dec. 1832; The Times, 2 Feb. 1837, 30 Mar. 1842; Daily News, 6 Nov. 1849.

Despite initial reservations about engaging in ‘party business’ and a sceptical attitude towards ‘liberal agitators’, Galwey became a noted local political leader. In 1826 he acted as treasurer of Henry Villiers Stuart’s committee and was described as ‘one of the ablest captains’ in its successful campaign to oust the Beresfords from the representation of county Waterford, which he was said to know ‘as well as any man living’.4F. O’Ferrall, Catholic Emancipation. Daniel O’Connell and the Birth of Irish Democracy, 1820-30 (1985), 121, 129, 146; W. Fitzpatrick, The Correspondence of Daniel O’Connell. The Liberator, i (1888), 407. A ‘bustling, pushing, active man’, Galwey cut a large and flamboyant figure, once accompanying Daniel O’Connell during his Dungarvan canvass in 1830 ‘dressed in his very peculiar and extraordinary electioneering costume’.5Daily News, 6 Nov. 1849; Freeman’s Journal, 29 July 1830. Curiously, Galwey was once referred to as a ‘cousin of Mr. O’Connell’: Morning Chronicle, 14 Jan. 1833. However, O’Connell’s subsequent criticism of John Hely Hutchinson after his defeat by Thomas Wyse in the Tipperary election in August 1830 alienated Galwey, whose land agent he was. Nevertheless, Galwey’s wealth and political influence made him ‘worth bringing back into the fold’.6Daniel O’Connell to Nicholas Purcell O’Gorman, 25 July 1830, P.V. Fitzgerald to O’Connell, 3 Oct. 1830, O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M. R. O’Connell, iv, 210, 211-2. Having failed to gain Dungarvan as a repealer in 1832, despite O’Connell’s full support, nine days later he stood successfully for county Waterford, where he was backed by his wife’s cousin, Sir Henry Winston Barron (MP for Waterford).

Galwey is only known to have spoken once in parliament (1 July 1834), to deny an allegation made by Feargus O’Connor that the Irish solicitor-general had written to him concerning financial contributions to oppose O’Connell’s candidate at the recent Dungarvan by-election.7Caledonian Mercury, 5 July 1834; Hansard, 25 June 1834, vol. xxiv, cc.840-6, 849; Daily News, 6 Nov. 1849. He is reputed to have had ‘an impeccable voting record’ as a repealer, voting with O’Connell on questions of coercion, repeal and the Irish church, as well as more general reform issues, such as public distress and Lord Ashley’s factory bill.8M. B. Kiely and W. Nolan, ‘Politics, Land and Rural Conflict in County Waterford, c.1830-1845’, in W. Nolan and T. P. Power, Waterford: History and Society (1992), 459-94; Hansard, 8, 12, 20, 21, 22, 29 Mar 1833, vol. xvi, cc.488-9, 528-9, 872-5, 961-3, 988-9, 1166-7, 29 Apr 1834, vol. xxiii, cc.286-7. Yet he made an inauspicious start to his parliamentary career and, after dutifully attending the first meeting of O’Connell’s National Council on 18 January 1833, attracted criticism for remaining in Ireland at the commencement of the session and failing to vote in the first division on the Irish coercion bill.9Hansard, 1 Mar. 1833, vol. xvi, cc.99-100; Morning Chronicle, 13, 21 Mar., 8 July 1833; Freeman’s Journal, 4, 11 Mar. 1833. He appears to have attended parliament with decreasing regularity thereafter and later admitted to ‘the greatest aversion to the late hours he was obliged to attend at the House of Commons, ... which are so contrary to his habits, as well as his being obliged to absent himself for a long time from his family’.10Morning Chronicle, 20 Feb. 1837.

Having returned to Dungarvan at the Easter recess, he was active in mobilising opposition to vestry taxes in his local parish of St. Patrick’s. Another rift with O’Connell opened after he was advised to support Pierce George Barron against Ebenezer Jacob, O’Connell’s preferred candidate, at the Dungarvan by-election in February 1834.11Freeman’s Journal, 13 Apr., 1 June 1833; Fitzpatrick, Correspondence, i, 406. While Galwey pledged his vote to the repeal candidate, he declined to nominate a man ‘he had never seen, known, or even heard of before’. This ‘desertion’ was, however, forgiven and O’Connell was again anxious to arrange an amnesty which would allow Galwey to take his ‘proper place at the head of the people of Dungarvan’. Galwey was, however, reluctant to come to terms with O’Connell.12Morning Chronicle, 11 Feb. 1834; O’Connell to P.V. Fitzpatrick, 17 Feb. 1834, O’Connell to Galwey, 21 Feb. 1834, Galwey to O’Connell, 24 Feb. 1834, O’Connell Correspondence, v, 104, 107. At the second by-election in May he both voted and declared his interest against Jacob and was subsequently accused of persecuting those of his tenants who had voted contrary to his orders. Indeed, the report of the election committee to the Anti-Tory Association on 22 Nov. 1834 severely criticised his ‘political delinquencies’.13Belfast News-letter, 2 Dec. 1834; The Times, 2 Dec. 1834. This breach was never healed and Galwey became increasingly unpopular amongst O’Connell’s supporters. As one contemporary recalled, he became ‘a very disobedient “joint” and after having wriggled for some time, was at last cut off’. In a speech at Waterford on 14 Aug. 1834 O’Connell publicly denounced him as a ‘Luttrell’, a traitor to the cause of Irish nationality.14D. Owen Madden, Ireland and its rulers; since 1829 (1843), 234.

Galwey, however, refused to give up his political ambitions and used the profits he generated from the butter trade to finance his election expenses.15Keily and Nolan, 460. Galwey is reputed to have spent £3,000 on election expenses in 1832 alone: Hoppen, Elections, Politics and Society, 84. Despite issuing an address to the county, Galwey opted instead to contest his native town at the 1835 general election, when he unsuccessfully challenged Michael O’Loghlen, as he did again at the subsequent by-election that September. By this time he had, by one report, ‘sustained more defeats … than any parliamentary candidate on record’.16The Times, 25 Sept. 1835; Caledonian Mercury, 26 Sept. 1835. Undeterred, he contested another by-election in February 1837 and the general election that August, again losing to O’Loghlen. Galwey’s election campaigns were characterised by his clashes with the Catholic clergy. ‘Since emancipation’, he informed the Dublin Evening Mail, ‘I have ever been against the interference of the all-powerful but ambitious priesthood, except in matters concerning religion’. In 1836 he became embroiled in a controversy with the bishop of Waterford over his refusal to allow a priest to celebrate mass in Galwey’s home that Christmas during his wife’s illness because of ‘political differences’.17The Times, 2 June 1835; Morning Chronicle, 14 Nov. 1838. He was also the subject of bitter attacks from the Liberal press, who accused him of ‘always exhibiting himself to the world as a donkey of the first magnitude’. Others admired his dogged determination to defend the political ‘independence’ of his native borough. Commenting on his robust defence of himself against O’Loghlen’s charge that he was supported by the Conservative interest in Dungarvan, The Times observed, ‘John Galwey though nothing but a plain country gentleman, is an ugly customer, whom it were well if persons of higher professional attainments would learn to respect and avoid offending.’18Morning Chronicle, 20 Feb. 1837; The Times, 2 June 1835.

Galwey and his family resided briefly in Weymouth during 1838 but returned to Dungarvan before the great repeal meeting there on 13 January 1841, at which O’Connell, spotting Galwey in the town square, humorously declared, ‘Why, I think I see some fat friend of mine in a window smiling on our proceedings – cheering us on in repeal’.19Morning Chronicle, 14 Nov. 1838; Freeman’s Journal, 18 Jan. 1841. He died aged 53 of heart failure at his home on Good Friday 1842, leaving his widow Anne, who died aged 75 in 1855, and four children to inherit his ‘very considerable’ fortune. To his supporters he was ‘a “Liberal” in the true sense of the word, and as such earned the unmitigated hostility of Mr. O’Connell, who, with the powerful aid of the Roman Catholic clergy, many of whom were disposed to regard Mr. Galwey’s liberalism as little, if anything, short of heresy, raised a prejudice against him sufficiently potent to exclude him from Parliament’.20The Times, 30 Mar. 1842. Although Galwey’s son, Edward, lost his fortune and estates as a result of the famine, the family remained prominent due to his younger brother James (1800-1880), who later became high sheriff of Waterford, inspector-general of Irish prisons, and a director of the Waterford and Limerick Railway.21Burke’s Irish Family Records (1976), 465.