SADLEIR, James (1809-1881), of 11 Gloucester Square, Hyde Park, London; 5 Great Denmark Street, Dublin and Clonacody, Clonmel, co. Tipperary

Sadleir1This entry draws heavily on J. O’Shea, Prince of Swindlers: John Sadleir M.P., 1813-56 (1999) came from a banking family in Tipperary, where his maternal grandfather had established a bank in 1803. Having managed the National Bank in Tipperary, he assisted his brother, John, in founding the Tipperary Joint-Stock Bank in 1838, of which he became managing director in 1842, and came to exercise ‘uncontrolled authority’ over its affairs.2G.L. Barrow, The Emergence of the Irish Banking System, 1820-1845 (1975), 161; O’Shea, Prince of Swindlers, 23, 28. His personal fortunes further improved the following year when he married the daughter of a wealthy Leicester industrialist, whose father endowed her with a trust of £10,000. Sadleir’s own father, a prosperous tenant farmer, assigned to him a small estate at Ballyvolode, county Limerick, where he acquired a poor reputation as a landlord.3Ibid., 31, 261; Freeman’s Journal, 5 Dec. 1843. Sadleir also held land in Tipperary and Waterford: Morning Chronicle, 26 Feb. 1853. He assisted with John Sadleir’s return for Carlow in 1847, always remained amenable to his younger brother’s wishes.4O’Shea, Prince of Swindlers, 59, 64.

When the candidacy of the sitting Liberal MP for County Tipperary, Nicholas Maher, ran into difficulties in 1852, Sadleir was selected to stand in his place.5It was suggested that pressure from Sadleir’s bank was also exerted in order to induce Maher to stand aside: J. O’Shea, Priest, Politics and Society in Post-famine Ireland. A study of County Tipperary 1850-1891 (1983), 180. Amidst claims that the selection committee had been packed with his supporters, he was nominated by Archdeacon Michael Laffan and stood in favour of tenant-right and the defence of Catholic rights, and advocated ‘independent government’ for Ireland, coming second in the poll, close behind his cousin, Francis Scully.6O’Shea, Prince of Swindlers, 261-2; Morning Post, 3, 5 July 1852; Freeman’s Journal, 8, 29 July 1852; O’Shea, Priest, Politics and Society, 180. Critics charged that the politically inexperienced Sadleir had the talents of ‘that sort of plodding, money-making cunning’ appropriate for banking, but not for politics. It was correctly anticipated that his ‘feet and not his tongue’ would ‘tell his sentiments on the floor of the House of Commons’.7O’Shea, Prince of Swindlers, 261, quoting The Tablet, 10 July 1852.

As a core member of the ‘Irish Brigade’ of oppositionist Irish Liberals, Sadleir was actively involved in the campaign against the ecclesiastical titles bill and participated in the formation of the Catholic Defence Association.8O’Shea, Priest, Politics and Society, 180-1; Freeman’s Journal, 9 Sept. 1852. He attended the Tenant Right Conference in September 1852, and, as a member of the Brigade’s land committee, founded the Irish Land Company to purchase property under the Incumbered Estates Act.9M. O’Dwyer, A Biographical Dictionary of Tipperary (1999), 381; O’Shea, Prince of Swindlers, 293. However, although he repeatedly pledged himself to the policy of independent opposition, he largely supported the coalition ministry after his brother accepted office in January 1853, voting for Gladstone’s budget in May, and supporting government opposition to an inquiry into Irish taxation. By the autumn he was regarded in Ireland as a ‘ministerialist’ and habitually sat on the government side of the House.10Freeman’s Journal, 5 Oct. 1853; J.H. Whyte, The Independent Irish Party, 1850-9 (1958), 180-1. Yet in April 1853, when he was called upon by sixty Cashel priests to explain his parliamentary conduct, he insisted upon his independence, informing his constituents that he was ‘neither the adherent, nor the follower, nor the partisan’ of the Aberdeen ministry.11O’Shea, Prince of Swindlers, 343; Whyte, Independent Irish Party, 149-50.

Sadleir is not known to have either contributed to debate or introduced any bills, but he served on the select committee on the Irish tenants’ improvements compensation bill in 1853.12PP 1852-53 (19) vii. 263; Morning Chronicle, 26 Feb. 1853; Freeman’s Journal, 5 Oct. 1853. By 1856, however, his bank was hopelessly insolvent, after Sadleir had allowed his brother to overdraw his account to the extent of £200,000, much of which had been employed in railway speculation on the continent.13Barrow, Emergence of Irish Banking, 163. The bank had liabilities of £400,000 and assets of only £35,000: F. Boase, Modern English Biography, iii (1901), 373. After the bank’s crash in February 1856, and John Sadleir’s subsequent suicide, evidence of James’s culpability in the deception of the bank’s shareholders gradually emerged, and pressure mounted from his constituents to resign.14O’Shea, Prince of Swindlers, 450; Freeman’s Journal, 3 Apr. 1856. By the time a warrant for his arrest was issued on 4 July 1856, he had already absconded. John Roebuck moved for his expulsion from parliament, 24 July 1856, but the motion was shelved by the government before being finally carried, 16 Feb. 1857.15PP 1856 (394) (394-I) l. 587, 599; PP 1857 Session 1 (22) xiv. 363; PP 1857 Session 1 (22) xiv. 375; Hansard, 16 Feb. 1857, vol. 144, c. 721; T.E. May, Law of Parliament (10th edn., 1893), 56. Sadleir’s enemies within the Irish Independent party alleged that the government’s actions had forewarned Sadleir of his arrest: Hansard, 7 July 1856, vol. 143, cc. 399-401; Morning Chronicle, 10 July 1856.

After fleeing to Paris via Copenhagen, Sadleir settled in Boulogne before moving to Switzerland in 1861. Both his own and his wife’s estates had been seized by his creditors, and he lived alone in Zurich on an annuity from his wife’s family. He was murdered there in the course of a robbery in June 1881. He left no successor, and the remainder of his Tipperary estate was sold off by his creditors on 24 June 1881.16J. O’Shea, ‘Sadleir, John’, Oxford DNB, xlviii. 553-5; Freeman’s Journal, 14 June 1881.