WALDRON, Laurence (1811-1875), of 38 Rutland Square, Dublin; Ballybrack, co. Dublin and Helen Park, co. Tipperary

Waldron was born in Dublin in 1811, one of seven children of Patrick Waldron, a Dublin linen merchant and calico printer. He was the nephew and heir of Laurence Waldron (1763-1833), a wealthy and successful merchant and manufacturer, of Landscape, co. Dublin, from whom, Waldron inherited almost 6,000 acres of land in counties Mayo, Roscommon, Kilkenny and Tipperary, where he came into possession of an estate at Killenaule worth £7,000 per annum and subsequently earned a reputation as a generous and popular landlord.1Freeman’s Journal, 23 May 1833; Law Times, lviii (1875), 438; J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 460; Freeman’s Journal, 14 Aug. 1851, 13 Nov. 1852, 17 Apr. 1857.

Waldron was called to the bar in 1840 and joined the Munster circuit.2Belfast News-letter, 14 Jan. 1840. He ceased to practice after only two years, when he married the daughter of Francis White M.D., president of the College of Surgeons and inspector general of prisons and lunatic asylums in Ireland. As a Liberal (his uncle, John Shinnor, was described in 1838 as ‘an old, respected, and unswerving friend of the Liberator’) he signed the memorial for the release of Charles Gavan Duffy in 1849 and, as a ‘sincere Catholic’, contributed regularly to religious charities, joining the public campaign against the inspection of nunneries bill in 1853.3Freeman’s Journal, 27 Apr. 1838, 31 Mar. 1849; M. Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs, i. 390; Freeman’s Journal, 3 July 1852, 14 Jan., 1, 2 June 1853, 18 Apr. 1854.

Having been briefly spoken of as a candidate for Cashel in 1841, Waldron declined an offer to stand for Tipperary in 1852, citing familial duties. He was again spoken of as a candidate after the Tipperary banking scandal broke in June 1856, and was approached to stand for the county when James Sadleir was expelled from the House in February 1857.4Freeman’s Journal, 3 Mar. 1857; Daily News, 23 June 1856; HP Commons, 1832-68: ‘Robert Keating’. Waldron offered as an advanced and independent Liberal on a platform of tenant-right and disestablishment, citing the position of the Irish Church as the ‘monster grievance of Ireland’. Despite his reputation as ‘one of the best landlords in Tipperary’ and ‘one of the most thoroughly independent men in Ireland’, however, he was roundly defeated in a contest that became ‘one solely of personal rivalry’ against The (Daniel) O’Donoghue. After repudiating charges that he was a ‘place hunter’ and a ‘Sadleirite’, Waldron came forward again at the 1857 general election, claiming to be ‘entirely independent of all Ministerial influence’ and committed to the formation of an ‘Irish National Party … holding itself entirely disengaged from both the great English Political Parties’.5Freeman’s Journal, 18, 19, 28 Feb., 3, 18, 25 Mar. 1857. In spite of further accusations of Whiggery, he was returned unopposed alongside O’Donoghue, promising to stand aloof from the independent leader, George Henry Moore, who was then seeking an alliance with the Derbyites.6Freeman’s Journal, 3 Mar., 15, 17 Apr. 1857; A. Shields, The Irish Conservative Party, 67-8.

In 1857 Waldron served on the select committees on parliamentary oaths and Irish county and district surveyors.7PP 1857 Session 2 (253) ix. 477; PP 1857 Session 2 (270) ix. 55. After supporting the Liberal position on Maynooth, he voted with the Conservative opposition on several issues, including the divorce and matrimonial causes bill, but supported Palmerston’s ministry on its defeat over the conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858. That June, he voiced support for the second reading of the Irish tenants’ compensation bill, arguing that it might serve imperial interests by stemming the flow of emigration from Ireland.8Hansard, 9 June 1858, vol. 150, cc. 1809-10. In January 1859 he attended a meeting of Irish Liberal members which resolved to resist any future coercion bill for Ireland and called instead for the immediate amendment of the laws regulating landlord-tenant relations.9Freeman’s Journal, 26 Jan. 1859; The Times, 27 Jan. 1859. He subsequently displayed support for electoral reform and by mid-1859 had divided (or paired) in favour of the repeal of the septennial act, the extension of the Scottish franchise, the abolition of property qualification, the ballot, and the extension of the county franchise in England.10Freeman’s Journal, 17 Feb. 1859, 8 Mar. 1859; Birmingham Daily Post, 22 Mar. 1860. In spite of what some considered his ‘vague pledge of opposition’, Waldron secured the support of the powerful Tipperary Independent Club and was returned unopposed for the county at the 1859 general election.11J. O’Shea, Priest, Politics and Society in Post-famine Ireland. A study of County Tipperary 1850-1891 (1983), 193; K.T. Hoppen, ‘Tories, Catholics, and the General Election of 1859’, Historical Journal, 13:1 (1970), 48-67 [63-4]. Having shown no inclination to support the Derby ministry, he voted against their reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859, and lent his support to the Liberal amendment to the Queen’s speech, 10 June 1859, which brought the government down. In 1861 he sat on the important select committee on poor relief in Ireland and served on the committee on the Irish births, deaths, and marriages bills.12Whyte, Independent Irish Party, 182-3; PP 1861 (408) (408-I) xi. 647; Freeman’s Journal, 27 Apr. 1861; PP 1861 (425) xiv. 13. Waldron inevitably became embroiled in the controversy over Palmerston’s threat to withdraw the subsidy to the Galway Packet station. In December 1858 he had joined a deputation to the Irish viceroy concerning postal communication between Ireland and America and, during 1859-61, opposed the government’s policy on telegraphic contracts, voting with the opposition on Disraeli’s motion of censure over the Schleswig-Holstein question, 8 July 1864.13Freeman’s Journal, 31 Dec. 1858, 1 Aug. 1860, 3 June 1861.

In April 1863 he introduced a bill to make more effectual provision for the appointment of watchmen in towns in Ireland, and a year later prepared a measure to amend the law relating to grand jury presentments for the maintenance of bridges in Ireland.14PP 1863 (102) v. 410; PP 1864 (70) i. 115. That year he also sat on select committees on scientific institutions in Dublin and the Patent Office Library and Museum in London.15PP 1864 (495) xiii. 1; PP 1864 (504) xii. 1. Waldron was said to possess ‘business capacities of a very high order’ and served on a number of public boards. ‘Clear-headed, shrewd and energetic’, he was chairman of the Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford Railway and, as a man ‘of broad and enlightened views, of great intelligence, and upright and straightforward disposition’ he became a prominent figure in Dublin society, thus acquiring a large circle of influential friends.16Irish Times, 8 Apr. 1875; Freeman’s Journal, 5 Apr. 1875. He was an active member of the Royal Dublin Society, and contributed to Irish scholarship by transcribing Irish manuscripts deposited in European archives during his annual visits to the Continent.17R.M. Gilbert, Life of Sir John Gilbert; LL.D., F.S.A.: Irish Historian and Archivist (1905), 215; E. O’Curry, Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History (1861), 646. He promoted Irish participation in the International Exhibition held in London in 1862, and was on one of the organising committees of the Dublin International Exhibition in 1865. In 1874 he was part of the deputation that called for the establishment of what later became the National Museum of Ireland.18Freeman’s Journal, 23 Sept. 1861, 16, 19 Oct. 1864, 7 Nov. 1874; The Times, 25 Sept. 1861. He was also vice-president of the education department of the National Society for the Promotion of Social Science: Daily News, 17 Aug. 1861.

Waldron was particularly concerned with the question of Catholic rights and education. He had first spoken in the Commons in May 1857 to inquire about the report of the parliamentary inquiry into the state of endowed schools and, in 1861, questioned the exclusivist practices of the Royal Hibernian Military School.19Hansard, 18 May 1857, vol. 145 c. 403; 28 June 1861, vol. 164, c. 82. In August 1860, he was one of 19 Irish Catholic MPs to raise the issue of national education with the Irish chief secretary, and was appointed a commissioner of the National Board of Education in Ireland in March 1861. He was also to serve on the royal commission on Irish education in 1868.20Freeman’s Journal, 19 Dec. 1860; The Times, 23 Mar. 1861, 10 May 1861; PP 1861 (212) xlviii. 683; Belfast News-letter, 7 Jan. 1868; The Examiner, 25 Jan. 1868; PP 1870 [C.6] xxviii. Pt.I, 1. However, with the Liberal electors of Tipperary apparently unimpressed with his performance as an education commissioner and faced by opposition from the National Association, Waldron retired at the 1865 general election.21Caledonian Mercury, 27 July 1865; B. O’Cathaoir, John Blake Dillon: Young Irelander (1990), 160-1. Thereafter he became estranged from the Liberal party (in October 1861 he was reported to have told James Whiteside that if Lord John Russell ever resumed leadership of the Liberal party he would instantly cross to the Conservative side of the house). Proclaiming his faith in Lord Derby to remove all religious inequalities in Ireland, he unsuccessfully contested Tipperary as a Liberal Conservative at the by-election consequent upon the death of John Blake Dillon in October 1866.22A. Shields, The Irish Conservative Party 1852-1868. Land, Politics and Religion (2007), 87; Freeman’s Journal, 28 Sept. 1866; Pall Mall Gazette, 26 Sept. 1866. Having flirted with Conservatism, Waldron next turned to home rule, joining the movement at its inception. He became honorary secretary of the Home Government Association in October 1870, and presided at the first annual meeting of the Home Rule League in February 1874.23Penny Illustrated Newspaper, 10 Sept. 1870; Freeman’s Journal, 4 Nov. 1870, 25 Feb. 1874, 13 Jan., 1, 5 Apr. 1875; Daily News, 25 Feb. 1874; The Nation, 10 Apr. 1875; D. Thornley, Isaac Butt and Home Rule (1964), 109.

Waldron died in April 1875 and was given a well-attended funeral at Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin, of which he had been a board member.24M.H. Gill, A Guide Through Glasnevin Cemetery (1879), 79. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Patrick John (1850-1932), a military officer and high sheriff for co. Louth (1896). His fourth son Laurence Ambrose (1858-1923), a noted stockbroker and patron of the arts, sat as an Independent Nationalist MP for Dublin, St. Stephen’s Green (1904-10).25D. Murphy, ‘Waldron, Laurence Ambrose’, Dictionary of National Biography, ix. 697-8; M. Stenton and S. Lees, Who’s Who of British MPs, ii. 360. Another son, Francis, rose to the rank of brigadier-general in the British Army.