FITZGERALD, Richard Albert (1806-1847), of Muckridge House, Youghal, co. Cork and North Great George’s Street, Dublin and Air Street, Piccadilly, London, Mdx.

Fitzgerald was born at Clonmel, county Tipperary, one of 12 children of a wealthy Catholic landholder with estates in counties Cork and Tipperary into a junior branch of the Leinster family, his father being a descendant of the 5^th earl of Kildare.1B. O’Connor, ‘The Nagles of Garnavilla, County Tipperary’, Irish Genealogist, iii (1956), 17-25 [20]; Limerick Standard, 16 Apr. 1840; Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs, i. 141; A. Fitzgerald, ‘Thunder from Ireland’: www.myfamily.com. His mother was the subject of Edward Lysaght’s poem, ‘Kate of Garnavilla’, and a brother, Frederick, was an officer of the Imperial Austrian Army. He appears to have been active in politics from an early age, and was (apparently) admitted to the Catholic Association in November 1824. After completing his education in Paris, where he later married, he returned to Ireland and by 1839 had become a member of Daniel O’Connell’s Precursor Society.2Morning Post, 10 Nov. 1824; Freeman’s Journal, 20 Feb. 1839. In January 1841 he joined the Irish ‘Friends of Reform’ to oppose Lord Stanley’s registration bill, and, in May 1843, became one of the first magistrates to be dismissed by the Irish lord chancellor for attending repeal meetings. (He was reinstated in August 1846.)3Morning Post, 27 May 1843; PP 1843 (384) li. 1; Freeman’s Journal, 13 Jan. 1841, 16 Jan. 1845, 19 Aug. 1846; Standard, 29 Aug. 1846. He claimed that the dismissal had merely ‘relieved him from a post of trouble and responsibility which he had never sought, and which he only accepted of at the request of his neighbours’: Hansard, 3 Apr. 1846, vol. 85, c. 569. Thereafter he attended the ‘monster meeting’ at Skibereen, along with others in county Cork, and addressed a gathering at Lismore, speaking out against the Irish church establishment.4Freeman’s Journal, 27 Sept. 1843. In April 1844 he attended a public meeting at Cork, called by O’Connell to denounce Lord Eliot’s registration bill, and, the following month, while attending his first meeting of the Repeal Association, was called to the chair by O’Connell, whereupon he delivered a long address ‘in a very prosaic and monotonous style’.5Standard, 11 Apr. 1844; Morning Post, 15 May 1844. He also presented his three year-old son to the the meeting as a prospective member of the Association.

A founder and committee member of the ’82 Club, a society dedicated to the commemoration of Ireland’s ‘patriot parliament’, Fitzgerald’s long attachment to the ‘popular cause’ and ‘high place on the list of Repeal Arbitrators’ secured his selection as a candidate for Tipperary, following the death of the sitting Liberal, Robert Otway Cave in 1845. Though he was neither resident in the county, nor personally ambitious, Fitzgerald enjoyed O’Connell’s backing and was duly returned unopposed as a repealer, 21 Feb. 1845.6Freeman’s Journal, 16 Jan., 24 Feb. 1845; Morning Chronicle, 20 Jan. 1845; Morning Post, 22 Jan. 1845; D. O’Connell to W. Smith O’Brien, 1 Jan. 1845, O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, vii. 298-9. He subsequently informed the house that he had neither sought the representation, ‘nor expended a farthing on his election’: Hansard, 3 Apr. 1846, vol. 85, c. 569. In his subsequent address to the Repeal Association, he argued that repeal did not involve Ireland’s separation from Great Britain, and expressed his firm belief in Ireland’s loyalty to the crown.7Freeman’s Journal, 25 Feb. 1845. By December, however, he had adopted a more militant posture, following the ‘most insulting’ oath which he had been administered upon taking his seat. Fearing the ‘coercion’ of Ireland, he briefly considered a policy of non-attendance, and although an adherent of ‘peaceful agitation’, he was emboldened by the sympathy he had recently witnessed for the Irish cause while travelling in France, Spain and Portugal, and pledged that he would struggle and, ‘if necessary take arms’, to defend the constitutional rights of Ireland.8Freeman’s Journal, 2 Dec. 1845; The Times, 3 Dec. 1845. While on the continent he had been gathering materials for a history of Ireland on behalf of his friend Thomas Davis, who expired in his absence.

Fitzgerald first spoke in the House on famine relief, advocating greater Irish participation in the consideration of government policy to meet the crisis. A supporter of free trade, he endorsed Peel’s plan to remit duties on corn, expressing admiration for the prime minister’s ‘moral courage’ in advancing the measure and dividing in favour of repeal, 27 Mar. 1846.9Hansard, 18 Mar. 1846, vol. 84, cc. 1212-3; 23 Feb. 1846, vol. 83, cc. 1414-6. The following month, believing that ‘no language could adequately describe’ the distress of the Irish people, he introduced (with William Sharman Crawford) a bill for the protection and relief of ejected tenants in Ireland.10Hansard, 13 Mar. 1846, vol. 84, c. 1008; PP 1846 (237) ii. 79. Fitzgerald was surprisingly restrained in his criticism of the government’s Irish coercion bill, opposing it ‘not to protect or palliate’ systemic violence, but because the measure seemed bound to fail and ‘still further exasperate the people’. He does not appear to have served on any committees and defended William Smith O’Brien’s refusal to submit to service in April 1846.11Hansard, 3 Apr. 1846, vol. 85, cc. 567-9; 28 April, vol. 85, cc.1190-1.

Although initially inclined to support the new Whig ministry that took office in 1846, Fitzgerald expressed disappointment with its proposals to deal with destitution in Ireland, and argued for a diversion of labour from public works to the cultivation of crops. In defending the efforts made by resident landlords to provide relief in February 1847, he condemned the ‘evil of absenteeism’ which, he claimed, annually drained the country of £4,000,000 in rents.12Hansard, 19 Feb. 1847, vol. 90, c. 289; 5 Mar. 1847, vol. 90, cc. 976-7; 18 Mar. 1847, vol. 91, cc. 185-6. He was convinced that railway construction ‘would be of vast and almost permanent advantage’ in improving the conditions of the Irish labourer and consequently voted for Lord George Bentinck’s Irish railway bill.13Hansard, 9 Mar. 1846, vol. 84, c. 801; Standard, 17 Feb. 1847. The following month he supported the first reading of Sharman Crawford’s bill to give legal effect to Ulster Custom, and criticised Lord John Russell’s Irish poor relief bill, arguing that by increasing the number of ex officio guardians, the poor law boards would fall into the hands of Protestant magistrates and landlords, thus renewing ‘religious animosities … with greater bitterness than ever’.14Morning Chronicle, 22 Feb. 1847; Hansard, 25 Mar. 1847, vol. 91, cc. 401-2.

Fitzgerald remained faithful to O’Connell after the repeal movement divided in 1847.15The Times, 16 June 1847. However, on 11 June it was announced that he had suddenly resolved to retire, citing his disgust ‘at the incompetence of an English House of Commons to legislate for Ireland’.16Daily News, 11 June 1847; The Times, 11, 14 June 1847. He had, however, died of typhus fever the previous day at Tramore, county Waterford, four days after contracting the illness ‘while attending to the relief of the destitute in his locality’.17Freeman’s Journal, 15 June 1847; Daily News, 16 June 1847. His death was announced by the Cork Reporter on 12 June. After his death, his widow and children took up residence in France where they owned extensive properties. He was succeeded by his only son Richard Edwin (1838-1916), then a minor, who later settled in Brittany .18O’Connor, ‘The Nagles of Garnavilla’, 24-5; A. FitzGerald, ‘Richard Albert Fitzgerald Esq. M.P. for Tipperary’: www.genforum.genealogy.com.