LANIGAN, John (1803-1868), of Glenaguile and Richmond House, Templemore, co. Tipperary

A member of the Catholic gentry of county Tipperary, Lanigan was, from 1830, land agent to Robert Otway Cave. He came into possession of a small estate at Glenaguile, four miles east of Nenagh, where his family had been ceded land by Lord Orkney in the early eighteenth century, and inherited Richmond House through marriage.2Freeman’s Journal, 21 Jan. 1839; NLI, Genealogical Office: Ms 110, 185-6; www.rootsweb.com; K. O’Keefe, ‘O’Keefe Family Tree’ [www.iol.ie/~kevnilse/famous]. In 1838 he was amongst the bidders for Cave’s Lissen Hall estate, purchased by Sir Richard Keane for £25,600: Freeman’s Journal, 24 Dec. 1838. As a local squire, Lanigan became embroiled in the rural violence which erupted in Tipperary during 1837-8, when his father-in-law, Charles O’Keefe, was murdered at Thurles, 23 Oct. 1838, and Lanigan himself received a threatening letter shortly afterwards.3Freeman’s Journal, 26 Oct. 1838, 21 Jan. 1839; M.R. Beames, ‘Rural Conflict in Pre-Famine Ireland: Peasant Assassinations in Tipperary 1837-1847’, Past & Present, 81 (1978), 75-91.

Lanigan had commenced his political career by establishing a branch of the Catholic Association in Tipperary with an elder brother, Martin Lanigan (c.1795-1830), a barrister and the leader of the Independent Freeholders of the county, who was credited with engineering the return of Thomas Wyse for Tipperary in 1830.4Freeman’s Journal, 25 Aug., 8 Sept., 7 Oct. 1830, 2 July 1847, 27 Oct. 1868. Martin Lanigan also assisted O’Connell in the prosecution of members of the Irish constabulary following the deaths of protesters at Borrisokane: M. Lanigan to D. O’Connell, 15 May 1830, O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, iv. 164-6. Having been a collector for the O’Connell fund, Lanigan joined the Clonmel Independent Club in March 1832 and helped to organise an anti-tithe meeting at Tipperary. As local treasurer of the National Fund from 1839, he made a fund-raising speech for the Repeal Association at Thurles in 1841, and attended the public dinner for O’Connell at Nenagh in May 1843.5Freeman’s Journal, 5 Nov. 1830, 16, 24 Mar. 1832. However, his suggestion to the independent electors in December 1844 that Daniel O’Connell jr. might succeed Cave as the Liberal representative for Tipperary, was rejected by the Liberator.6Freeman’s Journal, 23 Dec. 1844; J. Lanigan to Daniel O’Connell, 17 Jan. 1845, O’Connell Correspondence, vii. 301. Indeed, Lanigan, who was on the platform at the great repeal meeting at Thurles, 25 Sept. 1845, and chaired a meeting of the Repeal Association in Dublin that November, was himself spoken of as a candidate for Tipperary in 1847, and as ‘an old ally of Daniel O’Connell’, he was well-regarded locally as ‘an honourable and high-minded gentleman’.7Morning Chronicle, 29 Sept. 1845; Freeman’s Journal, 4 Nov. 1845, 30 June, 2 July 1847; The Times, 7 May 1859. He spoke at Cashel in June 1851 against the ecclesiastical titles bill when, in spite of his opposition to ‘the mock rebellion of 1848’, he threatened that if the ‘base and bloody measure’ succeeded in tearing ‘the mitre from the sainted brow of their prelates … the men of Tipperary would meet again and say, “Up Ireland, and at them”’.8Freeman’s Journal, 9 June 1851, 8 Oct. 1850. Lanigan had once refused to be sworn on to a grand jury, claiming that the high sheriff had observed that, as a Catholic, he was not fit to serve as a juror: Freeman’s Journal, 10 Nov. 1848. However, he proved reluctant to enter national politics and declined an offer to stand for the county in 1852. After an excursion to Constantinople in 1854, ‘to witness warfare on the Danube’, Lanigan returned to his country estate.9J. O’Shea, Prince of Swindlers. John Sadleir M.P. 1813-1856 (1999), 261; Freeman’s Journal, 27 Mar. 1854. As chairman of the Tipperary electors meeting at Thurles in March 1857 he called for unity amongst the competing Liberal factions, and the subsequent return of The (Daniel) O’Donoghue at the ‘epic by-election’ was said to have been due ‘entirely to his influence’. At that year’s general election he came forward for Cashel, pledged to support the ‘Independent Irish Party’. However, despite attracting clerical support, he disappointed expectations by coming third in the poll.10Freeman’s Journal, 4, 10, 19, 23 Mar. 1857, 8 Oct. 1868; J. O’Shea, Priest, Politics and Society in Post-famine Ireland. A Study of County Tipperary 1850-1891 (1982), 49. Following the death of his wife in August 1858, Lanigan again came forward in 1859 as ‘a staunch supporter of the Old Ireland policy’, and easily defeated a Conservative challenger.11Freeman’s Journal, 26 Aug. 1858; The Times, 7 May 1859; Freeman’s Journal, 9 Oct. 1868, 26 Mar., 10, 17 Apr. 1857, 25 Apr. 1859.

The Conservatives were confident that Lanigan could ‘be managed’, but he divided with the Liberals to bring down the Derby ministry, 10 June 1859, and opposed Disraeli’s motion on the income tax, 24 Feb. 1860.12B. Disraeli to Lord Naas, 12 May 1859, M.G. Wiebe [et al.] (eds.) Benjamin Disraeli Letters, vii (2004), 376-8; Freeman’s Journal, 21 May 1859. A member of the Tipperary Ballot Association, he unsurprisingly divided in favour of that measure, 20 Mar. 1860, and was one of a minority of Irish Liberals who voted with the Conservatives to defeat Lord John Russell’s reform bill, 7 June 1860.13Freeman’s Journal, 5 Mar. 1859; Liverpool Mercury, 9 June 1860. He divided in favour of the church rates abolition bill, 14 May 1860, and the county franchise bill, 13 Mar. 1861, but joined other Irish Liberals in opposing the ministry over the Galway mail contract. After questioning the prime minister, Lord Palmerston, over the matter in May 1861, he joined the protest against the ministry’s plan to withdraw the Galway subsidy by voting against the government on the question of repealing paper duties.14Hansard, 30 May 1861, vol. 163, cc. 244-5.

Lanigan is not known to have brought forward any bills or served on any select committees, but he frequently asked parliamentary questions of ministers.15Hansard, 14 July 1859, vol. 154, c. 1200. His chief concern was the alleviation of the economic hardships suffered by Ireland’s labouring classes. Though he was embedded in the system of local government, being a proprietor, magistrate, grand juror, and poor law guardian, he wished to amend the powers of these bodies and, in some areas, cede them to the Irish executive. For many years Lanigan had advocated the taxation of ‘the fund holders of Ireland’, and in 1859 he pressed for a bill to amend the Irish Grand Jury Acts in order to relieve the occupiers of houses and land from the pressure of taxation, by apportioning the payment of county cess equally between landlords and tenants.16Daily News, 12 Oct. 1846; Hansard, 18 July 1859, vol. 154, c. 1383. The following year he called the attention of the Irish chief secretary, Edward Cardwell, to the plight of Irish agricultural labourers who lacked employment in consequence of the tenant farmers’ reluctance to invest in the improvement of their farms whilst their landlords still possessed the power to evict them without compensation.17Hansard, 20 Feb. 1860, vol. 156, c. 1351. Cardwell’s subsequent Landed Property (Ireland) Improvement Act, 1860 (23 & 24), c. 153, went some way to remedying this situation: P. Bull, Land, Politics and Nationalism. A Study of the Irish Land Question (1996), 44.

In March 1860 Lanigan highlighted his career’ by launching a powerful protest against the removal of Irish paupers from Great Britain, an intervention which led directly to the passing of the Poor Removal Acts in 1861.18Freeman’s Journal, 8 Oct. 1868; Hansard, 16 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, cc. 738-40; 22 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, c. 1021; PP 1860 (430) lviii. 833 (5 July 1860); 1861 (24 & 25 Vict.), c. 55, c. 76. That year he also pressed Cardwell for a bill authorizing poor law commissioners to grant compensation to retired workhouse officers, a matter which was subsequently referred to the committee on the administration of the Irish poor law.19Hansard, 12 Mar. 1861, vol. 161, c. 1797. Having been chairman of three boards of guardians in Ireland, Lanigan was particularly concerned by the economic distress which affected Ireland in 1862-3. Though a landlord himself, he was an early supporter of tenant-right who had advocated that the movement be brought firmly under O’Connellite control.20Freeman’s Journal, 8 Oct. 1850. He believed that agrarian crimes arose entirely from hardship and the sense of injustice created by the land tenure system.21Hansard, 19 May 1862, vol. 166, c. 1956. In 1847 he had applied for a land improvement grant of £1,100 and helped to organise the tenant-right demonstration in Tipperary in October 1850: Daily News, 3 Nov. 1847; Freeman’s Journal, 25 Sept., 4 Oct. 1850. In 1863 he argued that the poor law commissioners ought to have powers to order outdoor relief for the unemployed, something that had hitherto rested with the boards of guardians.22Hansard, 24 Feb. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 725-6. In 1865 he pressed for the withdrawal of the additional constabulary that had been stationed in Tipperary at a cumulative cost to the locality of £90,000. During the subsequent debate on the Irish constabulary force amendment bill, he argued, in vain, that the authority to remove additional police should lie with the Irish executive, and not with local magistrates.23Hansard, 25 May 1865, vol. 179, c. 788; 29 May 1865, vol. 179, cc. 994, 996; 19 June 1865, vol. 180, c. 509.

Lanigan was also involved with the public campaign for denominational education, being one of 19 MPs to address the Irish chief secretary on the subject in August 1860. He supported Cardinal Cullen’s opposition to the government’s national education reforms and in 1862 denounced the Queen’s Colleges as ‘nurseries of infidelism’.24Morning Chronicle, 19 Dec. 1859; PP 1861 (212) xlviii. 683; The Times, 10 May 1861; Belfast News-letter, 9 May 1861; Freeman’s Journal, 1 Jan. 1862. He also took part in a deputation on behalf of Irish National School teachers: Freeman’s Journal, 24 June 1861. In 1864 he called for the disestablishment of the Irish Church.25Freeman’s Journal, 21 Dec. 1864. Despite his reputation as a ‘consistent patriot’ and a ‘kind and useful’ representative, he was, however, defeated by a Liberal challenger in Cashel at the 1865 general election, and declined a requisition to stand for the county seat in 1866.26Freeman’s Journal, 7 Apr. 1857, 5 Oct. 1866; Irish Times, 8 Oct. 1868; Birmingham Daily Post, 24 Sept. 1866.

A keen sportsman, racehorse owner and steward of the Templemore and Cashel races, Lanigan had on one occasion intervened personally to avert a serious collision between local people and soldiers of the Templemore garrison during a race meeting held on his farm in 1856.27Morning Chronicle, 12 Apr. 1856. His horse National Petition won the Garrycastle Handicap at Athlone in 1865 and also won races at Punchestown: T. Hunt, Sport and Society in Victorian Ireland: The Case of Westmeath (2007), 48. He died of heart disease in Dublin in October 1868 and was buried in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin.28Daily News, 9 Oct. 1868. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Stephen Martin Lanigan (b. 1840), a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and a magistrate of Tipperary and Kings counties. Both of his sons were barristers, but took no part in national politics.29Freeman’s Journal, 14 Apr. 1865; J. Foster, Men-at-the-Bar: A biographical handlist of the members of the various Inns of Court, including Her Majesty’s judges (1885), 265. Both sons attended Oscott College and Stephen assumed the name Lanigan-O’Keefe in 1895.