SMITHWICK, Richard (1804-1860), of Birchfield, co. Kilkenny

Smithwick was a solicitor and public notary, who owned land near Kilkenny city. He was the son of a freeman of the city, and was descended from a Cheshire family that had settled in county Cork in 1627. His eldest brother, Edmond Smithwick (1800-76), managed the St. Francis’ Abbey brewery,1He greatly expanded the family business which had begun in 1710. The company was taken over in 1965 by Guinness who continue to market the brewery’s ale under the name Smithwick’s. and served as an alderman, 1843, and mayor of Kilkenny in 1843-4, 1864 and 1865. One of Daniel O’Connell’s ‘most loyal and necessary supporters’, Edmond was regarded as the Liberator’s ‘local mainstay’ in south Leinster.2O. MacDonagh, The Emancipist. Daniel O’Connell 1830-1847 (1989), 209, 293. Of his other brothers Peter was a councillor of Kilkenny corporation, 1843, and Daniel was a councillor, 1844-6, and alderman, 1849, and served as high sheriff, 1855, and mayor of the city, 1857: Burke’s Irish Family Records (1976), 1030-1. Richard Smithwick had been an original member of the reformed corporation of Kilkenny, but had resigned his seat ‘upon taking up his residence entirely in the country’. Nevertheless, he attended the great repeal meeting at Kilkenny, 8 June 1843, and was said to be widely esteemed by ‘men of every class, grade, creed and party in the community’.3Freeman’s Journal, 10 June 1843, 27 Nov. 1860.

When Pierce Butler, the sitting repeal member for County Kilkenny, died in June 1846, O’Connell was determined that the seat should not fall into the hands of the Young Ireland faction. Eager to forestall a contest, O’Connell suggested to Edmond Smithwick that if he was unwilling to stand his brother might do as well, and the county registry association and freeholders duly called upon Richard to come forward.4D. O’Connell to E. Smithwick, 23, 25 June 1846, R. Kane to D. O’Connell, 26 June 1846, O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, viii. 55-7, 57-8, 59; Freeman’s Journal, 2, 23 July 1846, quoting Kilkenny Journal. Although Smithwick ‘regretted that some person higher in station had not been chosen’, he was popularly accepted as a ‘gentleman of unquestioned patriotism’. He advocated ‘self-legislation’, pledged ‘to give every opposition’ to the established church, and affirmed that he ‘was proud to represent the middle and the humble classes – those who themselves represented the industrial resources of the country’.5Morning Post, 3 Aug. 1846. Returned unopposed as ‘a repealer of the first water’, he was called to the chair of the Repeal Association to make his ‘first speech in a public assembly’, and took the parliamentary oath on 19 Aug., shortly before the end of the session.6Standard, 24 July 1846; Freeman’s Journal, 30 July, 1, 4 Aug. 1846; Liverpool Mercury, 21 Aug. 1846.

Smithwick attended a meeting for ‘the formation of an Irish Parliamentary party’ in Dublin in January 1847, and joined a deputation to Lord John Russell concerning famine relief.7Liverpool Mercury, 22 Jan. 1847; Freeman’s Journal, 2 Feb. 1847. He is not known to have spoken in the House, introduced any bills, or sat on any committees. He voted with O’Connell on the Irish destitute persons bill, 5 Feb. 1847, and joined the Irish support for Lord George Bentinck’s Irish railways bill, 16 Feb. Thereafter, however, he does not appear to have ventured into the division lobby, and did not vote on important Irish issues such as William Sharman Crawford’s tenant-right bill and William Watson’s Catholic relief bill.

Having moved a resolution for the erection of a monument to O’Connell at a national meeting in Dublin, 6 Aug. 1847,8W.B. MacCabe, The Last Days of O’Connell (1847), 254. Smithwick, finding that his health was ‘giving way’, retired at the 1847 general election.9Freeman’s Journal, 28 June 1847; Morning Chronicle, 21 July 1847. He was subsequently active as a magistrate and member of the county prison board and, as a poor law guardian, took a leading part in the local famine relief committee. A member of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society from 1849, he was appointed high sheriff of Kilkenny in 1850 and died after a painful and protracted illness at his residence in 1860. A ‘vast’ funeral procession ‘nearly two miles in length’ was staged for him, being led by Smithwick’s tenants and the employees of his brothers’ businesses. His remains were interred in the family plot at Kilkenny’s Catholic cemetery, when even his political opponents credited him with ‘unceasing and most successful devotion to the interests of the Liberal party in Kilkenny’ over ‘very many years’.10Freeman’s Journal, 27 Nov. 1860. Although Smithwick left no heir, his nephew, John Francis Smithwick, became an alderman, mayor and MP for Kilkenny, 1880-6, being one of a number of that generation of the family to hold high office in the city.11Burke’s Irish Family Records (1976), 1030-1.