BRADY, Denis Caulfield (1806-1886), of Merchant’s Quay, Newry, co. Down of 8 Manchester Buildings, London

Brady was a nephew of Denis Caulfield, an ‘eminent distiller’ who by the early years of the nineteenth century was ‘one of the first merchants in Ireland’ and had helped to raise the town of Newry in the scale of commercial importance.1Assembled Commons (1837), 25; A. Marmion, The Ancient and Modern History of the Maritime Ports of Ireland (3rd edn., 1858), 313.

A Reformer, Brady was persuaded by his aforementioned uncle to come forward for Newry at the 1835 general election. Regarded by Conservative opponents as a ‘Radical’, he promised to vote for the abolition of ‘the hateful and odious impost of tithes’, which he considered to be ‘the bane, the curse of our devoted country’.2Belfast News-letter, 6, 9 Jan. 1835; The Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 24. He was returned ahead of a Conservative, Sir Thomas Staples, in a close contest during which two electors were alleged to have died as a result of having been plied with drink by Brady’s supporters, and numerous Conservative voters were said to have been kidnapped.3Morning Post, 24 Jan. 1835, quoting Newry Telegraph; Morning Post, 26 Jan. 1835.

Having overcome a petition against his return, Brady was quickly identified as one of Daniel O’Connell’s ‘tailsmen’.4CJ, xc. 111-2; Morning Post, 28 July 1837. However, although he was thought to be sympathetic to repeal, he does not appear to have openly advocated the policy.5Freeman’s Journal, 23 Jan. 1835; Belfast News-letter, 23 Jan. 1835. A silent but assiduous member of the Commons, Brady supported the Whig opposition over the election of a speaker, 19 Feb. 1835, and the address, 26 Feb., and divided for the immediate introduction of an Irish tithes bill, 20 Mar. 1835. In April he backed Lord John Russell’s three motions on the Irish Church. He was in the minorities which backed Cayley’s motion for a silver standard, 1 June, and Grote’s ballot motion, 2 June, (as he was again, 7 Mar. 1837), and voted to remit the sentences on the Dorchester labourers imprisoned for illegal combination, 25 June 1835.

In the following session Brady backed the Whigs on the address, 4 Feb. 1836, and divided against the first and second readings of Agnew’s Sabbath observance bill, 21 Apr., 18 May, and Lord Chandos’s motion on agricultural distress, 27 Apr. He voted in favour of Poulett Thomson’s factory regulation bill, 9 May, and divided against a motion that it was a breach of the privileges of the House for members to become the paid advocate of outside bodies, 30 June. He continued to support the government over Irish Church reform, but was one of 18 members to vote in the minority, (against O’Connell), for William Sharman Crawford’s motion for the immediate abolition of Irish tithes, 1 July 1836. In the following session he backed Molesworth’s motion to repeal property qualifications for MPs, 14 Feb. 1837, and divided for the ministry’s proposals on the reform of Irish municipal corporations and the abolition of church rates. In May 1837 he served on the select committee into the operation of the small debts jurisdiction of the Irish manor courts.6PP 1837 (494) xv. 1.

Despite rumours that he was to retire at the 1837 general election, Brady re-contested Newry as a supporter of the Whig ministry, but amidst ‘terrible excitement’ in the town was narrowly defeated by an English Conservative.7Assembled Commons (1837), 25; Morning Post, 5 July, 5 Aug. 1837. He petitioned against the result without success, although local feeling was that his case would have been successful ‘before even a moderately impartial committee’.8CJ, xciii, 84-5, 97-100, 382; Freeman’s Journal, 2 Apr. 1838, quoting Newry Examiner.

Thereafter Brady remained active in the political life of his native town and chaired a local meeting of the O’Connellite Precursor Society in November 1838.9Freeman’s Journal, 5 Nov. 1838. The following April he chaired the dinner at Newry given to O’Connell by the ‘Ulster Reformers’, the first time that the Liberator had been ‘entertained in the North’, at which Brady offered fulsome praise for the Irish administration of Lord Normanby.10Freeman’s Journal, 11 Apr. 1839. He continued to support the Whig government, endorsing an address to the queen which expressed ‘unabated confidence’ in the ministry, and joining the popular protest against Lord Stanley’s Irish registration bill.11Freeman’s Journal, 10 Apr. 1839, 2 May 1840, 8 Jan. 1841. Although he declined ‘for various unspecified reasons’ a requisition from Newry’s Liberal electors to stand at the 1841 general election, Brady continued to take a lively interest in local affairs, and became an active member of Newry’s charity committee.12Freeman’s Journal, 3 June 1841, quoting Newry Examiner; Manchester Times, 12 June 1841. In 1845 he joined the provisional committee of the Newry, Warrenpoint and Rostrevor Railway, and became a large shareholder in the Newry Navigation company, of which he served as chairman.13Belfast News-letter, 10 June 1845; Freeman’s Journal, 1 Dec. 1886.

A ‘faithful member of the Catholic Church’, Brady joined the campaign to reform the Irish Church establishment in the name of religious equality in 1868, and chaired a meeting of Liberal electors to select a parliamentary candidate in 1871.14Daily News, 11 Mar. 1868; Freeman’s Journal, 2 Jan. 1871. However, as an active magistrate he moved a resolution to record the ‘detestation’ felt by the Newry bench at the murder of the Irish chief and under secretaries in Dublin in May 1882, and in later years his politics ‘assumed a Unionist type’.15Freeman’s Journal, 11 May 1882, 1 Dec. 1886.

Brady died aged 83 at his residence in Bridge Street, Newry after a lingering illness extending over nine months, at which time he was the oldest magistrate in counties Down and Armagh, and one of the last survivors of those who held a parliamentary seat during the reign of William IV.16Freeman’s Journal, 1 Dec. 1886; Leeds Mercury, 11 Dec. 1886. He was buried in the family burial ground at the Old Chapel Yard, Newry, attended by the county clergy and magistrates, the only living relative in attendance being his nephew, Colonel Constantine Maguire.17Belfast News-letter, 3 Dec. 1886.