Dundalk was a parliamentary borough constituency in Ireland, which returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the

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of the

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. It was an original constituency represented in Parliament when the

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of Great Britain and Ireland took effect on 1 January 1801, replacing the Dundalk constituency in the

Parliament of Ireland The Parliament of Ireland ( ga, Parlaimint na hÉireann) was the legislature of the Lordship of Ireland, and later the Kingdom of Ireland, from 1297 until 1800. It was modelled on the Parliament of England and from 1537 comprised two cham ...

Boundaries

This constituency was the Parliamentary borough of

Dundalk Dundalk ( ; ga, Dún Dealgan ), meaning "the fort of Dealgan", is the county town (the administrative centre) of County Louth, Ireland. The town is on the Castletown River, which flows into Dundalk Bay on the east coast of Ireland. It is h ...

in County Louth.

History

The constituency was one of the two member

borough constituencies In the United Kingdom (UK), each of the electoral areas or divisions called constituencies elects one member to the House of Commons. Within the United Kingdom there are five bodies with members elected by electoral districts called "constituenc ...

in the

, which became a single member United Kingdom constituency when the union of Great Britain and Ireland took effect on 1 January 1801. The first member of the United Kingdom House of Commons was to be selected from the area's two MPs in the Irish Parliament, by drawing lots. However both members resigned so the seat could not be filled by co-option and a by-election was necessary. The by-election took place on 28 February 1801. The Right Honourable Isaac Corry, a quite prominent political figure, was elected the first United Kingdom MP for Dundalk. Corry was associated with what came to be called the

Tory Party The Tories were a loosely organised political faction and later a political party, in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. They first emerged during the 1679 Exclusion Crisis, when they opposed ...

after the death of

William Pitt the younger William Pitt the Younger (28 May 175923 January 1806) was a British statesman, the youngest and last prime minister of Great Britain (before the Acts of Union 1800) and then first prime minister of the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Ire ...

in 1806. Up until the extension of the franchise in 1832, the borough was strongly Tory in representation. The fact that no Tory or Conservative was elected after 1832 may say something about the unrepresentative nature of the old franchise. Dundalk had a population of 9,256 in 1821. Walker records that the electorate in 1831 numbered 36. The population in 1831 had increased to 10,750. All the elections in the borough between 1801 and 1831 were unopposed returns. The 1832 general election was conducted on a new franchise. The registered electorate, under the new system, numbered 318. At the borough's first contested election of the century 295 people voted (Liberal 167, Conservative 128). From 1832 to 1885 the constituency returned members who were Liberals or who belonged to a series of Irish-based groups (the Repeal Association, the Independent Irish Party and the Home Rule League). The Liberals elected in Dundalk tended to have nationalist leanings. The last MP for the constituency was the prominent Liberal lawyer-politician, Charles Russell. An Irish born Catholic, Russell was to be the lead Counsel for

Charles Stewart Parnell Charles Stewart Parnell (27 June 1846 – 6 October 1891) was an Irish nationalist politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1875 to 1891, also acting as Leader of the Home Rule League from 1880 to 1882 and then Leader of the ...

during the inquiry into allegations which had appeared in ''The Times''. In March 1887 it had been suggested that Parnell was complicit in the

murders Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the ...

of the Chief Secretary for Ireland Lord Frederick Cavendish and the Permanent Under-Secretary for Ireland, T.H. Burke. Letters were produced to support the allegations. As a result of Russell's masterly cross-examination of Richard Pigott, the forger of the letters, the Commission of Enquiry vindicated Parnell.

Members of Parliament

Elections

Elections in the 1830s

Elections in the 1840s

Redington resigned after being appointed

Under-Secretary for Ireland The Under-Secretary for Ireland (Permanent Under-Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) was the permanent head (or most senior civil servant) of the British administration in Ireland prior to the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922 ...

, causing a by-election. Upon petition, MacTavish was unseated and McCullagh was declared elected on 20 March 1848

Elections in the 1850s

Elections in the 1860s

Elections in the 1870s

Elections in the 1880s

Notes

References

*''The Parliaments of England'' by Henry Stooks Smith (1st edition published in three volumes 1844–50), 2nd edition edited (in one volume) by F.W.S. Craig (Political Reference Publications 1973) * {{Louth constituencies Westminster constituencies in County Louth (historic) Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom established in 1801 Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom disestablished in 1885 Dundalk