Friday, 16 January 2015

738 Sir Dominic Corrigan



Constituency : Dublin 1870-4

Dominic  chalked  up  the  penultimate  Liberal  gain  in  this  Parliament  when  he  captured  the  second  Dublin  seat  after  the  Tory  Sir  Arhur  Guinness  was  unseated  for  bribery.

Dominic  was  a  Dublin  born  doctor  educated  at  Maynooth  and  then  Edinburgh  Medical  School.  He  returned  to  Dublin  and  became  a  distinguished  physician  with  many  public  appointments  as  well  as  a  private  practice. He  came  to  be  a  specialist  on  heart  conditions  and  the  abnormal  pulse  rate  in  aortic  valve  insufficiency  is  named  "Corrigan's  pulse "  after  his  work. In  1859  he  became  the  first  Catholic  president  of  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians  in  Ireland. He  was  created  a  baronet  in  1866. He  stood  unsuccessfully  in  1868

After  his  election  Dominic  campaigned  for  secular  education  in   Ireland  and  the  early  release  of  Fenian  prisoners.  He  defended  the  mass  meeting  in  Phoenix  Park  in  1871.Some  of  his  suggestions  on  Irish  university  education   went  into  Gladstone's  Irish  Universities  Bill. The  Catholic  hieararchy  were  not  pleased  ; Cardinal  Cullen  wrote  "I  hope  that  at  the  next  election  we  shall  be  able  to  pay  off  Sir  Dominic". His  support  for  temperance  and  the  closure  of  pubs  on  Sundays   lost  him  support  in  the  constituency  and  he  declined  to  stand  again  in  1874. Saunder's  Newsletter   commented "  the  Liberals  of  Dublin  have  not  treated  their  late  representative  with  generosity. He  brought  to  their  cause  a  distinguished  name  which  will  always  hold  a  high  place  in  the  history  of  Irish  medicine,  and  we  are  not  aware  that  his  party  have  any  reason  to  complain  of  any  want  of  zeal  on  his  part  in  their  service".

He  died  in  1880  after  a  stroke  aged  77.

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