Newry Journal

John Mitchel was born in County Derry near the town of Dungiven on November 3 1815. His father was a Presbyterian Minister and was called to serve in Newry.  The family moved to Drumalane House.  

John Rea Born: 1822, Millfield area of Belfast Died: May 17, 1881 – suicide by gunshot Father: Francis REA Mother: Married: Never married A man of many parts, he served nine months in Kilmainham Jail in 1848. He defended John Mitchel, acted for the Catholics after “Dolly’s Brae” and defended Michael Davitt in in 1879 […]

The smutty and libellous doggerel quoted below, and widely published at the time, demonstrates the extent to which the ‘establishment’ would go in 1832 to blacken the emerging Catholic political class.

The list of names of Catholic Newry electors (2/2) of 1832 reproduced here is more interesting in a variety of ways to us 180 years later, than was its original intent (which was to intimidate Catholic electors who had failed to vote for the Catholic Dennis Maguire).

The following list of names of allegedly recalcitrant Catholic electors of the Borough of Newry in the 1832 election to Parliament (Imperial) was printed and produced to punish, by intimidation, those who had failed to wrest the seat from the agents of the landlord, the Earl of Downshire.