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Richard Martin

1754–1834

 

Known to his Georgian contemporaries as Humanity Dick, Richard Martin was a pioneer in the ethical treatment of animals.  Butt he had other claims to fame as well.

      He was the eldest son of Robert Martin, one of a family settled in Galway since the thirteenth century, and his first wife, Bridget Barnewell, a daughter of Lord Trimelston.  He was born in Dublin in February 1754, but he is associated with the rugged shore of the west of Ireland.

      He was the first of his family who was brought up a Protestant from childhood, for many Catholics became at least outwardly Protestant in order to hold on to their lands in the eighteenth century.  After attending Harrow School, he abandoned his studies at Cambridge to enter Parliament in 1776.  He was called to the Irish bar in 1778.  Although he joined the Connaught circuit, he was merely attempting to gain the qualification needed to act as a magistrate.  He acted in one case only, a famous action between two brothers named Fitzgeralds, which caused a social stir at the time.  He was High Sheriff of Galway in 1782, and continued his public life as colonel in both the Irish Volunteers, and the local Galway Yeomanry, as befitted his social position.

      His home was at the castle of Ballinahinch on an estate that covered two hundred thousand acres, all he could see for thirty miles, deep in the wilds of Connemara.  He was called the King of Connemara, but in the days of rapacious landlords he had a good reputation among the tenants.  This huge estate made him one of the largest landlords in the west, and it was he who built much of the present family house standing in a magnificent location overlooking the Owenmore River.  It is featured in William Thackeray's travel book An Irish Sketch Book and in MARIA EDGEWORTH'S [91] letters.  Martin was thought to have been the model for Godfrey O'Malley, the uncle of the hero in Charles Lever's novel Charles O'Malley, and the novel The Martin's of Cro Martin, also by Charles Lever, is based on this family history.

      Martin married twice.  By his first wife he had two sons and a daughter.  His second wife was the mother of three daughters and a son.

      He was a member of the Irish Parliament, representing several seats until it was abolished by the Act of Union, a measure he supported.  In 1801 he was re-elected from Galway, and he remained a member of Parliament until 1826, when his election by eighty-four votes was challenged and he was unseated.

      He was a friend of the Prince Regent, but fell out with him for a time when the prince became George IV, as Martin supported the rejected Queen Caroline.  Martin supported Catholic emancipation (granted in 1829), but, anxious for his seat, he made it known that he would not vote to suppress the Catholic Association, the power base of DANIEL  O'CONNELL  [20], and the Catholic church.  But it was not his role in Irish politics that made him famous, rather his love of animals and his readiness as a duellist.  His fights with 'Fighting' Fitzgerald and Eustace Stowell were relayed in his own words in Sir Jonah Barrington's Personal Sketches of His Times.

      He worked to abolish the death penalty for forgery, and introduced a bill to allow those charged with serious offences the benefit of legal counsel.  He twice refused a peerage.

      In spite of opposition from the political establishment, he managed to get through Parliament an act 'to prevent the cruel and improper treatment of cattle'.  This was the first act in the world to prevent cruelty to animals and was the beginning of a long campaign in Victorian and modern times against cruel practices on the farm, in racing, and nowadays in scientific research.  He was one of those who founded the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in 1824.

      After losing a seat he retired to Boulogne in the north of France, a haunt of British and Irish debtors, where he died on 6th January 1834, at the age of seventy-nine.

      His heir, Thomas Martin, died from a fever he contracted while visiting his tenants in Clifden Workhouse during the famine year of 1847.  His daughter, Mary Letitia Martin, was the author of a novel, Julia Howard, about the west of Ireland, but she was ruined by the famine, during which she had worked to relieve the suffering and died ten days after she and her husband reached New York in 1850.

      The huge estate had been mortgaged to an insurance company, which foreclosed on it and sold it off for very little in the Encumbered Estates Court.  In 1926 it was bought by the famous cricketer Prince Ranjit Sinjhi, the Jam Sahib of Nawanagar, and today it is a country house hotel of great elegance, where the memory of Richard Martin is honoured.

      These days it is fashionable to deride 'Victorian values', but it is often forgotten that those values are the source of much of the legislation that exists regarding the proper treatment of animals, factory workers, the mentally ill, and so on.  In this respect the modern world has little claim on the same moral authority.  Today, Richard Martin's name and his love of animals and of his Connemara wilderness is honoured all over the world by the innumerable groups and societies devoted to animal welfare, as well as important issues of ecology.  An enlightened landlord and a progressive legislator in his own day, Martin remains a moral example through his campaigns for the kinder treatment of animals.