Life
1814-1856; b. Shrone Hill, Co. Tipperary; ed Clongowes; br. of James Sadleir,
MP, and son of Dublin solicitor whose practice he at first managed; agent
for Irish railways; MP for Carlow, 1847, though remaining unionist until
1848; became a member of George Henry Moore’s ‘Irish Brigade’,
otherwise known as ‘the Pope’s Brass Band’ because of Sadeir
and Keogh’s obstructionist vociferations in the House of Commons;
established the Telegraph in Dublin, 1851, as organ of the Catholic Defense
Association, chaired by Archbishop Cullen, and supported Duffy’s
Tenant League; accepted post as Junior Lord of the Treasury under Gladstone
when the new Govt. was formed in 1852, Lord Derby’s shortlived administration
(ad interim on fall of Lord Russell’s) having lost the election;
MP for Sligo, 1853; forged title deeds as collateral for loans on London
banks; committed suicide with prussic acid on Hampstead Heath, on failure
of his brother’s bank (Tipperary Joint-Stock Bank, est. 1827), with
assets only one-tenth of deposits, John Sadleir having overdrawn £200,000
on his own account to purchase votes and maintain the Telegraph;
banking loss fell heavily on Tipperary small-holders; The Nation
described him as ‘a sallow-faced man with multifarious intrigue,
cold, callous, cunning’; there was a rumour that he was not dead
but escaped to America.; d. 17 Feb. 1856. DNB DIB DIH FDA OCIL
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Criticism
John Francis O’Donnell, Sadleir, the
Banker; or, the Laceys [Family] of Rathmore ser. in Nation
(1872-73),[publ. The Nation office 1873].
James O'Shea, Prince
of Swindlers: John Sadlier 1813-1856 (Dublin:
Geography Publications 1999), 519pp.
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Dictionary of National Biography Irish politician and swindler,
original of Dicken’s Mr Merdle in Little Dorrit, also Davenport
Dunn by Charles Lever, and John Needham’s Double. See
Irish Book Lover (‘life of crime’ [index]). NOTE, called
with Keogh, the ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’ of Irish history,
in ‘Beside the Sickbed: Carlyle, Duffy, Dr. Cullen’, p.129.
Doherty and Hickey, A Chronology of Irish History Since 1500 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1989); [a widely variant account], leading mbr. of Irish Brigade, and Catholic Defence Association; fnd. Irish Land Company; then fnd. Tipperary Joint-Stock Bank to buy Kingston estate, Co. Cork, on which Land Co. held a mortgage; Chairman of the London and County Joint-Stock Co.; combined with Tenant League to become Independent Irish Party, pledging not to take office; accepted office in Lord Aberdeen’s ministry, 17 Nov. 1852; Lord of the Treasury, 1853; MP for Sligo, 1853; invested in American railways, and embezzled heavily from the Tipperary Bank to the sum of £1,250,000; lost court action against creditor, Jan. 1854; fearing discovery, he committed suicide.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, p.254 [ftn. to O’Leary’s Recollections, where he appears as Sadlier (sic)]; 258 [with William Keogh], 277n. [with Keogh].
Charles Dickens called him that ‘precious rascality’ and made
him the model of Merdle (Forster, Life of Dickens).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)