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CONCANNON, Lucius (c.1764-1823).
Available from Cambridge University Press
Biography Detail
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Family and Education
b. c.1764, ?nephew of Andrew Concannon, tobacconist, of College Green, Dublin. educ. ?Eton 1779-82. m. 10 May 1790, Sarah Anne Richmond, spinster, of St. Marylebone, Mdx., s.p. d. 29 Jan. 1823.
Offices Held
Lt. Suss. militia 1780; ensign 40 Ft. 1782; cornet 17 Drag. 1783, half-pay 1783.
Biography
After a colourful career as a fashionable faro banker and brothel keeper and a lengthy period in Europe as a détenu, Concannon had obtained the seat which had eluded his persistent endeavours of over 20 years in 1818, when Lord Thanet returned him for Appleby.1 He could not be accommodated there in 1820, but another Whig borough proprietor, the 3rd earl of Darlington, brought him in for Winchelsea. He was admitted to Brooks’s Club shortly before the election and, while he was unobtrusive in the House, he attended with fair regularity to vote with the Whig opposition to the Liverpool ministry. He did so on the civil list, 5, 8 May 1820. His attendance then lapsed, but he was present to vote against the barrack bill, 17 July 1820. He joined in the campaign in support of Queen Caroline in early 1821 and divided in protest against the Allies’ revocation of the new constitution in Naples, 21 Feb. He voted for Catholic relief, 28 Feb. After a month’s inactivity he voted for repeal of the additional malt duty, 3 Apr., went to ground again, but voted for repeal of the Six Acts, 8 May, against delays in the inquiry into the courts of law and for parliamentary reform, 9 May, for inquiry into Peterloo, 16 May, and for the forgery punishment mitigation bill, 23 May, 4 June. He cast a number of votes in support of the radicals’ obstructive resistance to the estimates in May 1821, but did not oppose the duke of Clarence’s grant the following month, when he seems to have been largely an absentee.
Concannon also missed the early divisions of the 1822 session, but he was present by 21 Feb., when he voted for further tax reductions to relieve distress. He subsequently voted regularly for economy and retrenchment. He divided for inquiry into the alleged attack by soldiers on Robert Waithman* in the aftermath of the queen’s funeral, 28 Feb., the remission of Henry Hunt’s* gaol sentence, 24 Apr., parliamentary reform, 25 Apr., inquiry into Governor Maitland’s conduct in the Ionian Islands, 14 May, and criminal law reform, 4 June. His attendance became spasmodic towards the end of the session, but he voted against the aliens bill, 5 June, the Irish constables bill, 7 June, and the Irish insurrection bill, 8 July 1822, when, in his only reported speech, delivered in ‘so low a tone of voice as to render him scarcely audible in the gallery’, he
urged the immediate necessity of adopting measures calculated to heal the wounds of his native country; and warmly expressed the indignation which he felt at seeing ministers allow month after month to elapse, and calamity after calamity to occur, without any endeavour to arrest the progress of the evil.2
It was his swan-song, for he died intestate in January 1823.
