David Sheehy

David Sheehy was an Irish nationalist politician. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1885 to 1900 and from 1903 to 1918, taking his seat as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Political career

Born in Limerick, he had been a student for the Catholic priesthood at the Irish College in Paris but had left it and made a runaway match with a convent schoolgirl, Bessie McCoy, who eloped with him He had also been a me for various anti-government activities

At the 1885 general election he was elected unopposed as MP for South Galway and held that seat until the 1900 general election. His re-election in Galway was unopposed in 1886 and 1895. However, at the 1892 general election, when the Irish Party split over the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell and Sheehy joined the anti-Parnellite majority, he was opposed by a Parnellite candidate, who he defeated with a majority of nearly two-to-one. In the same election he also stood in Waterford City, but failed to unseat the Parnellite John Redmond.

The two factions of the Irish Parliamentary Party reunited for the general election in 1900, but Sheehy did not stand again and was out of Parliament for the next three years. However, after the death in August 1903 of James Laurence Carew, the Independent Nationalist MP for South Meath, Sheehy was selected as the Irish Parliamentary Party MP candidate in the resulting by-election in October 1903. Carew had apparently been elected in 1900 as a result of a series of errors in nominations, and his predecessor John Howard Parnell stood again, this time as an Independent Nationalist. Sheehy won the contest with a majority of more than two-to-one, and held the seat until he stood down at the 1918 general election.