Richard Allman

Richard Lane Allman (1813 – 22 December 1904)[1] was an Irish businessman from Bandon in County Cork. He was also an Irish Liberal Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1880 to 1885. His brother was the botanist and natural history professor George Allman.

Richard Lane Allman
Born	1813
Died	December 22, 1904
Nationality	Irish
Occupation	Irish businessman, House of Commons member of the United Kingdom from 1880-1885
Known for	His participation as an Irish Liberal Party politician

Early life

Allman was the son of James C. Allman and his wife Sarah née Lane.[2]

The family were entrepreneurs in Bandon in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.[3] Initially they ran a cotton mill at Overton, near Bandon, but when this declined they established Bandon Distillery in 1826.[4]

Business life

Allman's distillery produced up to 600,000 gallons of whiskey per year, which was mostly exported. However, trade was badly hit by prohibition in the United States and by the great depression. Production stopped in 1925, and the business closed in 1929.[5]

Parliament

At the general election in April 1880, Allman unsuccessfully contested the borough of Bandon. He lost by 15 votes (175:200) to the Conservative Percy Broderick Bernard, a nephew of the 3rd Earl of Bandon whose family had held the seat for most of the 19th century.[6]

However, Bernard resigned from the House of Commons in June 1880, and at the resulting by-election on 25 June 1880, Allman was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bandon.[6] He had won 217 votes, against the 172 for the Conservative J. W. Payne.[6]

The borough was disenfranchised at the 1885 general election.

References

1. Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "B" (part 1)
2. Robert Henry Mair, ed. (1881). "Debrett's House of Commons and the Judicial Bench, 1881". London. p. 4. Retrieved 22 May 2014.
3. "Allman (County Cork)". Landed Estates Database. NUI Galway. Retrieved 22 May 2014.
4. "Bandon Allman's Distillery papers" (PDF). National Library of Ireland. 2002. Retrieved 22 May 2014.
5. "Allman's Bandon Distillery – Co. Cork 1826 to 1925". The Ireland Whiskey Trail. Retrieved 22 May 2014.
6. Walker, Brian M., ed. (1978). Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland 1801–1922. A New History of Ireland. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy. p. 253. ISBN 0901714127. ISSN 0332-0286.

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Richard Lane Allman