Thomas Shillington

Thomas Shillington (9 May 1835–24 January 1925) was an Irish factory owner and politician.

Shillington ran the Castleisland Linen Company for many years, and in 1897 inherited the business from his elderly father. In 1908, he floated the company for £40,000.[1]

Shillington first came to prominent as the chairman of the Irish Land Committee on its formation in 1883, an organisation aiming to draw together numerous local tenant's rights bodies. At the 1885 UK general election, Shillington stood for the Liberal Party in North Armagh, but was not elected.[2] The following year, he became the first president of the Irish Protestant Home Rule Association, a body of Liberals aiming to show that a significant number of Protestants in Northern Ireland supported Home Rule.[3]

At the 1895 UK general election, Shillington stood in South Tyrone as an independent nationalist, narrowly losing to the Liberal Unionist Thomas Wallace Russell.[4] In 1911, he was appointed to the Privy Council of Ireland,[5] and then in 1923 to the recently founded Privy Council of Northern Ireland.[6]

References

  1. ↑ Kathleen Rankin, The Linen Houses of the Bann Valley: The Story of Their Families, p.209
  2. ↑ George Fottrell, Dublin Castle and the First Home Rule Crisis, p.146
  3. ↑ Terence Bowman, People's Champion, p.62
  4. ↑ Desmond Murphy, Derry, Donegal, and Modern Ulster: 1790-1921, p.202
  5. ↑ Whitaker's Peerage (1921), p.494
  6. ↑ "The Belfast Gazette, 27 April 1923", p.132
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