Thomas Westropp Bennett

Who was Thomas Westropp Bennett?

Thomas William Westropp Bennett was an Irish politician, magistrate and public figure in Irish agriculture.

Born on his father's estate in Ballymurphy, County Limerick he was the eldest son of Captain Thomas Westropp Bennett, a gentleman-farmer, Crimean War veteran and retired Captain in the 39th regiment of the British Army. One of his younger brothers, George C. Bennett was Cumann na Gaedhael/Fine Gael TD for Limerick County. The Bennetts were an old Limerick family of Protestant gentry who had been resident in Limerick since the 1670s. His father was a Church of Ireland member, but the children followed the Catholic faith of their mother.

Westropp Bennett's ancestors followed the usual occupations of their class: Protestant clergymen, Justice of the Peace, landowners or military officers; several cousins had fought in the Peninsular War and another, Lt Francis W Bennett, died of wounds after fighting in the Battle of Waterloo. An ancestor, Hugh Massy, 2nd Lord Massy of Duntrileague, had sat in Henry Grattan's Irish Parliament in the 1780s in both the Irish House of Commons and, later, the House of Lords.