DICK, Hugh (1780-1830), of 3 Rutland Square East, Dublin and Curzon Street, Mayfair, Mdx.

One of the fourth generation of a Scottish family, originally settled in county Antrim, this Member’s grandfather, Quintin Dick of Neagh, county Tipperary, had brought his family to Dublin, where his father Samuel later flourished as an East India linen merchant and rose to become deputy governor (1796) and governor (1797-9) of the Bank of Ireland. He died in 1802 with property ‘estimated at upwards of £400,000’, the titular head of the family firm, Samuel Dick and Company, merchants of 32 North Great George Street, a director of the Bank and the Royal Exchange Insurance Company of Ireland, a major shareholder in two further insurance companies (the National and the Patriotic) and an investor in the Consolidated Buildings Company of Dublin and canals. Burke LG (1904); F.G. Hall, Hist. Bank of Ireland, 44, 75; Gent. Mag. (1802), i. 94; IR26/2125/481. Hugh Dick, who had been raised to play a prominent role in the family business, now took new premises at 13 Linen Hall Street and, reflecting his younger brother William Forster Dick’s involvement, they traded briefly as Dick (Hugh, William and Co.), before reverting to the original name, 1806-28. Hugh did not share his father’s involvement in banking and insurance, but he became a director of the Corn Exchange Building Company of Dublin (1815-25) and from 1819-29 served as a merchant trustee of the Royal Exchange and member of the ‘Society of the Ouzel Galley’ - a merchant-traders’ cartel whose members had ‘a duty to sit as arbitrators in the settlement of any matter in dispute to them referred, provided all the arbitrators chosen are members of the Galley’. Wilson’s Dublin Dir. (1801), 12, 35, 113; (1802), 38; (1805), 34, 104; (1807), 36; (1809), 15; (1815), 39; (1817), 63; (1820), 66, 152, 200; (1821), 61, 187; (1822), 63; (1824), 65; (1825), 66, 155; (1827), 62; (1828), 141, 195, 220; (1830), 45; Watson Stewart’s Irish Almanack (1801), 103, 108, 116; (1805), 129; (1820), 165-6, 176; (1821), 177; (1822), 168-9, 180; (1824), 167, 178; (1825), 150, 155, 166; (1827), 137-8, 157; (1828), 164, 220; (1829), 22, 144-5, 164; (1830), 23, 143, 201. His return for Maldon, where he topped the poll in absentia in December 1827 as locum for his elder brother Quintin, then Member for Orford on the 3rd marquess of Hertford’s interest, was unexpected and hurriedly organized by Quintin, following the death of George Allanson Winn, who had defeated him there in a costly contest in June 1826. The Times, 13, 16, 28 Nov., 4 Dec.; Colchester Gazette, 24 Nov., 1, 8 Dec.; Suff. Chron. 27 Dec. 1827; Add. 60287, f. 337.

Hugh, who was said to be ‘if anything more decisive’ in his views on ‘the Catholic question and the corn laws’ than his brother, took his seat on 28 Mar. 1828, shortly after Quintin’s unsuccessful attempt to introduce the Maldon charter bill. The Times, 3 Dec. 1827. In 1828-9 his known parliamentary activities were devoted entirely to opposing Catholic emancipation, against which he voted with Quintin, 12 May 1828, 6, 18, 30 Mar. 1829. He presented and defended hostile petitions from Maldon, 4 June 1828, 2 Mar., St. George’s and St. Bridget’s, Dublin, 23, 27 Feb., and the Essex parishes of Burnham, Goldhanger, Tillingham and Hylton Ferry, 9, 18, 24, 30 Mar. 1829. He questioned the validity of counter-claims made by his colleague Barrett Lennard on presenting Maldon’s pro-emancipation petitions, 2, 17 Mar. Colchester Gazette, 21 Mar. 1829. He presented and endorsed a private petition from George Hearn and Rebecca Clarke of Maldon for compensation for the loss of a vessel run down and sunk in the Thames by a foreign brig with a Trinity House pilot on board, 3 June 1829. He voted with Quintin against the enfranchisement of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb., and also against the appointment of Thomas Frankland Lewis* as treasurer of the navy, 12 Mar., and the navy estimates, 22 Mar. 1830, in his brother’s absence. He or Quintin voted with the revived Whig opposition for abolishing the Irish lord lieutenancy, 11 May. Hugh presented a petition against the sale of beer bill from the proprietors and occupiers of public houses in Maldon, 6 May, and voted to amend it to impose a two-year probationary period prior to granting licences for on-consumption, 1 July 1830. He retired at the dissolution that month, and died of a stroke at his Dublin home in August 1830, shortly after Quintin’s unopposed return for Maldon. Gent. Mag. (1830), ii. 189; Saunders’s News Letter, 12 Aug.; Dublin Weekly Reg. 14 Aug.; Colchester Gazette, 7, 20 Aug. 1830.