Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Upington, Thomas
UPINGTON, Sir THOMAS (1845–1898), South African statesman, born in 1845, was the son of Samuel Upington (d. 1875) of Lisleigh House, co. Cork, by Mary (Tarrant). Though a Roman catholic, he was made welcome at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was admitted on 11 Oct. 1861, and whence he graduated B.A. in 1865 and M.A. in 1868 (Cat. of Dublin Graduates). He was called to the Irish bar in 1867, and a few years later was made a queen's counsel, having in the interval been appointed secretary to the Irish chancellor, Thomas O'Hagan, baron O'Hagan [q. v.]. In 1874 he settled in Cape Colony, was in 1878 elected to the representative assembly, and in the same year, upon the fall of the Molteno ministry, became attorney-general in (Sir) Gordon Sprigg's administration, and one of the most prominent politicians of the colony, identifying himself to a large extent with Sir Bartle Frere's policy; he resigned in 1881, and became leader of the opposition in the Cape parliament. In August 1883 he was chosen counsel for Patrick O'Donnell, the bricklayer who shot James Carey [q. v.], the informer, on his way to the Cape. He did all that he could to prevent O'Donnell's extradition, and was offered a big fee on condition of his returning to England to defend his client there; but he returned the brief (Critic, 17 Dec. 1898). In 1884 Upington became premier, taking office as attorney-general, with Sir Gordon Sprigg as his treasurer. Vigorous retrenchment had to be combined with such forward movement as the annexation of Walfisch Bay. Froude, who gives a personal description of Upington and his wife, both of whom he liked, interviewed Upington (by the latter's desire) during the term of his ministry, and was impressed by his opposition to Sir Charles Warren's expedition on the ground that it would widen the breach between the English and the Dutch, who were, as a whole, ultimately loyal to British sovereignty as knowing that it would be infinitely less irksome than any other (Oceana, 1886, pp. 65–7). In 1886 Upington resigned the premiership in favour of Sir Gordon Sprigg, but continued in the cabinet as attorney-general down to 1890. He was appointed puisne judge in the supreme court of the Cape in 1892, but resumed the attorney-generalship in succession to Mr. Schreiner in 1896. He was on the commission appointed to inquire into native laws and customs of the colony, and was a delegate at the colonial conference in 1887, when he was made a K.C.M.G. He died at Wyberg, near Capetown, on 10 Dec. 1898. He married, in 1872, Mary, daughter of J. Guerin of Edenhill, co. Cork, and left issue. A village and district in Bechuanaland are named after Upington (South African Gazetteer).
[Times, 12 Dec. 1898; Trinity Coll. Dubl. Matric. Book (per the registrar); Colonial Office List, 1898, p. 480; Walford's County Families, 1898, p. 1045; Wilmot's History of our own Times in South Africa, 1897; The [Cape] Argus Annual, 1896, p. 128.]