Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Sadleir, John
SADLEIR, JOHN (1814–1856), Irish politician and swindler, born in 1814, was the third son of Clement William Sadleir, a tenant farmer living at Shrone Hill, near Tipperary, by his wife, a daughter of James Scully, founder of a private bank at Tipperary. His parents were Roman catholics. He was educated at Clongowes College, and succeeded an uncle in a prosperous solicitor's business in Dublin. He became a director of the Tipperary joint-stock bank, established about 1827 by his brother, James Sadleir, afterwards M.P. for Tipperary.
Shortly before 1846 he was an active parliamentary agent for Irish railways, and retired from the legal profession in 1846. At that period and subsequently he was connected with a number of financial enterprises, including the Grand Junction Railway of France, the East Kent line, the Rome and Frascati Railway, a Swiss railway, and a coal company. He was an able chairman of the London and County Joint-Stock Banking Company from 1848 to within a few months of his death.
Sadleir was elected M.P. for Carlow in 1847. He was a firm supporter of Lord John Russell till the period of the Wiseman controversy, when he became one of the most influential leaders of the party known as ‘the pope's brass band’ and ‘the Irish brigade.’ In 1853, on the formation of Lord Aberdeen's ministry, he accepted office as a junior lord of the treasury, but his constituents rejected him when applying, on his appointment, for re-election. In the same year (1853) he was elected M.P. for Sligo, but the disclosure of some irregularities in connection with the election led to his resigning his junior lordship, though he retained his seat till his death.
At the beginning of February 1856 the Tipperary bank, at that time managed by James Sadleir, was in a hopelessly insolvent condition, and John Sadleir had been allowed to overdraw his account with it to the extent of 200,000l.. On Saturday, 16 Feb., Messrs. Glyn, the London agents of the bank, returned its drafts as not provided for. John Sadleir was seen during the day in the city, and at his club till 10.30 at night; but on the morning of Sunday the 17th his dead body was found lying in a hollow about a hundred and fifty yards from Jack Straw's Castle on Hampstead Heath. A silver cream jug, and a bottle which had contained the essential oil of almonds, and which bore several labels of ‘poison,’ were found by his side.
Sadleir's suicide created a great sensation, and a revelation soon followed of his long career of fraud and dishonesty. The ‘Times’ for 10 March 1856 began a leading article with the words ‘John Sadleir was a national calamity.’ The assets of the Tipperary bank were found to be only 35,000l., and the losses of the depositors and others amounted to not less than 400,000l.. The loss fell heavily upon many small farmers and clerks in the south of Ireland, who had been attracted by a high rate of interest to deposit their savings in the bank.
Sadleir, who had dealt largely in the lands sold in the encumbered estate court in Ireland, was found in several instances to have forged conveyances of such land in order to raise money upon them. His frauds in connection with the Royal Swedish Railway Company, of which he was chairman, consisted in fabricating a large number of duplicate shares, and of appropriating 19,700 of these.
The ‘Nation’ (Dublin) described Sadleir at the time of his death as a sallow-faced man, ‘wrinkled with multifarious intrigue, cold, callous, cunning.’ He was a bachelor, and, to all appearance, had no expensive habits; his only extravagance seemed to be that of keeping a small stud of horses at Watford to hunt with the Gunnersbury hounds. The character of Mr. Merdle in Dickens's ‘Little Dorrit’ was, according to its author, shaped out of ‘that precious rascality,’ John Sadleir (Forster, Life of Charles Dickens, bk. viii. p. 1). In the spring of 1856 a curious belief was current that the body found at Hampstead was not Sadleir's, and that he was alive in America. But at the coroner's inquest the identification with Sadleir had been clearly established.
[Gent. Mag. 1856, i. 530; Times 1856, 18 Feb. p. 11, 10 March, p. 8; Sprigge's Life of Wakley; Miss Braddon's Trail of the Serpent; Walford's Old and New London, v. 455.]