Tim Healy (politician)

Timothy Michael Healy, KC (17 May 1855 – 26 March 1931) was an Irish barrister, nationalist politician, journalist and author. His political career began in the 1880s when he became a Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons and continued into the 1920s, when he was appointed as the first governor-general of the Irish Free State.

He was born in Bantry, County Cork, the second son of Maurice Healy, clerk of the Bantry Poor Law Union, and Eliza (née Sullivan) Healy. His elder brother, Thomas Healy (1854–1924), became a solicitor and Member of Parliament (MP) (1892–1900) for North Wexford. His younger brother, Maurice Healy (1859–1923), with whom he held a lifelong close relationship, also became a solicitor and served at Westminster as MP for Cork City between 1885 and 1918.

His father was descended from a family line which in holding to their Catholic faith, lost their lands, ^[when?] which he compensated for by being a scholarly gentleman.

Timothy Michael Healy was educated at the Christian Brothers school in Fermoy, and was otherwise largely self-educated, in 1869 at the age of fourteen going to live with his uncle, Timothy Daniel Sullivan MP, in Dublin.^{[citation needed]}

He then moved to England finding employment in 1871 with the North Eastern Railway Company in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. There he became deeply involved in the Irish Home Rule politics of the local Irish community. After leaving for London in 1878 Healy worked as a confidential clerk in a factory owned by his relative, then worked as a parliamentary correspondent for The Nation newspaper owned by his uncle, writing numerous articles in support of Parnell, the newly emergent and more militant home rule leader, and his policy of parliamentary obstructionism.

Parnell admired Healy's intelligence and energy after Healy had established himself as part of Parnell's broader political circle. He became Parnell's secretary but was denied contact to Parnell's small inner circle of political colleagues.^{[citation needed]}

Parnell, however, brought Healy into the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) and supported him as a nationalist candidate for a by-election to Wexford in 1880 following the death of William Archer Redmond, against John Redmond, the son of the deceased MP. After John Redmond stood aside, Healy was returned unopposed to parliament.^{[citation needed]}

In parliament, Healy did not physically cut an imposing figure but impressed by the application of sheer intelligence, diligence and volatile use of speech when he achieved the Healy Clause in the Land Law (Ireland) Act 1881 which provided that no further rent should in future be charged on tenant's improvements. By the mid-1880s Healy had already acquired a reputation for a scurrilousness of tone. He married his cousin Eliza Sullivan in 1882, they had three daughters and three sons and he enjoyed a happy and intense family life, closely interlinked both by friendship and intermarriage with the Sullivans of west Cork.