Author: Giffard, John
Biography:
GIFFARD, John (1746-1819: DIB)
He was born at Dublin to John Giffard, an attorney from Great Torrington, Devon, and his wife Dorcas Robinson, a widow from Co. Wexford whose birth name was Murphy. He was orphaned at an early age and Ambrose Hardinge, a Dublin barrister and friend of John Giffard, senior, sent the boy to school, and apprenticed him to a Dublin apothecary. He qualified in 1768 and unsuccessfully sought work in London. Returning to Ireland, he married Sarah Morton of Co. Wexford. From about 1771 when their first child, Ambrose Hardinge Giffard (q.v.), was born, they lived in Dublin where Giffard operated a shop in Fishamble Street and represented the apothecaries in the Dublin council. In 1776 he issued Reason, a pamphlet responding to Thomas Paine’s (q.v.) Common Sense. He was one of the most uncompromising and fervent Protestant loyalists of his time. He served in the Dublin customs in 1784 and, except for a few years when he was removed from his post for opposing Catholic emancipation, remained there until 1811. In 1788 he acquired Dublin’s oldest newspaper, the Dublin Journal (sometimes known as Faulkner’s Dublin Journal) and built a house near Dundrum, Dublin. Family life was complicated by his relationship with an actor, Catherine Deane, with whom he had eight children. Giffard was appointed Sheriff of Dublin in 1793 and became popularly known as “the dog in office.” From 1793 he was an officer in the Dublin militia and in 1795 he was admitted to the newly formed Orange Order where he later served as acting Grand Master. He and his wife were legally separated in 1818, a year before his death at Roebuck House in Dundrum. He was buried at Powerscourt, Co. Wicklow. The Lemon (1797), sometimes attributed to Henrietta Battier (q.v.), is a response to his Orange: A Political Rhapsody. (DIB 1 Mar. 2021; ODNB 1 Mar. 2021; findmypast.co.uk 1 Mar. 2021; A. H. and Edward Giffard, Who Was My Grandfather? [1865]) SR
Other Names:
- J. Giffard