Author: Grady, Thomas
Biography:
GRADY, Thomas (c.1759- 1842: Court Magazine)
Although anecdotes about this writer are plentiful, almost nothing is known about his family and education. He was the son of a landowning family in Co. Limerick and inherited an estate at Belmont, Limerick. No record of his education has been found, but he became a barrister at a time when the Irish bar was very powerful and a route to preferment. Grady spoke for the Union on the side of John Fitzgibbon, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, at the meeting of the bar on 9 Dec. 1799. His reward was to be made a county judge, and he served on the Munster circuit. His Impartial View of the Causes Leading this Country to the Necessity of an Union was published in 1799. He married but the name of his wife is not known. He had at least one son, Thomas William Grady (d 1852), who in 1819 was involved in a widely-reported dispute over his appointment as Clerk of Peace for Limerick. Lenihan describes Grady as “a severe and scarcely decent satirist.” The Nosegay, which takes aim at George Evans Bruce, banker at Limerick who gave less than Grady expected on some accommodation bills, launched a libel case which found against Grady. He was ordered to pay £500 in damages. Instead, he voluntarily expatriated himself and moved to Boulogne-sur-Mer where he died on 1 Nov. 1842. (Dublin University Magazine 87 [1876] 588-89; Maurice Lenihan, Limerick: Its History and Antiquities [1866]; The Court Magazine 21 [1842] 173) SR
Other Names:
- T. Grady