Most Dubliners pass the Rates office building on Castle Street without giving it a second glance. Few know the story of scandal, bankruptcy and suicide which still haunts its corridors.
In 1722, a banker by the name of William Gleadowe married into the Newcomen family of Carriglass in Co. Longford and assumed their name. In 1781 he was knighted and elected to the Irish Parliament. Here, he voted in favour of the Act of Union. Sir William Gleadow-Newcomen’s wife was rewarded with a peerage as thanks.
In 1778, he commissioned architect Thomas Ivory to build a new bank at 16 Castle Street next to City Hall which traded as Newcomen & co. Bank. It was completed in 1781.
At time of his death in 1807, he was in £74,000 in debt to his own bank. Hhis son Thomas Viscount Newcomen inherited his mother’s title and the management of the Bank.
Thomas followed his father’s example by borrowing £44,000 from the same source. Additionally, he borrowed elsewhere to the tune of £163,000.
He soon turned into a despondent, isolated, Scrooge like figure.
William John Fitzpatrick in his memoir 1892 memoir Secret Service Under Pitt, described how he:
For years he lived alone in the bank, gloating, it was wildly whispered, over ingots of treasure, with no lamp to guide him but the luminous diamonds which had been left for safe keeping in his hands. Moore would have compared him to ‘the gloomy gnone that dwells in the dark gold mine‘. Wrapped in a sullen misanthropy, he was sometimes seen emerging at twilight from his iron clamped abode.
From 1825, the mismanaged bank suffered a number of failures and eventually had to close.
Newcomen, then forty-eight and still unmarried, could not face the scandal. He returned home to Killester House, went into his office and turned a gun on himself.
After his death the title became extinct.
In 1831, the building was sold to the Hibernian bank and it later became the Rates office.
I wonder is there any connection between this family and Newcomen Bridge on North Strand?
William Gleadowe Newcomen commissioned the reconstuction of his bank in 1778. The work was completed in 1781, the year of his knighthood. During those years the bank’s business was conducted from 19 Mary’s Abbey. William died in 1807, in debt to his own bank for £74,000. His son Thomas inherited both the bank and his father’s title. He also followed his father’s example by borrowing £44,000 from the same source. Additionally, he borrowed elsewhere to the tune of £163,000. These liablities totalled £281,000, but did not become public knowledge until after Thomas had reputedly taken his own life, by which time the bank had stopped trading. The Gleadowe’s lived in Killester. Sir William’s work in his estate was praised by commentators and he was highly regarded for his cultivation of fruit.
Update: “I should have acknowledged the work of G L Barrow from on which my post is based.See his article in the Dublin Historical Record March 1972, pages 38-53., “Some Dublin private banks.”
Thanks for that info! I’ve included some of it now in the original article.
Strictly speaking Bank was on Cork Hill rather than Castle St.
A colleague of mine said he was ridiculed by his peers for being ‘new money’ i.e.’ new come inn’ Sad end.
Just another note – there is a porter in the Rates Office telling American visitors it was designed by Jack Hoban and he even brought two tourists in and showed them the original ‘oval office’. I will pop in one day myself and see what the story is!!!! I might have to crook my finger at him and say – come here to me…………
[…] its patron was the duke of Leinster; businessmen and opposition politicians rallied to it; and Gleadowes, rivals of the La Touches, were bankers to the company. In other words, there was to be a left-wing […]
[…] Come Here To Me!: The lonely Thomas Gleadowe-Newcomen […]