John Pollok
(1850-1891)
1 July 1862

 

Volume 8, page 154, sitting number 10,238.

[Identified as 'John Pollock, Esq.' in the Silvy daybooks, the preceding entries are 'Allen Pollock, Esq.,' presumably this sitter's father, and 'A. Pollock, Esq.,' presumably this sitter's older brother.] 

Allen Pollok (1815-1881) was the Scotsman known as 'the Great Evictor, ' who acquired and cleared thousands of acres of land in County Galway, Ireland, taking advantage of financially distressed landholders through the Encumbered Estates Court in the wake of the Great Famine. A petition against these forced evictions, signed by 1400 people, was debated in the House of Commons in 1856. According to the Newry Telegraph (3 May 1856), Pollok had by this point already evicted some 5000 people from their homes and he now intended to depopulate a further 7000 acres. 'There was no gentleman in the West of Ireland who did not regard with abhorrence these proceedings of Mr Pollock [sic], as tending to depreciate the general character of Irish landlords, to disturb peace, and to depopulate the country.'  Nevertheless, in the 1870s Pollok is recorded as holding over 29,000 acres in Galway as well as a small amount of property in county Dublin. 

In 1881 he was succeeded by his son John, who had in 1873 married Florence Madeline Bingham, a daughter of John Charles Robert Bingham, 4th Lord Clanmorris. The marriage produced seven children.

John Pollock died, aged 40, at Finchley in North London on 16 August 1891. He left an estate valued at £33,362.