Henry Guinness

Henry Seymour Guinness (24 November 1858 – 4 April 1945) was an Irish engineer, banker and politician.

Born at Burton Hall, Stillorgan, County Dublin, the family home, Guinness was educated at Winchester College and then the Royal Indian Engineering College, and worked as an engineer in the Indian Public Works in 1880–95. He served as a lieutenant in the Burma State Railway Volunteer Rifles in the Third Anglo-Burmese War. Back in Ireland he was a director of the Great Northern Railway in 1902–24, director of the Bank of Ireland, and assistant managing director at Guinness in 1924–30.

He was appointed High Sheriff of County Dublin in 1899. A supporter of the Irish Unionist Alliance until 1921, he was chosen to represent the Irish business world as a Senator in the Senate of Southern Ireland, which failed to function.

During the Irish War of Independence Guinness arranged for the Sinn Féin led Dublin Corporation to be funded by the Bank of Ireland, as rates due from the Local Government Board had been withheld in 1920. W. T. Cosgrave chaired the British-run Local Government Board finance committee for Dublin, while being at the same time the Minister for Local Government of the Irish Republic. In 1951 he recalled that "I went to the Bank of Ireland and there interviewed two of the Directors, H.S. Guinness and Andrew Jameson. They eventually gave the accommodation so urgently required for the Corporation. It was for this reason that when President of the Executive Council at a later stage, I nominated these two gentlemen as Senators."

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