Thomas Westropp Bennett

Thomas William Westropp Bennett (30 January 1867 – 1 February 1962) was an Irish politician, magistrate and public figure in Irish agriculture.

Born on his father's estate in Ballymurphy, County Limerick he was the eldest son (and second of five children) of Captain Thomas Westropp Bennett, a gentleman-farmer, Crimean War veteran and retired Captain in the 39th (Dorsetshire) regiment of the British Army. One of his younger brothers, George C. Bennett was Cumann na Gaedhael/Fine Gael TD for Limerick County. The Bennetts were an old Limerick family of Protestant gentry (a class known in history as "Anglo-Irish") who had been resident in Limerick since the 1670s. His father was a Church of Ireland member, but the children followed the Catholic faith of their mother.

Westropp Bennett's ancestors followed the usual occupations of their class: Protestant clergymen, Justice of the Peace (magistrates), landowners or military officers; several cousins (Ensign Thomas Bennett and Lt Joseph Bennett) had fought in the Peninsular War and another, Lt Francis W Bennett, died of wounds after fighting in the Battle of Waterloo. An ancestor, Hugh Massy, 2nd Lord Massy of Duntrileague, had sat in Henry Grattan's Irish Parliament in the 1780s in both the Irish House of Commons and, later, the House of Lords. The family had been politically active at a county level, including a Lord Mayor of Limerick, several Freemen of Limerick and numerous JPs.

Westropp Bennett was educated at Kilkenny College and the Queen's Service Academy in Dublin but, unusually, did not attend Trinity College, Dublin where many of his ancestors had studied. On completion of his education, he returned to the Bennett family's extensive landholdings in Limerick and both farmed and took a prominent role in County Limerick life.

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