 Introduction | Early Data | Recent Research | Lattey in India | Lattey in New Zealand | Lattey Locations | Name Index EARLY DATA This is the family history written by R T Lattey. The earliest known member of the Lattey family was Joseph Senior Lattey. The date of his birth is not known but he married in 1805 and was in the employment of the Dublin County and City Excise in 1806 and died in 1835 when he was considered to be 'youngish', so that means he was probably born between 1770 and 1780. Of his ancestry nothing is known but it is recorded that his eldest son used to say in joke that he was a cousin of 'John first Duke of Argyll', by which he presumably meant the 6th Duke of Argyll. Some of the family claimed relationship with the Hely Hutchinsons. Joseph Senior Lattey named his 3rd son Abraham Hely Hutchinson, and his 11th child Dugald Campbell. One of Abraham Hely Hutchinson’s grandsons when he went to South Africa in the 1890’s to join the Cape Mounted Police, is reported to have been very kindly received by Lord Donoughmore, who was then Governor of the Cape, which suggests that there is something in this Hely Hutchinson story. (John Irvine Lattey worked with a Chris Hely Hutchinson at GKN Contractors in Redditch between 1977 and 1983 and Chris said that his family accepted that we were related). The stories as to the parentage of JSL are mainly derived from letters written by his grand-daughter Frances Maria, daughter of Parke Pittar Lattey: and who married a member of the Pittar family. She says that her father believed his father to have been an only son and that her Uncle Arthur agreed with this. In 1643, Richard Hutchinson, an ironmonger in London, subscribed the sum of £760 to prosecute the war against the Irish. After the Cromwellian campaign of the mid-17th century and the surrender of Clonmel to the forces of the Lord Protector, it was decided that all those loyal to the Parliamentarian cause should be assigned land which would be distributed in a lottery. On September 1st, 1653, Richard Hutchinson drew his allotment in Tipperary, where his final grant on the 19th July 1667 was 755 acres at Knocklofty. According to Richard’s will of 1757, he made a niece, Christina Nickson, heiress to his estates. She, in turn, married John Hely, a barrister from Donoughmore in County Cork. John Hely was born in 1724,. and adopted the name of Hely-Hutchinson. He had 6 sons and 4 daughters by his wife between 1756 and 1769. According to the story circulating in our family he went to Stirling on Government business and met (possibly en-route in Campbelltown) a Miss Lautie, the daughter of a physician, and induced her to go with him to Dublin where she changed the spelling of her name to Lattey. He was a man of outstanding ability. He was appointed Provost of Trinity College in Dublin and in 1777 was made Secretary of State for Ireland. In parliament he strongly advocated the relaxation of the penal laws. He declined any peerage for himself, so it was his wife who was ennobled as Baroness Donoughmore of Knocklofty on 16th October, 1783. Their son Richard was created a Viscount in 1797 and for his support of the Act of Union was made Earl of Donoughmore. A strong supporter of Catholic Emancipation he became a Lieutenant-General in the army and was appointed governor of Tipperary. The 7th Earl of Donoughmore (1902 - 1981) was the last of his family to occupy Knocklofty House. The Earl and his wife were extremely popular figures in the local community to which they contributed generously. When the couple were kidnapped by an armed and masked gang from their home in 1972 the incident was greeted with shock and outrage in Clonmel. Fortunately, they were both released unharmed four days later in the Phoenix Park. Knocklofty House which was the home of the Earls of Donoughmore for more than two hundred years was sold in 1983 and converted into a country hotel. Joseph Senior Lattey married on 12 June 1805 Frances Letitia Pittar who came of a Huguenot family which had been settled for some time in Dublin and are said to be descended from Jean Pitard, Physician to Louis XIV, who persuaded the people of Paris to have a second water supply because the old one was contaminated. In 1807-7 he was a Surveyor for the Collector of Revenue for Mallow; in 1808 he was Surveyor at Sligo; 1809 – 26 at Maryborough and in 1827 he was one of the Supervisors of the Dublin County and City Excise. In 1828 he was appointed the Collector of Excise at Kilkenny, where he died in 1835. He had eleven children:
From here onwards it is proposed to confine this account to the life of Robert John and his descendants. 
Robert John, born 17 August 1806 at St Stephens Green, Dublin. Married Rebecca Payne on 14 November 1835.She died on 14 October 1881. He seems to have got a job with a shipping company, because there is a letter from his father(18 March 1821) saying that he was expecting shortly to sail for Rio, but eventually he had a job in in a shipping Company’s office in Calcutta where one of his Pittar cousins was also at work.
When he had been there a few years, he had leave and came to England where he called on a watchmaker who traded under the name of Barwise, and pointed out that there was no-one in India who could repair a watch or clock and that everyone out there, both Army and civilian, had to send their watches all the way round the Cape whenever they wanted repair. He and his cousin had saved up enough money to pay the wages of a good watch and clock repairer for about six months, when they felt confident they would have made sufficient to be able to carry on. Barwise said, 'Oh, yes, I can find you a suitable man, but that is not the proper way to start business; you should also sell silverware'But the young man pointed out that he had no capital to buy the stuff. Barwise replied, 'You look an honest young man and if you tell me what ship you are going back by, I will have £500 worth of silverware on board that ship for you'. After some months all the silverware was sold and Robert John was about to write to Barwise to suggest that some more might come, and to pay him for the first £500 worth, when a ship came in with a letter saying 'On this ship is another £500 worth; you ought to have sold the first lot by now'. Trade continued to grow because of course they had the watch and clock repair work for every European in India, and when people came with a watch to the shop they were likely to buy some of the goods, and the trade eventually developed into trading in precious stones. Robert John’s (RJ) two eldest children, Rebecca Frances (17.10.1836 to 7.3.1922) and Robert Thomas (1.1.1839 to 17.2.1920) were born in Calcutta; the rest were born in the UK, at St. John’s Wood, presumably in the large house which RJ had built quite close to Swiss cottage station.
RJ invested a good deal of money in the Royal British Bank. This had been formed in 1851 with branches in the Strand and Westminster Bridge Road. Its failure was due to a dishonest manger named Cameron who had been helping himself to the funds and using them to make himself a grand place on Brownsea Island. There had also been excessive drawings by directors and heavy losses on a colliery in Wales. At a meeting of the shareholders about 1855, RJ expressed his dissatisfaction with the accounts presented and asked that a committee of shareholders should be allowed to investigate the books. The Chairman held that this was illegal, but suggested that Mr R J Lattey should be made a Director and this was done. When he saw the books he found that he was quite right and that the whole thing was hopelessly insolvent. His fellow Directors pointed out that under the law of that time the Directors were responsible for making up deficiencies, each up to his last halfpenny. RJ’s opinion was that things would get worse and that the only safe policy was at once to declare that the bank was insolvent. There were several other bank failures at about this time, and calls of £2-3000 were made on the holders of each £500 share, and this led to the law by which Banks became Joint Stock Companies with Limited Liability in 1858. The Courts took, so far as can be made out, every penny that RJ had in England, but overlooked the fact that he had fairly recently bought a quite respectable property called Cregg Park in Co.Galway; there was also a fishing lodge on Lough Cutra. He was not badly off, since he was able to take his family for six months to Paris at one time and later took some of them for a prolonged tour of Italy. When RJ’s youngest son (Henry) was first articled to his eldest brother (Robert Thomas) in the late 1870’s, one of his first jobs was to deal with some of the last papers connected with the Royal British Bank, and when Robert Thomas died (1920) Henry had to go to Dublin to establish the fact that his brother’s estate owed nothing in connection with the Bank failure. He found that all the papers had been burned in the 'Troubles', and typed copies of the papers which he had brought with him are now the official records in Ireland.  Back Row: Robert John Lattey, Evelina Crowe (Lattey), Mary Lattey, Clara Lattey Front row: Henry Lattey, (Governess), Rebecca Lattey (Payne) Introduction | Early Data | Recent Research | Lattey in India | Lattey in New Zealand | Lattey Locations | Name Index |