John Sweetman

John Sweetman (1752 – 1826) was an Irish republican, a delegate to the 1792 Catholic Convention and a member of the Leinster directory of the United Irishman.

Life Sweetman was born of Catholic parents in Raheny, then a village north of Dublin, in 1752; the family had for more than a century operated an extensive brewery in the city. Sweetman succeeded to the ownership of the brewery on the death of his father.

He identified with the movement for the removal of the civil and religious disabilities of the Catholics coordinated from Dublin by the Catholic Committee. in 1791, he supported the vigorous policy initiated by John Keogh that led to the secession from the Committee of most of the Catholic gentry Sweetman was a delegate to the national Catholic Convention which assembled in Dublin on 3 December 1792, the proceedings of which led to the partial Catholic Relief Act of 1793. In the same year a secret committee of the Irish House of Lords accused certain "ill-disposed members" of the Catholic Church of contributing money in support of the "Defenders," a secret agrarian society. They founded this assertion upon the discovery of a letter by Sweetman, enclosing money to defend a peasant accused of "Defenderism." Sweetman immediately published A Refutation, in which he denied the accusation, and stated that he had offered assistance because he believed the man to be innocent. He described himself as "Secretary to the sub-committee of the Catholics of Ireland."

After eighteen years of exile, Sweetman was permitted to return to Ireland in 1820. He died in May 1826, and was buried at Swords, County Dublin.

Personal life Sweetman married, in 1784, Mary Atkinson, the daughter of another Dublin brewer.