Thomas Phillips

Sir Thomas Phillips (1801 – 26 May 1867) was a Welsh lawyer, politician, and businessman, who was Mayor of Newport in Monmouthshire at the time of the Newport Rising in 1839.

Life The eldest son of Thomas Phillips of Llanellen House, Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, by Ann, eldest daughter of Benjamin James of Llangattock, Crickhowell, Brecknockshire, was born at Llanelly in 1801. The family later moved to Trosnant, near Pontypool.

On 9 November 1838, Phillips was elected Mayor of Newport and became a figure of the Newport Rising. On 4 November 1839, he was in charge of the town when John Frost, at the head of 7,000 Chartists, entered it with the intention of releasing Henry Vincent from gaol. A 30-strong company of the 45th Regiment of Foot was placed at his disposal and took up station in the Westgate Inn. When the hotel was attacked, Phillips was wounded with bullets in the arm and groin.

On 9 December, Phillips was knighted to mark his "individual exertions in maintaining her majesty's authority". On 26 February 1840, he was voted the Freedom of the City of London, and admitted on 7 April. Phillips continued to warn about Chartist activity in south Wales in 1842.

Phillips was called to the bar at the Inner Temple on 10 June 1842. The journey, via Venice, Greece, and Egypt, saw Dadd suffer a breakdown, and he returned to England, leaving Phillips in Paris, in May 1843. Suffering from mental illness, Dadd subsequently stabbed his father to death and was confined to Bethlem Hospital as insane. He was unmarried, and his fortune was inherited by his sister's son, Thomas Phillips Price, who later became MP for North Monmouthshire between 1885 and 1895.