Denny Lane

Denny Lane (4 December 1818 – 29 November 1895) was an Irish businessman and nationalist public figure in Cork city, and in his youth a Young Irelander.

[1] Although a Catholic, he graduated from the mainly Protestant Trinity College, Dublin, where he joined the College Historical Society, became a friend of Charles Gavan Duffy and Thomas Davis, and moved in the circle from which the Young Ireland movement sprang.

[1][5] Thomas Carlyle on his 1849 Irish tour met Lane on 17 July, describing him as a "fine brown Irish figure, Denny; distiller – ex-repealer; frank, hearty, honest air; like Alfred Tennyson a little".

[6] Lane took over his father's distillery in Cork and later started several industrial businesses near the city, with mixed success.

[1][7] He stood for Parliament in the 1876 Cork City by-election, but the Home Rule vote was split with John Daly, so that unionist William Goulding was elected.