Luke Hayden

Luke Patrick Hayden (c. 1850 – 23 June 1897[1]) was an Irish nationalist politician and MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party represented South Leitrim from 1885 to 1892 and South Roscommon from 1892 until his death in 1897.

He was secretary of one of the first Home Rule County organizations, the branch started in Co. Roscommon at the beginning of the movement.

In the 1895 general election the prominent anti-Parnellite John Dillon attempted to oust him from South Roscommon, by standing there as well as in his own seat of Mayo East.

Luke Hayden was a popular local figure and his funeral cortège in the county town of Roscommon on 25 June 1897 was over a mile long.

The following month, he was succeeded in his South Roscommon seat by his younger brother John Patrick Hayden, also a Parnellite, who was returned unopposed.