Thomas (Buck) Whaley

Buck Whaley (1766 - 1800), son of Robert 'Burn Chapel' Whaley, was perhaps the last of the true rakes.
Robert Whaley had a reputation reputation as a fearsome priest hunter and a ruthless efficiency in the burning of Catholic churches during the 1798 insurrection.
He is best remembered for his gambling excesses and a famous wager where he won some £15,000 by travelling to Jerusalem.

The most widely referenced source is Whaley's memoirs (pdf) published by Sir Edward O'Sullivan in 1906. These memoirs were written by Whaley while in exile in the Isle of man.

By all accounts, the gentleman was a self professed misery, in spite of his fortune and adventure.
Yet surprisingly little has been written about his life and times in Ireland.

He was a restless individual and an unashamed womaniser in addition to his profligacy, as this extract from his memoirs shows.

This quiet life did not suit my volatile disposition: in order therefore to vary the scene, I sent over to London for a female companion, with whom I had been intimate, and who immediately accepted the invitation. I had no motive whatever in giving her the preference but that she was an exotic. My inamorata was neither distinguished for wit or beauty; but I will do her the justice to say that she had none of that rapacity and extravagance so common of her profession. What I expended on her account was from my own free will and suggestion. I hired her a magnificent house, suitably furnished, and settled an allowance of five hundred a year on her; this was merely pro forma, for she cost me upwards of five thousand. At her house I kept my midnight orgies, and saw my friends, according to the fashionable acceptation of the word.
But soon growing tired of this manner of living, I conceived the strange idea of performing, like Cook, a voyage around the world....

pp.33/34 Buck Whaley's Memoirs

Perhaps the memory of this man is an example of Georgian aristocratic propaganda with a selective record of his dashing exploits, rather than his corruption and exploitation. The source of the family fortunes, combined with Robert's campaigns against Catholics, might raise an eyebrow or two.

Whaley's Dublin residence was the house beside what is now the Bank of Ireland (No. 41 today perhaps?)

For over thirty years Samuel Faulkner was agent to estates of the Whaley family, which included country houses at Castletown, Co. Carlow, and Whaley Abbey, Co. Wicklow, and a town house at 85, St Stephen's Green, Dublin. Thomas 'Buck' Whaley directed in his will, that 'As I am now building a house and offices [i.e. 86 St Stephen's Green] adjoining my present dwelling house on the south side of Stephen's Green, Dublin, my will is that in case the same should happen not to be finished at the time of my death, that my executors or administrators should compleat and finish the same according to the plan thereof, and under the direction of my faithful servant Samuel Faulkner.' Faulkner himself lived in No. 96 St Stephen's Green South. He was drowned at sea in 1795, when he was brainging gold to Thomas Whaley in the Isle of Man.

http://www.dia.ie/architects/view/2463

(There is a reference at the end of the note above to letters from Whaley in the Georgian Society, but a search on their site was unproductive.)