Duhigg, Bartholomew (c.1751–1813), political activist, antiquarian, and barrister, was the fourth son of Bartholomew Duhigg, ‘gent.’, of Ballyhigh, Co. Limerick, who seems to have been a Roman catholic who conformed in 1725. Bartholomew the younger entered the Middle Temple in London and King's Inns, and was called to the bar in 1775. He later wrote: ‘my professional exertions were first known or encouraged by the people of Cork’ (Duhigg, 560). In 1777 he married Mary Anne (or Maryanne) Montgomery of Kilkee, Co. Cork. They made their home in Dublin, having one son and at least one daughter.
The chief baron, Barry Yelverton (qv), regarded Duhigg as ‘a man of general reading and information, not only in his own profession but in every branch of science’ (NA: SPO, Law 1728–1796, OP 9/25/33). Duhigg served as the part-time assistant librarian (1794–1801) and junior librarian (1801–1813) of King's Inns, and also acted as its under-treasurer in 1803–4. He published the first catalogue of the library of King's Inns (1801) and was instrumental in securing for that society the benefit of the Copyright Act. Duhigg wrote two books, King's Inns remembrances (1805) and History of the King's Inns (1806); the latter is unreliable in some important respects. He also wrote at least seven extended ‘Letters’ or ‘Observations’, which were published as pamphlets and addressed political, legal, and administrative topics. Duhigg's surviving manuscripts (at King's Inns) include ‘Irish parliaments’ and other papers.
A member of the Volunteer movement for national reform and an independent whig, Duhigg claimed later to have antagonised the future lord chancellor and earl of Clare, John FitzGibbon (qv), by publishing in 1785–6 an attack on the latter's prosecution, as attorney general, of Henry Stevens Reilly. Duhigg supported demands for catholic emancipation, praising those catholics who had fought in 1690–91 at the siege of Limerick. If Duhigg's father was in fact a convert, then some of his own ancestors may have been among those besieged in that city. Duhigg's name was absent from a declaration in favour of the union, signed by 300 Limerick men, including the senior librarian of King's Inns. This was published by direction of FitzGibbon in the Limerick Chronicle on 14 September 1799. However, notwithstanding various indications that he had once opposed the political union of Britain and Ireland, near the end of his life Duhigg declared his support for it.
Duhigg was one of the first lawyers appointed as an ‘assistant-barrister’ to the justices of the peace, in his instance for Co. Wexford (1796–1808). He strongly condemned the manifesto of the United Irishmen and poured scorn on certain supporters of the 1798 rebellion, whom he described as ‘briefless barristers and physicians without practice’.
Duhigg undertook research on public documents for William Burton Conyngham (qv) of the RIA, who, before his death in 1796, intended to publish a volume for Ireland in the style of Foedera, the collection of public treaties and alliances published in England by Thomas Rymer (d. 1713). Thereafter, Duhigg long advocated and was partly responsible for the establishment of a Record Commission for Ireland, publishing two pamphlets on the subject (1801 and 1810). In 1810 he was one of four barristers appointed as the first sub-commissioners for records. According to Duhigg's widow, ‘his indefatigable attention to the laborious duties of the Record Commission which he first recommended to this country was the immediate cause of his death’ (Maryanne Duhigg to Charles Abbot, BL Add. MS 40,232, f.172). He died in Dublin in 1813.