Tallon, Daniel (1836–1908), wine merchant and nationalist politician, was born in Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow. He set up in business as a tailor in Dublin, but later became a wine and spirits merchant, eventually establishing two branches of his business – in Wexford Street and South Great George's Street. For a quarter of a century he was either vice-chairman or chairman of the Licensed Grocers’ and Vintners’ Protection Association; he played a leading role in spreading the organisation throughout Ireland, and was described by one member as its ‘right arm’. Temperance advocates, including Irish Irelanders, saw Tallon as embodying the power of the drink lobby; after he boasted that as spokesman for the drink trade he had only to ‘push the button’ and the Irish Party leadership would respond, D. P. Moran (qv) mocked him as ‘Keeper of the Magic Button’. Tallon was a generous contributor to Dublin charities, a governor of the Donnybrook Hospital for Incurables, and a founder member of the Dublin Wicklowmen's Association.
Tallon entered electoral politics during the upheavals of the Parnell ‘split’ in 1890, in which year he was elected to Dublin corporation for the Mansion House ward; he joined the board of the Parnellite Irish Daily Independent on its foundation in 1891. In 1895 he was elected high sheriff of Dublin city, and in 1897 was elected lord mayor for 1898; he was re-elected in 1899 and his term extended into 1900 because of franchise and boundary changes, making him the longest-serving lord mayor since the corporation was reformed in 1840.
Under the union Dublin corporation had assumed considerable significance as a forum for nationalist politics, and during the 1890s the Parnellites emphasised their dominance in Dublin to offset their minority status in the country as a whole. These factors, combined with his flamboyant personality, explain Tallon's unusually high profile in office. Shortly after his election he formed a Mansion House committee to draw public attention to near-famine conditions in the west of Ireland and raise funds for relief work there; he undertook a speaking tour in Britain, issued appeals to the mayors of British cities, and subsequently went on a widely publicised fact-finding mission in the west. (A road was later named after him in Castletownbere, Co. Cork.) He played a leading role in the agitation that accompanied the inquiry into financial relations between Britain and Ireland; sections of the Unionist Party joined Parnellites and Healyites in publicising the 1896 report of the Childers commission (parts of which held that under the union Ireland had been taxed beyond her capacity) and demanding government compensation. Much of the groundwork for Tallon's activities on over-taxation and famine relief was done by his secretary, Thomas Kennedy. In 1899 Tallon joined John Redmond (qv) on a successful tour of the United States to raise funds for a Parnell statue in Dublin; they spoke in many urban centres and dined with President McKinley at the White House. Tallon turned down more than one offer of a nationalist seat in parliament.
Alongside these popular successes, Tallon's mayoral term was marked by criticism from advanced nationalists. During the main 1798 centenary rally on St Stephen's Green (which he attended as president of the Wicklow ‘98 Memorials committee as well as in his capacity as lord mayor) Tallon said that Ireland was better off under British law. John O'Leary (qv), who was on the platform, retorted that he did not care whether Ireland was a republic or an absolute monarchy so long as she had her own laws. When Tallon adjudicated prize draws for the Independent while serving as lord mayor, Arthur Griffith (qv) accused him of demeaning his office to promote a newspaper. Griffith also complained that the Parnell statue project was devised by the parliamentarians to divert attention from the separatist-dominated effort to raise funds for a Wolfe Tone (qv) memorial. And Tallon was widely criticised for undermining a proposed pro-Boer resolution brought before the corporation in 1899 because he feared it might cause parliament to reject legislation to extend the corporation boundaries.
In 1900 Tallon acted as proxy for William Martin Murphy (qv) in buying the Irish Daily Independent ‘on behalf of the debenture holders’, thus saving it from the Freeman's Journal, whose owners wanted to buy the Independent and close it down. The paper was merged with the Healyite Daily Nation; Tallon remained on the board of the merged paper until Murphy bought out the other shareholders in 1904 in order to relaunch the Independent as a mass-market paper. In 1902, when the Independent campaigned successfully to ban a provocative Orange procession at Warrenpoint, Co. Down, an Orange speaker told his brethren that those of them who frequented public houses were subsidising one of the prime movers behind the paper, who would use their cash to build catholic churches. Griffith commented that this overestimated Mr Tallon's piety.
Tallon's political career declined after the 1899 widening of the municipal franchise. In the first elections under the new system he lost the Mansion House ward aldermanry to a labour candidate. His support for loyal addresses when Dublin was visited by Queen Victoria (1900) and Edward VII (1903) made him a major target for the nascent Sinn Féin party, which ran candidates against councillors regarded as insufficiently nationalist; in 1904 Tallon lost his corporation seat and left politics. He died 13 July 1908 at his Rathmines home. He was married with at least one daughter. His career embodied the ambiguities of late Victorian Dublin middle-class nationalism. James Joyce (qv) mentions him in Ulysses and Finnegans wake.