Thomas Francis Meagher and John Mitchel were not the only 19th century Irish revolutionaries to make their mark on Australia and America. Among those they inspired was County Meath man John Boyle O’Reilly. Like Meagher and Mitchel, O’Reilly was transported to Australia for conspiring in rebellion. Like Meagher and Mitchel, he escaped to America, and like Meagher and Mitchel, O’Reilly became one of the most important Irishmen in America. According to A.G. Evans’ biography Fanatic Heart, O’Reilly is remembered in Ireland as a patriot and poet, in Australia as a convict who made a daring escape, and in America as a journalist, poet and philanthropist.
John Boyle O’Reilly was born in 1844 in the shadow of the Boyne river near Drogheda. His home village Dowth is the site of a megalithic passage tomb of similar vintage to nearby Newgrange. Schoolteacher William O’Reilly married Eliza Boyle in Dublin before he took over Dowth national school. John was their third child. At his father’s feet John learned about Cromwell’s massacre of Drogheda, and the Battle of the Boyne at nearby Oldbridge. Ireland suffered an even bigger tragedy as John toddled around the house. The potato crop failed in 1845, then again in 1846, and a third time in 1848. Thanks to poverty, disease and British government negligence, one million people died while another million emigrated. The O’Reillys survived on William’s wages though it turned young John into a lifelong “implacable enemy” of England.
His older brother William was an apprentice at the Drogheda Argus. When William contracted tuberculosis, John took his place, aged 11. John spent four years at the Argus but was forced out after the proprietor died in 1859. The family sent John to Preston, Lancashire where his mother’s sister had married an Englishman. Preston was a Catholic town and O’Reilly enjoyed four years there, working at the Preston Guardian. After 12 months he enlisted with the 11th Lancashire Rifle Volunteers amid talk of a possible war with France. O’Reilly became interested in Irish history and returned to Dublin in 1863, as rumours of Fenian rebellion convulsed Ireland.
O’Reilly enlisted as a trooper in the 10th Hussars in Dublin, not as a potential agent provocateur but simply because he “liked soldering”. The Fenians appointed John Devoy to seek recruits from the army. Devoy estimated 8000 members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood were among 26,000 troops in Ireland. Devoy sought out O’Reilly as a popular member of the Hussars and enlisted him to the movement. With the American civil war ending, Fenian leader James Stephens said 1865 would be the year of action. He never gave the signal. Instead authorities raided Fenian paper the Irish People and arrested its leaders.
Informers attended the secret meetings that Devoy held with army recruits and tipped off police who arrested Devoy at the next meeting in March 1866. O’Reilly was not present but he was arrested at army barracks. His colonel shouted, “Damn you, O’Reilly! You have ruined the finest regiment in the service.” O’Reilly taken to Mountjoy prison and court martialed in June, charged with knowledge of a mutiny and not telling his commanding officer. Informers testified O’Reilly was part of a Fenian conspiracy. The defence cited O’Reilly’s good character but could not undermine the evidence. Aged 22, and was sentenced to death, commuted to 20 years penal servitude.
On September 4, O’Reilly was shackled with military prisoners and transported to London’s Millbank prison, now home of Tate Britain gallery. Millbank was a grim, silent place punctuated only by the clanging of doors and quarter hour chimes at nearby Westminster. Talking was forbidden even during the daily 15 minute exercise though prisoners secretly sent letters to each other. O’Reilly took comfort in Thomas A Kempis’s Imitation of Christ.
In April 1867 he was transferred to Chatham prison before being moved to Portsmouth and then Dartmoor in Devon. O’Reilly described the dreary moorside prison in his later novel Moondyne, “its two centuries of unloved existence in the midst of a wild land and fitful climate, had seared every wall-tower and gateway with lines and patches of discolouration.” By year’s end O’Reilly was on the move again – this time to the other side of the world, transported to Western Australia aboard the Hougoumont.
Though he did not know it, O’Reilly was on the last ever convict ship from Britain to Australia. New South Wales abolished transportation in 1840 and it lasted another 12 years in Van Diemen’s Land. Western Australia began taking prisoners in 1850 but faced pressure from anti-transportationists to end it. There were 280 convicts aboard the Hougoumont, all male, and 62 were Fenians. This caused alarm in WA especially after the “Manchester Outrages” where a policeman was accidentally killed after an attack on a police van, and three Fenians were executed. There were protests in Fremantle and settlers confronted the governor who told them their fears were exaggerated.
The ship left Portland in October 1867. O’Reilly was delighted to be reunited with fellow Fenians. Some would become lifelong friends including Denis Cashman who left a wife and three children in county Waterford. Their guards were surprisingly well disposed towards the Irish and relaxed rules on fraternisation aboard. The prisoners amused themselves with concerts, O’Reilly contributing poetry. Cashman said O’Reilly formed a conspiracy to capture the ship but was talked out of it by prisoners with lesser sentences.
He put his creativity towards a new project, a weekly newspaper. A priest helped secure paper, pens and ink. The first edition of the Wild Goose came out on November 9. That evening the concert was cancelled so O’Reilly could read aloud the handwritten eight-page paper to comrades. Cashman contributed artwork to the subtitle in Gothic letters “A Collection of Ocean Waifs.” The tone was literary rather than political and it hoped to “prove of interest to all to watch the changing flight of the flock.” Amid articles and poetry, a humorous “markets column” announced that biscuits were “getting livelier” while tea was “rather flat.” Co-editors O’Reilly and John Flood encouraged prisoners to stay true to Ireland “with the true unswerving love known only to exiles.”
Convicts loved it and the second edition was eagerly awaited a week later. O’Reilly wrote of an amusing mock trial of a prisoner tried by fellow convicts for stealing tobacco, “instigated by the devil and a love of plunder.” The offender was tarred and locked up in the toilet for three hours before being scrubbed with a hair broom. Flood encouraged Fenians to “fight life battle’s bravely out.” The last page stated that Fremantle was preparing a grand reception for the Wild Goose “by her feathered friend, the Swan.”
O’Reilly and Flood produced their paper every Saturday. Sometimes heavy seas made the going difficult as the Hougoumont sailed into the roaring forties, but the Wild Goose was always published on time, the sixth edition coming as they sailed within 3000 miles of Antarctica. The ship’s surgeon said the seventh edition would be the last as paper was confiscated in preparation for Fremantle. The last 16-page edition on December 21 was a “Christmas number” complete with ornate festive script. O’Reilly contributed a story called “Christmas Night.” He delayed the weekly reading of the paper until Christmas Day with a special dinner of “salt horse and plum duff” and a double ration of wine.
The captain demanded O’Reilly and Flood write a second copy for him, which they managed in heavy seas. Two mates also wanted their own copies keeping them busy until within sight of the Western Australian coast. On January 9, 1868 they docked at Fremantle, then a larger town than the capital upriver at Perth. The town was divided between those welcoming the convicts and those fearing the Fenians’ reputation. The convicts were taken by barge to prison and issued summer clothes. Civilians were assigned to work groups but 17 military Fenians including O’Reilly were kept in jail. O’Reilly was appointed orderly to the prison chaplain and after a month was sent 115 miles south to join a bush camp building a road at Bunbury.
In 1868 Bunbury was a busy export centre for timber and sandalwood. The new road would link Bunbury to Geographe Bay. The work camps were housed in tents and rude huts with hammocks for beds. They worked nine hour days under a baking sun with primitive tools, a wearying task, as O’Reilly wrote, with “no wages, no promotion, no incitement, no variation for good or bad, except stripes for the laggard.”
O’Reilly was marked out as a promising convict and was promoted to clerical assistant giving him respite from back-breaking work. He became a messenger to Bunbury and was attracted to his warden’s daughter Jessie. They had a brief but doomed affair. A note in his file said O’Reilly tried to commit suicide. He also attracted the dislike of an overseer, who punished him for a minor infraction, and he was not allowed letters for six months. One of the delayed letters was news of his mother’s death.
The harsh treatment awakened a desire to escape and he turned to Catholic priest Patrick McCabe for advice. McCabe thought escape was impossible but agreed to help. On an errand to Bunbury, O’Reilly met Irishman James Maguire who said McCabe would help Fenians escape aboard an American whaler. Over 40 convicts had escaped on whalers between 1850 and 1862 and British authorities thoroughly searched ships at port. When whaler Vigilant arrived in Bunbury in February 1869, McCabe paid the captain £30 and planned to smuggle O’Reilly aboard. One evening as O’Reilly was night constable on duty, he began his escape. Maguire and a friend escorted him to the mouth of the Collie River where they found a boat and rowed four miles silently past the town and its harbour police and beyond Bunbury’s estuary entrance into the ocean. They landed 12 miles north at a deserted beach north of Leschenault Peninsula near Australind. There they would wait a day or two for the Vigilant.
His companions went to find a former convict who lived nearby while O’Reilly searched for food. After he skinned and ate a possum, Maguire returned with water and provisions. They made a bed of tree branches and fell asleep exhausted. The following day they spied the Vigilant out to sea and rowed out to meet it. But the ship veered away. The men shouted in vain and the ship sailed out of sight. Bitterly, they returned to the shore and left O’Reilly to hide in the dunes.
Unknown to O’Reilly two other prisoners had escaped Bunbury on the same night as him. Police were everywhere and it was only by some miracle O’Reilly’s boat was not spotted as it passed the town. The two other men were later caught and when Police realised that O’Reilly was also missing, they combed the hills around the town, while he hid 12 miles away. The Vigilant was searched but the captain was worried that he might be followed and could not risk picking up O’Reilly.
In desperation O’Reilly took to his boat again and spent two days on the ocean. Remarkably he found the Vigilant again, but once more the ship veered away. O’Reilly rowed back to the dunes. He remained there for two weeks while McCabe and Maguire raised more money, this time to escape on the American whaler Gazelle. An English prisoner named Bowman blackmailed his way into the escape plans. Maguire took Bowman to the dunes where O’Reilly kept a suspicious eye on him. The following morning they rowed three miles to meet the Gazelle. This time O’Reilly was allowed to come aboard. Bowman joined him, though was not as welcome.
There remained dangers ahead. Gazelle was five months from home and British tentacles were everywhere on the seven seas. The ship sailed north and continued whaling with the occasional “gam” (meeting) with other whalers. O’Reilly was part of one whale chase and when the harpoon struck, the whale lashed out at O’Reilly’s boat, smashing it to smithereens. Second mate Henry Hathaway found him unconscious and head down in the water. He dragged O’Reilly up and punched him repeatedly to get the salt water out of him. O’Reilly convinced Hathaway to give him a second chance and they successfully dragged a whale aboard.
The Gazelle headed to the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues for supplies. Now part of Mauritius, Rodrigues was then a British colony. When they landed in July 1869, authorities boarded the ship with information an Australian convict was aboard. They identified Bowman and arrested him. O’Reilly was not taken but suspected Bowman would inform on him. Hathaway formed a plan, hiding O’Reilly in a locker and telling the crew that O’Reilly was suicidal. Hathaway shouted “man overboard” and when the crew found O’Reilly’s hat in the water, they were convinced he had drowned. The following morning Bowman returned with soldiers to identify O’Reilly only to be told he was dead. The crew’s distress was not faked. After the Gazelle left the island, sailors were astonished when O’Reilly emerged from the locker.
It was a narrow escape. When the Gazelle gammed with American cargo ship Sapphire in the Indian Ocean, O’Reilly swapped ship taking the identity papers of a deserted sailor. The Sapphire took her cargo of cotton to Liverpool where O’Reilly stepped ashore as seaman John Soule. Though tempted he did not return to nearby Preston and instead boarded the Bombay bound for America. O’Reilly looked longingly as they passed the coast of Ireland, the closest he would ever get to home. He docked at Philadelphia on November 23, 1869, “a political refugee” in his own words, finally beyond the reach of British authorities.
O’Reilly was welcomed as an Irish hero in a reception at New York’s Cooper Institute. He joined the Fenians but was disappointed to find a split between those who wanted to attack Canada and those who wanted action in Ireland. After a month he took the advice of friends and moved to Boston, where he lived the rest of his life. While relations between Irish and nativists in Boston had improved since the 1850s when Massachusetts had a Know Nothing governor, there were still tensions and O’Reilly wanted to ease them.
O’Reilly met Cavan-born immigrant Patrick Donahoe who in 1836 started the Pilot, which became Boston’s main Irish Catholic newspaper. Donahoe offered him a job and by April 1870 O’Reilly told his aunt in Preston he was establishing a reputation and lived “as a gentleman.” He covered that month’s Fenian convention in New York and supported John O’Neill’s plan for a third invasion of Canada. O’Reilly followed O’Neill’s army to the border and wrote about their poor morale and discipline. O’Reilly joined the revolution which was a disaster and he was arrested. Disillusioned, he wrote “Fenianism has lost its mystery” and its leaders were “criminally incompetent.” He resigned from the movement. From here on, O’Reilly’s loyalty was to America.
Within a year O’Reilly became editor of the Pilot. While diehard Fenians detested him, his strong views on Irish assimilation helped the paper increase circulation. O’Reilly’s reputation grew with forceful lectures. Within two years, he was a wealthy man. He married Irish American woman Mary Murphy in 1872. The Pilot office was rocked by three fires in the following 12 months that destroyed Donahoe’s fortune. O’Reilly survived the disasters and his literary career flourished. In 1873 he published a book of poetry Songs from the Southern Seas which he dedicated to newborn daughter Mollie. While the reception was mixed it gained an enthusiastic following.
After Donahoe went bankrupt, O’Reilly bought the paper in partnership with Boston Archbishop, John Williams. The Pilot went from strength to strength as did O’Reilly’s reputation as a prominent Boston Catholic. He was distracted by matters past when the Fenians resolved to free remaining Irish military prisoners in Western Australia. O’Reilly and Cashman (now the Pilot‘s business manager) met old Fenian friend John Devoy to discuss the plan. O’Reilly suggested they talk to Henry Hathaway about buying a whaler to pick up the fugitives. Hathaway arranged for Devoy to buy a ship called the Catalpa while O’Reilly involved Western Australian friend Father McCabe in the rescue. The Catalpa picked up six Fenians off Fremantle and survived a stand-off with a British naval vessel before returning in triumph to America in 1876.
In 1878 O’Reilly published Moondyne in weekly instalments in the Pilot. The novel was based partly on Western Australian bushranger Moondyne Joe and partly on his own life. Though melodramatic, it was well received. Its themes included penal reform, which O’Reilly promoted in the paper. He was a supporter of rights of minorities, including Native Americans, Jews and especially African Americans. He attacked New York police who threatened to resign if a black man was appointed to the force. He supported armed retaliation against southern lynching. “The negro is a new man,” he wrote, “and he can be a great man if he will avoid modelling himself on the whites.”
O’Reilly supported the Irish Land League in 1879 and met Parnell in Boston a year later. By then O’Reilly had published his third book of verse and was the father of four daughters. Though O’Reilly was an athletic man of immense energy his busy life began to affect his health. He complained of insomnia and overwork and he took time off on canoe trips, which he described in a book Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport. There was disappointment in 1885 when the British government turned down his request to visit Canada as an undischarged felon. O’Reilly knew he could never return to Ireland. He continued a punishing schedule of writing commissions and public engagements until illness in September 1889 forced convalescence in the mountains. He recovered and travelled to California in 1890 on a speaking tour, which added to his exhaustion.
O’Reilly returned to their summer house at Hull near Nantucket where he commuted daily to Boston to edit the paper. On the night of August 9, 1880 wife Mary asked him to go to the doctor’s for medicine. At midnight he arrived back with a doctor, who diagnosed nervous tension. O’Reilly had a second excursion at 2am after he spilled medicine. He returned with more medicine, the doctor advising he should take some himself. Mary woke at 3am and found her husband slumped in a chair. She couldn’t rouse him and sent for the doctor. O’Reilly rallied briefly before he collapsed and died, aged 46. The Boston Herald called it “heart failure” though the doctor listed a cause of death as “an overdose”. Suicide is also a possibility, given his prior attempt and his chronic overwork and pressure.
Cardinal Gibbons called his death “a public calamity” and former president Grover Cleveland hailed him as a “strong and able man”. O’Reilly was buried at the highest point of Boston’s Holyhood Cemetery, now marked by a bas-relief engraved on a basalt rock. There is also a memorial on the Fenway intersection to the “poet, patriot, orator.” According to A.G. Evans, O’Reilly helped change American perceptions of Irish-Americans, raised the consciousness of the Irish themselves, and was a Western Australian folk hero. In the last few weeks, Bunbury hosted a play on his romance with Jessie, Springfield Massachusetts’ John Boyle O’Reilly Club built a new pavilion, while Drogheda held a wreath laying in his honour. O’Reilly’s impact remains profound on three continents.
Woolly Days 