People Australia

Patrick O'Donohoe (1808-1854) Young Ireland exile, convict and journalist

Birth: 1808 at Clonegal, County Carlow, Ireland, probably to a Catholic middle-class family. Marriage: details unknown to Anne surname unknown. They had one daughter. Death: 22 January 1854 at Brooklyn, New York, United States of America. 

• Probably received a good education. By the 1840s he was living in Dublin with his wife and daughter and was employed as a solicitor‘s clerk when he was involved in the unsuccessful Young Ireland revolt in July 1848. Convicted of high treason before a special commission at Clonmel, in County Tipperary on 23 October 1848, his death sentence was later commuted to life transportation.
• Was granted a ticket-of-leave on his arrival in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) aboard the Swift in July 1849. Unable to find legal work he was forced by financial need into journalism. He wrote from his Liberal Catholic perspective and was influenced by the missionary priest, Father J. J. Therry.
• Wrote about the Van Diemen's Land convict system and his own experiences on a timber gang in Port Arthur. Wrote about both male and female convicts as people rather than stereotypes. Argued that even those convicts who had committed serious crimes were capable of improvement and should not be abused after their debt to society had been paid.
• Positioned himself against the Anti-Transportation League free settlers who condemned the entire convict system, but he also did not support the continuation of transportation. Supported probation system. Argued that free settlers had made much money from assigned convicts. Free settlers' arguments against assigned convicts were hypocritical as many free settlers were from relatively humble beginnings but once they had built resources, they demanded free immigrant labour and an end to the assigned convict system.
• Allied with William Carter, a provisions merchant who became first Mayor of Hobart in 1853. Also allies with 'Sigma' and 'Chirurgicus'.
• Edited and published paper Irish Exile and Freeman's Advocate. While Governor Denison was not unhappy with O'Donohoe's criticism of anti-transportationists during most of 1850, he changed his mind towards the end of the year and O'Donohoe and two colleagues were sent to Port Arthur for three months for illegally visiting the Chief of the Colonial Office, William Smith O'Brien.
• Subsequently O'Donohoe lost his paper Irish Exile and as it was his means of support he needed to survive on charity in Launceston.
• Sent to Port Arthur again and later broke his parole due to ill treatment and escaped to New York where he and his family lived in poverty.
• Viewed as being drunk and erratic in behaviour and a gifted writer with a radical political philosophy.
• On 19 December 1852 he boarded a steamer for Melbourne and from there to Sydney where he hid while arranging a passage to the Unites States of America.
• O’Donohoe arrived in San Francisco on 23 June 1853, then moved to New York and gave successful lectures. He died, probably from drink-related causes on 22 January 1854, the day his family arrived from Ireland.

Sources
Richard Davis, 'Young Ireland Rebel and Convict Worker Advocate', Van Dieman's Land 1850, Dept. of History, University of Tasmania, and ‘Patrick O’Donohoe: outcast of the exiles’ in Bob Reece (ed), Exiles from Erin: convict lives in Ireland and Australia (London, 1991), pp 246- 283; Bridget Hourican, ‘Patrick O’Donohoe’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography: https://www.dib.ie/biography/odonohoe-patrick-a6711