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On January 2, 1870, John Boyle O'Reilly First Arrived in Boston, Where He Spent the Rest of His Life Defending the Downtrodden


Irish immigrant and fugitive John Boyle O'Reilly first arrived in Boston on January 2, 1870. He never left. For the final two decades of his life, he became one of the city's leading defenders of the downtrodden, while advocating ceaselessly for liberty, freedom and justice that he equated with American ideals.

His road to Boston as a final destination was perilous. Born in 1844 in County Meath, Ireland, he was an infant when the infamous Irish Famine devastated Ireland, killing about one million people and sending another two million refugees into exile.

As a young man, O'Reilly joined the British Army, "with the object of overthrowing the British monarchy,' wrote his biographer Jeffrey Roche, but he was discovered and charged with treason against the British Crown.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment in an Australian penal colony, along with 62 other political prisoners, aboard the Hougoumont and taken to the convict prison in Freemantle, Western Australia. He spent over a year there before making a daring escape aboard a New Bedford whaler, Gazelle, in 1869, a feat that helped shape his legend by the time he landed in America.

When he finally reached America, he landed first in Philadelphia in November 1869, and shortly thereafter went up to New York. We was received with open arms in both cities, but he decided to go to Boston with hopes of continuing his work on behalf of Ireland while also continuing his vocation as a poet and writer.

When he arrived in Boston in 1870, he was infatuated by the possibilities of democracy and liberty, and eager to make a difference after witnessing first hand the injustice of the world. He was quickly befriended by other like-minded Irish living in Boston, including poet Dr. Robert Dwyer Joyce, publisher Patrick Donahoe, whose weekly newspaper The Pilot was the leading Irish and Catholic voice in the country.

And he met Patrick A. Collins, who was born in the same year as O'Reilly and who had moved to Boston in 1848 with his widowed mother. Collins had experienced a similarly traumatic early life when he other Irish Catholics were physically attacked by rabid anti-Catholic Know Nothings in Chelsea, MA when he was 10 years old. O'Reilly and Collins formed a deep friendship and alliance and worked together on numerous causes on behalf of Ireland.

O'Reilly spent the next twenty years of his life in Boston, living in Charlestown with his wife Mary Murphy and four daughters. Right up onto his death on September 10, 1890, O'Reilly continued to speak out on behalf of Irish, African-Americans, Native Americans, Jews, Chinese and other beleaguered groups trying to make their way in America.

Read more about O'Reilly, and visit his memorial in Boston's Fens at the top of Boylston Street. The O'Reilly memorial is part of the city's Irish Heritage Trail.

Research + Text, Michael Quinlin 

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