By RAY CAVANAUGH
Fugitives are among the most desperate of demographics. Fortunately, they have a patron saint, in Brigit of Kildare, whose feast day is on February 1.
Not all fugitives seek to commit crimes, though. In fact, some proceed to do inspiring things. And one fugitive in particular, John Boyle O’Reilly, eventually became a Catholic media mogul.
Born in County Meath, Ireland, in 1844, he entered life amidst the Great Famine. O’Reilly, though, had a less famished time than much of his ethnic brethren. He took to book-learning as a child, and at age 13 was apprenticed to a local newspaper.
As a young man, he joined the British Army. He then joined the rebel Irish Republican Brotherhood. With Ireland’s widespread woes at the time, many were eager to enlist. The once-secret brotherhood grew too large to avoid the radar of British authorities.
Raids, seizures, and informants became commonplace. Many rebels were arrested, O’Reilly among them. Offered leniency if he would reveal names of coconspirators, he remained uncooperative and received a 20-year sentence of penal servitude in Western Australia.
While on board his convict ship, O’Reilly established a handwritten newspaper, and had a learned reputation (in contrast to many of the passengers, who consisted largely of illiterate career criminals from British prisons) by the time he landed in Australia.
Beginning as a laborer, he managed to get switched to prison accountant, and then became the warden’s personal messenger. Part of his duties included delivering messages to the warden’s home, where O’Reilly began a relationship with the warden’s daughter. It ended badly — rather unsurprising given the circumstances.
The convict took the breakup to heart. On December 27, 1868, he was discovered unconscious and bleeding from severed veins in his left forearm. Though O’Reilly’s life was saved, it was clear that he was a desperate man. And desperate men often make for unreliable convict-servants.
O’Reilly had befriended a local priest named Fr. McCabe, in whom he confided his plan to escape to America. The priest, after advising against any such endeavor, eventually agreed to help the convict.
On February 18, 1869, messenger O’Reilly was running a bit late. But there was a very good reason: He had joined a group of Irish friends, scampered to a nearby river, boarded a well-concealed rowboat, and paddled into the Indian Ocean.
After traveling some twelve miles, the rowboat docked at an inlet, where O’Reilly and his fellow fugitives hid in the sand dunes. They waited for a ship that Fr. McCabe had arranged to collect them, but this ship failed to honor the arrangement. Fortunately, another ship was contracted, and this one came through for the fugitives.
O’Reilly had at least one close call when his getaway ship was searched by authorities upon reaching the British colony of Mauritius (east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean). He had to switch ships twice before reaching America. Arriving first in Philadelphia, he soon relocated to Boston, where he began working for the city’s Catholic newspaper, The Pilot.
The Pilot had been established under a different title in September 1829 by Bishop Benedict J. Fenwick and, among other things, was used as a forum to combat a prevailing anti-Catholic (particularly directed at Irish-Catholic immigrants) sentiment in Boston.
Already prominent when O’Reilly came on board, the newspaper became even more influential during his tenure as editor. Though he served the interests of Irish Catholics, he wasn’t hesitant to call them out for bad behavior when he felt it was committed, and even sacrificed some of his popularity among diehard Irish nationalists, according to A.G. Evans’ biography Fanatic Heart — A Life of John Boyle O’Reilly.
O’Reilly wrote editorials for 20 years and also became part-owner of The Pilot. Aside from his journalism, he wrote one novel and three volumes of poetry. His poems became very popular and often were recited at public events. Contemporary critical reviews of his poems were mixed, and later critical reviews tended toward the dismissive.
In 1872, O’Reilly had married a journalist, Mary Murphy. They proceeded to raise four daughters in Boston’s heavily Irish Charlestown neighborhood.
He had come a long way, in every sense, from his days as a convict-servant in Australia. Yet he knew that some of his Irish compatriots remained Down Under. He gladly lent his firsthand knowledge to a daring plot, known as the 1876 Catalpa Rescue, which involved a ship that sailed from Massachusetts all the way to Australia to pick up a group of six Irish escapees.
During the late-1880s, O’Reilly was contending with health problems and grew more reclusive. He had been a strong and athletic man, but he was overexerting himself with his tireless journalistic work.
O’Reilly was found dead in the early hours of August 10, 1890. The 46-year-old apparently had overdosed on his wife’s sleeping medication, choral hydrate, a potent substance that often led to fatalities. The cause of death was reported in the press as heart failure. Though no autopsy was performed, the official cause was documented as accidental poisoning.
There were rumors of suicide. After all, he’d tried it back in 1868. Granted, his life appeared far bleaker back then. Also, it should be noted that O’Reilly was dealing with insomnia and — even though it was his wife’s medication — he had a legitimate therapeutic reason to consume chloral hydrate.
Until the time of his death, he was considered a fugitive by British authorities. Much of Boston considered him a hero, and his funeral was attended by thousands. There were numerous glowing obituaries, and Harper’s Weekly magazine described him as: “easily the most distinguished Irishman in America.”
Not bad for an ex-convict who, two decades earlier, was hiding in sand dunes, hoping that he might hop a ship bound for the land of opportunity.
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