Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/O'Brien, James Francis Xavier
O'BRIEN, JAMES FRANCIS XAVIER (1828–1905), Irish politician, born in Dungarvan, co. Waterford, Ireland, on 16 October 1828, was son of Timothy O'Brien, a merchant there, who owned some vessels which traded between England and Ireland and South Wales. His mother, Catherine, also belonged to an O'Brien family. When Father Mathew, the total abstinence missionary, visited Dungarvan, O'Brien, then aged eight, took the pledge, which he kept till he was twenty-one. He was educated successively at a private school in Dungarvan and at St. John's College, Waterford. In boyhood he adopted Irish nationalist principles of an advanced type. During the disturbances of 1848 he took part in the abortive attack of James Finton Lalor [q. v.] upon the police barrack of Cappoquin. A warrant was issued for O'Brien's arrest, but he escaped to Wales in one of his father's vessels. On his return to Ireland he engaged, at first at Lismore and then at Clonmel, in the purchase of grain for the export business carried on by his father and family. After his father's death in 1853 he gave up this occupation in order to study medicine. In 1854 he gained a scholarship at the Queen's College, Galway, but soon left to accompany a political friend, John O'Leary [q. v. Suppl. II], to Paris, where he continued his medical studies. He attended lectures at the École de Médecine, and visited hospitals — La Pitié, La Charité, Hôtel Dieu. Among the acquaintances he formed in Paris were the artist James MacNeill Whistler [q. v. Suppl. II], John Martin [q. v.], and Kevin Izod O'Doherty [q. v. Suppl. II], members of the Young Ireland party. A failure of health broke off his medical studies. After returning to Ireland in 1856 he sailed for New Orleans, with the intention of seeking a new experience by taking part in William Walker's expedition to Nicaragua. Through the influence of Pierre Soule, then attorney-general for the state of Louisiana, O'Brien joined Walker's staff. He sailed with the expedition to San Juan and up that river to Fort San Carlos, but Walker made terms without fighting. Returning to New Orleans, O'Brien became a book-keeper there. In 1858 he met James Stephens [q. v. Suppl. II], one of the founders of the Fenian organisation, and Stephens led him to join the local branch. On the outbreak of the American civil war in 1861 he served as assistant-surgeon in a volunteer militia regiment, consisting mainly of Irishmen.
In 1862 he returned to Ireland, and joined the Fenian organisation in Cork, and here he met Stephens again in 1865. He deemed the Fenian rising in 1867 to be premature, but on the night of 3 March 1867 he loyally joined his comrades at the rendezvous on Prayer Hill outside Cork, and led an attack upon the Ballymockan police barracks, which surrendered. The party seized the arms there, and marched on towards Bottle Hill, but scattered on the approach of a body of infantry. O'Brien was arrested near Kilmallock, and taken to Limerick jail. He was subsequently taken to Cork county gaol, and in May tried for high treason. He was convicted, and was sentenced in accordance with the existing law to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. The sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. O'Brien is said to have been the last survivor of those sentenced to the barbarous punishment provided by the old law of treason. By a new act of 1870, hanging or beheading was appointed to be the sole penalty of the extreme kind. From Mount joy Prison, Dublin, O'Brien was soon taken with some twenty-nine other political prisoners, chained together in gangs, to Holyhead on a gunboat, whence he was removed to Millbank, where he was kept in solitary confinement for fourteen months. Next he was removed to Portland Avith others, chained in sets of six. In Portland he worked at stone-dressing. He was finally released on 4 March 1869. On visiting Waterford, and subsequently Cork, he received popular ovations.
Before his arrest O'Brien was manager of a wholesale tea and wine business at Cork. He resumed the post on his release, and was soon appointed a traveller for his firm. Having rejoined the Fenian organisation (finally becoming a member of the supreme council of that body) he combined throughout Ireland the work of Fenian missionary and commercial traveller until 1873. Subsequently he carried on the business of a tea and wine merchant in Dublin, and was at a later period secretary to the gas company at Cork.
Meanwhile he was gradually drawn into the parliamentary home rule movement under Parnell's leadership. In 1885 he became nationalist M.P. for South Mayo, and acted as one of the party treasurers till his death. In the schism of 1891 he seceded from Parnell. Afterwards he became general secretary of the United Irish League of Great Britain, an office which he held for life. He continued member for South Mayo till 1895, when he became member for Cork City and retained the seat till his death. He died at Clapham on 28 May 1905, and was buried in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin. He was twice married: (1) in 1859 to Mary Louisa Cullimore (d. 1866), of Wexford; and (2) in 1870 to Mary Teresa O'Malley. By his first wife he had one son; by his second, three daughters and two sons. A portrait painted by an artist named Connolly belongs to the family.
[Private information; John O'Leary's Recollections, 2 vols. 1896.]