‘Attempt on the life of the Duke of Edinburgh and the arrest of O’Farrell,’ 12 March 1868.
Source: Dictionary of Sydney
This section concerns an Irish Catholic, Henry O’Farrell, and how he was perceived by the Australian media following his attempted assassination of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh in 1868. After the incident, many newspapers published articles and documents portraying O’Farrell in negative ways; most spoke negatively of his Irish heritage. The way that people perceived him was no doubt shaped by this coverage of his actions but also they biased towards him due to the fact that he was an Irish Catholic immigrant.
For many of those who embarked on a new journey to Australia in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, all wanted to set out for a new and better life. Emigrating from Ireland during that time was not all that easy. Not being able to return home when desired was not stress-free and those who emigrated were leaving behind their family and friends; more often than not they would never see them again. Many historians have portrayed Irish immigrants as hopeless and not prepared for their new life and new culture that they were about to embark on.[1] However, this was not the case for every immigrant in Australia.
On 12 March 1868, Henry James O’Farrell not only made headlines in Australia but in Ireland along with other parts of the world after his assassination attempt on Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh who was on tour of the colonies for the first time.[2] The Prince was seriously wounded at picnic at Clontarf in northern Sydney and took a couple of months to recover during which time O’Farrell was tried and sentenced to death. Newspapers documented not only the account of what happened on the day in question but also the follow up over the next few weeks during the trial, conviction and hanging. The perception of Irish and Catholics changed drastically in the media during this time. The Irish went from being rarely mentioned in the Australian press to being associated with a man who had previously spent time incarcerated in a lunatic asylum and was now the first person ever in the colonies to try and assassinate a person in connection to the British Crown.[3] The event was highly publicised with the majority of news outlets being biased against O’Farrell – which probably contributed to sectarian tensions between English settlers, first-generation Australians and Irish immigrants in Australia.
Henry James O’Farrell (1833-1868)
Photograph by Montagu Scott of Henry James O’Farrell, following his arrest. Source:
Dictionary of Sydney
Henry O’Farrell, formerly of Dublin, had moved back and forth between Ireland and Australia prior to this incident in 1868. An article titled ‘The Assassin of Prince Alfred’ published in The Tasmanian Times, Hobart, on 19 March 1868 stated that while returning to Ireland he began his studies with the priesthood and even visited Rome. This highlighting of the ‘assassin’s’ connection to the Roman Catholic Church made those who were not involved whatsoever with the attempted assassination guilty by association of their faith.[4]
Even though the papers were singling out Henry O’Farrell individually, other Irish people were guilty or easily stereotyped by association. O’Farrell had the attention of a large number of people at the time and was referred to as ‘O’Farrell the Assassin’ in newspapers across many colonies, including the Ovens and Murray Advertiser in Victoria.[5]
The language of this article is noteworthy; O’Farrell is referred to as a ‘rascal’ instead of a person. It also notes Henry O’Farrell’s time spent in a lunatic asylum and how he was a leading member of the Catholic Church and took interest in its internal affairs. Even though the majority of the information is nearly entirely correct, it is not written in an unbiased language. It was evident that O’Farrell suffered from mental health disease but he was still described as ‘fearful’, ‘dangerous’, ‘a terror to the neighbourhood’ and also ‘a dangerous man’.[6] However true this statements and labels were, at the time anyone who suffered from a mental illness was not given the treatment that is received in today’s age. They were incarcerated in a lunatic asylum and cared for by people with little knowledge of the topic.
During this particular time period back in Ireland there was still a lot of tension between both Catholic and Protestant people. The Act of Union, 1801, now meant that Ireland was now legally under the rule of the British Crown.[7] It created divides in the country which made things difficult and sometimes violent. While Henry O’Farrell was growing up, he knew little about the troubles that were occurring between both Britain and Ireland. It was his father that educated him about the differences between the two countries, instilling in him a sort of hatred and anger towards English people and Protestants.[8] The shooting of Prince Alfred was seen and presented in this sectarian light.
Back at home in Ireland, people were also linking O’Farrell and the attempted assassination of the Duke of Edinburgh with the works of the Fenians. The Fenians were an Irish republican organisation who used violence to gain independence from Great Britain as they were opposed to British rule. It was highly unlikely that O’Farrell was in anyway associated with the Fenians as they were not a common organisation in Australia earlier than 1914; according to James Jupp they were very scarcely spread out across Australia before this year.[9]
Not only did the newspapers’ attitudes change towards the Irish but so did those of the inhabitants of Australia all due to the events that happened in Clontarf. An article titled ‘Feeling of the Country Press’ published in The Tasmanian Times in Hobart noted the ‘universal horror’ of how the attempted murder on Prince Alfred’s life was being perceived across the world. The same newspaper summarised intelligence from other sources, showing the (obvious) scandalous newsworthiness of the story.[10] Even nearly one hundred years after the incident took place, O’Farrell was still making headlines in the newspapers in Ireland. The Evening Herald, an Irish newspaper published an article in 1970 stating that the Fenians did not have anything to do with the incident whatsoever even though many Irishmen were arrested and questioned over the attempted assassination of the Duke of Edinburgh; no one besides O’Farrell was ever convicted. Curiously the language employed by the Evening Herald depicted O’Farrell as a ‘madman, for whose actions the Fenians were blamed.[11]
Trial and reception
Pencil drawing by Francis Charles Needham of Henry O’Farrell incarcerated after the attempted assassination of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh. Source:
Dictionary of Sydney
Henry O’Farrell’s trial began on 20 April 1868 as reported in the Illustrated Sydney News.[12] This newspaper made it apparent that if Henry O’Farrell was of English or Protestant descent he may have received a better and a fairer trial.[13] Another newspaper in New South Wales, The Goulburn Herald and Chronicle, also indicated that perhaps O’Farrell did not receive a fair trial.[14] Something highly important that we must take into consideration when looking over the O’Farrell trial was the evident fact that he was clearly suffering from mental health illness as he had only being released from a lunatic asylum twelve months prior to this incident.
A report published in Sydney Morning Herald (extracted from the Nation in Ireland) outlined how countless witnesses saw him and could identify him as the person who tried to take the Duke of Edinburgh’s life but also how none of those witnesses were cross examined.[15] The Nation newspaper was one of Ireland’s most prominent nationalist newspapers in the country during this time. In a piece by Ann Andrews published much later in The Irish Times, the newspaper was ‘one of the most important developments in the history of Irish nationalism.’[16] It referred to O’Farrell’s sister’s speech stating that her brother was very clearly suffering from a mental illness and had been this way for a long time. It was claimed that he needed not the death penalty, for he more than likely did not understand much of his wrong doing but was tormented with illness and alcoholism.[17]
The attempted assassination of Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, sparked outrage mainly throughout Australia and Great Britain. The Australian colonial press did not take long to jump to conclusions and blame him for the attempted murder of without even considering his background or his mental state of mind at the time in which the act was committed just outside of Sydney. The frenzy related to the story revealed each newspaper’s own agendas and biased views about O’Farrell, most claiming that he was a dangerous human who could lash out at any given moment without taking into consideration of his background or history. The fact that he was born in Ireland to Irish parents and practiced becoming a priest presented the Australian with a simple motive: that Catholic-Irish O’Farrell had a personal vendetta against the Protestant-British Crown.
A.W Martin has contended that sectarianism had a lot to do with the crime that was committed especially due to the amount of publication that the case received in the press.[18] Lindsay J. Proudfoot and Dianne P. Hall have also demonstrated that there was much dislike towards Catholic Irish people after the incident.[19] O’Farrell was portrayed as an Irish Catholic Fenian sympathiser something that not only divided opinions, but had a more tangible outcome in provoked the Orange Order to build up their organisation in the Australian colonies. Henry O’Farrell received much press scrutiny for his attempt to assassinate Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, but also drew more attention to other Irish Catholic immigrants in the colonies during that period, portraying if not representing attitudes towards certain immigrants: Irish Catholics in Australia were not treated as equals to the English and Scots immigrants.
REFERENCES
[1] Malcolm Campbell, ‘Ireland’s Furthest Shores: Irish immigrant settlement in nineteenth-century California and Eastern Australia’ in Pacific Historical Review, no. 1 (2002), pp 59-60.
[2] Mark Lyons and Bede Nairn, ‘O’Farrell, Henry James (1833–1868)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, 5 (1974), National Centre of Biography, Australian National University (http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/ofarrell-henry-james-4322/text7013) (11 May 2018).
[3] A. W. Martin, ‘Henry Parkes and the Political Manipulation of Sectarianism’ in Journal of Religious History, no. 1 (1976), p. 85.
[4] The Tasmanian Times, 19 March 1868, National Library of Australia’s Trove (https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/232858854?searchTerm=henry%20o%27farrell%20prince%20alfred%20sydney%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20&searchLimits=l-availability=y )
[5] Ovens and Murray Advertisers, 17 March 1868, National Library of Australia’s Trove (https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/197439656?searchTerm=henry%20o%27farrell%20prince%20alfred%20sydney&searchLimits=l-availability=y )
[6] Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 17 March 1868, National Library of Australia’s Trove (https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/197439656?searchTerm=henry%20o%27farrell%20prince%20alfred%20sydney&searchLimits=l-availability=y )
[7] Act of Union, 1801 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/apgb/Geo3/39-40/67/contents )
[8] The Irish Times, 7 August 2017
[9] James Jupp, The Australian people (Cambridge, 2001), p. 455.
[10] The Tasmanian Times, 19 March 1868, National Library of Australia’s Trove (https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/232858854?searchTerm=henry%20o%27farrell%20prince%20alfred%20sydney%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20&searchLimits=l-availability=y
[11] Evening Herald, 30 March 1970
[12] Illustrated Sydney News, 20 April 1868, National Library of Australia’s Trove (https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/5409031 )
[13] Illustrated Sydney News, 20 April 1868, National Library of Australia’s Trove (https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/5409031 )
[14] The Goulburn Herald and Chronicle, 25 April 1868, National Library of Australia’s Trove (https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/101476031?searchTerm=henry%20o%27farrell%20prince%20alfred%20sydney%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20&searchLimits=l-availability=y )
[15] Nation, 6 June 1868
[16] Irish Times, 21 February 2015
[17] Nation, 6 June 1868
[18] Martin, ‘Henry Parkes and the political manipulation of sectarianism’, p.85.
[19] Lindsay J. Proudfoot and Dianne P. Hall, Imperial spaces (Oxford, 2014), p.170.
Irish Aussies: historical perspectives 