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Tag Archives: Richard D’Alton Williams


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Birth of Kevin Izod O’Doherty, Politician & Young Irelander

Kevin Izod O’Doherty, an Irish Australian politician who, as a Young Irelander, is transported to Tasmania in 1849, is born in Dublin on September 7, 1823, although other sources including the Dictionary of Australasian Biography indicate he is born in June 1824. He is first elected to the Legislative Assembly of Queensland in 1867. In 1885, he returns to Europe briefly serving as an Irish Home Rule MP at Westminster before returning in 1886 as a private citizen to Brisbane.

O’Doherty receives a good education and studies medicine, but before he is qualified, joins the Young Ireland party and in June 1848, together with Thomas Antisell and Richard D’Alton Williams, establish The Irish Tribune. Only five editions are issued, the first being on June 10, 1848. On July 10, 1848, when the fifth edition is issued, O’Doherty is arrested and charged with treason felony. At the first and second trials the juries disagree, but at the third trial, he is found guilty and sentenced to transportation for ten years.

O’Doherty arrives in Tasmania in November 1849, is at once released on parole to reside at Oatlands, and his professional services are utilised at St. Mary’s Hospital, Hobart. The other Irish prisoners nickname him “St. Kevin.”  In 1854 he receives a pardon with the condition that he must not reside in Great Britain or Ireland. He goes to Paris and carries on his medical studies, making one secret visit to Ireland to marry Mary Eva Kelly, to whom he is affianced before leaving Ireland. He receives an unconditional pardon in 1856, and completes his studies in Dublin, graduating FRCS in 1857. He practises in Dublin successfully, and in 1862 goes to Brisbane, Australia, and becomes well known as one of its leading physicians.

O’Doherty is elected a member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland in 1867, in 1872 is responsible for a health act being passed, and is also one of the early opponents of the trafficking of Kanakas. In 1885, he resigns as he intends to settle in Europe.

In Ireland, O’Doherty is cordially welcomed, and is returned unopposed as Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) MP for North Meath to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in the November 1885 United Kingdom general election. However, finding the climate does not suit him, he does not seek re-election in 1886 and returns to Brisbane in that year. He attempts to take up his medical practice again but is not successful. He dies in poor circumstances in Brisbane on July 15, 1905.

O’Doherty’s wife and a daughter survive him. A fund is raised by public subscription to provide for his widow, a poet, who in her early days is well known as the author of Irish patriotic verse in The Nation under the soubriqet “Eva.” In Australia, she occasionally contributes to Queensland journals, and one of her poems is included in A Book of Queensland Verse. She dies at Brisbane on May 21, 1910.


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Birth of Richard D’Alton Williams, Physician & Poet

richard-dalton-williams

Richard D’Alton Williams, physician and poet, is born in Dublin on October 8, 1822. He is the son of James and Mary Williams, who come from County Westmeath. He grows up in Grenanstown, a townland near the Devil’s Bit in County Tipperary, where his father farms for Count Dalton. He is educated at Tullabeg Jesuit College and St. Patrick’s, Carlow College.

Williams becomes a member of the Young Ireland movement and contributes poetry to The Nation under the pseudonym “Shamrock.” He is immediately successful. In the January 21, 1843 edition there appears: “Shamrock is a jewel. He cannot write too often. His verses are full of vigour, and as natural as the harp of Tara.”

Later in 1843 Williams goes to Dublin to study medicine at Saint Vincent’s Hospital. In 1848 he brings out a newspaper, the Irish Tribune, to take the place of the suppressed United Irishman, founded by John Mitchel. Before the sixth weekly publication, it is seized by the Government, and proceedings are instituted against the editors, Williams and his friend Kevin Izod O’Doherty. On October 30, 1848, at a third trial, O’Doherty is convicted of treason and transported to Australia while Williams is successfully defended by lawyer and fellow poet Samuel Ferguson two days afterwards on the same charge. He then resumes his medical studies, takes out his degree at Edinburgh, Scotland in 1849 and emigrates to the United States in 1851.

Williams is married to Elizabeth Connolly on September 8, 1856, with whom he has four children of whom the youngest is commemorated in Lines on the Death of his Infant Daughter, Katie.

In the United States Williams practises medicine until he becomes ill and dies of tuberculosis in Thibodaux, Louisiana on July 5, 1862. He is buried there in St. Joseph’s Cemetery. His headstone is later erected that year by Irish members of the 8th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry, then encamped in Thibodaux.