Life
1805-1864 [pseud. “Bronterre”]; b. Co. Longford; ed. Edgeworthstown school, BA TCD, and Gray’s Inn; joined Chartist movement and wrote political articles, pen-name Bronterre; ed. Poor Man’s Guardian, contrib. Northern Star, advocating violence; imprisoned Apr. 1840-Sept 1841; quarrelled with Fe[a]rgus O’Connor on their release, opposing his land-scheme; made precarious living lecturing at John St. Institute and the Eclectic Institute in Soho, London. d. in poverty, London, 23 Dec. 1864. ODNB DIB
Criticism
Asa Briggs, ‘Fergus O’Connor and J Bronterre O’Brien’, in JW Boyle, ed., Leaders and Workers, Thomas Davis Lectures (Cork 1966).
References
Desmond Fennell, ‘Irish Socialist Thought’, in The Irish Mind, ed. Richard Kearney (1985), b. Granard, Co. Longford; ed. TCD, worked under William Thompson in co-operative movement; chief intellectual of Chartism, nicknamed ‘the schoolmaster’ by Feargus O’Connor; admired figures of French socialism, Babeuf, Blanqui, and Saint-Simon; writings in periodicals; first to use term social democrat in English; fnd. National Reform League, early 1850s, formulating evolution socialist programme. (Fennell, p.194.)
Notes
Portrait, Bronterre O’Brien (seated) and Fergus O’Connor in 1939), Irish Labour History Museum, engraving; printed in History Ireland (summer 1994), p.27.
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