Henry James O'Farrell (183321 April 1868) was the first person to attempt a political assassination in Australia. On 12 March 1868, he shot and wounded Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the second son and fourth child of Queen Victoria.
Henry O'Farrell was from an Irish-Australian family who had migrated to Melbourne in the early 1840s. He was heavily influenced by Catholicism and Irish nationalism. By the early 1860s, O'Farrell was showing signs of mental instability, exacerbated by heavy drinking. O'Farrell travelled to Sydney during the tour of Australian colonies by Prince Alfred, where he made an attempt to kill the royal visitor at a public picnic at the harbour-side suburb of Clontarf. Despite a plea of insanity O'Farrell was convicted of wounding Prince Alfred with intent to murder and was executed in April 1868 at Darlinghurst Gaol.
O'Farrell's attempted assassination of Prince Alfred produced a wave of public sympathy and outrage in Australia. The veteran New South Wales politician, Henry Parkes, took advantage of sectarian discord to push through repressive legislation and raise concerns of a secret cohort of Fenian conspirators in Australia. Parkes' failure to prove such a conspiracy signalled a temporary decline in his political influence.
Biography
Early life
Henry James O'Farrell was born in about 1833 at Arran Quay, on the north bank of the River Liffey in Dublin, Ireland, one of eleven children of William O'Farrell and Maria Anastasia (née Flinn, Flynn, O'Flynn).Family records, per Ancestry.com. His father was a butcher. In 1836 William and Maria O'Farrell migrated with their family across the Irish Sea to Liverpool, where William re-established his butchery at Edge Hill, near the city's docks.Harris, chapter 3 ('Henry, the Would-Be Priest'), page 1. In 1841 the O'Farrell family migrated to Australia, arriving in the newly-established settlement of Melbourne in the Port Phillip District. William set up a butcher's shop at the lower end of Elizabeth-street.The Assassin of Prince Alfred, The Argus (Melbourne), 13 March 1868, page 5. Maria O'Farrell died in March 1842 in Melbourne (when Henry was nine years-old).Died, Port Phillip Gazette (Melbourne), 23 March 1842, page 3.
By 1846, William O'Farrell had been appointed as a rate-collector in the Melbourne Town Council, and in December 1848, he was appointed as a Town Auctioneer. O'Farrell's children "were educated in a manner to fit them for positions higher than the trade followed by their father". Young Henry O'Farrell received his early education at David Boyd's 'Melbourne Academy' school in Queen-street and then as a boarder at the Melbourne Analytical Seminary for General Education run by James McLaughlin, "to learn the classics, theology and elocution".Harris, chapter 3 ('Henry, the Would-Be Priest'), pages 8-9, 12-13. In 1848 and 1849, he attended the school-house at the rear of St. Francis' Chapel on the corner of Elizabeth and Lonsdale Streets.
William O'Farrell was an inaugural member of the St. Patrick's Society of Australia Felix, formed in Melbourne in 1842."St. Patrick's Society of Australia Felix", Melbourne Times, 2 July 1842, page 2. Sectarian tensions came to the surface in Melbourne after the formation of the Orange Society in 1843.Mike Cronin and Daryl Adair (2004), The Wearing of the Green: A History of St Patrick's Day, New York: Routledge, , page 45. On 19 March 1846, Henry O'Farrell, as one of the St. Patrick's Society's "juvenile members", made his maiden speech at the Society's anniversary dinner.O'Farrell's Antecedents in Melbourne, Ballarat Star, 27 March 1868, page 4.
After the appointment of James Goold as the first Catholic Bishop of Melbourne in 1848, the O'Farrell family developed close ties to the Catholic hierarchy in Melbourne. Bishop Goold conferred "minor orders prior to ordination" on Henry O'Farrell in December 1850 at St. Francis' Church, in a ceremony considered to be "on the path to priesthood".Ordination at St. Francis Church, Melbourne Daily News, 23 December 1850, page 2. In early 1851, O'Farrell was ordained as a sub-deacon and in 1852 as a deacon.Harris, chapter 3 ('Henry, the Would-Be Priest'), pages 19, 21. Henry's older brother Peter was admitted as a solicitor in September 1851 and began handling "the growing legal issues" of Bishop Goold and senior clergy and managing Church land acquisitions.Supreme Court: New Attorneys, Melbourne Daily News, 5 September 1851, page 2.
As a young man, O'Farrell "was regarded as genial, warm-hearted, and enthusiastic", but possessed an abiding passion for Irish nationalism.O'Farrell's Career in Ballarat, The Age (Melbourne), 16 March 1868, page 6.
Travel and business enterprises
In about 1853, Henry O'Farrell left Melbourne for Europe, to continue his studies. One account claimed he accompanied a French priest who was proceeding to France for the purpose of printing a Bible in the Maori language, translated at a Catholic missionary establishment in New Zealand.O'Farrell's Antecedents and Conduct, Newcastle Chronicle, 21 March 1868, page 2. O'Farrell visited the principal cities on the Continent, including Paris and Rome, and also travelled in England and Ireland. He was absent for about two years, returning to Victoria in about 1854.O'Farrell's Antecedents, Empire (Sydney), 23 March 1868, page 3. O'Farrell's father died in July 1854 at South Melbourne (an event that may have prompted his return from Europe).Died, The Banner (Melbourne), 14 July 1854, page 8.
In about 1855, Henry O'Farrell gave up his intention of joining the priesthood after he "had a dispute with the bishop on some religious points". Soon afterwards, O'Farrell went to Clunes "to learn sheep farming".To the Editor of the Herald, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 March 1868, page 5; letter to the editor from John Carfrae, Sydney, dated 18 March 1868. Soon afterwards, in partnership with his cousin Joseph Kennedy, O'Farrell established "a flourishing and lucrative business" as a grain merchant at Ballarat, operating a hay and corn store at the corner of Doveton-street and Market-square.
Increasing instability
O'Farrell was described "as a man of gentlemanly demeanour, but exceedingly excitable, and of a very violent and misanthropical disposition". It was said of him that he was one who "having attached himself to an idea would pursue it at any cost, to himself or to others".
By March 1863, creditor attention began to be paid to the financial affairs of O'Farrell's elder brother, the Melbourne solicitor Peter A. C. O'Farrell, who had in previous months been involved in an acrimonious dispute that culminated with him being put on trial for libel, for which he was found guilty, resulting in serious damage to his public reputation.Sketch of O'Farrell's Career,The Ballarat Star, 22 August 1882, page 3.P. A. C. O'Farrell's True History, Geelong Advertiser, 28 October 1882, page 1. Subsequent investigations into his finances disclosed a deficiency in his estate of approximately twenty thousand pounds.The growing embarrassment..., The Age (Melbourne), 13 April 1863, page 5.
In July 1863, Peter O'Farrell's estate was compulsorily sequestrated as a result of a petition by his brother Henry O'Farrell and James Kennedy.The estate of Mr. P. A. C. O'Farrell..., Bendigo Advertiser, 22 July 1863, page 2. In late August, the court issued a rule nisi calling on Peter O'Farrell to show cause as to why his estate should not be finally sequestered.Supreme Court, The Age (Melbourne), 31 August 1863, page 6. By late September 1863, while insolvency proceedings were still underway in the Supreme Court, rumours began to spread regarding Peter O'Farrell's disappearance and probable departure from the colony.Apropos of Mr. O'Farrell's Disappearance, Bendigo Advertiser, 23 September 1863, page 3. By February 1864, it was confirmed that he had left Victoria "without complying with the conditions of administration".Law Report, The Argus (Melbourne), 26 February 1864, page 6. According to his younger sister, Henry O'Farrell "sustained some pecuniary losses by the departure of his brother; he seemed to feel it very much".The Trial of Henry James O'Farrell, Sydney Mail, 4 April 1868, pages 5-7.
Henry O'Farrell's produce business operated until about March 1867, but with its owner's health and mental state in marked decline during the last few years of its operation (probably exacerbated by the excessive drinking of alcohol). O'Farrell was known to drink "very hard, and was subject to fits of delirium tremens". It was reported that, "on one occasion he asked an acquaintance to lend him a pair of pistols to blow his brains out". In January 1867, two of Henry's sisters were summoned to Ballarat by O'Farrell's medical attendants. His older sister, Caroline Allan, later described how her brother did not recognise them at first. He was subject to various delusions, including asserting that "he had been poisoned by the doctors".
The royal tour
At the beginning of 1867, Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Victoria's second son, had embarked on a world cruise aboard the Galatea, a steam-powered sail-equipped frigate. With the Prince as captain, the Galatea departed from Gibraltar in June 1867 and visited Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, the tiny island of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic and the Cape Colony of southern Africa, before arriving at Adelaide in October 1867 to begin what was to be Australia's first royal tour.McKinlay (1970), pages 9-25. The Prince visited the colonies of South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and Queensland, in an itinerary consisting of numerous official engagements, civic receptions, dances, and public events. Details of the royal tour and the enthusiastic responses of the public were comprehensively recorded in colonial newspapers.Pentland (2015), pages 57-58.
During a welcoming ceremony at Melbourne on 24 November 1867, an estimated crowd of ten thousand gathered to meet Prince Alfred. An image of William of Orange defeating the Catholic armies at the Battle of the Boyne was erected on a hall in Melbourne. An Irish Catholic crowd gathered outside, with stones being thrown at the hall, and someone fired shots from inside the hall into the crowd. A Catholic boy was killed, and a riot between Irish Catholics and Protestants broke out.
Assassination attempt
The Galatea arrived at Sydney from Tasmania on 21 January 1868 and berthed at Circular Quay. The Prince was welcomed by the Colonial Secretary, Henry Parkes, and the Governor, Lord Belmore, in an elaborate pavilion erected for the occasion. Later the Prince and his entourage were driven to Government House through the welcoming crowds.McKinlay (1970), pages 131-137. O'Farrell was in the crowd that day. He later stated: "I had gone to Circular Quay on the day of the Prince's arrival in Sydney, and I intended to shoot him there, but the opportunity did not present itself".McKinlay (1970), page 175.