O'DONOVAN ROSSA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 7182, 21 February 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

O'DONOVAN ROSSA.

A correspondent in the Melbourne Argus writes as follows:—

O'Donovan Rossa can hardly be what the doctors would call " a good life," as he must be getting old and has lived fast. He was born i at Rosscarbey, in tha County Cork, in 1830. His father was a small farmer and weaver, and i young Jeremiah Donovan managed to establish himself as a provision merchant at Skibereen, in County Kerry, a village of terrible fame for deaths during the famine of 1847. It was here he started the Phcenix conspiracy, and it was Father John O'Sullivan, of Kenmare, who first gave information about Donovan's Conspiracy to the authorities in Dublin, stipulating at the same time that " the foolish boys " who were engaged in it should be let off with " a proper fright," which was done, James Stephens first made Donovan'a acquaintance at Skibereen, and he became one of Stephens' most active lieutenants. They, however, quarrelled after the arrests and break-up of the Fenian movement in 1865. Donovan married one Mary Jane Irwin, of Clonakilty, and has had seven or eight children. He was sentenced to penal servitude for life in 1865, and was sent to Chatham convict prison. One Sunday morning the governor, Major Pitt Butts, was making an inspection of the wards, each convict standing at his cell [door. As the governor came in front of Donovan's cell the latter threw a bucket of slops in his face, He was not flogged, as most other prisoners no doubt would have been, but was sentenced to three months' "penal class," which involves solitary confinement in a light coll, no labour,' and nothing to eat but porridge and milk. In the penal class cells Donovan tore his clothing and bedding to pieces, and was next kept in handcuffs for 28 days. Released from penal servitude in 1872, he went to New York, and sank to a very low ebb there, keeping an eating-house at one time which was seized by the sheriff for debt. The prestige of the Land League movement gave him a chance of getting into notoriety again, as he took to himself the oredit of being connected with every daring act which was reported in the newspapers. For instance, he boasted of having caused an explosion on board a British man-of-war off the coast of South America a year or two ago, and no doubt was believed and given presents on the strength of it. He also pretended to have had a Bhare iu the Phcenix Park murders. All this has brought him fame and money again of late years. The fact is that O'Donovan K-osaa is an " institution," and all the "advanced" Nationalists, of course, pay him j a sort of homage; but it is very doubtful j whether he has been really connected with any j of tho recent plots or explosions. No capable j conspirators would trust him with sacrets. '