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. DNB DIB
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Criticism
Asa Briggs, ‘Fergus O’Connor and J Bronterre O’Brien’,
in JW Boyle, ed., Leaders and Workers, Thomas Davis Lectures
(Cork 1966).
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Notes
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)
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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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)