John Devoy

John Devoy , 1842-1928, Irish-American journalist and Irish revolutionary, b. Ireland. He joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood (see Fenian movement ) in 1861. For proselytizing within the British army he was sentenced in 1866 tp 15 years in prison. He was released in 1871, however, and went to America. He founded (1881) and edited the Irish Nation, and became one of the leading Irish propagandists in the United States. He organized the rescue of six Irish prisoners from Freemantle, Australia, using the Catalpa in 1875-76, and secured American financial support for the Land League movement. In 1903 he founded the Gaelic-American. During World War I he secured much of the financial backing for the Easter Rebellion (1916). Afterward he back the Irish Free State against the republican extremists and helped secure a market for its first bonds.

Bibliography: See his Recollections of an Irish Rebel (1929); biographies by, T. Golway (1998) and T. Dooley (2003); D. Ryan, The Phoenix Flame (1937).

Devoy, John (1842–1928). Irish nationalist. Devoy was born in Kildare and joined the Fenians as a young man. His task was to foster disaffection in the British army and he was arrested in 1862. Released in 1871 on condition of exile, he spent the rest of his life in America, where he organized the Clan na Gael as a fund-raising group, affiliated to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. In 1878 he initiated the ‘new departure’, a proposal for a rapprochement between the Fenians and Parnell's parliamentarians, but it was rejected by the IRB the following year. In 1915 Devoy supported Casement's mission to Germany to obtain arms, assuring the Germans that Casement had his ‘fullest confidence’. After Casement's arrest, Devoy distanced himself.

J. A. Cannon

Devoy, John (1842–1928), a clerk in Dublin who joined the Fenians in 1861. For his part in the conspiracy he spent the period 1866–71 in prison. Exiled subsequently, he became the most tireless and effective organizer of Irish‐American support for advanced Irish nationalism. He had a key role in the emergence of the Land League (1879) and in the genesis of the rising of 1916. His Recollections of an Irish Rebel (1929) is a classic (if highly selective) text.

Richard Vincent Comerford