Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/44

 to Fort San Carlos, but Walker made terms without fighting. Returning to New Orleans, O'Brien became a book-keeper there. In 1858 he met James Stephens [q. v. Suppl. II], one of the founders of the Fenian organisation, and Stephens led him to join the local branch. On the outbreak of the American civil war in 1861 he served as assistant-surgeon in a volunteer militia regiment, consisting mainly of Irishmen.

In 1862 he returned to Ireland, and joined the Fenian organisation in Cork, and here he met Stephens again in 1865. He deemed the Fenian rising in 1867 to be premature, but on the night of 3 March 1867 he loyally joined his comrades at the rendezvous on Prayer Hill outside Cork, and led an attack upon the Ballymockan police barracks, which surrendered. The party seized the arms there, and marched on towards Bottle Hill, but scattered on the approach of a body of infantry. O'Brien was arrested near Kilmallock, and taken to Limerick jail. He was subsequently taken to Cork county gaol, and in May tried for high treason. He was convicted, and was sentenced in accordance with the existing law to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. The sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. O'Brien is said to have been the last survivor of those sentenced to the barbarous punishment provided by the old law of treason. By a new act of 1870, hanging or beheading was appointed to be the sole penalty of the extreme kind. From Mount joy Prison, Dublin, O'Brien was soon taken with some twenty-nine other political prisoners, chained together in gangs, to Holyhead on a gunboat, whence he was removed to Millbank, where he was kept in solitary confinement for fourteen months. Next he was removed to Portland Avith others, chained in sets of six. In Portland he worked at stone-dressing. He was finally released on 4 March 1869. On visiting Waterford, and subsequently Cork, he received popular ovations.

Before his arrest O'Brien was manager of a wholesale tea and wine business at Cork. He resumed the post on his release, and was soon appointed a traveller for his firm. Having rejoined the Fenian organisation (finally becoming a member of the supreme council of that body) he combined throughout Ireland the work of Fenian missionary and commercial traveller until 1873. Subsequently he carried on the business of a tea and wine merchant in Dublin, and was at a later period secretary to the gas company at Cork.

Meanwhile he was gradually drawn into the parliamentary home rule movement under Parnell's leadership. In 1885 he became nationalist M.P. for South Mayo, and acted as one of the party treasurers till his death. In the schism of 1891 he seceded from Parnell. Afterwards he became general secretary of the United Irish League of Great Britain, an office which he held for life. He continued member for South Mayo till 1895, when he became member for Cork City and retained the seat till his death. He died at Clapham on 28 May 1905, and was buried in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin. He was twice married: (1) in 1859 to Mary Louisa Cullimore (d. 1866), of Wexford; and (2) in 1870 to Mary Teresa O'Malley. By his first wife he had one son; by his second, three daughters and two sons. A portrait painted by an artist named Connolly belongs to the family.

 O'CALLAGHAN, FRANCIS LANGFORD (1839–1909), civil engineer, born on 22 July 1839, was second son of James O'Callaghan, J. P., of Drisheen, co. Cork, by his wife Agnes, daughter of the Rev. Francis Langford. Educated at private schools and at Queen's College, Cork, he received practical engineering training under H. Conybeare between 1859 and 1862, when he was employed on railway construction in Ireland and in South Wales. He then entered the public works department of India by competitive examination, and was appointed probationary assistant engineer on 13 June 1862. He became an executive engineer on 1 April 1866, and reached the first grade of that rank in March 1871, becoming superintending engineer, third class, on 1 Jan. 1880, and first class in March 1886. On 9 May 1889 he was appointed chief engineer, first class, and consulting engineer to the government of India for state railways, and on 8 Aug. 1892 he was appointed secretary to the public works department, from which he retired in 1894.

In the course of his thirty-two years' service O'Callaghan was engaged on the Northern Road in the Central Provinces (including the Kanhan bridge); on surveys for the Chanda, Nagpur and Raipur, Nagpur and Chhattisgarh, Sind-Sagor, and Khwaja-Amran railways; and on the construction of the Tirhoot, Punjab Northern (Pindi-Peshawar section), Bolan, and Sind-Pishin railways. He was thanked by the government of India in May 1883 for his work on the Attock