37 Facts About Joseph O'Doherty

Joseph O'Doherty was an Irish teacher, barrister, revolutionary, politician, county manager, member of the First Dail and of the Irish Free State Seanad.

Joseph O'Doherty's father Michael O'Doherty was a prosperous entrepreneur from Gortyarrigan in the parish of Desertegney at the side of Raghin Beg mountain on the Inishowen peninsula, County Donegal.

Joseph's mother Rose O'Doherty inspired him to become a revolutionary.

Joseph O'Doherty's brother, Seamus, was a member of the IRB and took part in the events of the Easter Rising.

Joseph O'Doherty then studied at St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, where he qualified as a primary school teacher in 1912.

Joseph O'Doherty loved teaching and wanted to continue in this field, but was reluctantly persuaded by his elder brother Seamus O'Doherty to join the republican movement.

Joseph O'Doherty later studied at Trinity College Dublin and was enrolled at King's Inns where he qualified as a Barrister-at-Law.

In 1913 Joseph O'Doherty joined the Irish Volunteers when the organisation met at the Rotunda in Dublin.

Joseph O'Doherty was a member of the Volunteers 'B' Company, 3d Battalion, Dublin.

Joseph O'Doherty founded branches of the Volunteers from Crossmaglen to Malin Head.

Joseph O'Doherty was given command of the Derry Volunteers in the buildup to 1916 Easter Rising and remained a member of the Executive until 1921.

Shortly after joining the Volunteers, Joseph O'Doherty's elder brother Seamus informed him of the existence of the secret revolutionary party called the Irish Republican Brotherhood of which he was a member.

Joseph O'Doherty was asked to join and was initiated into it by a close friend of the O'Doherty family, Sean Mac Diarmada who was the manager of the radical newspaper Irish Freedom.

Joseph O'Doherty remained a member of the IRB until after the 1916 Easter Rising, and was specially mobilised by the IRB for the Howth Road and Killcoole gun-runnings.

In 1914, Joseph O'Doherty took part in the two audacious gun-running events at Howth and Kilcoole.

Joseph O'Doherty unloaded the first consignment of around 900 Mausers and 29,000 bullets off the Asgard along with Bulmer Hobson, Douglas Hyde, Darrell Figgis, Peadar Kearney, Thomas MacDonagh and others.

Joseph O'Doherty was involved in the second gun-running the following week, around midnight on 1 August 1914, when the volunteers landed 600 more German-made Mauser 71 single-shot rifles and 20,000 rounds of ammunition off the Chotah at the much more discretely located beach at Kilkoole, County Wicklow, and spirited them away under cover of darkness.

Joseph O'Doherty was in the lorry that delivered that consignment to a cache at St Enda's School and which was now located at The Hermitage at Rathfarnam in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains where Pearse was waiting for them on the steps.

In 1914 Joseph O'Doherty was one of a special group of IRB men mobilised under William Conway to frustrate a British Army recruiting meeting that was to be held at the Mansion House in Dublin.

In 1914, Joseph O'Doherty took part in a little-known operation in which the Irish Volunteers seized part of the 216 tonnes of guns and ammunition that had been delivered to the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force from the German Empire, in the Larne gun-running incident on 24 and 25 April of that year.

Joseph O'Doherty remained in Dublin until 1915 when his father asked him to return to Derry to manage the chain of butchers' shops business which he had recently bought there.

Joseph O'Doherty was charged by the Irish Volunteers Executive to co-ordinate the Easter Rising in Derry, and to wait for the signal to begin the planned operation.

Joseph O'Doherty was sent soon afterwards to the Abercorn Barracks at Ballykinlar in County Down.

Joseph O'Doherty spent time at Belfast gaol, Derry gaol, and was moved to Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire, Wormwood Scrubs in London and the Frongoch internment camp in Wales, where he was sent as an Irish prisoner of war along with 1,800 others including Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith.

Joseph O'Doherty went back to Derry and helped his father re-open the head office of his family business, and then in December he was contacted and asked to come up and manage the first republican paper that was published in 1916, called "The Phoenix".

Joseph O'Doherty was put in Arbour Hill gaol, but was released in 1917.

Joseph O'Doherty became a member of the executive of the Irish Volunteers that year.

Joseph O'Doherty was re-elected at the 1921 general election and opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty which led to the partition of Ireland.

Joseph O'Doherty was re-elected as Anti-Treaty Sinn Fein and as an abstentionist republican in 1922 and 1923 respectively.

Joseph O'Doherty crossed the Atlantic aboard a luxury liner, where during a dinner party hosted by the ship's captain, another guest who was a world-famous boxer challenged him to a fight to entertain the passengers, but O'Doherty had to decline in order to avoid drawing attention to himself.

Joseph O'Doherty's related adventures included descending the Grand Canyon on horseback, being invited to join a police raid on an opium den in San Francisco's Chinatown.

In 1926 Joseph O'Doherty he left the Sinn Fein party's Ardfheis with Eamon de Valera and became a founder member of the new Fianna Fail party.

Joseph O'Doherty lost his seat at the June 1927 general election but was re-elected again to the Dail in the 1933 general election.

Joseph O'Doherty was elected to the Seanad Eireann in 1928, serving as one of Fianna Fail's first six elected Senators under the leadership of Joseph Connolly.

O'Malley, in his book On Another Man's Wound, had implied that Joseph O'Doherty had refused to go.

In 1918, Joseph O'Doherty married Margaret Claire Susan Irvine, the same year she graduated as a medical doctor.

Joseph O'Doherty died in 1979, the third last surviving member of the First Dail, and is buried along with his wife in the Republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.