Kevin Izod O'Doherty

Australian politician

Kevin Izod O'Doherty (7 September 1823 – 15 July 1905) was an Irish Australian politician who, as a Young Irelander, had been transported to Tasmania in 1849. He was first elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly in 1867. In the 1885 he returned to Europe briefly serving as an Irish Home Rule MP at Westminster before returning in 1886 as a private citizen to Brisbane.

O'Doherty was born in Dublin on 7 September 1823, although other sources including the Dictionary of Australasian Biography indicate he was born in June 1824. Charles Gavan Duffy, in his My Life in Two Hemispheres, states that O'Doherty was still under age when he was arrested in July 1848; however, Gavan Duffy was writing 50 years later. O'Doherty received a good education and studied medicine, but before he was qualified, joined the Young Ireland party and in June 1848, together with Thomas Antisell and Richard D'Alton Williams, established The Irish Tribune. Only five editions were issued, the first being on 10 June 1848. (see, Christine Kinealy, 'Repeal and Revolution. 1848 in Ireland', Manchester, 2009). In 1854 received a pardon with the condition that he must not reside in Great Britain or Ireland. O'Doherty was elected a member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly in 1867, in 1872 was responsible for a health act being passed, and w as also one of the early opponents of the traffic in kanakas. In 1877 he transferred to the Queensland Legislative Council, to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in the November 1885 general election; but finding the climate did not suit him he did not seek re election in 1886, and returned to Brisbane in that year. He attempted to take up his medical practice again but was not successful, and he died in poor circumstances on 15 July 1905. His wife and a daughter survived him. A fund was raised by public subscription to provide for his widow, Mary Eva (1826–1910), a poet, who in her early days was well known as the author of Irish patriotic verse in The Nation under the soubriqet "Eva". In Australia she occasionally contributed to Queensland journals, and one of her poems is included in A Book of Queensland Verse. She died at Brisbane on 21 May 1910.