Walsh, John Stephen

by Owen McGee

Walsh, John Stephen (c.1835–1894), revolutionary, was born in Milford, Co. Cork, but when he was a boy his family emigrated to Middlesborough, where he attended school. A tall, powerfully built man with a military appearance, he worked for many years as a steelworker in Middlesborough. Probably sometime during the 1860s he was sworn into the IRB, but he did not assume a prominent role in the organisation until the early 1870s, when he was elected to represent the north of England on the IRB supreme council (c.1874–6). After receiving a letter smuggled out of prison from IRB prisoners in Western Australia, he persuaded the supreme council to fund, and let him lead, a rescue mission. On 13 January 1876, with only one assistant, Denis Florence McCarthy, a Cork draper and relative of P. N. Fitzgerald (qv), he set sail for Australia. Coincidentally, after his arrival in Australia he encountered a completely separate rescue team that had been sent by Clan na Gael in the US. He provided this larger team with his money and arms. During the successful rescue attempt (13 April 1876) he cut telegraph wires and acted as a scout to help the escaped prisoners avoid detection and reach the ship that subsequently took them to New York.

During his stay in New York, Walsh was dissatisfied by what he saw of the Irish-American revolutionary movement and consequently, after returning to Middlesborough the following year, played a less prominent role in the IRB; he eventually left the organisation around 1880. He supported the Land League of Great Britain from its inception in August 1881 and spoke at several of its meetings. Outraged by the suppression of the Land League in Ireland the following October, he was persuaded by John McCafferty, a ‘freelance’ Irish-American revolutionary, along with a handful of other members of the Land League of Great Britain, to establish the ‘Invincible’ conspiracy. In November 1881 he was chosen to visit Dublin and swear recruits into the organisation, which he did before returning in January 1882 to England, where he spoke at a couple of meetings protesting at the suppression of the league. In February 1883, after being named in court by James Carey (qv) as a founder of the Invincible conspiracy, Walsh fled from his lodgings in Rochdale, Lancashire, to France. At the instigation of the British government, the French police arrested him on his arrival, but after he had proved he was in Durham on the day of the Phoenix Park murders (6 May 1882) he was released on 20 March and immediately set sail for New York via Le Havre. Walsh did not take part in Irish-American politics and settled in Rochester, New York. Ill health caused him to fall into destitution and he died in a local hospital in February 1894.