Duffy, Edward (1840?–68), Fenian, was born about 1840 at Loughglin near Ballaghadreen, Co. Mayo, one of several children born to Edward Duffy, a national schoolteacher. Educated at his father's school, he acted as class monitor before becoming a shopboy in the hardware shop of Bernard Gannon of Castlerea, Co. Roscommon, about 1856. After serving an apprenticeship at Cannock & White's drapery in Limerick, he began working in Pim's drapery in Dublin about 1860. One of a number of young clerical workers drawn into the Fenian movement in the city during the recruitment drive initiated in 1859 by Thomas Clarke Luby (qv), he probably took the IRB oath at a meeting of the Brotherhood of St Patrick on 18 March 1861. Despite wearing a bushy ‘Yankee’ beard, he retained an air of vulnerability and innocence which endeared him to all sides in a fractious movement, and he proved a fiercely industrious Fenian activist. Quickly in the thick of Fenian machinations in Dublin, he was employed by James Stephens (qv) as messenger and go-between, and often lodged with Joseph Denieffe (qv).
By early 1863 he had returned to work with Gannon in Castlerea, but on Stephens's orders he gave up his job later that year to undertake full-time Fenian organisational work as a ‘head centre’ in Connacht. Distributing the Fenian newspaper the Irish People in the small towns of the west, he campaigned strenuously, and with some success, to increase provincial Fenian membership, using trade and family contacts. Stephens came west to lend weight to his endeavours in early 1864, and he was assisted by Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa (qv) between March and May 1865. Members of the county militias were sworn in, and recruits were trained secretly by night in remote districts. The doggedly sectarian members of the Ribbon societies of Sligo and Roscommon were reconciled by patient negotiation to the newer, more ambitious, organised conspiracy. Duffy's increasingly critical tubercular condition did not slow his labours, and the organisation advanced significantly in Connacht, while still lagging behind membership levels in Leinster and Munster.
Duffy was a favourite of Stephens, whom he hero-worshipped in return, and he resided with Stephens and Charles J. Kickham (qv) in Fairfield House, Sandymount, Dublin, between July and November 1865, taking part in various Fenian activities. He was among those arrested there on 11 November 1865. He was committed for trial to Richmond jail for two months, but the crown abandoned his prosecution in January 1866 believing that he was close to death. Having escaped to Paris, Stephens appointed Duffy his deputy in Ireland from March 1866. Duffy's intellectual abilities were modest and the appointment was plainly a calculated attempt by Stephens to use a trusted subordinate to protect his own position. In the event, Duffy was too ill for most of 1866 to carry out much executive work, although he kept covertly in touch with the organisation in Connacht despite police surveillance, and was recognised as deputy head of the civil wing of Fenianism in Ireland in 1866–7. He was one of four elected provincial Irish Fenian representatives that met American and English-based Fenians in London on 10 February 1867 to form a provisional Irish government in preparation for a rising on 5 March, and he signed a republican address ‘From the Irish people to the world’. He returned to Connacht but there was insufficient time to mount a rising in the province. Arrested on 9 March at O'Leary's hotel in Boyle, Co. Roscommon, he was tried 17–21 May and convicted on a charge of treason felony. Sentenced to 15 years' penal servitude, he was moved from Mountjoy prison, Dublin, to Pentonville prison, London, on 27 September 1867, and a week later to Millbank prison, London, where a Roman catholic chaplaincy was available. He died 17 January 1868 in the prison infirmary. His remains were returned to Ireland later that month and he was buried in Glasnevin cemetery.
In early 1867 he became engaged to the poet Ellen O'Leary (qv), sister of John O'Leary (qv).