O'Brien, Ignatius John (1857–1930), Baron Shandon , lord chancellor of Ireland, was born 31 July 1857 in Cork city, ninth child and youngest son of Mark Joseph O'Brien, chandler and brewer's agent and freeman of Cork, and his wife Jane, daughter of William Dunne, also of Cork. His father lacked business capacity; the business was kept afloat only through the labours and sacrifices of his mother, and the family lived in genteel poverty. Five of his siblings died in his early childhood, and as the other survivors were the eldest, O'Brien grew up as a lonely boy, acutely aware of the need to earn a living. He was abjectly miserable at the Vincentian School, Cork, where teaching was based on rote memorisation backed by frequent and sadistic corporal punishment (‘I wanted to know the reason of everything and if I wasn't told the reason I couldn't understand. I was that way all my life’ – ‘Reminiscences’, 59), but was encouraged by a kindly lay teacher, J. F. McDonald, and subsequently by private tutoring at his mother's expense. Although O'Brien left Cork with alacrity and bitterness at the age of sixteen, he developed considerable retrospective fondness for it, and his memoirs contain detailed accounts of the city's life at the beginning of the railway age.
Inspired by religious conviction, O'Brien's mother sent him at considerable financial sacrifice to the Catholic University of Ireland, where he remained for two years; O'Brien himself developed the lifelong view that the catholic bishops’ opposition to the queens’ colleges had been disastrous, and expressed this opinion in his inaugural address as auditor (1878–9) of the Literary and Historical Society. Since he felt disgust at the dissecting room, he decided to be a barrister, supporting himself as a junior reporter during his studies. The barrister and future judge William O'Brien (1832–99) advised him that he was not fit to be a barrister; a significant early milestone in his bar career was a courageous demand that the habitually biased Judge O'Brien should correct a prejudicial statement about his client.
O'Brien's first place of employment was on the moribund Saunders's News-Letter as a junior reporter. From there he went to work for the Freeman's Journal. Many years later, as a successful judge, he recalled with horror such journalistic experiences as attending inquests on paupers; being sent to the house where Isaac Butt (qv) lay dying, with peremptory orders to knock at intervals and ask if he had died yet; and witnessing the Maamtrasna murder trials, at which an aristocratic lady (whom he compared to Jezebel) sat on the bench and pronounced it excellent entertainment. (O'Brien firmly believed that Myles Joyce (qv) and several other defendants were innocent, and that the principal prosecution witnesses had themselves committed the murders.) In the meantime he continued his studies at the King's Inns and was called to the Irish bar in 1881. His early career was less than profitable; at times he experienced actual hunger, and he had to support himself by reporting judges’ decisions for the Irish Times and acting as Dublin correspondent for two Cork papers. His experience of poverty led him to engage in extensive private charity in later life and to comment harshly on the English practice of wasting food.
O'Brien gradually built up a small practice on the Munster circuit and married (11 February 1886) Anne, daughter of John Talbot Scallan (a prominent Dublin solicitor), to whom he had been engaged for seven years; he believed that without ‘the incentive of her affection’ he would have gone under. Early in 1887 the O'Briens were contemplating emigration to New South Wales (possibly encouraged in this by the prospective difficulty of supporting children; in fact their marriage was to be childless) when he unexpectedly became a nationalist hero. In its attempts to crush the Plan of Campaign, the Dublin Castle administration had invoked the bankruptcy law to summon Canon Daniel Keller (1839–1922), parish priest of Youghal, into court and demand that he reveal the whereabouts of money entrusted to him in connection with the Plan on the Ponsonby estate. Keller refused to testify, on the grounds that this concerned activities undertaken in his capacity as a priest, and was consigned to indefinite imprisonment till he should comply with the court's orders. Although Keller's claim involved a considerable stretch of the legally nebulous concept of clerical privilege, it was widely felt that he had been treated harshly. O'Brien suggested to T. M. Healy (qv) that Keller might be released through a writ of habeas corpus; he was employed by the National League to argue the case on appeal, and secured the release through diligent attention to technicalities. O'Brien maintained a certain distance from the enthusiastic demonstrations in his honour, as he did not wish to be drawn directly into nationalist politics; he states that both he and Keller privately disapproved of the Plan. His subsequent fame enabled him to build up a significant practice in bankruptcy and chancery cases; he later acquired a long-standing and lucrative appointment as standing counsel to the Freeman's Journal. He made a point of never giving credit, as he thought a client who could not pay cash down would never be worthwhile.
O'Brien's self-assertion and lack of clubbability were signalled by his decision to become the first Dublin barrister to live outside the North and South Circular Roads – barristers then held consultations in their own houses, and feared solicitors would boycott anyone who moved into the suburbs. O'Brien did business from an office in Merrion Square, and travelled to his new residence (Ardtona, on eleven acres in Churchtown, near Dundrum) by bicycle. He became QC in 1899.
Although O'Brien lacked interest in nationalist politics (he was sickened by the split in the Irish party, in which his private sympathies were with C. S. Parnell (qv)), he remained firmly convinced of the necessity for home rule and knew the highest legal offices could only be obtained by political patronage. He therefore associated himself with the vestigial Dublin City and County Liberal Association, as did other lawyers whose nationalist sympathies did not extend to taking the Irish party pledge against office-seeking. O'Brien was disappointed not to become a law officer when the Liberals returned to government in 1906. He was elected a bencher of the King's Inns in 1907, and in 1910 was appointed second serjeant-at-law. O'Brien himself believed that this honour, while useful in giving a person prestige at the bar, had long ceased to be a profitable position. He campaigned for Liberal candidates in Liverpool and at successive elections in Tyrone North, a marginal seat which the Irish party allowed to be represented by Liberals, who might attract a few extra protestant voters unlikely to support an outright nationalist.
O'Brien became solicitor general for Ireland in 1911. In 1912 he was advanced to the office of attorney general and made a member of the Irish privy council. As a law officer he prosecuted certain political offenders, including militant suffragettes (he believed in retrospect that women's suffrage should have been conceded much earlier, but defended his actions by pointing out that such militant activities as an attempt to set fire to the Dublin Theatre Royal, during a meeting addressed by Asquith, might have caused considerable loss of life). His connection with the Freeman's Journal led to accusations that his appointments represented Redmondite jobbery.
When the lord chancellor, Redmond John Barry, retired in 1913 O'Brien was appointed to the vacant post. While he was a hard worker he was neither diplomatic nor forceful enough to be truly effective, and was notorious for his long-winded and self-important judgments. His judicial philosophy favoured sweeping aside precedent and technicalities in favour of substantive justice as he saw it; hence he was on good terms with Peter O'Brien (qv), though he disapproved of his politics, and at odds with Christopher Palles (qv), though he acknowledged Palles's eminence as a jurist. He greatly enjoyed the social side of his office and the ceremonies and amusements of the viceregal court.
O'Brien was nearly ousted as lord chancellor in 1915 in favour of James Campbell (qv) by the first coalition government – his removal was also sought by T. M. Healy and William O'Brien (qv) (1852–1928) – but was retained after a public outcry orchestrated by the Redmondites, which threatened to affect American public opinion. He drew up several proclamations under the defence of the realm act (including the martial law proclamation issued at the outbreak of the Easter rising). O'Brien was created a baronet of the UK in 1916. Within the administration he advocated immediate home rule as the only means of stabilising the Irish situation, but he carried little political weight. He was dismissed as lord chancellor in June 1918 and promoted to the peerage as Baron Shandon in consolation. His abrupt departure (seen as reflecting the increasing dominance of Dublin Castle hard-liners) provoked considerable comment. One Law Library wit suggested he should have become Baron Stepaside; another, in a cruel reference to his childlessness, preferred ‘Lord Stillorgan’.
Alarmed at the extent of republican violence, O'Brien sold his property in Ireland after the IRA raided his house; this proved a blessing in disguise, as had he sold later he would have found it impossible to obtain a reasonable price, and he was able to move his possessions to England in safety, albeit at considerable expense. He then moved to the Isle of Wight, later acquiring a London home, 12 Newton Court, Church St., Kensington. In 1923 he was called to the English bar by the Middle Temple.
He was an active member of the house of lords, taking a prominent part in debates on the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, in conjunction with other Irish peers, especially Antony MacDonnell (qv) – whom he came to see as an able and patriotic man who had been widely misjudged, by O'Brien himself among others – and the moderate Irish unionists led by Lord Midleton (qv). After this he spoke little, and only on Irish and legal matters; he attended many Irish functions in London. His last years were saddened by the deaths of his wife Annie (1929), of a chauffeur who (according to the London correspondent of the Irish Independent) was ‘more a friend than a servant’, and of a nephew in Philadelphia. Shandon died at his London home on 10 September 1930 and the peerage became extinct.
As a former vice-president of the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Shandon left in his will £1,000 to the RIAM for an annual competition for the junior piano class, to be called ‘The Lord and Lady Shandon Scholarship.’ He also left the RIAM bound music, books, and a full grand Bechstein piano. His photograph can be found in the Irish Independent, 11 September 1930. A typescript, ‘The reminiscences of Lord Shandon, lord chancellor of Ireland’, is in the Honourable Society of King's Inns, Dublin. At several points in this lucid work (insufficiently utilised by scholars) O'Brien refers to the English as ‘we’; however, he expressed guarded optimism for the future of the Irish Free State, and admired the government of W. T. Cosgrave (qv), praising such decisions as the replacement of JPs by paid district justices and the creation of an unarmed police force. He emerges from its pages as a sensitive and somewhat neurotic meritocrat, haunted at the sufferings inflicted by inefficiency, and believing that the great fault of British administration of Ireland under the union was not so much brutality as stupidity.