O'Brien, Peter (1842–1914), Baron O'Brien of Kilfenora , lord chief justice of Ireland, was born 29 June 1842 at Carnelly House, Ballynalacken, Co. Clare, fifth son of John O'Brien, MP for Limerick (1841–52), and his wife, Ellen (née Murphy). Richard Lalor Shiel (qv) was a remote relative. His earliest memory was of standing in a field with his father seeing rotten potatoes being dug during the famine. O'Brien was privately educated by his father before being sent briefly to the Jesuit school at Tullabeg and thence to Clongowes Wood College (1856–8), where he received many prizes, including the Clongowes medal in 1858. After his father died in 1855, the family moved to Dublin, and he entered TCD with a law career in mind. Despite spending most of his time in college socialising, he graduated BA in 1865. He entered the Middle Temple in 1862 and was called to the Irish bar in 1865. There he devilled with Christopher Palles (qv), and in later life when they disagreed on judicial decisions Palles would comment audibly, ‘you never learned that law from me’.
After his call to the bar, O'Brien became registrar to his uncle Judge James O'Brien (1806–81), who succeeded John O'Brien as MP for Limerick before being elevated to the bench. However, a love of socialising, the theatre, and hunting during his first six months militated against his advancement. It was only when he proposed to his prospective wife (who made it a condition of her acceptance that he should set to work in earnest) that he settled into his chosen career, joining the Munster circuit. As a barrister he was renowned for his skill in appraising and appealing to a jury. He acted as junior to Isaac Butt (qv) in several cases and became known for his courage in standing up to harassment from the bench; in 1877 William Keogh (qv) apologised to him in open court after O'Brien had accused him of impinging on the freedom of the bar in his comments during a trial. He proceeded MA in 1874. In 1879 he stood as a Whig candidate for Clare, declaring his support for tenant right and denominational education, but was unsuccessful. Although O'Brien later claimed that he could have won the seat if he had been prepared to compromise his opposition to home rule, and had differentiated his support for tenant right from the ‘criminal’ activities of later land agitators, his statements during this campaign were frequently cited by political opponents as evidence that he had apostatised for the sake of office.
O'Brien became queen's counsel in 1880, in which year he represented T. D. Sullivan (qv) in the abortive trial of the Land League leadership for seditious conspiracy. The following year he took his first step on the professional ladder by becoming junior crown prosecutor at Green Street courthouse in Dublin. In 1883 he was appointed senior crown prosecutor. In these capacities he prosecuted several agrarian murder cases under the administration of Earl Spencer (qv) (1882–5); it was during this period that O'Brien became a particular target of the nationalist press and attracted the nickname ‘Peter the Packer’ for his skill in excluding nationalists from juries in agrarian trials. He retorted that this had been necessary because murderers and other criminals were escaping through the intimidation of jurors. ‘I certainly eliminated from the jury box, without apology, those who were prejudiced, and I would do it again under similar circumstances’, he wrote in his Reminiscences. ‘I have always maintained that I ought to have been called “The Great Unpacker”.’ The dangers of this approach were seen in his prosecution of those accused of the 1882 Maamtrasna murders, after which nationalist journalists obtained possession of his brief and revealed that not only had potentially troublesome jurors been excluded, but witness statements had been edited to conceal material from defence lawyers. O'Brien always maintained that all the prisoners convicted had been guilty, but it was and is widely believed that one of those hanged and several of those imprisoned were innocent. O'Brien also participated in the prosecution of the Invincibles for the Phoenix Park murders of May 1882.
Under the Gladstone–Spencer administration O'Brien served as third serjeant-at-law (1884–5), and second serjeant-at-law (1885–7). When Gladstone and Spencer advocated home rule from 1886 O'Brien became a liberal unionist. That same year he pronounced the Plan of Campaign illegal. He was solicitor general (1887–8) and attorney general (1888–9) under Lord Salisbury's unionist government, and it was in the latter capacity that he enforced Balfour's (qv) Crimes and Coercion Act, prosecuting (with ‘packed’ juries) such high-profile cases as the assault action brought by Wilfred Scawen Blunt (qv) against a police inspector who had detained him while participating in a banned meeting (O'Brien believed the law would have been unenforceable in Ireland had Blunt's case succeeded) and the trial of Fr James MacFadden (qv) and other inhabitants of Gweedore for killing Inspector Martin. (Although the last of these cases was tried in the predominantly catholic district of Maryborough (Portlaoise), all but one of the jurors were protestant.) O'Brien was bitterly criticised for prosecuting a priest; this caused him some pain since, although his religion sat lightly on him, he regarded himself as a loyal catholic. He was also asked to conduct an internal inquiry into whether the killing of three people by police shooting into a riotous crowd at Mitchelstown in September 1887 had been justified, a matter on which he cannot be described as unbiased. Denunciations of him in the nationalist press rose to a new intensity, and he entered not merely political debate but popular folklore as the symbol of legal injustice.
O'Brien refused to take a brief in the Parnell commission because he distrusted the prospect of relying on Richard Pigott (qv) as a witness, though he later believed that the commission had done much good in publicising the links between agrarian crime and the home rule party. As with his right-hand man Edward Carson (qv), O'Brien commended himself to his superiors by physical and moral courage (or brazenness, depending on one's point of view); even such a moderate unionist as Horace Plunkett (qv) regarded him as exemplary in his courage, while he in turn revered Balfour's loyalty to subordinates who made harsh and unpopular decisions.
O'Brien became lord chief justice of Ireland in 1889 and retained the position until 1913. In 1894, during the Gladstone–Rosebery Liberal government, the viceroy, Lord Houghton (qv), complained to the queen that it was improper for O'Brien as a judge not merely to boycott the viceregal court but to incite others to do the same. He was created a baronet in 1891, awarded an honorary doctorate by TCD in 1893, and raised to the peerage in 1900 as Baron O'Brien of Kilfenora.
O'Brien's prominence was enhanced by his mannerisms, which became more pronounced after his elevation to the bench. He had a noticeable lisp (hence his name was often rendered as ‘Pether’) and prominent lips with which he made loud sucking noises to indicate scepticism. He had a very large head; he often removed his wig to cool it during trials and drummed his fingers on his bald pate.
Although O'Brien had a good grasp of common law principles, he was seen as falling short of judicial greatness; he was inclined to be lazy and rely on his intelligence to carry him through. He made few notes during trials, relying on his excellent memory to prepare his summing-up and sentencing report. He made a point of delivering decisions in plain and simple words and using straightforward arguments; sometimes he read out his decisions in advance to family members to test their comprehensibility.
Like many public figures of the period, O'Brien aspired to an image of effortless aristocratic achievement and paternalist good fellowship. He loved to reminisce about his youthful hunting experiences and took particular interest in cases which concerned horses. He was also an enthusiastic cricket player. He liked to present himself as one who had enjoyed the society of women in a wild and reckless youth, and (according to several legal memoirists, whose views of him may have been coloured by their nationalist politics) he showed blatant bias in civil cases towards the side which produced a pretty woman as litigant or witness. He was, however, capable of acts of great generosity towards those who attracted his sympathy; in his memoirs T. M. Healy (qv) records an instance where O'Brien crossed to London for the sole purpose of interceding with cabinet ministers not to dismiss a rural postmistress, and states that the judge performed many unpublicised kindnesses. This paternalist self-image also influenced his conduct of non-political criminal cases; he states in his memoirs that he hated to pass death sentences and was glad to have done so only on particularly repulsive miscreants. He took pride in organising a high-profile international rowing race at the 1902 Cork International Exhibition, accompanied by a sumptuous dinner funded at his persuasion by the Munster bar. Never a reflective man, his favourite reading consisted of the Waverley novels (particularly Ivanhoe) and adventure novels such as the works of Harrison Ainsworth (though he also regularly re-read the Bible and the works of Shakespeare).
The reminiscences of the Right Hon. Lord O'Brien (of Kilfenora), lord chief justice of Ireland was edited by his daughter Georgina O'Brien and published in 1916; it contains some vivid memories of youth, some significant evasions (his account of the Maamtrasna controversy mentions the accusation – which he denies – that ‘C’ next to the names of doubtful jurors stood for ‘catholic’ rather than ‘challenge’ but does not mention the suppression of witness statements), some interesting filial comments, and miscellaneous items including a speech on women's suffrage (he believed women should vote but should not be MPs).
In 1867 O'Brien married Annie, the daughter of Robert Hare Clarke, JP, of Bansha, Co. Tipperary, with whom he had two daughters and one son (who died in infancy). He lived in Merrion Square and successively at Castletown House, Celbridge, Co. Kildare, at Newlands, near Clondalkin, and at Airfield, Donnybrook, where he died 7 September 1914 ; his peerage and baronetcy became extinct.
A copy of confirmation of arms to the descendants of James O'Brien of Limerick and to his grandson the Right Hon. Peter O'Brien is in the Genealogical Office, MS.110, fos. 139–40. In Donn Byrne's popular 1925 novel Hangman's house (filmed by John Ford (qv) in 1928) the ‘hangman’ of the title is a judge based on O'Brien.