O'Donohoe, Patrick (1808–54), Young Irelander, was born in Clonegal, Co. Carlow. Nothing is known about his early life but it is likely that he came from a catholic middle-class family and received a good education. By the mid 1840s he was living with his wife and daughter at 25 Portland Place, Dublin, and was employed as a clerk for the solicitor W. McGrath of Gardiner St., Dublin, with an annual income of £130. Initially an active repealer, he sided with the Young Ireland group in the split of 1846, and in January 1847 was named a member of the newly formed Irish confederation's executive council. After three months he ceased attending meetings; and when a new council was elected the following year, his name was struck off. He did however become a member, in early 1848, of the Grattan Confederate Club, whose secretary P. J. Barry was also a law clerk and a neighbour of O'Donohoe. On 17 July Barry proposed O'Donohoe as vice-president of the club, but the latter was later insistent that he never acted in any official capacity and dissented from Barry's violent opinions. However, it was probably this vice-presidency that led to the warrant for his arrest on 24 July 1848, two days after the suspension of habeas corpus. Before this could be effected, he received a message from Charles Gavan Duffy (qv) ordering him to Kilkenny with despatches for William Smith O'Brien (qv). He was so little known outside his club that in Kilkenny he was arrested by James Stephens (qv) on suspicion of being an undercover detective and taken in custody to Cashel, where they found Smith O'Brien. For the next week O'Donohoe followed O'Brien and his fluctuating forces through various Tipperary towns. He was present at key events such as the partial surrender of police at Mullinahone, the building of a barricade at Killenaule, and the council of war at Boulagh, which resulted in his being consigned with T. F. Meagher (qv) to raise Waterford. They proceeded to Slievenamon mountain but could do nothing in the face of terrible weather and clerical discouragement of the rising; on 12 August they were arrested near Clonoulty and the next morning were lodged in Kilmainham jail. Two weeks later O'Donohoe wrote his account of the rising, which is now in the NLI. It blamed the failure on bad planning and clerical opposition, but principally on O'Brien's refusal to endorse bloodshed or any requisitioning of property.
O'Donohoe was tried before a special commission at Clonmel 11–14 October on a charge of high treason and on 23 October was found guilty and sentenced to death, to the great surprise of the nationalist press. He was not a leader of the rising, and had had no part in its planning. The Freeman's Journal believed that only the prospect of adjournment, which would have left the jurors for thirty-three hours without food, achieved the verdict. Like the others condemned to death, he refused to seek pardon and their sentences were later commuted to transportation for life. On 9 July 1849 the four were taken from Richmond prison to sail for Van Diemen's Land. O'Donohoe had only 11s. 6d. (£0.575) in his pocket; he was much the most impoverished of the state prisoners. On arrival they were offered tickets-of-leave, giving them relative freedom within a prescribed area. All accepted except O'Brien. On 31 October O'Donohoe proceeded to Hobart town, where he took lodgings with an English woman called Ludgater and was warmly welcomed by the catholic clergy. He disliked Hobart, finding it viper-ridden with excessive numbers of public houses, which presented an uncontrollable temptation to him. He joined a local temperance society but his drinking, already a problem in Ireland, worsened in Australia. Unable to find work as a legal clerk, he determined to publish a newspaper. This was discouraged by the other Young Ireland convicts, including John Mitchel (qv), but he proceeded regardless, and the first edition of the Irish Exile and Freeman's Advocate appeared on 26 January 1850. It was a radical paper, appealing to the convict and working classes, which preached the equality of all men and denounced the free settlers for robbing the aborigines of their heritage. It supported the Tasmanian Union movement and was scathing in its exposition of anomalies such as a fine of 5s. for beating a woman, compared to a month's hard labour for a servant absent for an hour without leave. It upheld the moral character of convicts, using catholic theology to show that the misery they endured would lessen their time in purgatory. The paper was popular, attracting 800 subscribers, 500 of them in Sydney and Melbourne. Unsurprisingly it caused concern and in December 1850 the governor, Lord Denison, claiming O'Donohoe had broken parole by visiting O'Brien, sentenced him to three months in Port Arthur. He was unable to travel until 8 January 1851 as he had been involved in a fight with John Moore, editor of the Hobart Guardian, and had two broken ribs. During his probation he entrusted the Irish Exile to Patrick McSorley, but on his return (early April) was immediately ordered to Oatlands, a rural area where he would be unable to publish. He lost control of the paper to McSorley, who closed it unilaterally (19 April 1851). After three months in Oatlands he applied to move to Launceston, where he continued to live on charity and began to write a book on his Australian experiences, which was never published. Over the next year he lost his ticket-of-leave twice: once in September 1851, possibly for trying to escape, and again in August 1852 for an article in the Launceston Examiner (14 August 1852) in defence of Meagher and Duffy, who had recently been libelled in the Australian press. For this offence he was sent for three months to a chain gang in the Cascades. On 6 November he returned to Launceston and there put in place his escape plan. On 19 December he boarded a steamer bound for Melbourne, and then went into hiding in Sydney for two months before sailing for Tahiti; there he called on the American consul, who arranged for his passage to San Francisco, which he reached on 23 June 1853. His escape attracted little press interest in Australia.
In America he received funds and was initially well received. After moving to New York he gave some successful lectures, but his constant inebriation caused embarrassment to his friends and he was soon sidelined. He died from causes probably related to drink in Brooklyn, New York, on 22 January 1854, on the very day his family arrived from Ireland to join him. His widow, Anne O'Donohoe, publicly denounced Meagher and Mitchel for deserting him. A not very successful fund was established on behalf of the family. The historian Richard Davis writes that through the Irish Exile he ‘deserves to be remembered as one of the founders of the Irish-Australian radical tradition’ (Exiles from Erin, 274).