Taylor, John Sydney (1795–1841), barrister and journalist, was born in Donnybrook, Dublin, son of John Taylor, artist. His father had been born John McKinley but had assumed the surname of Taylor, and was descended from Capt. David McKinley who had commanded a company of the Enniskilleners at the battle of the Boyne. His mother was a Sarsfield descended from Patrick Sarsfield (qv). His elder brother was William B. Sarsfield Taylor (qv), artist, author, and archaeologist.
Educated at Samuel White's academy in Dublin, he entered TCD (1809), was awarded a scholarship (1812), and graduated (1814). During his time at TCD, he was a prominent member of the ‘Hist.’, the college debating society. He moved to London and from 1820 edited the Talisman with his friend Thomas Crofton Croker (qv). In 1824 he was called to the English bar (Middle Temple), but decided to pursue a journalistic career and did not immediately practise his profession. A close friend of the Rev. Charles Wolfe (qv), in October 1824 he established Wolfe's claim to the authorship of the poem ‘Lines on the death of Sir John Moore’ in a letter to the Morning Chronicle. He then became a writer for the Morning Chronicle and later worked as the editor of the Morning Herald, maintaining an association with this newspaper for fourteen years.
During his time with the Herald the paper became associated with the humanitarian party, and he wrote several articles advocating a reform of the penal code and a review of the use of the death penalty for certain crimes. Resigning from the editorship of the Morning Herald, he applied himself to his law practice but still wrote articles for the paper. He was the leading counsel in some significant cases including the Roscommon peerage case (1828), in which he established the claim of Michael James Robert Dillon to that dormant peerage. His most famous case came in 1840, however, when he defended Edward Oxford, who had been charged with high treason after discharging two pistols at Queen Victoria as she passed along Constitution Hill in her carriage with Prince Albert. Police investigations showed that Oxford had carefully planned his attack and it was expected that he would be hanged. He was a simple-minded youth, however, and Taylor convinced the court that he was insane; he was later confined in an asylum.
Apart from journalism, Taylor also published Anti-Draco: or reasons for abolishing the punishment of death in cases of forgery (London, 1830) and A comparative view of the punishments annexed to crime in the United States and England (London, 1831). He died in London, 10 December 1841, and was buried in Kensal Green cemetery. A public fund was raised and a fine monument placed at his grave. The same fund provided the money to have some of his writings published after his death as Selections from the writings of John Sydney Taylor: prose and verse with a sketch of his life (London, 1843).
He married (1827) a Miss Hill, niece of James Perry, proprietor of the Morning Chronicle.