Baines, Thomas O'Malley (1844–99), Fenian, was born near Louisburgh, Co. Mayo, son of a couple named Baines, of whom no more is known. His father died soon after his birth. In 1848 Mrs Baines with her two children were evicted from their holding as part of the famine clearances on the estate of the marquess of Sligo. They continued to live in the Westport area; Baines's mother and sister spent the rest of their lives in Westport and are buried at Oughaval, Co. Mayo.
Baines joined the Irish brigade formed to defend the papal states; he was stationed at Ancona, where the papal garrison surrendered to Sardinian forces in September 1860 after a brief siege. Baines and his comrades were deported to France; he returned to Rome and remained in the papal service till 1862, participating in several skirmishes with Garibaldian forces. Baines always boasted of his service to the pope; he compared the seizure of the papal states to his family's eviction. He cited the conspiracy theory that nationalist uprisings in Europe (especially those against the papacy) were orchestrated by Lord Palmerston, as ‘proof’ that Leo XIII was shortsighted in supporting the British position on the Plan of Campaign.
On returning to Ireland in November 1862, Baines joined the newly formed Dublin fire brigade, as did several other papal veterans subsequently involved in the IRB. From 1864 Baines worked full-time for the IRB, recruiting Irish soldiers in the British army to the Fenian cause; in 1865–6 he worked with Michael O'Brien (qv), the ‘Manchester martyr’. On 16 August 1866 Baines was arrested in Liverpool and his papal service medal was confiscated (he later attempted to obtain a substitute from the Vatican). He was tried at Dublin on 12 February 1867, sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude, and removed to Millbank penitentiary in London. On 30 September he was one of the Fenians embarked on the Hougomont, the last convict ship sent to Australia. Between January 1868 and February 1871 he worked on road-making as a convict in Western Australia. In March 1871 he received a conditional pardon; after a short and unsuccessful attempt at gold-mining, he left for the United States.
Baines landed in San Francisco in March 1872. He became a saloon-keeper; in 1875 he was shot in the lung during a dispute with a barkeeper and nearly died. He was a prominent activist in the Workingman's Party of California, a populist group led by Denis Kearney (qv), which achieved extensive support (1877–80) among the San Francisco white working class by campaigning for labour reform and against Chinese immigration. Baines revisited Australia between January 1880 and May 1882 to disinter the body of Patrick Keating – a Fenian military prisoner originally recruited by Baines, who had died in Western Australia – and bring it to California for eventual shipment to Ireland and burial in Glasnevin. He may also have undertaken IRB business during the visit. Baines spent the remainder of his life as a travelling book agent, a pedlar soliciting advance subscriptions for books due to be published.
Baines carried around and sold an autobiography, My life in two hemispheres: what was suffered for love of country (3rd ed. San Francisco, 1889). This combines a cursory outline of his career with brief accounts of numerous prominent Irish people he met in Australia and California (desiring to perpetuate their memories and hoping they would buy the book), making it a potentially valuable source for historians of the Irish in late nineteenth-century California. It also reprints well known patriotic ballads and advertisements for California businesses (mostly Irish-owned). Several advertisements specify: ‘All white labor – no Chinese employed’.
Baines remained active in local Irish and Democrat politics into the 1880s. In December 1883 he acted as grand marshal of a symbolic funeral commemorating Patrick O'Donnell (qv), hanged for killing the informer James Carey (qv). He was subsequently active in the American branch of the Irish National League. Baines considered Grover Cleveland lamentably blind to British intrigues against America, and claimed that Salvation Army missionaries were British agents recruited among ex-convicts and sent to America, since Britain no longer possessed penal colonies. Baines was always on friendly terms with local Irish catholic clergy. While visiting the priests in the former St Mary's College, Mission Road, San Francisco, on 5 April 1899 he suffered a paralytic stroke, dying on 10 April.
During a near-fatal illness, Baines married (18 January 1877) a Miss McCarthy. They had two sons, Robert Emmet Baines and Thomas Addis Emmet Baines; Robert, the elder, joined the American army and fought in Cuba during the Spanish–American war.
Baines was not in the first rank as Fenian or autobiographer, but his career reflects the worldwide wanderings and resentments of many post-famine emigrants, the ambivalent relationship between nineteenth-century Irish nationalism and catholicism, and the fact that oppression does not automatically produce sympathy for other marginalised groups.