Fitzpatrick, Sir Jeremiah (c.1740–1810), physician, inspector of prisons, and social reformer, was born at Kilbeggan, Co. Westmeath. Of his parents and education little is known, but it can be inferred from the elder Fitzpatricks’ burial in the Old Relic graveyard on the road to Tullamore that they were catholics of comfortable means, and from this that Jeremiah Fitzpatrick's medical training was most likely received in France. By the early 1780s he was practising in Dublin with an address in Jervis Street. On 29 July 1782, for reasons that remain a mystery, he was knighted by the departing lord lieutenant, the 3rd duke of Portland (qv). He had conformed to the established church in 1780 in St Ann's parish, Dublin, but evidence points to covert catholicism or even indifferentism in middle age, followed by overt catholicism in old age. It seems possible that he was related to Portland's chief secretary, Richard Fitzpatrick (qv), which could have counted more than his religious affiliation.
Energetic, engaging, and of a philanthropic disposition, Sir Jeremiah (sometimes known as Sir Jerome) had for some years been concerning himself with conditions in Irish prisons, to which he voluntarily paid visits of inspection. (The concern for prison reform of Richard Fitzpatrick's predecessor as chief secretary, William Eden (qv), may also have been a reason for his knighthood.) Influenced perhaps by the penal reformer John Howard (whose visit to Ireland in 1782 attracted much attention) and with mutual encouragement from Peter Holmes (1729?-1802), MP for Banagher (1761–90), and chief of a group of prison reformers in the Irish house of commons which included Sir John de Blaquiere (qv) and Richard Griffith (qv), Sir Jeremiah gave lengthy evidence to two parliamentary committees inquiring into the state of prisons (1783, 1785) and published a pamphlet, An essay on gaol abuses (1784). On 24 May 1786, under Holmes and Griffith's Prisons Inspection Act of 1785, he was appointed inspector general of prisons in Ireland, which position he held officially until 8 September 1794. Already he had been engaged by the Incorporated Society for Promoting English Protestant Schools in Ireland to inspect its fifty schools, thirty of which he succeeded in visiting (1785–8). A major concern in both types of institution was poor living conditions, which he attempted to remedy by his reports. Abuses of all kinds in Irish prisons (except for those in Dublin, excluded under the act from his responsibilities) had his attention. A study tour of England (1789) resulted in a second pamphlet, Thoughts on penitentiaries (1790). Some months later the first Irish penitentiary was opened in St James Street, Dublin (October 1790).
On a visit to Cork (probably late November 1793), Fitzpatrick learned of fever on transports embarking troops at Cove, promptly offered his services to the commanding officer, and served on a hospital ship crossing to Plymouth (January 1794), not to return to Ireland for many years. Thus he began a new career as an army medical inspector (self-appointed at first). He spent some time with the duke of York's troops in the Low Countries (1794). Back in England, supported by the 2nd earl of Moira (qv), the Irish whig politician, and Henry Dundas, the newly appointed secretary of war, Fitzpatrick made a draft of the duties and powers he desired and was appointed inspector general of army health, with responsibility directly to the secretary and apparently without any formal rank (November 1794). Except for a brief second visit to the Low Countries (December 1794 to January 1795), he remained in southern or eastern England until 1802. During that time, too forthright, he soon incurred the displeasure of the army medical board and from 1796 his main work was supervision of embarkation for the main theatres of war – the West Indies and the Mediterranean. He found time to concern himself also with the welfare of soldiers’ dependants and of convicts awaiting transportation. Another concern was slavery. In a pamphlet, Suggestions on the slave trade (1797), he advocated inspection of slave ships and, as a medium-term palliative in preparation for long-term abolition of slavery, a free black labour force in the West Indies. In this, as in all his concerns, he was ahead of his time.
After peace was signed with France, he was placed on half pay (30 July 1802) and faded into retirement. Fitzpatrick's politics during the revolutionary period were those of a cautious but enlightened catholic: he offered in May 1797 to return to Ireland to counsel catholics against the United Irishmen, and in January 1808, at a catholic meeting in Dublin, he attempted to bring about a compromise on the burning question of a government veto on the appointment of bishops.
Fitzpatrick died in February 1810 in Frith Steet, London. In an obituary in the Gentleman's Magazine he was described as ‘a second Howard’. His will reveals him as comfortably off and generous to friends and protégés as well as relatives – he had lands in Co. Westmeath and King's Co., acquired apparently through his wife, Elizabeth (née Fitzgerald), whom he married in November 1770. The couple had a son, John, who seems to have predeceased Sir Jeremiah, and a daughter, Elizabeth, who married John Tisdall of Ardee, Co. Louth, and bore him a son, another Jeremiah, who was the main beneficiary of Fitzpatrick's will. Fitzpatrick seems to have been an uncle of the catholic printer Hugh Fitzpatrick (qv), who also benefited from his will. There is a mezzotint portrait of Fitzpatrick dated 1801.