Slice of Galtee – Felix M Larkin on William O’Brien’s pioneering journalism

In late December 1877 and early January 1878, the Freeman's Journal published a series of five articles that are generally acknowledged as the earliest example of investigative journalism in Ireland. Entitled "Christmas on the Galtees", they were written by William O'Brien, the Freeman's star reporter. He was later an Irish Party MP and a prominent leader of the land agitation in the 1880s.

The articles were described by O'Brien as "the investigation of a historic agrarian struggle on an estate around the Galtee mountains". The estate in question was "a poor mountainous estate" in Co Tipperary which had been acquired by a wealthy English manufacturer, Nathaniel Buckley. He raised the rents – in most instances, by a factor of two or three – and resistance to this impossible burden escalated to the point where a bailiff was killed and the estate agent and a policeman wounded in a gun attack.

The plight of the tenants on the estate was first highlighted in letters from a prominent local Fenian, John Sarsfield Casey, published in the Freeman and in the Cork Examiner. This resulted in a libel suit against Casey.

When the suit failed and Casey was vindicated, the Freeman decided to pursue the matter further.

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O’Brien was dispatched to Tipperary with, in his own words, instructions “to probe the truth to the bottom and publish the results, whatever they might be, without fear or favour”. He spent 10 days over Christmas 1877 on the assignment.

The Freeman was owned at this time by Edmund Dwyer Gray, and the Buckley estate was located in the constituency for which Gray had recently been elected MP. The candidate he defeated on that occasion was the same John Sarsfield Casey who had drawn attention to conditions on the estate. In his Recollections, O'Brien recalls that Gray personally gave him the commission to write the articles. In doing so, Gray was clearly taking steps to avoid being outflanked in his political backyard.

What makes O’Brien’s articles extraordinary is the quality of the analysis that underpinned his exposition of the wretched circumstances of the tenants – “the shameful scenes which passed under my own eyes”, to quote O’Brien – and his focus on the experience of individual tenants.

In this regard, O’Brien writes: “The inquiry was original in this sense, that it was, so far as I know, the first time when, in place of general statements, there was substituted a house-to-house visitation, telling in detail the story of every family – their crops, their stock, their debts, their struggle for life – from documents examined on the premises, and in words taken down in shorthand from the peasants’ own lips.”

This combination of precise investigation and vivid reportage makes “Christmas on the Galtees” a perfect specimen of the new genre of journalism – the so-called New Journalism – just then emerging in Britain and associated with the legendary WT Stead. The articles also display the passionate advocacy that was so much a part of the New Journalism.

O'Brien's final article concludes with an appeal to public opinion, which, with its implicit assumption that his articles would galvanise public feeling, is characteristic of the New Journalism: "One wave of that English opinion, before which Cabinets have fallen and nationalities been raised up – one generous impulse, such as was at the call of undeserved human misery in Bulgaria – would either end this unhappy strife or sweep away for ever the law that allows it."

WT Stead, as editor of the Darlington Northern Echo, had played a central role in publicising atrocities in Bulgaria committed by the Ottoman Empire in 1876. By linking his exposé of conditions on the Buckley estate with that controversy, O'Brien was very deliberately identifying his work with the New Journalism.

O’Brien notes in his Recollections that the publication of his articles was “not without perils for the proprietor of a great newspaper” – specifically, the risk of a further libel action. Gray thus showed great courage in publishing the articles.

Moreover, he was extraordinarily prescient in bringing the land question to public attention at this relatively early date; the articles appeared almost 20 months before the founding of the Land League by Michael Davitt.

These considerations surely justify the tribute O’Brien paid to Gray when he described him in his Recollections as “the most enterprising newspaperman Ireland ever produced”.