Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Luby, Thomas Clarke
LUBY, THOMAS CLARKE (1821–1901), Fenian, born in Dublin in 1821 (Rutherford, Fenian Conspiracy, i. 46, says 1828), was the son of James Luby, a clergyman of the established Church of Ireland. He attended Mr. Murphy's school, and with a view to entering the church he matriculated at Trinity College, Dublin, as a pensioner and a protestant on 2 July 1839, Thomas Luby [q. v.] being his college tutor. He graduated B.A. in 1845 (Cat. of Graduates in the University of Dublin), but falling under the influence of the Young Ireland propaganda he abandoned his theological studies and became an occasional contributor to the 'Nation' newspaper. In 1848 he was involved in the revolutionary movement headed by William Smith O'Brien [q. v.]. With his friend Eugene O'Reilly he planned a rising on the borders of Dublin and Meath, and after the failure of what was known as the Blanchardstown affair (Duffy, Four Years of Irish Hist, pp. 671-5) he went south to join O'Brien in Tipperary. Undismayed by O'Brien's defeat at Ballingarry, he and several others of the party conceived a plan for a fresh rising in 1849. The rising proved a fiasco, but Luby was captured at Cashel and suffered a short imprisonment. After his release he is said (Rutherford) to have gone to Australia, whence he returned to Europe about 1853 to assist James Stephens [q. v. Suppl. II], who was at that time in Paris, in starting a new conspiracy, known subsequently as the Fenian movement. The next two years were spent by Luby in Stephens's company, travelling about Ireland and collecting information as to the state of public opinion. Finding that beneath the apparent tranquillity the embers of the rebellion were still aglow, he was detached to assist Charles Joseph Kickham [q. v.] in the editorship at Dublin of the short-lived revolutionary 'Tribune' newspaper. In 1858 the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret society, of which the members were bound together by an oath formulated by Luby (O'Leary, Fenians and Fenianism, i. 120), was founded for the purpose of forcibly separating Ireland from England. During Stephens's absence in America in 1858-9 the work of extending the society in Ireland was energetically carried on by Luby. Numerous 'circles' were established by him at this time and the following years in Leinster and Munster. The funeral of Terence Bellew MacManus [q. v.] in 1861, followed closely by the 'Trent' affair, gave a great impetus to the movement, and Luby was despatched by Stephens as special envoy to America in 1863 for the purpose of procuring the necessary funds. He landed at New York on 25 Feb. During the next four months he covered, in his own words, '6000 miles of space,' generally in the company of John O'Mahony [q. v.], the 'head centre' of the Fenian brotherhood, addressing public meetings at Philadelphia, Crawfordsville, Chicago, and other places.
His mission from a pecuniary point of view was not a success, and, returning to Ireland at the end of July, he found the movement languishing there. Luby's energy restored confidence, and the 'Irish People' newspaper was successfully launched at Dublin as the organ of the party. He accepted the post of co-editor along with John O'Leary [q. V. Suppl. II] and Kickham. The paper was rationahstic as well as revolutionary and was therefore boycotted by the catholic clergy. Nevertheless it had a large sale in the east and south of Ireland and was both a pecuniary and literary success. Luby's contributions can generally be distinguished by their inordinate length and sanguine tone (O'Leary, i. 257). The first number of the paper appeared on 28 Nov. 1863, the last was dated 16 Sept. 1865. On the evening of the previous day the offices of the 'Irish People,' in Parliament Street, were raided by the police. Luby, O'Leary, and the principal members of the conspiracy, with the exception of Stephens and Kickham, were arrested nearly at the same time and removed to Richmond prison. The trials commenced at Green Street police court on 27 Nov. before a special commission presided over by Justices Keogh and Fitzgerald. Luby was the first to be called up, and after a three days' trial he was condemned to twenty years' penal servitude for treason-felony. In 1869, by way of protest against the continued mis-government of Ireland, it was proposed to nominate him a candidate for the representation of county Longford (O'Connor, Parnell Movement, p. 219), but John Martin (1812-1875) [q. v.] was substituted and was defeated. By the exertions of the Amnesty Association, presided over by Isaac Butt [q. v.], Luby, with other political prisoners, was restored to liberty in 1871, but not being allowed to return to Ireland he settled with his wife and family in New York, where he devoted himself to journalism. He continued to take a lively interest in Irish affairs and, according to Le Caron (Secret Service, pp. 104, 120, 137-8), was one of the founders of the Irish Confederation and a trustee of the so-called skirmishing fund. But he ceased to play an active part in Irish-American politics. Like O'Leary and the Fenians generally, he regarded the home rule movement under Butt and Parnell with distrust, and he was open in his condemnation of the Land League agitation. Apart from his journalistic work he wrote 'The Lives and Times of Illustrious and Representative Irishmen' (New York, 1878; vol. i. only), and in 1882 he contributed a series of articles on the Fenian movement to the New York 'Irish Nation.' O'Leary dedicated his 'Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism' to him in acknowledgment of the assistance rendered by him in its composition; a portrait in vol. i. confirms the description of him in the Dublin papers in 1865 as 'a quiet-faced, pale and somewhat sad-looking man.' He died in New York on 1 Dec. 1901.
[The chief authorities for Luby's Life are his own reminiscences incorporated in O'Leary's Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism. See in addition to the authorities mentioned Report of Proceedings at the Special Commission, Dublin, for trial of Thomas Clarke Luby and others for Treason Felony, Dublin, 1866; The Times, 3 Dec. 1901.]