Author: O'Bryen, Denis
Biography:
O’BRYEN, Denis (c. 1755-1832: ODNB)
O’Bryen’s origins are obscure and his birthdate is estimated by the age (78) given at the time of his death. His title-pages and his contemporaries give his first name as Denis but it has subsequently sometimes been spelled Dennis. He was an Irishman trained as a surgeon who left his country and his profession to pursue the career of a writer in London, where his first published work appeared in 1782. A comedy performed at the Haymarket in 1783, “A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed,” had poor reviews and was never published, but according to O’Donoghue the Prologue appeared that year in an Irish periodical, Walker’s Hibernian Magazine. O’Bryen wrote mainly political pamphlets, some of them anonymously, on behalf of the Whigs and especially in support of his friend the politician Charles James Fox (1749-1806); retrospective newspaper accounts described him as Fox’s “agent.” O’Bryen was rewarded in 1806 with the sinecures of deputy paymaster-general and marshal of the Admiralty patent-office of the Cape of Good Hope. (In the same year he arranged a loan for another friend in need, R. B. Sheridan, q.v.) Accused of inciting a riot in 1799, he alone of three co-accused was found not guilty. In the year of his death, he attended the Insolvent Debtors Court and was judged “entitled to the benefit of the Act”—i.e. relieved of his debts—despite the large sums of money he had had from the public purse, estimated at £1400 a year. According to one newspaper account, he was discharged because it was understood that because of his “secret services” to them, the government would settle his debts (Bell’s Life). The same report described him at that time as “aged seventy-eight, and apparently in a state of imbecility.” Unmarried, he died at Margate and was buried at St. Peter in Thanet on 17 Aug. 1832. (ODNB 11 Mar. 2024; DIB 11 Mar. 2024; findmypast.com 11 Mar. 2024; MC 26 May 1832; Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle 27 May 1832) HJ
Other Names:
- D. O'Bryen