{{Short description|Irish printer and publisher (1766?–1822)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=June 2020}} {{Use Hiberno-English|date=June 2020}} '''Peter Finnerty''' (1766?–11 May 1822) was an Irish printer, publisher, and journalist in both Dublin and London associated with radical, reform and democratic causes. In Dublin, he was a committed United Irishman, but was imprisoned in the course of the 1798 rebellion. In London he was a campaigning reporter for ''The Morning Chronicle'', imprisoned again in 1811 for libel in his condemnation of Lord Castlereagh.
== United Irish pressman in Dublin == Finnerty was born in Loughrea, County Galway, the son of a town trader. Contemporary sources propose different dates for his birth, the earliest being 1766 and the latest 1778.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Wright|first=Jonathan|date=July 2014|title=An Anglo-Irish Radical in the Late Georgian Metropolis: Peter Finnerty and the Politics of Contempt|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24701793|journal=Journal of British Studies|volume=53|issue=3|pages=663–672|doi=10.1017/jbr.2014.55|jstor=24701793|url-access=subscription}}</ref> He moved to Dublin where he became a printer, later publishing (as titular proprietor) ''The Press'', a United Irish paper established in September 1797 by Arthur O'Connor and William Sampson. Finnerty was closely associated with James MacHugo and Francis Dillon, fellow natives of Loughrea who built the local branch of the United Irishmen.<ref>The District of Loughrea: Vol. I History 1791–1918, pp. 19–25, 37 {{ISBN|0-9546567-0-9}}</ref>
The Press's condemnation of the judges who sentenced William Orr to death for allegedly administering a United Irish test to a soldier and of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Camden, who refused to reprieve him, resulted in Finnerty being tried for seditious libel. His defence counsel, the renowned John Philpot Curran, appeared less concerned with addressing the charges against Finnerty, than in joining Finnerty in decrying the treatment of Orr. Finnerty was sentenced in the spring of 1798 to a session in the pillory and two years in prison, and was required to give security for his good behaviour for a further seven.<ref name=":1">{{Cite DNB |wstitle= Finnerty, Peter| volume= 19 |last= Cooper |first= Thompson |author-link= Thompson Cooper | pages= 38-39 |short=1}}</ref>
When Finnerty was taken to the pillory he was accompanied by the leading United Irishmen, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Oiliver Bond, Henry Jackson, William Sampson, and Arthur O'Connor who held an umbrella over the prisoner's head. When he was released from the pillory he struck a defiant: '[Y]ou see how cheerfully I suffer. I can suffer anything provided it promotes the liberty of my country".<ref name=":1" />
Finnerty's two years in prison, however, meant that he could play no role in the uprisings that occurred in the summer of 1798.
== Radical journalist in London == On his release in 1800, Finnerty emigrated to London. There was a report of Finnerty in 1803 travelling to Dublin to help Robert Emmet in his preparations for a renewed insurrection,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bartlett|first=Thomas|title=Revolutionary Dublin: The Letters of Francis Higgins to Dublin Castle, 1795-1801|publisher=Four Courts Press Ltd|year=2004|isbn=9781851827541|location=Dublin|pages=184 n93}}</ref> and even an account of him commanding men on the streets during the aborted rising of July 23rd.<ref name=":5">{{Cite web|last=O'Donnell|first=Ruan|date=2021|title=The Rising of 1803 in Dublin|url=https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/the-rising-of-1803-in-dublin/|access-date=2021-11-30|website=History Ireland}}</ref> But it is otherwise supposed that Finnerty remained in London where he busied with, not insurrectionary, but electoral politics.<ref name=":2">Wright (2014), p. 670</ref>
In London, Finnerty found work as a parliamentary reporter with ''The Morning Chronicle.'' This brought him into the orbit of the reform candidate Sir Francis Burdett who had championed the cause of Edward Despard executed for treason in January 1803. Finnerty assisted Burdett in his attempts to gain a parliamentary seat in Middlesex in 1802 and 1804. He remained involved in electoral politics in London. Alongside William Cobbett, he supported Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the Irish playwright, satirist, and poet, who won the Westminster seat in 1807, and in 1811 the abolitionist and proponent of minimum wages, Samuel Whitbread MP for Bedford.<ref name=":0" />
Finnerty associated with veterans of the artisan radical clubs.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=McElligott|first1=Jason|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E7zEDwAAQBAJ&q=William+Putnam+Mccabe+and+the+Spenceans%2C+London&pg=PT229|title=The Cato Street Conspiracy: Plotting, counter-intelligence and the revolutionary tradition in Britain and Ireland|last2=Conboy|first2=Martin|date=2019-12-17|publisher=Manchester University Press|isbn=978-1-5261-4500-0|language=en}}</ref> In the 1790s these had federated in the London Corresponding Society and been drawn into insurrectionary conspiracies by the United Irish emissaries James Coigly and William Putnam McCabe.<ref name="Elliott3">{{cite journal|last1=Elliott|first1=Marianne|date=May 1977|title=The 'Despard Plot' Reconsidered|journal=Past & Present|issue=1|pages=(46–61) 56–60|doi=10.1093/past/75.1.46}}</ref> His associates included the radical followers of Thomas Spence,<ref name=":0" /> (advocate of the common and democratic ownership of land), who were eager to recruit among London Irish communities that had provided the most dependable elements in Coigly's United Britons and in the Despard Plot.<ref>{{Cite book|last=McCalum|first=Ian|title=Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries, and Pornographers in London, 1795-1840|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1993|isbn=9780198122869|location=Oxford|pages=23}}</ref>
Finnerty was not implicated alongside the Spenceans in either the Spa Field Riots of 1816 or the Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820. In 1817, he did come to their defence, exposing one of the jurors in the trial of the organisers of the Spa Field meeting as one of the government's principal informers against the United Irishmen, Thomas Reynolds.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Thomas Reynolds - Irish Biography|url=https://www.libraryireland.com/biography/ThomasReynolds.php|access-date=2021-03-27|website=www.libraryireland.com}}</ref>
In 1808 Finnerty contributed to ''An Appeal to the Public, and a Farewell Address to the Public'', which exposed the sale of military commissions by the mistress of the Duke of York, the King's brother. In 1809 he reported on the disasters of the Walcheren Campaign, which accompanied as the ''Chroncile's'' special correspondent, laying blame at the feet of Lord Castlereagh.<ref>{{Cite book|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780192683120.013.9474|title=Finnerty, Peter (1766?–1822)|date=2017-11-28|publisher=Oxford University Press|series=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography|doi=10.1093/odnb/9780192683120.013.9474}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Durán de Porras|first=Elías|date=2014|title=Peter Finnerty, un antepasado de los corresponsales de guerra modernos|url=http://corresponsalesdeguerra.com/assets/files/Arti%CC%81culo%20Elias%20Dura%CC%81n%20Peter_Finnerty.pdf|journal=Textual & Visual Media|volume=7|pages=163–184}}</ref> When in 1811, Finnerty further accused Castlereagh of sanctioning torture and extra-judicial executions in the suppression of the I798 Rebellion in Ireland, the establishment struck back. Finnerty was convicted of libel and imprisoned for eighteen months.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Finnerty|first=Peter|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0O8yAAAAIAAJ|title=Case of Peter Finnerty, Including a Full Report of All Proceedings which Took Place in the Court of King's Bench Upon the Subject ...|publisher=J. M'Creery|year=1811|location=London|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Peter Finnerty - Irish Biography|url=https://www.libraryireland.com/biography/PeterFinnerty.php|access-date=2021-03-27|website=www.libraryireland.com}}</ref>
Radicals and reformers raised subscriptions for Finnerty in London, Liverpool, Belfast and Dublin. In ''An Address to the Irish People,'' which he to personally distribute around Dublin on a visit to the city early in 1812,<ref>{{Cite web|last=Fitzsimmons|first=Eleanor|date=2014|title=The Shelleys in Ireland {{!}} History Today|url=https://www.historytoday.com/archive/shelleys-ireland|access-date=2021-06-15|website=www.historytoday.com}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|title=Shelley's adventure in Irish politics|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/shelley-s-adventure-in-irish-politics-1.484454|access-date=2021-06-15|newspaper=The Irish Times|language=en}}</ref> Percy Bysshe Shelley hailed Finnerty as a man "imprisoned for persisting in the truth."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Morgan|first=Alison|date=2014-07-03|title="Let no man write my epitaph": the contributions of Percy Shelley, Thomas Moore and Robert Southey to the memorialisation of Robert Emmet|journal=Irish Studies Review|volume=22|issue=3|pages=285–303|doi=10.1080/09670882.2014.926124|s2cid=170900710|issn=0967-0882|doi-access=free}}</ref> Finnerty kept the controversy alive by complaining about the conditions of his confinement to Parliament in a petition that repeated the libel against Castlereagh.<ref name=":0" />
Finnerty returned to the Morning Chronicle but, as he was increasingly given to drink, in the last years before his death in 1822 he faded from public notice.
==References== {{Reflist}} * Andrew Shields, Persisting in the Truth: Peter Finnerty and the birth of Activist Journalism (London: Breviary Stuff Publicatiins, 2026) * ''Case of Peter Finnerty, including a full report of all the proceedings which took place in the Court of Kings Bench upon the subject ...'', London, 1811 * ''Galway Authors'', Helen Mahar, 1976 * ''The District of Loughrea: Vol. I History 1791-1918'', pp. 19–25,37 {{ISBN|0-9546567-0-9}}
==External links== * https://web.archive.org/web/20090507181204/http://www.loughreahistory.com/more_book1.html
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Finnerty, Peter}} Category:People from Loughrea
Category:Irish printers Category:Irish publishers (people) Category:Irish journalists Category:United Irishmen Category:1822 deaths Category:Year of birth uncertain