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Attempted assassination of HRH Duke of Edinburg...

Attempted assassination of HRH Duke of Edinburgh at Clontarf 1868

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Assassination attempt on Prince Alfred 1868 Clontarf Irish in Sydney from First Fleet to Federation Law and order

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Crime Political crimes and offenses

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Assassination attempt on Prince Alfred 1868

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Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh O'Farrell, Henry James

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Clontarf

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Calvert, Samuel

National Library of Australia

Assassination attempt on Prince Alfred 1868

In 1868, Henry O'Farrell tried to shoot the visiting Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Alfred, second son of Queen Victoria. Although the prince was only slightly wounded, the event set off a rash of anti-Irish feeling in Sydney, and O'Farrell was hanged in record time. Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital is a reminder of the event.

Clontarf

Named for a seaside town near Dublin, Clontarf's beach was a popular picnic spot by the 1860s. In 1868, at a picnic in the pleasure grounds, Prince Alfred the Duke of Edinburgh was shot, in an unsuccessful assassination attempt, by Henry O'Farrell who was hanged. Clontarf remained a cheap suburb, with a tent city springing up in the Depression of the 1930s, but a new bridge in 1958 made it more accessible.

Law and order

The politics of law and order were present at the foundation of Sydney as a convict settlement. They have remained part of the fabric ever since, and a vital aspect of the city's imagined life. Like many other parts of the city (its churches, its schools, its hospitals), the institutions of law and justice are a material aspect of the values and experiences of those who inhabit the city.

Irish in Sydney from First Fleet to Federation

A large part of Sydney's European community from its earliest days, the Irish helped shape the colony and its cultural and religious institutions. While many Irish immigrants, both convict and free, prospered and flourished in Sydney throughout the nineteenth century, they rarely forgot their homeland and its struggles, and remained a community which never thought of England as 'home'.

Crime

Political crimes and offenses

Assassination attempt on Prince Alfred 1868

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Crime committed by Henry O'Farrell on 12 March 1868, when he shot and injured the visiting prince at the Clontarf picnic grounds during a function.

Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh

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Prince Alfred was the second son of Queen Victoria, and he made the first royal tour of Australia in 1868. He returned for two further brief visits between 1869 and 1871.

O'Farrell, Henry James

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Irish republican who shot and wounded the Duke of Edinburgh and was hanged for attempted murder.

Clontarf

full record »

Residential suburb on the northern shore of Middle Harbour, between Seaforth and Balgowlah Heights. In 1868 it was the site of an attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria's son, Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh.