John Dillon - Early Life

Early Life

John Dillon was born in Blackrock, Dublin, a son of the former "Young Irelander" John Blake Dillon (1814–1866). He was educated at Catholic University School, at Trinity College, Dublin and at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. He afterwards studied medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, then ceased active involvement in medicine after he joined Isaac Butt’s Home Rule League in 1873, winning notice in 1879 when he attacked Butt’s weak parliamentary handling of Irish Home Rule. His family financial means enabled him to turn and devote all his energies to political life.

He became a leading land reform agitator as member of the original committee of the Irish National Land League, spearheading the policy of ”boycotting” advocated by Michael Davitt with whom he was allied in close friendship. He entered the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1880 as member for County Tipperary, and was at first an ardent supporter of Charles Stewart Parnell. He travelled to the United States with Parnell on a fund-raising mission for the Land League. On his return he denounced William Ewart Gladstone’s Land Act of 1881 as achieving nothing for small farmers. His views on agrarian reform and on Home Rule led him being branded an extremist, which resulted in his arrest from May until August 1881 under the Irish Coercion Act .