Mary Boyle O’Reilly was born on May 18, 1873 in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Her father, John Boyle O’Reilly, was a noted poet and Irish nationalist, and her mother, Mary Smiley (Murphy) O’Reilly, was a journalist. O’Reilly attended public school in Charlestown, and, later, the Sacred Heart Convent in Providence, Rhode Island.

In 1901, she opened the Guild of Saint Elizabeth, a settlement house, in Boston’s South End with three other women and became heavily involved in the charitable life of the city of Boston. She served in various capacities with the Boston Public Library, The Women’s Educational Union, The Tuberculosis Society, and The State Conference of Charities. She was appointed as a member of the Massachusetts Prison Commission in 1906, by Governor Guild, and proposed many reforms to the way that Massachusetts prisons were run. Her interest in housing reform led her to investigate and expose the abuses in New England’s “baby farms,” or homes fostering children in exchange for payment. On resigning from the Prison Commission in 1911, O’Reilly became a trustee of the Children’s Institutions in Boston, and a popular writer and lecturer on topics in social work and sociology, with work published in Harper’s Magazine and The Boston Globe. Her investigative reporting included an exposé of the working conditions of children in the canning industry in New York state.

In 1913, O’Reilly accepted a position as foreign correspondent for the Newspaper Enterprise Association, and was placed in charge of the London office. As war threatened in Europe, she travelled undercover to report from the continent. She was the first American journalist in Belgium and witnessed the burning of Louvain. She was subsequently held prisoner by the Germans. After her release, she remained in Europe and was present in Paris during the Battle of the Marne, and at Calais during the Battle of Loos. She returned to Belgium to work with refugees and also spent a number of months of 1915 in Warsaw doing relief work as people fled Poland.

O’Reilly returned to the United States in 1917, and went on a speaking tour of the country on the topic of her war experience. She settled back in the Boston area, campaigned with her uncle, John R. Murphy, on his unsuccessful mayoral campaign, built a small stone cottage in Auburndale as a tribute to her father, and continued writing until her death from a heart attack at the age of 66, on October 22, 1939.

Sources

Philpott, A.J. “Rich Life Devoted to Aiding Afflicted.” Daily Boston Globe, October 22, 1939.

O’Reilly, Mary Boyle. “Albert of Belgium, ‘Citizen-Monarch,’ Will be Last King in Europe, Said Another King to Mary Boyle O’Reilly.” Boston Daily Globe, October 5, 1919.

“Mary Boyle O’Reilly Dead, Daughter of Irish Patriot.” Daily Boston Globe, October 22, 1939.

“Mary B. O’Reilly, Writer, 66, Is Dead.” The New York Times, October 22, 1939.

“O’Reilly, Mary Boyle, 1873 – 1939.” Finding Aid at the Boston Public Library Archival and Manuscript Finding Aid Database, Boston, Massachusetts.

“Woman Tells of Life Back of the Front.” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 17, 1918.