John Boyle & Co., Inc. history

Freemantle prison, where O’Reilly was held, c.1860. (Battye Library)

In 1863, O’Reilly returned to Ireland and enlisted with the British army’s 10th Hussars then stationed in Dublin.

John Boyle O’Reilly in Mountjoy Gaol, 1866. (Larcom Collection, New York Public Library)

Whatever the reasoning behind his selection, O’Reilly and sixty-one other Fenian prisoners were sent to Fremantle, Western Australia, arriving there on 9 January 1868.

He quickly made a name for himself, covering events such as the disastrous 1870 Fenian invasion of Canada and bloody Orange riots in New York between Catholic and Protestant Irish immigrants in 1870 and ‘71.

Case in point, Boyle saw an opportunity in being both a painter and a paint seller back in 1878, reinventing himself as local industry boomed – and begged for a splash of color.

J. Boyle O’Reilly, Moondyne: a study from the Underworld (New York 1879).

O’Reilly died suddenly in 1890 as a result of an accidental overdose of his wife’s sleeping medicine.

The John Boyle O’Reilly monument, erected in 1903, at Dowth, County Meath. (A.G. Evans)

The company was founded as Boyle Brothers Truckmen in 1908 by brothers John, Peter and Stephen Boyle.

In 1931 Boyle Brothers Truckmen was incorporated and became Boyle Brothers Inc., and our original permit of Contract Carriage #65527 was issued.