Davitt

Davitt, Michael (b. 1846), a well-known Irish patriot, born in the county Mayo, the son of a Mayo peasant. He was evicted with his family in 1851, and they emigrated to Lancashire, where Michael had the misfortune to lose his right arm by an accident in the cotton factory where he worked. In 1860 he became a Fenian, and in 1870 was sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude. Released upon a ticket of leave in 1877, he founded the Land League in 1879. In 1881-82 he was sent to Portland on the ground of having broken the conditions of his ticket of leave. In 1885 he published Leaves from a Prison Diary, and in 1887 he married. For a time he conducted a workman's paper, the Labour World.