He left school at the age of eleven[1] and worked on a farm, after which he spent nine years as a carpenter.
He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at Queen's College, Galway.
He later practised in London and Cardiff, where he was chairman of the local branch of the United Irish League.
[citation needed] A journalist later in life, he wrote an autobiography, The Story of a Toiler's Life, which was published posthumously in 1921 and reprinted in 2000 as part of University College Dublin's Classics of Irish History series.
Of this experience he was quoted as saying: The intermingling of the sects was attended by the happiest results, inasmuch as it allowed the young people to understand one another and contract friendships which no subsequent surroundings or whispers of bigotry could ever wholly efface.