He was the eldest son of Joseph Bigger, merchant and chairman of the Ulster bank, by Isabella, daughter of William Houston of Ballyearl, Antrim.

He was educated at the Belfast Academy, and, entering his father's business of a provision merchant, became head of the firm in 1861, and carried it on till 1880.

"Now", I said, "when young Protestants in Ulster showed a tendency towards Nationality their mothers would say to them: 'The next thing we'll know is that you've turned Papish like Joe Biggar'".

To him, speaking was but a means to an end, and whether people listened to him or not – stopped to hang on his words or fled before his grating voice and Ulster accent – it was all one to him.

T. D. Sullivan refers to Biggar's preparation and delaying technique:[11] Of course he could not get the materials for his lengthy discourses "all out of his own head" but he knew whence there was a perfect mine of such matter, and thence he provided himself with supplies.

Once when he had been at his work for more than two hours, without a pause – except to take an occasional sip of water – the chairman (the House being in Committee), thought to get him to resume his seat by telling him that his observations had become almost inaudible and unintelligible to the chair.

Mr. Biggar tendered respectful apologies, said he felt conscious that his voice was growing somewhat indistinct, remarked that he was at rather too great a distance from the chair, but said he would be happy to improve matters by drawing nearer.

Thereupon he gathered up his books and papers and moved up, with all the ease and confidence in the world, to the front bench on the opposition side, facing the table of the house – a place reserved by immemorial custom for ex-ministers and their leading supporters.

He joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood after his election to parliament in 1874 and accepted a seat on its Supreme Council, but 'only with a view to winning fenian support for parliamentary politics'.

[4] However, his involvement in constitutional politics did not sit well with his more radical IRB colleagues and he was expelled from its Supreme Council in 1876 according to Alvin Jackson.

[4] In March 1879, in a meeting arranged by Michael Davitt, Biggar and fellow MP Charles Stewart Parnell met in Boulogne with John Devoy, the head of what was then the main Fenian organisation in America, Clan na Gael.

On 9 February 1886 Parnell declared to the voters of Galway that "If my candidate is defeated, the news will spread round the universe that a disaster has overwhelmed Ireland.

Biggar split with Parnell over this, declaring "Mr. Chairman, all I have to say is, I can't agree with what you state, and if Mr. Lynch [O'Shea's opponent] goes to the poll I'll support him!".

Biggar died from heart disease in London – some months before the O'Shea scandal ended Parnell's career – and was buried in his native Belfast.

He did so alongside William Johnston, the unionist MP, nominee of the town's "Protestant Workingmen's Association", and a senior Orangeman,[17][18] who, in the nineties, revived the legislative struggle for women's suffrage.

[19] When Johnston died in July 1902, The Irish News, commented on the courteous and friendly relationship between the two, otherwise fearsome, political opponents.