Father Charles Adolphus O'Hea OSA (1814–1903) was a Catholic Priest best-known today as the man who baptised Ned Kelly

Ned Kelly

Edward "Ned" Kelly was an Irish Australian bushranger. He is considered by some to be merely a cold-blooded cop killer — others, however, consider him to be a folk hero and symbol of Irish Australian resistance against the Anglo-Australian ruling class.Kelly was born in Victoria to an Irish...

, and who ministered to him before the bushranger was hanged in 1880.

O'Hea was described by Hugh McCrae "as a burly priest, developed like a Thessalonian bull, fisted like a Castor or Pollux; yet withal a learned man, a witty one, and a friend of the masses."

Born in Cork

Cork (city)

Cork is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland's third most populous city. It is the principal city and administrative centre of County Cork and the largest city in the province of Munster. Cork has a population of 119,418, while the addition of the suburban...

, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, O'Hea entered the Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine

Augustinians

The term Augustinians, named after Saint Augustine of Hippo , applies to two separate and unrelated types of Catholic religious orders:...

 in Drogheda

Drogheda

Drogheda is an industrial and port town in County Louth on the east coast of Ireland, 56 km north of Dublin. It is the last bridging point on the River Boyne before it enters the Irish Sea....

 in 1844, and moved to Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, seven years later.

O'Hea served the community of Pentridge from 1853 to 1882. He was the man who, in 1867, called a public meeting to discuss the potential for a change of name, as "Pentridge" was seen as too evocative of the gaol

HM Prison Pentridge

HM Prison Pentridge was an Australian prison built in 1850 in Coburg, Victoria. The first prisoners arrived in 1851. The prison officially closed on 1 May 1997....

. As a result of this meeting, the name of the suburb was changed to Coburg

Coburg, Victoria

Coburg is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 8 km north from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Moreland, although a handful of properties on Coburg's Eastern boundary are located in the City of Darebin...

. He now has a street named after him in that suburb.

He retired in 1882 and lived in retirement in what is now Mercy Convent. He died in 1903, at the age of ninety.

During his time in Melbourne, O'Hea was responsible for the building of four churches: Beveridge (1857); St Ambrose, Brunswick (1869); and Woodstock and Epping (1879). All four were constructed from local basalt

Basalt

Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...

 in the Gothic architectural style.

External links

• Coburg E-zine article about the renaming of Pentridge