Fr T.J. Linane, From Abel to Zundolovich, Vol. 1, 1979, p 27:

Bohan, John, Irish
Arr. Melb. on the 'Orizaba' from London 25.2.1892. C.D.'s 1894 & 1897 give his station as Blackall, Bris. Archdiocese, assisting Fr. Thos. Enright. Nothing further known.
(Footprints, Vol. 1, No. 6.)

---

Denis M. Long, Pioneer and Early Priests, Archdiocese of Brisbane, Deceased or retired by 1929, 2021, p 90:
Fr James (John) Bohan

James Bohan was born in Mohill in co Leitrim Ireland(1) to John and Mary (nee Bolger) Bohan in March 1869. James was baptised in the parish church of St Patrick's Mohill in the diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnois on 28 March.(2)

He studied at St Patrick's College Carlow where he was ordained a priest in 1891. He arrived in Brisbane in 1892. He was one of the seminary students who responded to Archbishop Robert Dunne's appeal for priests for the Brisbane mission on his visit to Ireland in 1890. A number of priests who had studied in St Patrick's College in Carlow came to the Brisbane mission.

Fr Bohan ministered in Brisbane and Blackall, before returning to Britain. He died in a hospice in Cardiff, Wales in October 1904.(3)

Fr Bohan was a sad case. Dr Neil Byrne in his life of Archbishop Dunne wrote:

In 1892 Father John Bohan from Carlow College had gradually developed a reputation as a fine preacher. However, once after a late-morning drinking bout he stumbled home to vomit beer over Dunne's dinner table. He was soon banished to the far west where he became even more notorious for his drinking. Dunne suspended him four times, before he finally retired from the diocese in 1896. Bohen returned to Britain and died in a hospice in Cardiff, at 36 years of age.(4)

While Archbishop Dunne was worried by alcoholism among a number of his priests, he was not sensitive to where he appointed those with these problems. To send such a priest to Blackall, even as an assistant to Fr Thomas Enright, he was placing him in a parish larger in area than the whole of Ireland. Here he had to travel by horse extensive distances and visit people who had been isolated for years. The welcome to such a person by most of these people isolated from populated areas for years would have been centred on having a drink with them.

Dr Neil Byrne, in his life of Robert Dunne, explains the dilemmas of these situations in a telling manner.

As I study the stories of such priests I have a compassion for the way in which they began their priestly ministry. Priests who served in isolated parishes of Western Queensland in the second half of the twentieth century have told me of the pitfalls faced by priests, even with the better communications and therefore much more priestly company than in those times.

Footnotes
1. Fr Jon McEvoy, Carlow College 1793-1993: the ordained students and teaching staff of St Patrick's College, Carlow, 1993.
2. National Library of Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers of Mohill, p. 147.
3. Cardiff Glamorganshire death records, Vol. 11a. No. 204.
4. Robert Dunne, Archbishop of Brisbane, Neil J Byrne, 1991, p. 208.

Reproduced by permission of Fr Denis Long.