William J. Fitz-Patrick

William John Fitzpatrick (1830–1895) was an Irish biographer and historian. Born in Dublin, he devoted himself to research in Irish political history of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, using family papers and official records. The Sham Squire and the Informers of 1798 exposed the men who had betrayed the United Irishmen, a theme he developed further in Secret Service Under Pitt (1892). He also wrote lives of Lord Cloncurry and the novelist Charles Lever and edited the correspondence of Daniel O'Connell. His books combine archival discovery with a taste for intrigue.