1868 in Ireland

Events

• January – American transport entrepreneur George Francis Train is arrested in Cork for debt and spends much of the year imprisoned in Ireland.
• 26 May – Michael Barrett, member of the Fenians, hanged outside the walls of Newgate Prison in London for his part in the Clerkenwell explosion of 1867. He will be the last person publicly executed in the United Kingdom.
• 13 July – Representation of the People Act extends the franchise in parliamentary boroughs.
• 15 July – foundation stone of St Colman's Cathedral, Cobh, laid.
• August – meteorological observatory set up on Valentia Island.
• late September – the Ardagh Hoard is discovered at Ardagh Fort, County Limerick.
• 18 December – Thomas O'Hagan is appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland, the first Roman Catholic to hold the chancellorship since the reign of James II.
• Methodist College Belfast opens to pupils.

Sport

Hare coursing

• Waterloo Cup won by Master McGrath.

Births

• 26 January – Beatrice Hill-Lowe, archer.
• 2 February – Frederic Trench, 3rd Baron Ashtown, peer.
• 4 February – Constance Gore-Booth, Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil TD, member of 1st Dáil, Cabinet Minister.
• 7 February – Aleen Cust, veterinary surgeon.
• 14 April – Annie S. D. Maunder, née Russell, astronomer.
• 25 April – Willie Maley, Association football player and manager.
• 1 May – George F. O'Shaunessy, Democrat U.S. Representative from Rhode Island.
• 7 May – John MacBride, republican.
• 26 May – Richard Maunsell, steam locomotive designer.
• 5 June – James Connolly, socialist, trade unionist, nationalist, rebel and Easter Rising leader.
• 7 June – John Sealy Townsend, mathematical physicist.
• 23 June – Francis Browning, cricketer.
• 9 August – Patrick McKenna, Roman Catholic Bishop of Clogher, 1909–1942.
• 14 September – Arthur Gore, 6th Earl of Arran, Anglo-Irish peer and soldier.
• ;Full date unknown
• :*P. J. Brady, Irish Nationalist Member of UK Parliament for Dublin St Stephen's Green.

Deaths

• 9 January – John Henry Hopkins, first bishop of Episcopal Diocese of Vermont and eighth Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America.
• 7 February – Admiral Theobald Jones, lichenologist and Unionist politician.
• 19 February – Dominick Daly, Governor of Prince Edward Island, later Governor of South Australia.
• 7 April – D'Arcy McGee, journalist, politician in Canada, assassinated.
• 21 April – Henry James O'Farrell, hanged in Australia for attempted assassination of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh.
• 19 May – Benjamin Guinness, brewer and philanthropist.
• 26 May – Michael Barrett, Fenian.
• 17 June – Samuel Hill Lawrence, recipient of the Victoria Cross for gallantry in 1857 at Lucknow, India.
• 25 June – Alexander Mitchell, engineer and inventor of the screw-pile lighthouse.
• 26 July – Peter Gill, recipient of the Victoria Cross for gallantry in 1857 in Benares, India.
• 3 August – Charles Graham Halpine, journalist, editor and author.
• 20 August – Henry Maxwell, 7th Baron Farnham, politician and peer.
• 26 December – Richard Mayne, barrister and joint first Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, head of the London Metropolitan Police .