0 DIEARA, BARRY EDWARD, was b. in Ireland in the year 1786. Otherwise without claim to be remembered, his name remains notable from his connection with the first Napoleon, whom he accompanied to St. Helena as household physician. A the age of 18 he entered the British army as assistant-surgeon. In 1S08, being stationed at Messina, be became concerned in a duel as second, under circumstances which must more or less have been held discreditable, as his dismissal from the service by sentence of court martial was the result. Afterward he succeeded ill proeurine.an appointment as surgeon in the navy, nod as such for some years is certified to have 'discharged his duties with zeal and efficiency. As it chanced, he was serving with capt. Maitland in the Bellero phon, when the emperor Napoleon (q.v.) surrendered himself to that officer. During the voyage from Rochefort to Plymouth he was introduced to Napoleon, on whom the impression he produced was favorable, leading to a proposal that he should accompany the emperor into exile physician, an arrangement to which he acceded, stipu lating that he should retain his rank in the navy, and be permitted to return to it at pleasure. By Napoleon, with whom he remained in daily intercourse at St. Helena for about three years. he seems to have been admitted to something more or less like intimacy; and occasionally it might well be, as he says, that the great captive would kill the creep ing hours by loose talk with his attendant over the events of his strange life. Of these
conversations O'Meara naturally enough took notes, which he afterward published. Meantime he became involved in the interest of Napoleon, in the series of miserable and petty squabbles which he waged with the governor, sir Ilndson Lowe (q.v.). The result of these, as regards O'Meara, was that in 1818, after a violent altercation with sir Hud son, he was committed to close arrest, and was authorized by the emperor to resign his post. On his return to England; he addressed a letter to the admiralty, in which, among other things, he accused sir Hudson Lowe of intentions against the life of his captive, and even of having, by dark hints to himself, insinuated a desire ior his services as secret assassin. For this lie was instantly dismissed the service. The avensacfini was plainly monstrous and incredible. In 1822, after Napoleon's death, O'Aleam putd:sbed .7copokon is Exile, by which book alone he is now remembered. As conveying to the world the first authentic details of the prison-life of the great disceased, it made on its appearance an immense sensation, and— though for obvious reasons everywhere to be accepted, if at all, with caution—it is still not utterly without interest. The last years of O'Meara's life were passcd in obscurity in the neighborhood of London, where, in 1836, he died.