1864 in Ireland

Events

• 1 January – civil registry of births, deaths and marriages replaces parish church registers.
• 30 January – opening of the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.
• May – Theobald Jones presents his Report on the progress made in collecting the Irish lichens to the Natural History Society of Dublin.
• December – Jane Wilde is found to have libelled Mary Travers; Travers is awarded only a nominal farthing in damages but Lady and the newly-knighted Sir William Wilde have to pay substantial costs.
• Foundation of the Munster Bank, later rescued as the Munster & Leinster Bank, a constituent of Allied Irish Banks.

Arts and literature

• Sheridan Le Fanu publishes the Gothic locked room mystery-thriller Uncle Silas.

  Births

• 31 January – Matilda Cullen Knowles, lichenologist.
• 13 February – Stephen Gwynn, journalist, writer, poet and Nationalist politician.
• 22 February – Michael Donohoe, Democrat U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania.
• 4 March – Daniel Mannix, Catholic clergyman, Archbishop of Melbourne for 46 years.
• 5 May – Henry Wilson, British Field Marshal and Conservative Party politician.
• 11 May – Ethel Lilian Voynich, née Boole, novelist and composer.
• 16 July – Joseph O'Mara, opera singer.
• 1 September – Roger Casement, British diplomat, nationalist, poet and Irish revolutionary, executed at Pentonville Prison.
• 19 October – Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl of Longford, peer and soldier.
• 11 November – John Meredith, Australian Army Brigadier General.
• 22 November – Sir William Moore, 1st Baronet, Unionist MP and Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland 1925–1937.
• 9 December – Willoughby Hamilton, tennis player, Wimbledon Champion in 1890.
• 21 December – James Whiteside McCay, Lieutenant General in the Australian Army, member of the Victorian and Australian Parliaments.
• ;Full date unknown
• :*William Gerard Barry, painter.
• :*Denis Grimes, Limerick hurler.
• :*Michael McCarthy, nationalist anticlerical lawyer.
• :*Moira O'Neill, poet.
• :*J. Laurie Wallace, painter.

  Deaths

• 10 January – Nicholas Callan, priest and scientist.
• 20 May – John George Bowes, businessman and political figure in Canada East.
• 18 June – William Smith O'Brien, nationalist.
• 4 July – Thomas Colley Grattan, writer.
• 23 July – Thomas Laughnan, soldier, recipient of the Victoria Cross for gallantry in 1857 at Lucknow, India.
• 27 July – Joseph Patrick Haverty, painter.
• 21 November – Charles McNally, Bishop of Clogher 1844–1864.
• 30 November – Patrick Cleburne, major general in Confederate States Army in the American Civil War, killed at the Battle of Franklin.
• 8 December – George Boole, mathematician.
• 23 December – James Bronterre O'Brien, Chartist leader, reformer and journalist.
• William Guy Wall, painter.