Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/408

 O'Connor Jones [q. v.] in the summer of 1846, and on 24 Oct. 1846 formally inaugurated the ‘Chartist Co-operative Land Company,’ afterwards altered to the ‘National Land Company.’ His scheme was to buy agricultural estates, divide them into small holdings, and let the holdings to the subscribers by ballot. The company was never registered, but 112,000l. was received in subscriptions, and five estates were bought in 1846 and 1847. The most extravagant hopes of an idyllic country life were held out to the factory hands and others who subscribed. In 1847 a magazine called ‘The Labourer’ was started by O'Connor and Jones with the same object, of which vol. ii. contains as frontispiece a portrait of O'Connor. Jones afterwards declared that from the moment that O'Connor undertook the land scheme, he could talk of nothing else (Times, 13 April 1853). At the general election of 1847 O'Connor was elected for Nottingham by 1257 votes against 893 given to Sir John Cam Hobhouse. On 7 Dec. 1847 he moved for a committee on the union with Ireland, and was defeated by 255 to 23.

From 1842 to 1847 the chartist movement had been one of comparatively small importance; but the news of the Paris revolution of February 1848 produced something like the excitement of 1839 in England, and O'Connor again became a prominent figure. He presided at the great Kennington Common meeting on 10 April 1848, and strongly urged the people not to attempt the proposed procession to the House of Commons, which had been forbidden by the authorities. O'Connor's advice was followed in a most peaceable fashion, and the disturbances which the government regarded as a possible outcome of the meeting were averted. The same evening O'Connor presented the chartist petition, declaring that it contained 5,706,000 signatures. The signatures were counted by a staff of clerks, and the total was 1,975,496. But many of them were obviously fictitious. After the fiasco of 10 April 1848 the chartist movement soon disappeared.

A committee of the House of Commons examined the affairs of the National Land Company on 6 June 1848. It was found that the scheme was practically bankrupt, and that no proper accounts had been kept, though O'Connor had apparently lost rather than gained by it. In 1850 O'Connor sent bailiffs with fifty-two writs to the estate at Snigg's End, Gloucestershire. The colonists, however, declared themselves ‘prepared to manure the land with blood before it was taken from them,’ and no levy was made (Times, 5 Sept. 1850).

It was already becoming obvious, in 1848, that O'Connor's mind was giving way, and after the events of 10 April his history is that of gradually increasing lunacy. His intemperance during these years was probably only a symptom of his disease (, Recollections, p. 183). In the spring of 1852 he paid a sudden visit to the United States, and on his return grossly insulted Beckett Denison, member for the West Riding. Eastern division, in the House of Commons (9 June 1852). He was committed to the custody of the sergeant-at-arms. Next day he was examined by two medical men, and pronounced insane. He was placed in Dr. Tuke's asylum at Chiswick, and remained there till 1854, when, against the wishes of the physicians and of his nephew, he was removed to his sister's house, No. 18 Notting Hill. Here, on 30 Aug. 1855, he died. He was publicly buried at Kensal Green on 10 Sept. 1855, and fifty thousand persons are said to have been present at his funeral.

There can be little doubt that O'Connor's mind was more or less affected from the beginning, and that he inherited tendencies to insanity. He was insanely jealous and egotistical, and no one succeeded in working with him for long. In all his multitudinous speeches and writings it is impossible to detect a single consistent political idea. The absolute failure of chartism may indeed be traced very largely to his position in the movement. 

O'CONNOR, JAMES ARTHUR (1791–1841), painter, was born in Dublin in 1791. His father was an engraver, who brought him up to his own profession. O'Connor's mind, however, was too original and creative to be content with mere reproduction, and he soon forsook engraving for landscape painting. By 1812 he was able to instruct in that art his pupil, Francis Danby [q. v.], whose first picture was exhibited in that year. He was also the intimate friend of George Petrie [q. v.], by whose instructions he probably profited. In 1813 the three friends made the expedition to London which has been described under. O'Connor, unlike Danby, returned to Ireland, but in 1822 quitted Dublin for London, ‘after years of hard labour, disappointment, and neg-