Funeral of T.P. OConnor in Victoria Street, London in November 1929 Irish journalist and politician. Thomas Power OConnor was born in Athlone in 1848, the eldest son of a shopkeeper. He was educated at Queens College in Galway, and began his career in journalism on Saunders Newsletter, a Dublin Conservative daily paper. In 1870, he moved to London in search of work. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out that July, OConnor obtained a position as sub-editor on the Daily Telegraph, dealing with war news, largely because of his ability to speak both French and German. When, the following year, hostilities ceased, he turned freelance, but found it difficult to make a living until he found work in the London offices of the New York Herald. At this time, he wrote an unsparing attack on Disraeli, The Life of Lord Beaconsfield, which was serialised anonymously in 1876 and published in book form, with the authors name, in 1879. In 1880, he was elected to the House of Commons as the Member for Galway as a supporter of Parnell, opposing Gladstones Liberal Government, and was engaged by Lord Morley, the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, to write a nightly sketch of the proceedings in Parliament. In 1885, he contested and won both Galway and the Scotland division of Liverpool; as he could sit for only one of these, he chose the latter, becoming the first and, possibly, the only Irish Nationalist to represent an English constituency in the House of Commons. In 1885, when Gladstone announced his proposals for Irish Home Rule, OConnor changed his allegiance from Conservative to Liberal. He continued to hold the seat until his death, becoming the Father of the House, a title which is given to the Member with the longest unbroken period of service. His career in journalism continued; and, in 1887, he founded The Star, which has no connection with the present-day tabloid of the same name, and for which Bernard Shaw wrote a column on music under the pseudonym Corno di Bassetto. After three years, however, OConnor quarrelled with the proprietor, and was bought out for £15,000 on condition that he did not start another evening paper for three years. In 1891, OConnor founded the Sunday Sun, which did, indeed, become an evening paper in 1893, but it was not a success. His last venture into journalism was a magazine, T.P.s Weekly (1902). In 1917, OConnor became the first President of the British Board of Film Censors; and, in 1924, he was made a Member of the Privy Council by the first Labour Government. He married Elizabeth Paschal (1850-1931) the daughter of a Supreme Court Judge from Austin in Texas, in 1885; they had no children.
Posted on: Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:05:31 +0000
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