An X MP

That Irishman was interviewed as himself and as the anonymous ‘X’ in R Barry O’Brien’s biography of Charles Stuart Parnell. His account of the formation of the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain, HRCGB, is revealing and vivid. He is generous in his assessment of Parnell:  a good listener, a quick learner, a sound instinct, with a hatred of England. He speaks of the influence of the Clan and of John Devoy.

24 October 1913, O’Connor Power writes to William O’Brien, describing himself as an (X) MP.

He was addressed as professor when teaching at St Jarlath’s college.  Conan Doyle’s Moriarty is an ex-professor.

In the 1874 and 1880 elections in Mayo, Power described how difficult it was to ensure that the correct box  on the voting paper was ticked with an X.

Avis

BARTS ARCHIVES

Entry for Avis Hooke in the Register of Probationary Nurses for St Barholomew’s Hospital

Date entered: May 1 1877

Name: Avis Hooke

Address: 2 West Pier, London, Docks, E

Remarks:  1878 April 30 -certificate awarded.  1878 April 30 Left

Entry for Hubert Weiss in the student signature book of St Bartholemew’s Hospital Medical College.

Date: October 1 1872

Name: Hubert Foveaux Weiss

Residence in London: 8 George Street, Hanover Square.

Avis and Hubert both worked in the West London Hospital. In the 1881 UK census Avis is living with her parents and gives her profession as trained nurse.

Daily Chronicle

The Daily Chronicle had the widest circulation of any daily newspaper in London.

According to the covecollective.com entry:  The Daily Chronicle Becomes a National Daily:

… the newspaper reported broad coverage, art criticism, literature, theatre and the perspectives of plain spoken people, such as John O’Connor Power  … a radical Liberal national newspaper, the views  expressed often aligned with  those of the Labour party.

O’Connor Power was its influential leader writer. He  was a strong proponent of Home Rule and prison reform.

See That Irishman, pps. 177-182

John O’Connor Power from Clashaganny

An excellent article in the Roscommon Historical and Archaeological Society Journal, volume 14, pps 166-167.

‘John O’Connor Power from Clashaganny’ by Patsy Flanagan.

That Irishman was born in the small townland of Clashaganny, close to Tulsk, County Roscommon. In 2011 I left a copy of That Irishman in Devine’s pub.

See That Irishman, Afterword, p. 235. Moriarty Unmasked, pps 24, 25.

Michael MacDonagh

Author and Journalist Michael MacDonagh now has his site on Wikipedia.  Thank you, Coningsby.

MacDonagh prefaces his The Home Rule Movement, 1920, with a salute to John O’Connor Power:

My friend, John O’Connor Power, once famous as The Member for Mayo, gave me shortly before his death in February, 1919, the papers he had collected in the course of his unique political career – commencing as an Irish Fenian and ending as a British Liberal. ‘Make what use you like of them,’ he says in his letter to me, ‘subject to one condition – they must not be made a basis of an attack on any Irishman.’

In the National Library of Ireland, there is a letter, dated 17 August, 1920, from Richard E Morrin of Hollymount, County Mayo,  congratulating MacDonagh on The Home Rule Movement.   Morrin suggests that he write a biography of John O’Connor Power.

[It was Labour] which supplied the driving force of the country, socially and politically, which had given the backbone, the muscle and the grit to every Nationalist movement, revolutionary and constitutional.

The Home Rule Movement, 1920.

Proportional Representation

That Irishman rejected Prime Minister Gladstone’s view that proportional representation was impractible and unintelligible.

It may be a pons asinorum according to the Prime Minister  but it is no more a pons asinorum than the vote by ballot was in 1874. I remember very well the difficulty which we had then in making the voter understand the secrecy of the ballot, and how to mark his voting paper, without rendering it null and void in the operation. My recollections of the pons asinorum at school is that of a passage on a scientific frontier, which having once been crossed, the way was smooth and clear ever afterwards … whatever the complications there may be in this system they are not felt by the voter ….

‘The New Reform’, J O’Connor Power, Nineteenth Century, Jan, 1885, 15-24.

Footstepping Gladstone

In 1877, William Gladstone, now in Opposition, paid a private visit to Ireland. He arrived 17th October and left 12th November. He stayed at Killruddery House, outside Bray, County Wicklow. His host, a former Liberal MP, was William Brabazon, 11th Earl of Meath.

Gladstone took time to visit the Cripples Home in Bray.

Three months earlier, 18th July, O’Connor Power had written to Gladstone, asking him to support a motion for the release of Fenian political prisoners. Power moved the motion in the House of Commons 20th July.*

A week before Christmas, 19th December, Michael Davitt was released.  Fellow prisoners were given their freedom three weeks later. They travelled to Dublin and, on 14th January, called on O’Connor Power at his lodgings and thanked him for his ‘unceasing exertions on behalf of prisoners’.

*See That Irishman, pps. 61, 62.

The Old Tuam Society Journal, no. 16, 2019.

Journal of the Old Tuam Society, 16, 2019.  There is an article on That Irishman: ‘O’Connor Power: Rebel and Statesman’,  pps. 50-57.

… a mini-biography of St. Jarlath’s College graduate, MP and Fenian ‘Pimpernel’ John O’Connor Power.

Figure 4 is an image of John O’Connor, MP, KC.  O’Connor Power is possibly the unnamed figure at the centre of the web in Figure 3.

See Posts The Johnson Club, December 13, 1892 and Confusion Fusion.