Feargus O’Connor, 1794 – 1855
Feargus O’Connor came to personify Chartism. More than anyone else, he turned the radical cause into a great national movement. But he was a deeply flawed popular hero. This is his life story.
Feargus O’Connor was a younger son of a very singular Irish family. Born at Connorville House in County Cork on 18 July 1794 (some sources say 1796), O’Connor would later follow his eccentric father in claiming descent from the Kings of Ireland, while allying himself firmly with radical causes, first in Ireland and later more memorably in leading the Chartist movement.
He grew up mostly at Dangan Castle, acquired by his father in the early 1800s and once the childhood home of his later adversary the Duke of Wellington. But his early years were steeped in politics and far from uneventful. In 1817, he and his brother Frank would flee the family home on stolen horses following their father’s arrest for robbery, taking refuge with the London radical MP Francis Burdett. But they would soon return, with O’Connor taking up a place to study law at Trinity College Dublin.
Though his father would disinherit him in 1820 for swearing the oath of allegiance needed to become a member of the bar, in that same year he inherited his uncle Robert Connor’s estates. The money he thus acquired enabled him to live the life of a gentleman radical, financially and politically independent, able to pursue his interests without the need to earn a living.
Feargus O’Connor’s family
Feargus O’Connor’s family is remarkable. They claimed to be descended from 12th-century Irish king Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair, though evidence for this is, to be generous, sparse. More credibly, they had arrived in County Cork in the 1650s during Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland, and become wealthy first through trade and subsequently as landowners. Protestant in religion, they included in their number both ardent nationalists and committed pro-British loyalists.
Feargus O’Connor’s uncle, Arthur O’Connor, was a prominent figure in the United Irishmen. A member of the Irish Parliament (1790-95), he was arrested in 1798 on the eve of a republican rebellion, and banished to France, where the future Emperor Napoleon appointed him General of an Irish division readying itself for an invasion of Ireland that never happened.
His father Roger O’Connor, known for his fanciful history of the Irish people, the Chronicles of Eri, was also an Irish nationalist, arrested and held along with his brother at Fort George in Inverness for some years before being allowed to return home. In 1817, he would face further difficulties, however, when he was tried for robbing a mail coach. Though acquitted, he never regained his reputation locally and was further damned in Catholic Cork as a religious sceptic.
Roderic O’Connor, the eldest boy among Roger’s five sons and four daughters, would take a different path, emigrating to Van Diemen’s Land as a land agent. Eventually he become one of the island’s largest landowners, and was notorious for his quarrelsome and litigious behaviour, support of the use of convict labour, and racist policies towards native aboriginal Tasmanians.
But it was his brother Francis, or Frank, to whom the young Feargus was closest. In 1819, he enlisted in the Latin American independence cause of Simon Bolivar, and sailed from Dublin with 100 officers and 101 men of the Irish Legion. Better known as Francisco Burdett O’Connor, he would rise to become a general in the Spanish American wars of independence, and Bolivia’s Minister of War.
Into Irish politics
O’Connor entered Irish politics as a young man, becoming by his own account involved in the Whiteboy agrarian protests in north-west Cork, during which he was wounded in a fight with British forces. Although he left for London to avoid arrest, by 1831 he was back in Ireland, agitating for repeal and the Reform Bill. He won his first parliamentary seat, representing Cork as a Repeal candidate in 1832.
Initially a follower of Daniel O’Connell, known as the Liberator for his success in gaining Catholic Emancipation, O’Connor became critical of O’Connell’s timid approach to Repeal and policy of accommodation with the Whig government. The two men soon became bitter enemies – a schism of some significance for Chartism’s later failure to thrive in Ireland.
O’Connor was re-elected in 1835, but disqualified on the grounds that he fell short of the property qualification. At a political loose end, he planned to raise a volunteer brigade to fight in the Spanish wars of succession on behalf of Isabella II, but instead moved to England, where his efforts to contest parliamentary seats in Oldham and then Preston were thwarted.
England, the Northern Star and the Charter
He was, however, developing links and a base within English radical circles. An advocate of ‘the five great principles of radicalism’ (later, with the addition of the payment of MPs to become the six points of the Charter), he became an founder member of the Marylebone Radical Association (later part of the London Democratic Association) and an honorary member of the London Working Men’s Association.
But it was in the North of England that O’Connor found his political constituency, touring and speaking incessantly at public meetings to denounce the New Poor Law and demand universal male suffrage. Only with the vote, he argued, could working men achieve their political aims.
O’Connor was, however, frustrated that his speeches made only an ephemeral and local impact, forgotten once made and poorly reported in the press. His solution was the Northern Star, launched in November 1837 with Joshua Hobson as publisher and William Hill as editor. The paper would prove to be a great success, swiftly building a huge circulation, and providing both a platform for O’Connor and an important means of organising the cause. It was the means by which most of its supporters came to hear of the People’s Charter when it was launched the following year, and the way in which they came to be part of a great national movement. Alongside it, O’Connor was also a prime mover in founding the Great Northern Union, which brought together radical organisations across industrial West Yorkshire and South Lancashire, providing a Northern working-class counterweight to the radical artisans of the London Working Men’s Association and middle-class radicals of the Birmingham Political Union. As Chartism took flight in the final months of 1838 and great monster meetings of 100,000 or more elected their delegates to the forthcoming Convention, Feargus O’Connor was the one speaker all wanted to hear. He was by all accounts a great orator, his stentorian voice the perfect instrument for outdoor meetings.
The First Convention and its aftermath
By the time of the First Chartist Convention in 1839, O’Connor had clearly emerged as a leading figure in the movement. Precariously atop a radical faction within the Convention, but always cautious about stepping over into illegality, he was among those arguing for the convention to agree on the ulterior measures to be taken once MPs rejected the Chartist petition, but drew the line at supporting a general strike which he and others thought could not command popular support. As the Birmingham bankers and manufacturers withdrew from the convention and talk began about a possible armed rising, however, O’Connor was nowhere to be found, having discovered a need to return to Ireland. There would later be accusations that he knew all about the plans which ended tragically in the Newport Rising, and that he had tried to call off a wider rising; but O’Connor denied all knowledge.
Whatever else he may have been, however, O’Connor was no physical coward. Robert Gammage, the first historian of Chartism and no fan of O’Connor, noted that during his early involvement with Irish politics, ‘No member of the prize ring could fight his way with more desperate energy through a crowd than could this electioneering pugilist’. And he was certainly built for the fight. As Gammage reported: ‘Upwards of six feet in height, stout and athletic, and in spite of his opinions invested with a sort of aristocratic bearing, the sight of his person was calculated to inspire the masses with a solemn awe.’ There is certainly no lack of anecdotes featuring O’Connor happily wading into the brawl when clashes with O’Connell’s supporter, or later those of the Anti Corn Law League, turned violent.
In 1840, however, O’Connor found himself in court, not for his involvement in the convention and its aftermath (which had earned William Lovett and others lengthy goal terms) or indeed for brawling, but for the publication of a seditious libel published in the Northern Star. Sentenced on 11 May to eighteen months in prison, he would serve his term at York Castle in relative comfort; friends in Parliament, notably Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, kept his case in the public eye, and O’Connor was able to continue writing for the Northern Star from his prison cell. Not surprisingly, the paper made the most of its martyred proprietor, and he emerged to a hero’s welcome.
Popularised by Thomas Cooper and the Leicester Chartists, but written by an unknown Welsh female Chartist, a song titled The Lion of Freedom captured the mood of adulation.
The lion of freedom comes from his den,
We’ll rally around him again and again,
We’ll crown him with laurels our champion to be,
O’Connor the patriot of sweet liberty.
Feargus unbound
The atmosphere among the collective leadership of the movement, however, was far from sweet. William Lovett had had plenty of time in prison to reflect on the failure of the petition and convention, and published a short pamphlet on his release titled Chartism: A New Organisation for the People. O’Connor and the Northern Star denounced it as a plot for subverting the Chartist movement. As Lovett later recalled: ‘All who appended their names to it were condemned as “traitors, humbugs and miscreants,” and myself in particular came in for a double portion of abuse. A number of those who, approving of the plan, had appended their signatures to it, bowed and cringed most basely under this storm of vituperation; and the only reward they got from the Star for withdrawing their names from our address was to obtain the designation of “rats escaping from the trap”.’
It was to become a familiar pattern. In a few short years, O’Connor would fall out irretrievably with Daniel O’Connell, William Lovett, the great Chartist orator Henry Vincent, with James Bronterre O’Brien, with the Northern Star publisher Joshua Hobson, editor William Hill and business manager John Ardill, with Thomas Cooper, Susanna Inge, and eventually with George Julian Harney, once his most loyal deputy.
But after his release, it was O’Connor who provided a figurehead, a new direction for Chartism with the land plan, and a chance of revival. More than ever, Feargus O’Connor now was Chartism.
Many saw the land plan as a diversion from the campaign for the Charter. By selling shares at small scale to tens of thousands of Chartists, it succeeded in buying sufficient land to build model settlements on which a few hundred industrial workers were settled, providing them with the chance of self sufficiency and even the right to vote. But it was soon mired in legal difficulties – partly because company law at the time was inadequate to the task of dealing with the land company, and partly because O’Connor kept many details of this incredibly complex and convoluted scheme in his head, even after it grew to encompass more than 1,000 acres of land and launched a bank with O’Connor as sole proprietor to manage its finances.
1848: the final wave
Chartism’s last great hurrah began in 1847, when Feargus O’Connor was unexpectedly elected MP for Nottingham. The results of the general election were disappointing for the Chartist body, with the small sums spent by the National Central Registration and Elections Committee having little impact. But O’Connor’s success was celebrated at the new land settlements and more widely. At Barnsley, Chartists sent out the town’s bellman to announce, ‘Glorious news for the million’, there was singing and cheering, and ‘the windows of Mr Peter Hoey, and Thomas Acklam, and others, were illuminated with a candle in every pane, and the Chartist flag once more proudly waved in the evening breeze’.
With Robert Peel ejected from office and the Whig Lord John Russell now installed as prime minister, O’Connor and the National Charter Association decided on a third great petition for the Charter to test the mood of MPs. With the added excitement of revolution in France and, since the death of O’Connell, hopes of a closer alliance with the radical Irish Confederates in England, the early months of 1848 promised a new hope for Chartism.
None of which, however, survived the events of 10 April 1848 and their fall-out. That day, a large crowd assembled on Kennington Common to hear O’Connor and others speak before taking the petition to Parliament. The authorities, however, were determined that this should not happen. With overwhelming force at their disposal, they closed the bridges across the Thames, stranding the Chartist crowd south of the river, and O’Connor was told that no march on Parliament would be permitted.
O’Connor probably had little choice but to comply, and after speeches were made he told the crowd to disperse. Some attempted to shout him down, among them the London Chartist leader William Cuffay. But memories of the Peterloo massacre in 1819 still remained, and the unarmed and unorganised Chartist crowd was in no position to confront the tens of thousands of special constables deployed that day, still less the cavalry and artillery mobilised as backup.
But if O’Connor was cautious on the day, his bluster over the petition in Parliament fatally undermined both him and the Chartist cause. Though advised against exaggeration, he told MPs that the petition carried more than 6 million signatures; the Commons authorities countered that there were fewer than 2 million. There were recriminations in the convention.
Decline and fall
Chartism did not end at Kennington, but O’Connor played little part in the continued agitation during the summer of 1848 – with its mass meetings in the East End of London, conspiracies and abortive risings.
Both friends and enemies, however, began to notice his behaviour becoming more erratic. Some have blamed the hardship of ten years of frenetic political activity taking its toll on his health; others looked to his heavy drinking; but it is also thought that he was exhibiting the symptoms of syphilis. O’Connor had never married, and as far as the Chartist rank and file were concerned, his life was a blameless round of public speaking interspersed with periods in his cottage at Lowbands and at other land settlements, where he enjoyed the physical hard work. But this was far from the full story. O’Connor also had a succession of affairs, and fathered several children, including Edward O’Connor Terry, the music hall artist and theatre owner. He may also have had a long-running relationship with the popular actress Louisa Nisbett, though this is uncertain.
By 1852, O’Connor’s mental decline could no longer be ignored or written off as eccentricity. After assaulting a fellow MP in the House of Commons, he was taken into custody, declared insane, and committed to an asylum. He would remain there for the remainder of his life, being discharged to the care of his sister a matter of weeks before his death on 30 August 1855. He is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery, where a stone monument marks his grave.
A full account of O’Connor’s tragic decline, sad death and magnificent funeral can be found here.
Judgement of history
For a century or more after his death, Feargus O’Connor was blamed personally for Chartism’s failures, in large part because most accounts of the movement were written by the legion of former allies and followers with whom he had fallen out over the years. William Lovett was moved to dub him ‘The great I AM of radicalism’. And even before O’Connor’s death, Robert Gammage declared: ‘An excessive hankering after popularity, purchased at whatever price, was the great mistake of O’Connor’s life. It led him to lend his influence, whenever the time arrived, to knock down every man who promised to rival him in the people’s estimation.’
Later historians, led by Dorothy Thompson and James Epstein developed a more positive view. Leading the revisionist charge, Thompson argued that O’Connor was ‘a shrewd and capable politician and a not inconsiderable organizer and administrator in addition’. She added: ‘Had the name Chartist not been coined, the radical movement between 1838 and 1848 would most surely have been called O’Connorite Radicalism’.
There is no doubt that O’Connor was entirely sincere in his commitment to the People’s Charter. Without him it is hard to imagine Chartism as more than a footnote in the history books. One of the last of the ‘gentleman radical’ radical leaders, he sacrificed his wealth, his health and his social standing for the cause of the People, and never sought personal financial benefit.
But the danger of such a man lay in his inability to see a distinction between the cause of Feargus O’Connor and the cause of the People.
For, as even Dorothy Thompson conceded, he was also a demagogue who used his popularity to destroy dissent. Seldom happier than when able to play the part of victim and martyr, he responded to criticism with a torrent of spurious facts, figures, counter-accusations and denunciations. And even his closest allies would be cast out should they question him, their reputations called into question in the Northern Star and the Chartist body turned against them. A great man, perhaps; but not a nice one.
Notes and sources
O’Connor, Fergus (Feargus), by Maura Cronin for the Dictionary of Irish Biography, accessed 13 July 2024.
Paul Pickering on Feargus O’Connor: interview with his biographer.
Arthur O’Connor (United Irishman), Wikipedia entry, accessed 13 July 2024.
Roger O’Connor, Wikipedia entry, accessed 13 July 2024.
Roderic O’Connor (land commissioner), Wikipedia entry, accessed 13 July 2024.
Francisco Burdett O’Connor, Wikipedia entry, accessed 13 July 2024.
Feargus O’Connor: A Political Life, by Paul A. Pickering (Merlin Press, 2008).
Life and Struggles of William Lovett, by William Lovett (1876).
The History of the Chartist Movement from its Commencement down to the Present Time, by R.G. Gammage (Holyoake & Co, first edition, 1854).
The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution, by Dorothy Thompson Maurice Temple Smith, 1984; republished Breviary Stuff, 2013.
The Lion of Freedom: Feargus O’Connor and the Chartist Movement, by James Epstein (Croom Helm, 1982; republished Breviary Stuff, 2015). Also available here as a PDF.
Feargus O’Connor and Louisa Nisbett: Evidence of a Relationship, by Catherine Howe (APS Books, 2021).