Thomas Power O'Connor
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Thomas Power O'Connor (or Tay Pay) (5 October 1848 - 18 November 1929) was a journalist and an Irish nationalist and political figure.
Biography
O'Connor was born in Athlone, County Westmeath, on 5 October 1848. He was the eldest son of Thomas O’Connor, an Athlone shopkeeper, and his wife Teresa Power, the daughter of a non-commissioned officer in the Connaught Rangers. He was educated at the College of the Immaculate Conception in Athlone, and Queen's College Galway, where he won scholarships in history and modern languages and built up a reputation as an orator, serving as auditor of the college's Literary and Debating Society. He entered journalism as a junior reporter on Saunders’ Newsletter, a Dublin journal, in 1867. In 1870, he moved to London, and was appointed a sub-editor on the Daily Telegraph, principally on account of the utility of his mastery of French and German in reportage of the Franco-German war. He later became London Correspondent for the New York Herald.
O'Connor was elected Member of Parliament for Galway in 1880, as a representative of Parnell's Nationalist Party. At the next general election in 1885, he was returned both for Galway and for the Scotland Ward of Liverpool; he chose to sit for Liverpool, and represented that constituency in the House of Commons from 1885 until 1929. For much of his time in parliament, he wrote a nightly sketch of proceedings there for the Pall Mall Gazette.
In 1885, he married Elizabeth Paschal, a daughter of a Judge of the Supreme Court of Texas.
O'Connnor founded and was the first editor of seveal newspapers and journals: the Star (1887), the Weekly Sun (1891), the Sun (1893), M.A.P. and T.P.’s Weekly (1902). He was appointed the first President of the Board of Film Censors in 1917, and was appointed to the Privy Council by the first Labour government in 1924. He became "Father of the House of Commons", with unbroken service of 49 years 215 days. O'Connor authored a range of books, including Lord Beaconsfield – A Biography (1879); The Parnell Movement (1886); Gladstone’s House of Commons; Napoleon; The Phantom Millions; and Memoirs of an Old Parliamentarian (1929). He died in London on 18 November 1929.
| Preceded by: Thomas Burt | Father of the House 1918–1929 | Succeeded by: David Lloyd George |