[3] On the death of his parents he was raised by his aunt, Catherine O'Connor Duffield, in her home over her shop and bakery in Society Street.

[4] At fifteen years of age, he went to live with relatives in Lancashire where he recruited for the Irish Republican Brotherhood and took up a trade in house painting.

[6] He was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) Supreme Council and was believed to be involved in gun-running (a matter on which in later life he threatened legal action).

From January 1871 to 1874 he was a student and teacher at St. Jarlath's College, Tuam, with his fees and expenses paid by a combination of teaching and lectures in Britain and America.

'[12] In August 1875 O'Connor Power was interviewed by his close associate James Joseph O'Kelly for an article in the New York Herald prior to his six-month tour of North America to promote Home Rule.

[14] This led to Gladstone lending his support to Fenian amnesty and he spent three weeks in Killruddery House, County Wicklow, from mid-October to 11 November.

Davitt was released early on 19 December 1877, and Fenians Thomas Chambers, Charles McCarthy and John Patrick O'Brien followed in January 1878.

The ex-prisoners travelled back to London and, 13 February, visited O'Connor Power in 'a private room in Parliament House, where they wrote out their statements giving the details of sufferings endured and the treatment to which they had been subjected ...

[16] In 1876, O'Connor Power and Parnell were sent to the United States by the Home Rule League to congratulate the President Ulysses S. Grant on the American Centennial.

Power presented an address to the House of Representatives and on 4 March 1877 the House passed a unanimous resolution recognising the services rendered by Irishmen to the United States and concluded that the principles of self-government be established as a sacred heritage to all future generations.

O'Connor Power was best known for his work in the radical wing of the Home Rule League and support for tenant farmers' rights, on which he spoke forcefully in Parliament,[18] He was generally considered by the Fenians to have sold out to constitutionalism during his career.

[19] In July 1906 Dr William Carroll wrote to John Devoy that at that time the original Home Rulers lost much of the Fenian support when the IRB expelled them, 'although at a meeting near Manchester, England, at which Davitt, Chambers and other Fenians met the IRB men, a modus vivendi was agreed upon which enabled both to go on with their work without clashing.

'[20] T. D. Sullivan presents an anecdote from 1876 that illustrates the distance that grew between O'Connor Power in his Home Rule days and some of his former radical nationalist colleagues:An immense mass of people assembled in the Free Trade Hall [Manchester] on the 16 September 1876, to hear a lecture from Mr. John O'Connor Power, MP, on a non-political subject.

Dan Crilly told me Parnell's first contribution to the Liverpool Argus (mentioned in my London letter) was not worth much, and though he promised to insert it, he has failed me."

Power was an able and eloquent man, "reeking of the common clay", at which Parnell's aristocratic sensitiveness recoiled.

He expressed disgust, and said he told the Dublin people he would not go over, and that it was only another piece of their cowardice in being afraid to face Butt themselves.

He related that footmen in legions, and horsemen in squadrons, gathered round him to demand reductions of rent.

The police were powerless, and Power foreshadowed that Ireland was on the verge of a movement which would end a dismal chapter.

After Parnell and Davitt addressed the follow-up meeting at Westport, County Mayo on 8 June 1879 they took control of the growing Land War.

I complied, but owing to his strained relations with Parnell and Biggar, he went to Dublin to examine the position, and wrote me: "... Davitt met me on my arrival here – a reception unexpected on my part.

Power's letter was written from the lodgings of Tom Brennan, who three months later, became secretary to the Land League, when Davitt was made its chief organiser, and Parnell (with Dillon) was accredited envoy to the United States.

[29] With the support of Michael Davitt, Thomas Brennan and a local curate, Father John O'Malley,[30] Power was re-elected for the two-member Mayo constituency in the 1880 general election, topping the poll.

He stood as a Liberal in Kennington (a seat with a substantial Irish electorate) in the 1885 general election,[35] losing to a Conservative candidate; and attempted as a Gladstone Liberal to regain in his old heartland, Mayo West in 1892, losing to an Anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation candidate.

[38] In December 1878 the Quaker Lewis Fry won a seat in Bristol North with the help of the Irish vote.

He was backed by the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain and O'Connor Power, who was present at the meeting before the poll at Colston Hall.

[39] At short notice, O'Connor Power stood as a Liberal (Radical) candidate for Bristol South in the 1895 general election, but again failed to re-enter Parliament.

[42] O'Connor Power was a guest of honour at John Dillon's table at the Ninety-Eight Celebration in London on St.Patrick's Day, 1898.

They were married for over two decades and Avis was at his bedside when, after a long illness, he died peacefully at home in Putney, London.

[47] He was buried in Abney Park Garden Cemetery, Stoke Newington, North London, in his wife's family plot, 28 February 1919.

Place the scaurs wore on your groot big bailey bill, he apullajibed, the O'Colonel Power, latterly distanted[clarification needed] from the O'Conner Dan, so promonitory himself that he was obliffious of the headth of the hosth that rose before him ...' James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, 1939 ' [at Irishtown] Mr. O'Connor Power said that public opinion must be organised, and that there's nothing tyrants dread so much as exposure.