Kenneth O'Connor

Sir Kenneth Kennedy O'Connor KBE MC QC (21 December 1896 – 13 January 1985) was a soldier, lawyer and judge who served in the British Colonial Service.

Early life O'Connor was born in Ranchi, then in the Chota Nagpur Division of the Bengal Presidency of British India. He was the second child of the Revd. William O'Connor and his wife Emma Kennedy. He was educated at the Abbey School, Beckenham, and Saint Columba's College, Dublin, a Church of Ireland boarding school, where he was a chorister and cricketer. From there, he won a choral scholarship to Worcester College, Oxford, but did not take it up, due to his military service during the First World War.

O'Connor had an older sister, Dorothy Georgina Noel O'Connor, who in 1921 was a teacher of modern languages at Wycombe Abbey in Buckinghamshire. and a graduate of the Royal University of Ireland, was ordained in 1891 into the Church of Ireland in Armagh. He was a curate at Carlingford, County Louth, then an SPG missionary at Ranchi, Chota Nagpur, from 1892 to 1900, returning home to take up the post of organising secretary of the SPG in Ireland from 1901 to 1913. He then returned to Ranchi until 1915, later holding a benefice in the Diocese of Oxford before in 1929 retiring, having lost heart due to the poor attendance at his parish church. He went to live at Princes Risborough and died in December 1951, aged 89. He was reported to be "a courtly, scholarly clergyman of obvious sincerity". On 2 July 1916 he was attached to the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs, and on 29 June 1917 was promoted to Lieutenant in the 14th King George's Own Ferozepore Sikhs. In 1919, following an action in 1918 during the British campaign in Mesopotamia against the Ottomans, O'Connor was awarded the Military Cross Quote|"...for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty at Mushaw on the 26th October 1918. Whilst boldly leading his men across a dry river bed swept by heavy fire he was knocked down by a partially spent bullet and struck by another, which wounded him in the leg. He at once picked himself up and continued to advance to the far side of the river bed, where loss of blood and exhaustion forced him to lie down. He continued to encourage his men and inspired them by his fine example." and was later the District Commissioner in Charsadda.

Legal career In 1922, O'Connor took the life-changing decision to return to England to train as a barrister. He was admitted to Gray's Inn and was called to the London Bar in 1924.

Colonial Legal Service O'Connor joined the Colonial Legal Service and in 1943 was appointed as Attorney General of Nyasaland, a British protectorate in Africa. travelling by sea from Singapore via London, with his wife and one young son. In Kenya in 1950, he was appointed a King's Counsel.

In 1954, he was recalled to Kenya as Chief Justice, serving until 1957. During his time as Chief Justice of Kenya, the Mau Mau Uprising was at its peak. O'Connor was the senior presiding judge in many Mau Mau trials, the most notable being that of Dedan Kimathi, whom O'Connor sentenced to death in 1957. O'Connor finished his legal career as President of the Court of Appeal for Eastern Africa from 1957 to 1962, with jurisdiction over Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika.

Personal life In Singapore, O'Connor met Margaret Helen Wise, the eldest daughter of Percy Furlong Wise MBE. They were married at Eton, Buckinghamshire, in 1928 and had two sons,

With the approaching independence of the British possessions in East Africa, in 1962 O'Connor and his wife retired to Buckland Court, at Buckland, Surrey, England, the home of a friend from Kenya, Sir Arthur Hope-Jones.

In April 1965, the O'Connors' son Hugh was married in Poole, Dorset.

O'Connor's sister Dorothy died unmarried in Surrey in 1969. He died in Westfield Close, Wimborne, Dorset, on 13 January 1985, aged 88 and his widow in Dorset in February 1989, aged 84.

Selected publications Guide to the Law of Property Act 1925 ( 1926) Editor, Straits Settlements Law Reports