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,"O'Connor, Sir Kenneth Kennedy (21 Dec. 1896–13 Jan. 1985), QC (Kenya) 1950, KBE 1961; Kt 1952; MC 1918", Who's Who and Who Was Who, online edition by Oxford University Press, 1 December 2007, accessed 15 March 2026 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. By that year, their father was a widower.
O'Connor's father, born in Tuam1921 United Kingdom census, The Rectory, Hedgerley, Buckinghamshire, Ancestry.com, accessed 16 March 2026 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.James Leslie, Armagh clergy and parishes (Dundalk: William Tempest, 1911), p. 162 He then returned to Ranchi until 1915, later holding a benefice in the Diocese of Oxford as Rector of Hedgerley, Buckinghamshire,The London Gazette, Issue 33442, 27 November 1928, p. 7768 before in 1929 retiring, having lost heart due to the poor attendance at his parish church."RECTOR WHO LOST HEART", The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser (1884-1942), 13 February 1929, p. 7 He went to live at Princes Risborough and died in December 1951,"Retired Minister Dies", Portadown Times, 18 January 1952"O'CONNOR reverend William of Wychelm Summersleys-road Princes Risborough Buckinghamshire clerk died 13 December 1951 at Tindal General Hospital Aylesbury Administration (with Will) Oxford 30 May to Lloyds Bank Limited Effects £2662 3s 10d" in Wills and Administrations England & Wales 1951 (London: High Court of Justice, 1952), p. 131 aged 89. He was reported to be "a courtly, scholarly clergyman of obvious sincerity".
India In 1915, O'Connor joined the Cadet College, Quetta, as an Indian Army officer cadet, and from there on 29 June 1916 was commissioned onto the Unattached List.The London Gazette, Issue 29735, 5 September 1916, p. 8714 On 2 July 1916 he was attached to the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs,The London Gazette, Issue 29853, 8 December 1916, p. 11980 and on 29 June 1917 was promoted to Lieutenant in the 14th King George's Own Ferozepore Sikhs.The London Gazette, Issue 30453, 1 January 1918, p. 149 In 1919, following an action in 1918 during the British campaign in Mesopotamia against the Ottomans, O'Connor was awarded the Military CrossThe London Gazette, Supplement 31420, 24 June 1919 [ p. 8062
O'Connor later wrote a short account of the Battle of Sharqat. After the war, he resigned his commission in the Indian Army, retiring with the rank of Captain. In 1919, he joined the Political Department of the Government of Mesopotamia, then in 1920 the Foreign and Political Department of the Government of India, serving until 1922. In December 1920, he was posted as the Assistant Commissioner in Hazara, a district of the North-West Frontier Province adjoining the Khyber Pass, 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. He practiced at the London bar for a few years, then went out to Singapore, where he worked as an advocate until 1941, becoming a partner in the firm of Drew & Napier. He was Chairman of the Straits Settlements Association in the late 1930s and played a key role in planning the civilian evacuation of the island in the event of a Japanese invasion. Having already sent his wife and children to Australia for their safety, before the arrival of the Japanese with three other men he escaped from Singapore in a small open sailing boat, with only a school atlas for navigation. Despite these limitations, the men successfully sailed to Sumatra. O'Connor later wrote a short account of this adventure, entitled Four Men in a Boat. By August 1942 he had joined his family in Adelaide.
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. After the war ended in 1945, he returned to Singapore to reconstruct the legal practice of Drew & Napier. In 1946, he was appointed as Attorney General of the Malayan Union, and in 1948 as Attorney General of Kenya, travelling by sea from Singapore via London, with his wife and one young son."Kenneth K. O'Connor, Margaret O'Connor, and Hugh W. D. O'Connor", in UK and Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878–1960: Port of Departure Singapore, Arrival Date 22 May 1948, Port of Arrival Southampton, England, Ship Name Willem Ruys, Shipping Line Royal Rotterdam Lloyd Line In Kenya in 1950, he was appointed a King's Counsel. In 1951, O'Connor took up the post of Chief Justice of Jamaica, in which position he served until 1954. He was knighted in 1952.
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, Anthony, born in 1933, and Hugh, born in 1940. His father-in-law was the manager of the Kepayang Estate, a rubber plantation in Malaya, and retired to Devon, England, in 1930, dying there in November 1940."Percy Furlong Wise M.B.E.", The Malaya Tribune, 20 November 1940, p. 2
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.Connie Kirk, Critical Companion to Flannery O'Connor (Infobase Publishing, 2008, ), p. 13
In April 1965, the O'Connors' son Hugh was married in Poole, Dorset."Mr Hugh William Dacres O'Connor and Miss Virginia Mary Roberts", in "Forthcoming Marriages", The Times, 7 April 1965
O'Connor's sister Dorothy died unmarried in Surrey in 1969. He died in Westfield Close, Wimborne, Dorset, on 13 January 1985, aged 88 "O'CONNOR, Sir Kenneth Kennedy", in "Deaths", The Times, 15 January 1985, p. 17 and his widow in Dorset in February 1989, aged 84."Lady Margaret Helen O'Connor of 17 The Maltings Long St Sherborne Dorset died 22 February 1989 Probate Bristol 20 July £209516", Wills and Administrations England & Wales 1989 (London: High Court of Justice, 1990), p. 5975"Margaret Helen O'Connor, Death Age 84, Birth Date 1 Feb 1905, Registration Date Mar 1989, Registration District North Dorset, Volume 23, Page 514" in England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007,
Selected publications Guide to the Law of Property Act 1925 ( 1926) Editor, Straits Settlements Law Reports References