J. E. O'Conor

James Edward O'Conor was an early member of the Theosophical Society and a statistician for the British government in India. He is known to Theosophists for his involvement in the Vega incident.

Personal life

Little is known of the personal life and education of Mr. O'Conor, except that he was born in 1843. Passenger lists indicate that his wife traveled with him between London and Bombay, but no children are listed. He died in 1917 in London.

Career

O'Conor was probably hired to work for the East India Company, but it was dissolved by June, 1874. Thereafter he continued in India, under the British Raj. He rose to the position of Director-General of Statistics, Finance and Commerce Department of the Secretariat of the East India Company.

Theosophical Society connections

Vega incident

O'Conor was traveling to England in March, 1882 aboard the ship Vega. William Eglinton, the prominent medium, was also aboard, and each of them wrote a letter to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

See account in D, pp. 188-9) and LBS, Letters X and XI, pp. 13-21. He was a friend of Mrs. Minnie Scott.

Professional writings

O'Conor issued many reports and statistical studies in the course of his work. A few have survived as booklets.

• Lac: Production, Manufacture, and Trade. Calcutta, Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1876. (3rd edition. This was about shellac. 83 pages.

• Vanilla: Its Cultivation in India. Calcutta : Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1881 (revised edition). 25 pages with illustrations.

• The Price of Silver in London and the Exchange Value of the Rupee in India from 1st January 1892 to 30th June 1896. [Simla, India], 1896. 14 pages. "Reissue of a diagram and comments explanatory of it (with slight changes) of the author's review of the trade of India, published in 1896, together with the tables from which the diagram was constructed."