Michael O’Connor

If death be a lingering shadow,

let me face it

unshackled,

in the light,

as a free man.

            Christopher Chiaro

Twenty-one… Twenty-three… two significant numbers in the story of Michael O’Connor, in the story of his life and of his death and of the man who let him face it head on, out of the darkness, unshackled, into the light. In late August, 1845, Michael O’Connor, an aging seaman, so adept at finding balance among the unsure foundations of turbulent seas, suddenly finds himself unmoored and disoriented on what is supposed to be solid ground, the dry lands of his native New York.

            Twenty-one dollars is not much money, even in 1845. I say it is not much money when in relation to a life, for no amount of money is a sufficient price for a life. Michael O’Connor found himself in the Eldridge Street debtor’s prison in August 1845 for failing to pay twenty-one dollars to a man named Francis Shultz. Shultz brought a lawsuit against O’Connor and won. O’Connor would sit for three months behind bars unable to pay and unable to earn. While behind bars, O’Connor became very sick and would have spent his last days of an otherwise proprietary life among the prison’s cold shadows, indistinguishable from the cold hands of an approaching death.

            Upon the urging of the Honorable Judge Edmonds, our friend Isaac T. Hopper went into the prison to see Michael. What influenced Judge Edmonds to make such a request? We are unsure, but according to Hopper’s Diary, "I called to see him and found him very sick." When Hopper saw O’Connor in this state, he took it upon himself to pay a visit to Francis Shultz. During this meeting, Shultz “was prevailed upon to relinquish his claim.” On December 2, 1845, Michael O’Connor was released from the literal bonds of poverty and taken to the City Hospital. The state of his health at this point is evident in the Diary, “Being unable to walk I took him in a carriage.”

            Twenty-one… twenty-three… significant numbers in the story of a man’s life and of his death. On December 2, 1845, with the charity and hard work of Isaac Hopper and Judge Edmonds, Michael O’Connor was taken out of the shadows to catch the fading glimpses of sunlight, a light that walks single file through the bare branches of tired trees standing stubborn through a New York winter. It is a light that is on its way home, content in its fading warmth, ready to embrace the coming night. On December 25, 1845, Christmas Day, Michael O’Connor became the recipient of the greatest gift, given to him by a great man, a chance to face his mortality on familiar ground. Twenty-three days after his release, Michael O’Connor faced his death in the light of a New York Christmas, on equal ground with death itself, as a free man, unshackled, twenty-three days out of darkness, twenty-three days spent among the living, twenty-three days of comfortable transition to the hereafter, twenty-three days that would have otherwise been spent in utter loneliness and dark isolation. For on December 25, 1845, twenty-three days out of prison, Michael O’Connor passed away a free man.