... company became bankrupt and the settlers were evicted. More events like this re-occurred, and at Kennington Common, O'Connor showed signs of desperation. He told the crowds he had collect a petition which had 5,706,000 signatures but when the MPs later examined the petition, they discovered he had lied and it only contained 1,975,496 signatures as the others were forgeries. O'Connor continued to "destroy the credibility of the Chartist movement" (as his critics would say) and he became irrational and assaulted several MPs. After this happened he was committed to a mental asylum and Chartism never recovered. Events such as the Plug Riots all added to the growing evidence against O'Connor as to why he was failing to lead the movement successfully. Fergus O'Connor denounced the strikes in his newspaper, the Northern Star, and even suggested that they had been organised by the middle class organisation, the Anti-Corn League. O'Connor and other ...

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