James Orr's life ended on 24 April 1816. It was several years since he had published in any well-known newspaper, and twelve since the publication of his Poems on Various Subjects. During that final, ostensibly silent period his personal reputation had suffered a decline. Orr himself had complained to Thomson as early as 1807 that the company he was oft en forced to keep lacked respectability, while McDowell, in his posthumous Sketch blamed what he euphemistically referred to as ‘the errors of his later years’ on Orr's bachelor state, and on bad companions who ‘for pleasure's sake, become covetous of a superior man's company, while they steal from him his reason and his resolution’. Since medical records are not available, the exact cause of Orr's death will probably never be determined, but the possibility that it was in some way alcohol-related certainly exists. McDowell was careful to stress, however, that Orr's posthumous works were at the poet's direction sold so that the profits might be ‘distributed among the poor of the parish of Broad-Island’ and that ‘he retained to the last a manly and independent spirit’.

The publication of the Posthumous Works and the successful appeal for funds to cover the cost of Orr's monument speak of the esteem in which he was held as ‘Poet, Patriot and Philanthropist’.