CAPTAIN JACK WHITE
First published in 2014 by Merrion Press
an imprint of Irish Academic Press
8 Chapel Lane
Sallins
Co. Kildare
© 2014 Leo Keohane
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
978-1-908928-92-4 (Paper)
978-1-908928-93-1 (Cloth)
978-1-908928-94-8 (PDF)
978-1-908928-71-9 (EPUB)
978-1-908928-72-6 (MOBI)
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Printed in Ireland by SPRINT-print Ltd
CONTENTS
11.Departure and Arrival: The National Volunteers
13.1916 Arrest and Imprisonment
LIST OF PLATES
1.Jack White as a teenager. (Family photo)
2.Lady Amy White, Jack White’s mother. (Family painting)
3.Field Marshal Sir George White, VC. As the ‘Hero of Ladysmith’ he was a substantial celebrity figure in these islands in 1900. (Biography of Sir George by Sir Mortimer Durand)
4.Whitehall, Cooreen, outside Broughshane, Co. Antrim, the White’s rather modest family home. (Family photo)
5.Sir George, then Governor of Gibraltar, and the Kaiser on his visit to Gibraltar c. 1903. (Biography of Sir George by Sir Mortimer Durand)
6.Sir George picnicking in Gibraltar with his wife and daughters, c. 1904. (Family photo)
7.Jack White as a subaltern in the Gordon Highlanders. (Family photo)
8.Jack White c. 1930. (from Jonathan Cape’s original autobiography)
9.Jack White on Irish Citizen Army manoeuvres with Francis Sheehy Skeffington. (1913)
10.Women stick training under the auspices of the Irish Citizen Army. On the right is Jack White with Constance Markievicz and possibly his wife Dollie. All surrounded by a group of admirers. (Family photo)
11.Jack White supervising the women stick training with again a substantial number of observers and advisers. (Family photo)
12.Jack White supervising the women stick training. (Family photo)
13.The happy stick fighters with Constance Markievicz on the far left with hat and Dollie, Jack’s wife, on the far right also in hat. (Family photo)
14.A newspaper image of Jack White with his bandaged head accompanied by Francis Sheehy Skeffington, March 1914. This was after the incident at Butt Bridge.
15.Jack White, left, with Colonel Maurice Moore, right, and the redoubtable Commander McGlinchey (the man who almost precipitated a Civil War single-handedly). (Irish Independent)
16.Jack White in his sixties. (Family photo)
17.Pat English (neé Napier) on her wedding day. Jack White’s niece, she was his most frequent correspondent in the last few years of his life. (Family photo)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Probably the hardest part of a book to write is the acknowledgments section. How can I thank properly all those who were of assistance in putting this together? An elegant quip, a gracious nod, a suggestion of a shared secret joke and a singling out of someone from the collection of names would be delightful. But the strain of putting it all together, indeed the ability even, can be beyond the best. How can I describe the tit bit of information that had the effect of clarifying months of work? What about the late night conversation that gave encouragement to take up the task once more, or the remark that inspired? And what about the forgetfulness?
I’ve been blessed with a number of friends that engaged with me, that tolerated me and that most of all showed me aspects of this journey that doesn’t just end with the publication of a book. There are others, of course, whom I’m either forgetting to mention, or have not been involved with the book. I list the participants,