Vane’s career pre-1916

Francis Vane was born in 1861 at 10 North Great George’s Street, the only son of an English cavalry officer and an Irish-American mother, and raised in Sidmouth, Devon. He was commissioned into the British army in 1878, and from 1900 served in the Boer War as a column commander and a military judge. His … Read more

Mutiny

However acceptable punitive raids may have been in the Middle East, analogous actions in post-war Ireland did not impress some Connaught Ranger veterans of the Mesopotamia campaign. Impelled by the British counter-insurgency campaign in Ireland, elements of the 1st Connaught Rangers mutinied in June 1920. The rebels struck the Union flag at their outpost on … Read more

‘Baron’ De Camin

Protestant lecturers such as Alessandro Gavazzi and ‘Baron’ De Camin became minor celebrities and regularly featured in the British press, touring throughout the country. Despite the focus on Rome and papal hierarchy professed by the majority of lecturers, and the apparent concern for the ‘misled’ and ‘abused’ Roman Catholic, public organisation and championing of such … Read more

Background

John Lee (né Fiott) (1783–1866) was the son of London merchant John Fiott and Harriet Lee of Totteridge Park, Hertfordshire. In 1815, the death of his maternal uncle and guardian William Lee Antonie brought a favourable bequest and a stipulation that he take his mother’s surname. Thereafter Lee divided his time between attending to his … Read more

The ‘Redlegs’ of Barbados

Aside from serving white supremacist agendas, the ‘white slave’ narrative has been equally problematic in its exploitation of the ‘Redlegs’ of Barbados. The ‘poor whites’ that currently reside along the east coast of Barbados have been presented as a living fossil of the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland. Television documentaries, works of fiction and non-fiction, radio … Read more