Editing Roger Casement (section)

==Early life==
===Family and education===
Casement was born in [[Dublin]] and lived in very early childhood at Doyle's Cottage, Lawson Terrace, [[Sandycove]],<ref>{{cite web|title=The 1916 Rising: Personalities & Perspectives (an online exhibition)|author=Dr Noel Kissane|url=http://www.nli.ie/1916/pdf/5.pdf|publisher=National Library of Ireland/Leabharlann Náisiúnta na hÉireann|year=2006|access-date=2 April 2008|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080228100752/http://www.nli.ie/1916/pdf/5.pdf|archive-date=28 February 2008}}</ref> a terrace that no longer exists, but that was on Sandycove Road between what is now Fitzgerald's pub and The Butler's Pantry delicatessen.

His father, Captain Roger Casement of the [[King's Own Royal Regiment of Dragoons|(King's Own) Regiment of Dragoons]], was the son of Hugh Casement, a [[Belfast]] [[Ship transport|shipping]] merchant who went bankrupt and later moved to Australia. Captain Casement had served in the [[First Anglo-Afghan War|1842 Afghan campaign]]. He travelled to Europe to fight as a volunteer in the [[Hungarian Revolution of 1848]] but arrived after the [[Surrender at Világos]].{{citation needed|date=March 2016}} After the family moved to England, Roger's mother, Anne Jephson (or Jepson), of a Dublin [[Anglican]] family, purportedly had him secretly baptised at the age of three as a [[Catholic]] in [[Rhyl]], [[Wales]].{{Why|date=April 2017}}<!--Was Anne Jephson a Catholic? Why at Rhyl?--><ref>Angus Mitchell, ''Casement'', Haus Publishing, 2003 p. 11.</ref><ref>Brian Inglis (1974, op cit.) commented at p. 115 that "…although she allowed the children to be brought up as Protestants, she had them baptised 'conditionally' when Roger was four years old."</ref> However, the priest who arranged his baptism in 1916 clearly stated that the claimed earlier baptism had been in [[Aberystwyth]], {{convert|80|mi|km}} from Rhyl, raising the question as to why such a supposedly important event should also become so misremembered.<ref>[[Bureau of Military History]], Dublin; file of Fr. Cronin (1951), WS 588, p. 2.</ref>
[[File:Sir Roger Casement (6188264610).jpg|left|thumb|{{c.|1910}}]]
According to an 1892 letter, Casement believed his mother was descended from the [[Jephson family]] of [[Mallow, County Cork]]<ref>Sawyer R. ''Casement the Flawed Hero'' (Routledge, London 1984), quoted at pp. 4–5. {{ISBN|0-7102-0013-7}}</ref> but the Jephson family's historian provides no evidence of this.<ref>Maurice Denham Jephson, ''An Anglo-Irish Miscellany'', Allen Figgis, Dublin, 1964. {{ISBN?}}</ref> The family lived in England in genteel poverty; Roger's mother died when he was nine. His father took the family back to Ireland to [[County Antrim]] to live near paternal relatives. When Casement was 13 years old, his father died in [[Ballymena]], and he was left dependent on the charity of relatives, the Youngs and the Casements. He was educated at the Diocesan School, Ballymena (later the [[Ballymena Academy]]). He left school at 16 and went to England to work as a clerk with [[Elder Dempster]], a [[Liverpool]] shipping company headed by [[Alfred Lewis Jones]].<ref name="siochain">Séamas Ó Síocháin, ''Roger Casement, Imperialist, Rebel, Revolutionary'', Lilliput Press, 2008, p. 15; {{ISBN|978-1-84351-021-5}}</ref>

Roger Casement's brother, Thomas Hugh Jephson Casement (1863–1939), had a roving life at sea and as a soldier, and later helped establish the [[Irish Coastguard]] Service.<ref name="DIB2">{{cite web|url = https://www.dib.ie/biography/casement-thomas-hugh-tom-a1533 | publisher = Dictionary of Irish Biography | title = Casement, Thomas Hugh ('Tom') }}</ref> He was the inspiration for a character in [[Denis Johnston]]'s play ''The Moon in the Yellow River''. He drowned in [[Grand Canal (Ireland)|Dublin's Grand Canal]] on 6 March 1939, having threatened suicide.<ref name="DIB2"/><ref>[http://genealogy.metastudies.net/PS01/PS01_367.HTM Thomas Hugh Jephson Casement profile] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170816233936/http://genealogy.metastudies.net/PS01/PS01_367.HTM |date=16 August 2017 }}, genealogy.metastudies.net; accessed 16 August 2017.</ref>

===Observations of Casement===
In a recollection of Casement, which conceivably is coloured by knowledge of his subsequent fate, Ernest Hambloch, Casement's deputy during his consular posting to Brazil, recalls an "unexpected" figure: tall, ungainly; "elaborately courteous" but with "a good deal of pose about him, as though he was afraid of being caught off his guard". "An easy talker and a fluent writer", he could "expound a case, but not argue it". His greatest charm, of which he seemed "quite unconscious" was his voice, which was "very musical." The eyes were "kindly", but not given to laughter: "a sense of humour might have saved him from many things".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hambloch |first1=Ernest |title=British Consul: Memories of Thirty Years' Service in Europe and Brazil |date=1938 |publisher=George G. Harrap & Co. |location=London |pages=71, 76}}</ref>

[[Joseph Conrad]]'s first impressions of Casement, from an encounter in the Congo he judged "a positive piece of good luck", was "thinks, speaks, well, most intelligent and very sympathetic". Later, ''after'' Casement's arrest and trial, Conrad had more critical thoughts: "Already in Africa, I judged he was a man, properly speaking, of no mind at all. I don't mean stupid. I mean that he was all emotion. By emotional force (Putumayo, Congo report etc) he made his way, and sheer temperament—a truly tragic figure."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Meyers |first1=Jeffrey |title=Conrad and Roger Casement |journal=Conradiana |date=1973 |volume=5 |issue=3 |pages=64–69 |jstor=24641805 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24641805 |access-date=24 August 2020 |archive-date=29 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201029014304/https://www.jstor.org/stable/24641805?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents |url-status=live }}</ref>