Richard Pope-Hennessy

Major-General Ladislaus Herbert Richard Pope-Hennessy CB DSO (1875 – 1 March 1942) was a British Army officer and Liberal Party politician of Irish Catholic descent.

Richard Pope-Hennessy
Richard Pope-Hennessy in 1927
Born1875
Died1 March 1942
AllegianceUnited Kingdom
Service/branchBritish Army
RankMajor-General
Commands held4th Battalion, King's African Rifles
1st Bn, the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry
50th (Northumbrian) Division
Battles/warsSecond Boer War
First World War
AwardsCompanion of the Order of the Bath
Distinguished Service Order

Background

A young Richard, pictured with his parents

He was the eldest son of Sir John Pope-Hennessy MP, of Rostellan Castle, County Cork and Catherine Elizabeth Low. He was educated at Beaumont College.[1]

Military career

Pope-Hennessy was commissioned into the Oxfordshire Light Infantry in 1895.[1] He was deployed to South Africa and served with the West African Frontier Force during the Second Boer War.[1] He subsequently became commandant of the 4th Battalion, King's African Rifles in 1906 for which service was appointed a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order in 1908.[1]

During the First World War he became commanding officer of the 1st Battalion the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry in Mesopotamia in 1916 and then became a staff officer with the British Indian Army in 1917.[1][2]

After the war he served as a staff officer at the War Office and then was Military Inter-Allied Commissioner of Control in Berlin. Subsequently he spent three years as military attaché in Washington D.C.[3] He became General Officer Commanding 50th (Northumbrian) Division in 1931 before retiring in 1935.[4]

Pope-Hennessy published a number of books an articles on military matters and in one of them he predicted the technique of the German Blitzkrieg.[2]

Political career

He took particular interest in military matters and in issues affecting his native Ireland. In 1919 he had published 'The Irish Dominion: a Method of Approach to a Settlement'.[1] He was Liberal candidate for the Tonbridge Division of Kent at the 1935 General Election. Tonbridge was a safe Conservative seat that they had won at every election since it was created in 1918. The Liberal Party had not fielded a candidate at the previous General election and he was not expected to win and finished a poor third.[5]

General Election 1935: Tonbridge[5] Electorate 56,106
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Rt Hon. Herbert Henry Spender-Clay 23,460 61.3
Labour F M Landau 9,405 24.6
Liberal Ladislaus Herbert Richard Pope-Hennessy 5,403 14.1
Majority 14,055 36.7
Turnout 68.2
Conservative hold Swing

Family

He married, in 1910, Una Birch a writer, historian and biographer. They had two sons,[1] James who became a writer and John an art historian.[6]

Death

Friary Churchyard of St Francis and St Anthony, Crawley, 2017

He died in 1942 and is buried alongside his wife at Friary Church of St Francis and St Anthony, Crawley.[7]

References

  1. Thom's Irish who's who. Alexander Thom. 1923. p. 208.
  2. James Wassermann (ed.): Secret Societies: Illuminati, Freemasons and the French Revolution. Nicolas Hayes, 2007, ISBN 978-0892541324, pp. 49-50
  3. The Times House of Commons, 1935
  4. "Army Commands" (PDF). Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  5. British parliamentary election results 1918-1949, Craig, F. W. S.
  6. Quennell, P., Introduction to A Lonely Business – A Self-Portrait of James Pope-Hennessy, 1981, p. xv.
  7. "Ladislaus Herbert Richard Pope-Hennessy". Find A Grave Memorial. Retrieved 2 June 2020.
Military offices
Preceded by
Henry Newcome
GOC 50th (Northumbrian) Division
1931–1935
Succeeded by
William Herbert
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