Horace de Vere Cole

Horace de Vere Cole was born in Ballincollig, County Cork, in 1881, the son of a British Army officer who died of cholera in India while his son was still a child. That early loss may have sharpened the boy’s edge, for he grew into a prankster so bold he once deceived the Royal Navy aboard HMS Dreadnought. He died young in 1936, but the memory of his mischief outlived him, turning a small Cork town into the birthplace of a famous trickster.