This story is part of a series, The Greatest Irish Olympic Stories Never Told, which will run every Saturday in The Irish Times up to the beginning of the 2024 Olympic Games, on Friday, July 26th
Decades after his death, a story in a British newspaper rather spuriously claimed that Maj Frederick “Rattle” Whitfield Barrett fired the first shot on the Western Front in the first World War. As part of the British Expeditionary Force recently arrived in Belgium in August, 1914, the Corkman was taking advantage of some downtime to indulge in a spot of partridge hunting near Casteau. There, he happened to cross paths with a squadron of the 13th Uhlan Regiment on patrol. Angry words were exchanged, then he grabbed his shotgun and kicked off the war to end all wars.
“I didn’t know who they were but they were bloody rude,” he told his commanding officer, “so I let them have both barrels.”
Later in the same conflict, a young Englishman called Thacker was sent to serve under Barrett by the Duke of Alba, a polo-playing pal of his from Madrid. Upon arrival, he handed the major a letter of introduction from their mutual associate.
“This lunatic insists on fighting,” wrote Alba, “please help him.”
Thacker arrived on the first day of the Somme and, alongside his new commanding officer, reportedly navigated his way through that carnage with the same insouciant air he had evinced as a butler serving his former boss drinks at his villa in Spain.
“Well, Thacker, what do you think of war now?” asked Barrett that night.
After first putting his hand over his mouth to gently cough, he replied. “Pardon me sir, isn’t it a trifle dangerous?”
Barrett led the kind of epic life that encouraged others to append these legends to his name. His achievements never required exaggeration but somehow seemed to encourage them. Tall tales abound. Another from the canon surrounding him asserts that he once cut off the tip of his nose with his own sabre while serving in India. Apparently, he lost control of the weapon as he practised charging on horseback at the suspended carcass of a sheep. No matter. He promptly stuck it back on and there it somehow remained.
By the time Barrett trained Annandale to win the 1931 Scottish Grand National, it was the sort of victory that would only merit a footnote in the story of his life. After all, he won Olympic gold and bronze medals in polo, trained horses for three English kings, and served with some distinction in the Great War. Somewhere along the way, between his childhood home in Ireland and the green fields of France, he even gained the more user-friendly nickname of “Rattle”, a moniker apparently a tribute to the number of bones he broke falling from horses during a stint as a jockey.
“Throughout the whole world, the name of ‘Rattle’ Barrett is known as that of a sportsman who has played the game ‘all round’,” gushed the Daily Mirror, “and played it well and successfully. He has helped to make sporting history.”
He was born in Glanmire, Cork on June 20th, 1875, the same year his father William bought Silver Spring House on the eastern approach to the city. The family can trace their lineage in Ireland back to the time of Strongbow in the 12th century and Rattle spent the first two decades of his life in the place where the Clayton Hotel of the same name now stands. He joined the 15th Hussars in the spring of 1897 but when he fell in love with Isobel Edwardes, the sister of a brother-officer, the 6th Lord Kensington, it became apparent he was not as well off as the impressive family digs in Cork suggested.
“Rattle fell foul of a peculiar regimental rule that said any officer beneath the age of 30 and under the rank of captain must pay 500 [pounds] or put in his papers if he becomes engaged,” wrote the Sunday Sun. “Not having the necessary cash and determined to wed his love, Barrett tendered his resignation. But, rather than lose him, the regiment changed the regulation.”
Just as well. During his military service, he was introduced to the sport where he would gain greatest renown.
“At the time, Barrett was well-known as a steeplechaser and took up polo only seriously in 1911 when his regiment went to India, where, by then a captain, he served as ADC to Maj Gen BT Mahon, then commanding the 8th Lucknow Division,” wrote Roger Chatterton-Newman in Polo Quarterly Magazine in 1998. “That was the year of the visit to India of King-Emperor George V and Barrett was among those awarded the commemorative Great Durbar Medal. On his return to England, a bad fall at Sandown put paid to his steeplechasing career and he concentrated on polo.”
In this sport that he only began playing properly in his mid-30s he came to leave an indelible mark. In 1914, he was captain and key player on the English team that won the prestigious Westchester Cup before a crowd of 35,000 at Meadow Brook, New York.
“The work of Major Barrett was again a splendid display of polo team play,” wrote Harry Cross in the New York Times. “His shots were all short and accurate. He was constantly in the midst of scrimmage, ready to pass the ball back to one of his colleagues. Whenever the ball shot out of the scrimmage to one of the English players for a run down the field, it was safe to assume Barrett was behind the ball when it started.”
More than 80 years would pass before that trophy crossed the Atlantic again, and Barrett’s key role in the triumph was underlined by the fact he had also become the first player from the British Isles to gain the ranking of a 10-goal handicap, the greatest accolade in the game. In the first 116 years since the rating system was introduced to the game, not even 100 players earned the 10-goal standard. Some pedigree. That Barrett did so just three years after seriously committing to the sport indicates that he must have been an exceptional horseman.
“At the beginning of 1914, Barrett had been appointed as instructor at the Cavalry School, Netheravon, and on July 5th was a member of the victorious 15th Hussars in the Inter-Regimental final at Hurlingham,” wrote Chatterton-Newman. “A month later, England was at war with Germany, and, within days, Barrett had sailed with the British Expeditionary Force. Mentioned in dispatches in 1917, he survived that war unscathed but a return to the polo field must have been tinged with sadness. So many of the pre-war polo masters had been killed.”
In 1919, he left the army, and the same year was Ireland’s best player in their defeat in the Patriotic Cup match at Hurlingham against an England team bulwarked by Maj Vivian Lockett. The Daily Telegraph noted that one of the English goals came when Barrett was off the field changing horses and praised his marshalling of the underdog Irish outfit. The following summer, he and Lockett were team-mates representing Great Britain at the Antwerp Olympics.
The first to be held since 1912, the Belgium Games marked the debut of now cherished traditions such as the five rings flag and the taking of the Olympic oath. Despite having by then turned 45, Barrett was a crucial figure alongside Lockett, Col Teignmouth Melvill and Lord John Wodehouse (a distant cousin of PG) in a squad that won gold after a 13-11 victory over Spain (featuring his pal the Duke of Alba) in the final. Interestingly, some record books list the winning side as Great Britain & Ireland while others just say Great Britain.
Four years later, Barrett was again on hand to collect a bronze at the Paris Olympics before embarking on a training career that saw him saddle winners for kings George V, Edward VIII and George VI. He was such a transatlantic celebrity that in 1928, sporting a dashing chesterfield coat, he featured in a fashion spread in Men’s Wear Chicago Apparel Gazette, as part of a photo shoot illustrating the clothing choices of prominent individuals at the Grand Military Race meeting in Sandown Park.
Barrett had two children, a daughter, Biddy, who died tragically in a drowning accident in the 1930s, and a son, Dennis. Rattle himself passed away in 1949 and is buried in St Bride’s, Pembrokeshire. The trophy he collected for his role in the 1914 Westchester Cup was awarded to Cowdray Park polo club in Sussex by his son in 1972. The Barrett Cup League remains one of the most prestigious competitions in polo. Only fitting the name should endure in the sport it once adorned.
