Captain Isaac Henry Woolf ("Jack") Barnato was an English airman of the Royal Air Force who died during the First World War.
He was born on 7 June 1894, in Mayfair, the son of Barney and Fanny Christina Barnato (née Bees), of London and Cape Town, South Africa. His father, who came from a modest background and had worked for a period as a music hall entertainer, had achieved success in South Africa and became one of the co-founders of the diamond mining company De Beers. He died in 1897, and Isaac and his siblings were raised by their mother in Brighton.[1][2]
Barnato studied at Windlesham House, Brighton and Charterhouse, after which he finished his education at Trinity House.[2] With the outbreak of war in 1914, Barnato attempted to enlist in the British Army, but was rejected. A subsequent attempt on 15 September 1915 proved successful, and Barnato joined the Public Schools Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers as an other rank.[3][4]
In 1915, he transferred to the Royal Naval Air Service as a qualified pilot, [2] and was commissioned as a flight sub-lieutenant on 13 June.[5] Barnato flew one of three naval aircraft which undertook a 300-mile air raid on the Ottoman city of Constantinople in April 1916.[6] That action earned a mention in despatches. Later in the war, Barnato returned to Britain as a staff officer. There, he contracted influenza during the flu pandemic which swept through Europe. His condition quickly deteriorated, and developed into septic pneumonia, from which he succumbed on 25 October 1918, at Duke Street Mansions, Grosvenor Square. He had married in 1917, to Dorothé Mabel Lewis, daughter of diamond miner Joe Lewis and the American actress Fannie Ward.[1][2]
He is buried in Willesden Jewish Cemetery.
Notes[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 de Courcy, Annie (2012), Society's Queen: The Life of Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Middleton, Judy (2014), Hove and Portslade in the Great War In 1915.
- ↑ Capt Isaak Henry Woolf "Jack" Barnato, findagrave.com. Retrieved 13 November 2016.
- ↑ Ancestry.com. British Army WWI Pension Records 1914-1920 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010.
- ↑ The London Gazette (29328), p. 10152. 15 October 1915, thegazette.co.uk. Retrieved 13 November 2016.
- ↑ The Times (41143), p. 8: "Constantinople Raided". 17 April 1916.
References[]
- Barnato, Isaac Henry Woolf, cwgc.org. Retrieved 13 November 2016.