Henry Hugh Peter Deasy

Captain Deasy

Henry Hugh Peter Deasy (1866 – February 1947) was an Irish army officer, founder of the Deasy Motor Car Company and a writer.

He was born in Dublin, only surviving son of Rickard Deasy and Monica O'Connor. His father was a highly successful politician and barrister who was elevated to the Bench and ended his career as a judge of the Court of Appeal (Ireland).

He served as a British Army Captain, mostly in India, between 1888 and 1897, when he retired. He married Dolores Hickie, daughter of Colonel James Francis Hickie of Borrisokane, County Tipperary, and Lucila Larios de Tejeda of Castile, and had three children. Dolores was a sister of the prominent soldier and statesman Sir William Bernard Hickie.

After his army service he became one of the first westerners to write a detailed account of Tibet, covering his travels between 1897 and 1899. Consequently, he won the Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal in 1900 for surveying nearly 40,000 square miles (100,000 km²) of the Himalayas. He also provided photographs for a book by Percy W. Church.

Later, his interests turned to Motor Cars. In 1903 he helped promote the Rochet-Schneider Company by driving a car from London to Glasgow non-stop. He also drove a Martini car up a mountain rock railway near Montreaux, Switzerland. At this time H H P Deasy and Co., was formed to import both Rochet-Schneider and Martini cars into the UK. In 1906 The Deasy Motor Co. was formed, and took over the factory formerly used by the Iden Car Co. at Parkside, Coventry. Deasy became increasingly frustrated after clashes with is chief designer, Edmund Lewis (formerly of Rover and Daimler) and resigned on 9 March 1908. In 1909, John Davenport Siddeley left Wolseley to join the Deasy Motor Company, which Siddeley later built up and merged into Hawker Siddeley Group, which ultimately became part of Rolls Royce.

His cousin was Agnes Mary Clerke, whose mother was a Deasy, and who was one of the best known popular science authors of the 19th century, and the first to write of astrophysics as such.

He had one son, the Irish army officer, politician and farming campaigner, Rickard Deasy

Works

• In Tibet and Chinese Turkestan : vol.1

References

• Henry Hugh Peter Deasy - In Tibet and Chinese Turkestan: Being the record of three years' exploration, T. Fisher Unwin, January 1, 1901
• Percy W. Church - Chinese Turkestan with caravan and rifle London, Rivingstones, 1901.

External links

• Brief history of Armstrong Siddeley Motor Co.