John Henry Patterson

Biography

Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson DSO (10 November 1867 – 18 June 1947) was a British Army officer, hunter, and author best known for his book The Man-eaters of Tsavo (1907), which details Patterson's experiences during the construction of a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in the East Africa Protectorate from 1898 to 1899. The book went on to inspire three films: Bwana Devil (1952), Killers of Kilimanjaro (1959), and The Ghost and the Darkness (1996). During World War I, Patterson served as the commander of the Jewish Legion, which has been described as the first precursor to the Israel Defense Forces. Patterson was born in 1867 in Forgney, Ballymahon, County Longford, Ireland, to a Protestant father and Roman Catholic mother. He joined the British Army in 1885 at the age of seventeen and eventually attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). He retired from the army in 1920. He married Frances Helena Gray of Belfast in 1895. She, in 1890, had been one of the first women to take a Doctor of Laws (LLD) in the UK. Their son Bryan Patterson (1909–79) became a palaeontologist at the Field Museum in Chicago. During the 1940s, Patterson and his wife, "Francie", lived in a modest home in La Jolla, California. Eventually, with his wife in need of regular medical care and his own health in decline, he took up residence at the home of his friend Marion Travis in Bel Air, where he eventually died in his sleep at seventy-nine years of age. His wife died six weeks later in a San Diego nursing home. Both Patterson and his wife were cremated, and their ashes were interred at Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery, niche 952-OC in Los Angeles. According to Patterson's grandson, Alan Patterson, one of his final wishes was that both he and his wife eventually be interred in Israel, ideally with or close to the men he commanded during the First World War.