http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=HNS19160804.2.31.2

SIR ROGER CASEMENT INTERESTING PARTICULARS 
Daily Mail 1916
When the present war broke out Sir Roger Casement was in receipt of a pension of £421 a year from the British Government. A week or so before Casement's landing in Ireland a curious story of an "arrest" of Sir Roger Casement was published in a Danish paper. It was stated that he had been arrested in Berlin "on a charge not specified." The report was absurd on the face of it, especially when it was perfectly well known that he had been engaged in traitorous work in Berlin, telling the Irish prisoners that he was authorised by the Kaiser to promise Home Rule to Ireland. After events have shown that this is only another German lie spread by means of the neutral press in order to throw the British Government off the scent. It has failed, as so many other lies of the same kind have failed, owing to the dexterity and unsleeping vigilance of our own Secret Service. 
An Irishwoman, who knew Sir Roger Casement in his youth, writes to the "Daily Mail":— 
"The Casements were a very well known County Antrim family with several branches. The grandfather was Mr. Roger Casement, a land agent and well-to-do man of property. The whole family have always been Protestants, staunch members of Orange societies, and pronounced Unionists, and so were all Sir Roger Casement's early associations and associates. "His father was once an officer in the British Army. He was a recluse and an eccentric, and his hobby was the 'occult.' He lived at the Adair Arms, the principal hotel of Ballymena, and undertook to give a séance and raise 'spirits' for the habitués of the hotel. On the night of the séance, at the hour appointed for the start, he was found dead in his room. The people said that his spirit was too big for his frail body and that he had simply 'snuffed out.' He was an extraordinary Don Quixote-looking man. 
"Roger, at that time about fourteen, was being educated at the Diocesan School at Ballymena. Left alone in the world, he was practically adopted by Mr. and Mrs. John Young, jun., well-known linen people of Ballymena [Wellington Street]. With them he spent his holidays, and was coming and going there until 1899. 
"At school he was a great, friend of my brother and often came to for home. He was a very remarkable boy, handsome, gentlemanly, gay, and of a singularly happy temperament. But he was a very determined boy, always very sure of himself, and with command and influence over boys much older than himself."