Juanita Casey was born on October 10, 1925 in Teddington (outside London) to Bertha Louise Newman, who named her Lorna. She was adopted soon after birth by Gerald Haw Taunton Barlow and his wife Mary Bischoff Barlow, who named her Joy Barlow and raised her near Southampton and Bournemouth. She attended four different boarding schools and enjoyed none of them. She left school for good after giving birth to her unknown rapist’s child, who was immediately adopted. Casey spent much of her childhood at the farm of her uncle, (Andrew) Walter Barlow, who introduced her to horse breeding, animal fairs, and boats, and nicknamed her “Juanita” after a lioness left behind by the circus that routinely overwintered on his farm. Through Walter Barlow and the people running the circus, Casey learned to speak Romani; she also learned that her mother and possibly her father had been either Romani or Irish Travellers, and embraced that heritage.

During work experience with horses on a Dorset farm, Casey met John Fisher. They married in 1945 and had a son, Will, two years later. The Fishers sold the farm to live on a boat moored in Cornwall, sailing to Ireland and other ports at will. She abandoned Fisher to live in Cornwall’s St. Ives art colony in the late 1940s, and was soon exhibiting her Japanese-cum-Lascaux cave-style drawings and monotypes of horses.

While in Cornwall, Casey met the artist Sven Berlin. They married and had a son, Jasper, in 1953. The Berlins moved into a horse-drawn caravan halted in England’s New Forest as part of a community of Romani people there. Casey inherited money from her father’s will and used it to purchase a farm in Emery Down, within the New Forest, and turned it into a stud. She raised horses, particularly Appaloosas, as well as zebras, and made many attempts at producing a zorse (a zebra-horse hybrid). Her skill at handling difficult horses (and zebras) became so well-respected that she was sent Zaman, a headstrong stallion owned by Queen Elizabeth II.

In 1963, Casey divorced Berlin, surrendering her inheritance in the process, having fallen for their Irish groom, Fergus Casey. Fergus and Juanita married that same year and had a daughter, Sheba. After wandering between England and Ireland, the Caseys eventually settled in a beach chalet in coastal Mornington, County Meath, until 1971. During this period, Juanita Casey produced the majority of her creative writing, including the short story collection Hath the rain a father? (Phoenix House, 1966), the poetry collection Horse by the river (Dolmen Press, 1968), and two novels, The horse of Selene (Dolmen Press, 1971) and The circus (Dolmen Press, 1974).

In March 1971, Fergus Casey went missing, and his body washed up in Galway that May. Juanita Casey and Sheba moved to a caravan in an orchard at Churchtown, County Dublin, before moving the caravan to Rosemary Bradshaw’s studio in Sneem, County Kerry, where Casey decorated pottery and exhibited her animal paintings. In 1974, she and Sheba moved again to Okehampton, Devon, where they remained, living alternately in caravans and chalets. Casey worked as a horse-master with the Roberts Brothers Circus for a short period, and continued to write, draw, and work with horses. She published her autobiography, Azerbaijan!, in a limited edition of 50 in 2008, and a poetry chapbook, Ballybunions, in 2012.

Casey died in Okehampton, Devon on October 24, 2012.

Sources:

Aarons, Sonia, “Juanita Casey: Writer, artist and horse breeder who lived the archetypal bohemian life,” The Independent, December 5, 2012. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/juanita-casey-writer-artist-and-horse-breeder-who-lived-the-archetypal-bohemian-life-8382233.html

Burke, Mary, “Casey, Juanita,” Dictionary of Irish Biography, September 2023. https://www.dib.ie/biography/casey-juanita-a10338.

Burke, Mary, “Juanita Casey - a forgotten Traveller-Romany writer rediscovered,” RTE, August 5, 2022. https://www.rte.ie/culture/2022/0805/1312820-juanita-casey-a-forgotten-traveller-romany-writer-rediscovered/