The Word of a Gentleman his wife Nora are the focus of many chapters (and the book opens with a quotation from Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"); these reflect Niesewand's detention by Desmond Lardner-Burke under P. K. van der Byl and Smith, and his subsequent deportation, leaving behind his wife of three years, Nonie Niesewand (née Fogarty). The Word of a Gentleman The Word of a Gentleman (1981) (later retitled "Undercut") was the third of five novels written by Peter Niesewand, the South African journalist who spent 73 days in solitary confinement for his coverage of Ian Smith's government in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
Cork County Gaol would be executed at Victoria Barracks. Republican (anti-treaty) prisoners were held in the Gaol during and after the Irish Civil War (1922-23). On 25 September 1922, a Republican prisoner, Volunteer Patrick Mangan (a veteran of the War of Independence from Lismore), was shot by a sentry as he tried to escape from Cork County Gaol. At 08:00 on 13 March 1923, the Free State Government executed a Republican prisoner named William Healy (born in Lackabawn, Donoughmore in 1900) at Cork County Gaol. On the evening before he faced the firing squad he wrote to his father telling him, "If I