Beckett, James C[rothers?] (‘Jim’) (1884–1971), water-polo international, national swimming champion, all-round sportsman, and administrator, was born 17 October 1884 in Prince William Terrace, Dublin, one of four sons and one daughter of William Francis Beckett, a successful building contractor and developer, and Frances (‘Fannie’) Beckett (née Crothers). He was educated at Wesley College and TCD, entering the latter in 1902, where he studied medicine, finally graduating as an MD (1912). One of Ireland's finest-ever water sportsmen, at the age of just sixteen he was picked for the Irish water-polo team, and he remained a regular member of the side – winning twenty-three caps – until his retirement in 1926. He was a member of the Irish team at the 1924 Olympics, when Ireland lost rather unluckily to Czechoslovakia in the quarter-finals. He also won eleven Irish swimming titles, and would undoubtedly have won more but for the dominance of George Dockrell (qv) in the early years of the twentieth century, and the intervention of the first world war. He won his first national title in the 440 yards in 1901 and won that championship on two more occasions (1903, 1904). He also won the 100 yards title six times: five times before the war (1902, 1909, 1911, 1912, 1914), and against a whole new generation of swimmers in 1919. He also won the 220 yards and the half-mile titles in 1902. His time of sixty-one seconds set in winning the 100 yards title in 1909 was not bettered until 1938, and then only in an indoor 25-metre pool as opposed to the 50-yard outdoor pool in which his championship record was set. In all, he set and held national records over all distances in the early 1900s. Beckett also helped to establish Pembroke swimming club as one of the powerhouses of Irish swimming in the first few decades of the twentieth century, winning the Leinster Water-Polo Cup (1905, 1914) and the Irish Water-Polo Cup (1921), and losing the national finals of 1922 and 1923. In 1913 he won the Leinster Men's High Diving championship, and would probably have won a national title if there had been one at that time. On the administrative side he was president of the Leinster Swimming Union on four occasions (1918, 1923, 1924, 1928) and president of the Irish Amateur Swimming Association in 1923.
Beckett was one of the most versatile sportsmen in Ireland in his time, and his sporting prowess was not confined to the water. While at TCD he was involved in athletics, hockey, and rugby, and was the college heavyweight boxing champion. He also played tennis at the Fitzwilliam club and rugby with Old Wesley from 1903 to 1911, captaining the club to its only Leinster Senior Cup victory in 1905, and won two caps for Leinster in the interprovincial series: against Munster in 1906 (17–8) and Ulster in 1911 (0–14). In addition he captained the Dublin Hospitals against their London counterparts on at least two occasions. He was also secretary of the Leinster RFU in 1905–6 and a referee in the 1920s.
Coming as he did from a sporting family, Beckett was extremely competitive and proud of his achievements, and kept his trophies on display in a glass case in his Fitzwilliam Place home. His brother Gerald (1886–1950) was also a swimming champion and a water-polo international; he also won three international rugby caps for Ireland in 1908 and was later captain of Greystones Golf Club. His elder brother, Willie (1871–1933), father of Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett (qv), also played rugby and golf, and was a year-round swimmer. An anaesthetist by profession, Jim Beckett was one of Ireland's most prominent and popular physicians, and spent twenty-five years working in the Adelaide Hospital, having served with the RAMC in France during the first world war. In his later years Beckett fell prey to diabetes and a muscular and circulatory disease that ran in the Beckett family. The disease kept him bedridden for many years, eventually causing blindness and resulting in both his legs being amputated and the movement in his arms being severely restricted. His medical predicament may have been an inspiration to his famous nephew; one biographer writes that Samuel Beckett considered his uncle (with whom he corresponded regularly) as a ‘ “stump of a man”, the equivalent of Bill Lynch in his own parodied genealogy of the Lynch family in Watt’ (Knowlson, Damned to fame, 582) while another considered that it was a ‘recreation’ of The unnamable (Samuel Beckett, 617). It is possible that Samuel Beckett's obsession with infirmity and limbless bodies may have been suggested by the effect of disease on such an athletic family. Described as an impressive figure, brimming with life and good humour, Jim Beckett had an abiding interest in music, and was secretary of a musical society for thirteen years. He died 19 March 1971 at the Adelaide Hospital, Dublin. A collection of over 90 postcards and letters he and his wife received (1965–78) from Samuel Beckett was sold for £57,600 at Sotheby's in July 2007.
He married (1914) Margaret (‘Peggy’) O'Connell; they had two daughters and a son. One of the daughters, Margo Magan (b. 1930), was also an Irish swimming champion and won the inaugural Irish Ladies Senior Golf championship in 1988.