Sir Neville Francis Fitzgerald Chamberlain KCB KCVO KStJ KPM (13 January 1856 – 28 May 1944) was an officer in the British Indian Army.

[1] In 1878, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, he joined the staff of Field Marshal Sir Frederick Roberts, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in Afghanistan.

In the same year he was appointed Inspector-General of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the armed police force for the whole of Ireland except Dublin.

[17] Chamberlain's years in the RIC coincided with the rise of a number of political, cultural and sporting organisations with the common aim of separating Ireland from the UK, which were often referred to as Sinn Féin, culminating in the formation of the Irish Volunteers in 1913.

[18] In reports to the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Augustine Birrell, and the Under-Secretary, Sir Matthew Nathan, Chamberlain warned that the Volunteers were preparing to stage an insurrection and proclaim Irish independence.

[19] However, in April 1916, when Nathan showed him a letter from the army commander in the south of Ireland telling of an expected landing of arms on the south-west coast and a rising planned for Easter, they were both "doubtful whether there was any foundation for the rumour".

On 19 March 1938, he had a letter published in The Field in which he claimed to have invented the game of snooker at the officers' mess of the 11th Devonshire Regiment in Jubbulpore (Jabalpur), India in 1875.