Page 77 - All About History - Issue 09-14

KILLING FOR HONOUR:

ENGLAND’S

LAST DUEL

For centuries, duelling was a gentleman’s right to keep their

honour, before the practice was made unlawful. However,

there was still time for one last duel in England…

Written by Martyn Beardsley

ate in the afternoon on 20 May 1845, whose dog was at fault, and the result was a duel
four young men slip out of Gosport near that same evening at the almost suicidal distance
Portsmouth and make their way to a remote of six yards. One was wounded, the other killed. A
beach. Minutes later, pistol shots echo across duel over such an incident was not uncommon.
Lthe afternoon sky and two men are seen By the time of the ‘last duel’, duellists were likely
fleeing the scene, as another crouches over a to be condemned, ridiculed or both. The attitudes
prostrate body that is crying out in agony. The of society and those in positions of power had
four men have just taken part in the last fatal duel changed. It became so hard to arrange a meeting
between Englishmen on English soil. without it being discovered and intercepted by
Duelling had been the way officers and the authorities that adversaries were having to go
gentlemen settled matters of honour for centuries. to ever-greater lengths of secrecy and subterfuge.
Up until the mid-19th century there were certain Queen Victoria made her displeasure of the practice
situations where a meeting with pistols or swords known; Prince Albert called it ‘barbarous’ and was a
was seen not just a possible response to a perceived prime mover in putting an end to it. Wellington, the
insult, but the only honourable one. Men risked iconic military figure of the day, worked with Prince
being ostracised from society for not issuing a Albert in changing attitudes. Ironically, Wellington
duelling challenge in response to an insult. himself took part in a duel that was one of the nails
One of the reasons for the decline of duelling in the practice’s proverbial coffin.
was that the definition of what constituted an Throughout history, some form of combat has
insult requiring ‘satisfaction’ became so broad that often settled disputes between men, making it
men were dying over trifles and a hasty word or difficult to pinpoint when duelling began. The
two, where the pettiest of quarrels could lead to concept evolved to a certain extent from trial by
pistols at dawn. For instance, in 1805 two officers, Ordeal, which had become an accepted avenue
one army and the other navy, were riding their for settling grievances in early medieval Europe,
horses in Hyde Park while exercising their dogs. but it was during Elizabethan times that the ‘true’
The dogs got into a fight, the owners argued about duel, the duel of honour, became an established
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