Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T01:40:22.189Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Killing with Courtesy: The English Duelist, 1785–1845

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Stephen Banks
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , July 2008 , pp. 528 - 558
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Letter of the earl of Sefton to Creevey, 25 March 1829, in Sir Maxwell, Herbert, The Creevey Papers: A Selection from the Correspondence and Diaries of the Late Thomas Creevey, M.P. (London, 1912), 542Google Scholar.

2 For Donna Andrew, the key to the demise of dueling was the emergence of the commercially minded middling class: “This new class could do more than look aristocracy in the face. It could and did reject the established norms of gentlemanliness, which the code of honour represented, and substitute its own definition of the term. … Dueling was identified as a failing of the upper classes and as such roundly condemned.” Andrew, Donna T., “The Code of Honour and Its Critics: The Opposition to Dueling in England, 1700–1850,” Social History 5, no. 3 (Autumn 1980): 409–34, 429CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For James Kelley, “The gradual emergence of a powerful and influential middle class, which had little sympathy with traditional aristocratic values, created an environment in the early nineteenth century in which it was increasingly less acceptable to duel.” Kelly, James, That Damn’d Thing Called Honour: Dueling in Ireland, 1570–1860 (Cork, 1995), 483Google Scholar. See also Antony E. Simpson, “Dandelions on the Field of Honor: Dueling, the Middle Classes and the Law in Nineteenth Century England,” Criminal Justice History 9 (1988): 99–155, 138.

3 Nye, Robert, “The End of the Modern French Duel,” in Men and Violence: Gender, Honor and Rituals in Modern Europe and America, ed. Pieter Spierenberg (Columbus, OH, 1998), 82–101Google Scholar.

4 Simpson, “Dandelions on the Field of Honor,” 140.

5 Ibid.

6 “The belligerents sallied forth, accompanied by their seconds, to the field of martial glory … the bystanders were in a state of breathless expectation—when just at this awful crisis, a constable, whom some one had very thoughtfully apprised of the circumstance, took one of the combatants into custody.” The Times, 21 February 1829, 3, col. c.

7 Andrew, “Code of Honour,” 410.

8 For some reason, tailors seem to have come to represent the stock comic duelist. It was claimed in 1786 that two heroic snips had met in Hyde Park to settle a rivalry in love, but they had been arrested before proceeding further (The Times, 30 August 1786, 2, col. c). Unfortunately, exactly the same story is repeated in 1791 (The Times, 9 September 1791, 3, col. c). Two tailors allegedly fought in Kilkenny in 1788, but their seconds declared that, “as each of the brethren of the sheers had demonstrated more than a ninth part of manhood, they ought to be reconciled” (The Times, 5 April 1788, 3, col. c). Dramatists took up the comic theme. In the 1816 comedy, “Where to Find a Friend,” the duelists were a tailor and an Irish laborer. A caricature by Cruickshank publicized the performance and showed the terrified tailor rushing off clutching his pistol and shears, while his opponent shot a signpost by mistake. R. Cruikshank, The Irish Duel; Or, The Loves Of Paddy Wackmacruck and Mackirkcroft The Tailor (London, 1816).

9 The Times, 1 November 1827, 3, col. e.

10 The Times, 18 December 1829, 2, col. e.

11 Simpson, “Dandelions on the Field of Honor,” 110.

12 In 1805, e.g., two naval lieutenants were arrested at Falmouth after a duel, and a Captain G. and Lieutenant R. exchanged shots after a dispute about winning lottery numbers (The Times, 9 January 1805, 3, col. d). Two officers fought a fierce encounter at the Shorncliffe barracks near Dover (The Times, 3 September 1805, 2, col. d.), and, finally, a captain and a lieutenant exchanged shots at Deal following a dispute at billiards (The Times, 29 October 1805, 3, col. a). The twelve ports surveyed were Bristol, Deal, Dover, Falmouth, Gosport, Harwich, Holyhead, Hull, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Southampton.

13 Alan Forbes Sieveking, “Duelling and Militarism,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 3rd ser., 11 (January 1917): 165–84, 165.

14 Gronow, Captain, The Reminiscences and Recollections of Captain Gronow: Being Anecdotes of the Camp, Court and Society, 1810–1860 (London, 1964), 93Google Scholar.

15 See, e.g., the case of Captain Bulkley, who was foolish enough to request a court of inquiry into the offensive behavior of Captain Brisco. Officers sent him to Coventry until he had dueled with the offender (The Times, 3 February 1785, 3, col. a).

16 Douglas, William, Dueling Days in the Army (London, 1887), ixGoogle Scholar.

17 Ibid., 22–31.

18 Wrigley, E. A., People, Cities and Wealth: The Transformation of Traditional Society (London, 1987), 162Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., 160, table 7.1.

20 The Manchester Mercury was used until 1830, but since it is not complete for the years 1835–40, the Manchester Guardian was substituted instead.

21 The nearest took place in Liverpool in 1805 between two militia officers (Manchester Mercury, 23 October 1805, 4, col. F).

22 The editions for 1800 are very fragmentary but are complete from 1805 on. I chose to use this publication because of its wide distribution in the West. Again, twenty-four duels were reported.

23 The Hampshire Telegraph was used from 1800 until 1835, but for 1840 the Hampshire Advertiser and Salisbury Guardian had to be substituted. The Hampshire Telegraph was alternatively titled Motley's Naval and Military Journal and was widely distributed among the fleets and garrisons of the south coast.

24 At least seventeen of the duelists can be clearly identified as military officers, and there are eight more duelists whose occupations are unknown, so the number may be higher still.

25 Two duels occurred near Portsmouth in 1800, one on Southsea Common and one near Hilsea Barracks (Hampshire Telegraph, 11 August 1800, 3, col. b). A duel occurred at Chichester in 1810 (Hampshire Telegraph, 8 January 1810, 3, col. a) and another again at Southsea Common in 1815 (Hampshire Telegraph, 6 January 1815, 4, col. c).

26 There are no duels or attempted duels recorded between 1794 and 1825 in the index to the Hull Advertiser. See Mahon, K. A., An Index to the More Important Historical Information Contained in the Files of the Hull Advertiser and Exchange Gazette, 1794–1825 (Hull, 1955)Google Scholar. However, the index for the period between 1826 and 1845 records a single, abortive duel that was prevented by the authorities at Grimsby on 3 February 1832. See Parry, D.The Meadley Index to the Hull Advertiser, 1826–1845 (Humberside, 1987)Google Scholar. The anonymous Index to the Norwich Mercury, 1770–1774, records no encounters in the Norwich area. The anonymous Index to the Durham County Advertiser (Durham, 1978) has reference to a single duel that occurred at North Shields and was reported in the edition of 27 October 1827. Finally, the indexes to the Maidstone Journal, 1830–1833, refer to a duel in Greenwich Park in 1832 but not to any encounters in the Maidstone area itself. See J. Hilton, Index to the Maidstone Journal (Orkney, n.d.).

27 “Sir, you say that there is not a man among the radicals, you say there is not one who will meet you with a brace of pistols but I will bid denial to your words as I, Jones the man, will meet you on Monday morning at seven o’clock on Rushenden hill.” Queensborough Borough Records. Qb/JP/1 1814–28, the Centre for Kentish Studies.

28 Letter of 7 September 1770, Walshingham Merton Collection, WLS/XLVI/8 fol. 2, Norfolk County Records Office.

29 For example, in 1779 a lieutenant of the militia was shot dead by a militia colonel who had accused him of inciting his men to mutiny; Millingen, John G., The History of Dueling Including Narratives Of The Most Remarkable Personal Encounters That Have Taken Place From the Earliest Period To The Present Time, 2 vols. (London, 1814), 2:103–4Google Scholar. In 1783 a Colonel P. wounded a Captain I. in a dispute over the Anglesey militia; ibid., 2:118–19. In 1795 there were duels fought over the management of both the Somerset militia and the North Lincoln Militia (The Times, 30 April 1795, 3, col. b, and The Times, 7 July 1795?, 3, col. d.1).

30 Sainsbury, John, “‘Cool courage should always mark me’: John Wilkes and Dueling,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 7 (1996): 19–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 The Times, 16 November 1818, 3, col. b.

32 The Times, 29 June 1826, 2, col. a; Sabine, Lorenzo, Notes On Duels and Duelling, Alphabetically Arranged, With a Preliminary History Essay (Boston, 1859), 212Google Scholar.

33 The Times, 29 October 1818, 2, col. c.

34 The Times, 27 August 1810, 3, col. b.

35 The Times, 2 May 1837, 5, col. a.

36 According to Cockburn, the percentage of homicides in Kent that were occasioned by shooting for the period 1800–1809 was some 26 percent. This declined between 1810 and 1819 to only 11 percent. Between 1820 and 1829 this figure rose again to 16 percent, and for the period 1830–39 the figure was 17 percent. After 1840, however, homicide by shooting was extremely rare, for between 1840 and 1849 the percentage of homicides so occasioned fell to just 2 percent. Cockburn, J. S., “Patterns of Violence in English Society: Homicide in Kent, 1560–1985,” Past and Present, no. 130 (1991): 70–106, 78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Between 1786 and 1790 there were eight Irish legal duelists. Between 1781 and 1785 there were seven. However, by 1801–5 the number had declined to just three, and there were also three duelists between 1806 and 1810. Kelly, That Damn’d Thing Called Honour, table 3.1, 118, and table 5.1, 213.

38 There were five encounters involving lawyers between 1790 and 1794, but thereafter lawyers rarely dueled. I can find firm evidence of only seven such duels in the entire period from 1800 to 1840. Perhaps the two most celebrated lawyerly duels were between Adolphus, who dueled with a fellow barrister Alley in 1816, and between Sir John Jeffcot, barrister and judge of Sierra Leone, and Doctor Hennis in 1834.

39 The Times, 17 July 1840, 3, col. c. One party, Topp, was wounded, but the other party and his second were merely convicted of breach of the peace at the High Court of Justiciary.

40 The Times, 25 February 1840, 6, col. c.

41 The Times, 6 October 1841, 4, col. f; The Times, 11 January 1843, 5, col. d.

42 The Times, 29 November 1813, 2, col. e. Two merchants did in fact meet on Hampstead Heath in 1822 (The Times, 2 November 1822, 2, col. c).

43 The Times, 2 June 1845, 7, col. b.

44 Michael Roper and John Tosh, “Introduction: Historians and the Politics of Masculinity,” in their Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800 (London, 1991), 1–24, 18.

45 Alexandra Shephard, “From Anxious Patriarchs to Refined Gentlemen? Manhood in Britain, circa 1500–1700,” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 2 (April 2005): 281–95, 292.

46 ldquo, Philip Carter;James Boswell's Manliness,” in English Masculinities, 1600–1800, ed. Tim Hitchcock and Michele Cohen (London, 1999), 111–30, 129–30Google Scholar.

47 Klein, Lawrence E., Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth Century England (Cambridge, 1994), 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Langford, Paul, “The Uses of Eighteenth Century Politeness,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 12 (2002): 311–31, 312.Google Scholar

49 “The fine gentleman at the play enters the box with a menacing air, as if prepared to force his way through some obstacle, which he habitually anticipates and resents beforehand. A true Englishman, on coming into a coffee house looks round to see if the company are good enough for him, to know if his place is not taken, or if he cannot easily turn others out of theirs. … There is always much internal oath, preparatory knitting of the brows, implied clenching of the fists, and imaginary shouldering of affronts and grievances going on in the mind of an unsophisticated Englishman.” J. Cook, ed., William Hazlitt: Selected Writings (Oxford, 1991), 156–57.

50 Harvey, Karen, “The History of Masculinity, circa 1650–1800,” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 2 (April 2005): 296–311, 311CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Hon. Berkeley, Grantley, My Life and Recollections, 4 vols. (London, 1865), 1:105Google Scholar.

52 Lennox, Lord William Pitt, Fashion Then and Now: Illustrated By Anecdotes, Social, Political, Military, Dramatic and Sporting, 2 vols. (London, 1878), 1:187–88Google Scholar.

53 Ibid., 183.

54 Tosh, John, “Masculinities in an Industrializing Society: Britain, 1800–1914,” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 2 (April 2005): 330–42, 331CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 See generally, Stone, Lawrence, “Interpersonal Violence in English Society, 1300–1980,” Past and Present, no. 101 (November 1983): 22–33Google Scholar; and Wiener, Martin J., Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness, and Criminal Justice in Victorian England (Cambridge, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 Wiener, Martin J., “Judges v. Jurors: Courtroom Tensions in Murder Trials and the Laws of Criminal Responsibility in Nineteenth Century England,” Law and History Review 17, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 467CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Banks, Stephen, “Speaking the City: Punishment, Performance and the Perception of London's Public Space, 1780–1840,” Law and Critique 16, no. 2 (January 2005): 231–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Shoemaker, Robert, “The Taming of the Duel: Masculinity, Honour and Ritual Violence in London, 1660–1800,” Historical Journal 45, no. 3 (2002): 525–45, 537CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Connell, Robert W., “The Big Picture: Masculinities in Recent World History,” Theory and Society 22, no. 5 (October 1993): 597–623, 609CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, CT, 1992), 9Google Scholar.

61 Millingen, John G., History of Dueling, 2:160Google Scholar.

62 Tosh, John, “The Old Adam and the New Man: Emerging Themes in the History of English Masculinities, 1750–1850,” in Hitchcock and Cohen, English Masculinities, 1660–1800, 217–38, 222Google Scholar.

63 Allen, John Taylor, Dueling: An Essay Read In The Theatre at Oxford, 10th June 1807 (Oxford, 1807)Google Scholar.

64 Sir Smith, R., The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London, 2005)Google Scholar.

65 The Times, 24 December 1788, 3, col. b.

66 The Diary of Col. Bayley of the 12th Regt., 1797–1803 (London, 1896), 61–66.

67 Millingen, History of Dueling, 2:133.

68 See, e.g., Lt. Col. Vernier, Willoughby, A British Rifleman: The Journals and Correspondence of Maj. George Simmons, Rifle Brigade, During the Peninsula War and the Campaign of Waterloo (London, 1899), 103–9, letter of 30 September 1810Google Scholar.

69 The Times, 30 April 1835, 6, cols. c–d.

70 Ibid.

71 The Times, 9 March 1844, 3, col. a.

72 Connell, Robert W., The Big Picture, 192Google Scholar.

73 Dawson, Graham, “The Blond Bedouin: Lawrence of Arabia, Imperial Adventure and the Imagery of English-British Masculinity,” in Tosh and Roper, Manful Assertions, 113–44, 118Google Scholar.

74 Nye, Robert A., “Fencing, the Duel and Republican Manhood in the Third Republic,” Journal of Contemporary History 25, nos. 2/3 (May–June 1990): 365–77, 370CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 The Times, 31 December 1831, 3, col. f.

76 Taken from the private correspondence of Sir William Henry Lytton Earl Bulwer (1801–72), contained in the family archive of the Bulwer family of Heydon Hall, Heydon, Norfolk; 5 BUL 16/28/3–7, Norfolk County Records Office.

77 Bulwer of Heydon Family Papers, 5 BUL 16/28/18/3, Norfolk County Records Office.

78 Bulwer of Heydon Family Papers, 5 BUL 16/28/18/6, Norfolk County Records Office.

79 The Times, 22 May 1839, 5, col. f., headed “Bath 24th April 1839.”

80 Ibid.

81 The Times, 23 December 1847, 3, col. f.

82 The Times, 24 May 1848, 5, col. a.

83 The Crisis Or The Point Of Honour, designed and etched by Thomas Landseer; published by F. G. Moon, 20 Threadneedle St., London; 6 August 1827.

84 Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, vols. 3–9, ed. F. G. Stephenson (London, 1877); Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, vols. 10–11, ed. M. D. George (London, 1952).

85 The Times, 17 June 1791, 3, col. c.

86 Millingen, History of Dueling, 2:84.

87 When Trant took careful aim at Sir John Conway in 1787, Conway protested to his second, “By the Lord, that damned Jesuit will shoot me!” A moment later he was dead (The Times, 14 April 1829, 3, col. b). The Times reported in 1827 that persons of distinction were attending a pistol gallery in the Haymarket and noted that it would tell against them in court if they ever happened to kill in a duel (The Times, 30 March 1827, 3, col. b).

88 Here cited from Sabine, Notes On Duels and Duelling, 31–34.

89 Ibid., 32.

90 Sir Barrington, Jonah, Personal Sketches of His Own Time (New York, 1853), 300Google Scholar.

91 The Times, 6 June 1789, 3, col. a.

92 Millingen, History of Dueling, 2:136.

93 The Times, 30 August 1839, 5, col. c.

94 The Times, 22 May 1839, 5, col. f; The Times, 24 December 1839, 8, col. b.

95 The Times, 11 December 1839, 4, col. e.

96 The Times, 11 October 1803, 3, col. a.

97 The Times, 10 October 1805, 4, col. a.

98 The Times, 16 June 1828, 6, col. f.

99 “Much as the modern French duel is ridiculed by certain smart people, it is in reality one of the most dangerous institutions of our day. Since it is always fought in the open air, the combatants are nearly sure to catch cold.” Twain, Mark, A Tramp Abroad, 2 vols. (London, 1880), 1:55Google Scholar. Iacop Gelli asserted that there were 3,918 duels in Italy between 1879 and 1899, which resulted in a mere twenty deaths. Cited by Hughes, Steven, “Men of Steel: Dueling, Honour and Politics in Liberal Italy,” in Spierenberg, Men and Violence, 64–81, 73Google Scholar.