Quote:
Originally Posted by douglas denny
I had a guided tour around 'Spice Island' in Old Portsmouth once; and was told the last 'offical' duel (with pistols) was carried out outside a pub which is just a few yards down from the 'Still and West' pub which is right at the end of Old Portsmouth.
Cannot remember the names of the duellists,or the date... or the outcome.
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I think this was the last fatal duel in England in 1845, but I have always believed it was fought close to where Clarence Pier now stands.
However this may be wrong. I found this on the net regarding Gosport.
Ahead is the Browndown firing range, a scene of military desolation with rusty narrow-gauge railways leading to huge shingle butts. It is an eerie landscape which has been used for military training for more than 300 years. Perhaps it is appropriate that it is the site of the last recorded duel between Englishmen, when Lt Hawkey of the Royal Marines fired at and mortally wounded Capt Seton of the 11th Dragoons to settle a matter of honour.
That's not quite right though. Englishmen certainly fought later duels abroad where the authorities were more relaxed about such matters, and quite right too.
Treitschke upholds the honour of the duel and lambasts late-Victorian England where, he claims, officers were involved in an unseemly fistfight in a railway carriage.
In today's gay-infested army it would probably be dildos at dawn.