DUEL FORESTALLED

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 193, 30 July 1932, Page 7 (Supplement)

DUEL FORESTALLED

RAPIERS CONSFISCATED BY POLICE. HONOUR TO BE SATISFIED AFTER APOLOGY. Intervention by the police at the eleventh hour brought to an abrupt termination a “duel” that had been arranged between a former Cambridge undergraduate and an American living in Cambridge (states an English exchange). With their seconds, who carried with them buttonless foils, the “duellists” met in a field near Girton College shortly after daybreak. They then discovered that the police had arrived before them. Their weapons were confiscated, and so the affair was settled.

The challenged party was Mr. John Davenport, an ex-undergraduate, who is a prominent member of the Footlights Club at Cambridge. “The challenge,’ Mr. Davenport explained, “arose out of a paragraph which was published in a ’I arsity weekly paper.

THE CHALLENGE. “The American considered that it was offensive to him, and he challenged the writer of it to fight him with rapiers. The writer is a friend of mine and he asked me to act as his second. “Finally, as he is an undergraduate and I am not, I offered to accept tho .challenge myself. “We met in a field near Girton College. There were six of us—the American, with three seconds and myself, with one. “ Wo had rapiers, the points of which had been specially sharpened. “When we reached the duelling ground we found the police already there. A friend of the challenger had told them. “The police treated the whole affair as as joke. They were very nice and friendly, but the superintendent took away our foils. As we could not fight we all went away and had breakfast together. “I understand that an apology is to he published, and we all consider that kunvur has been completely satisfied.