LAST FATAL DUEL IN SCOTLAND

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3717, 2 November 1926, Page 2

LAST FATAL DUEL IN SCOTLAND

A ROMEO-AHD-JULIET ENDING The centenary of what was probably the last fatal duel in Scotland falls to-day (says the London ‘ Observer ’ of August 22). It was fought in a field on the farm of Cardenbarns, Auchterderran, near Kirkcaldy, Fifesldre, a short distance from the _ spot where, four years previously, Sir Alexander Boswell, of Auchinleck, sou of Johnson’s biographer, was shot by James Stuart, of Duncarn. In the duel of August 22, 1829, the combatants were Mr David Laudale, a Kirkcaldy bleacher and merchant, and Mr George Morgan, the agent of the Kirkcaldy branch of the Bank of Scotland. A few months ago, it may he recalled, Sir Michael Nairn, Burt., presented to the Kirkcaldy Museum a grim relic of this historic encounter, in the form of a case of pistols said to have been used in the duel. Mr Laudale, the survivor of the duel —Morgan was mortally hurt and died almost immediately—was arrested, and a lew -<eeks later stood his trial at Perth on a charge of causing the death of the hanker, but was honorably acquitted. The quarrel arose out of certain statements circulated by Mr Morgan to Mr Landale’s discredit. When Mr Lnjidale repudiated these statements the hanker demanded satisfaction, and on meeting Mr Laudale in a public place insulted him and struck him with an umbrella. Mr Morgan had not only refused to apologise, but fired at his opponent before the word had been given. At the trial public feeling and the evidence were overwhelmingly on the side of the prisoner, and the jury, without troubling to retire, brought in a verdict of "Not guilty,” the judge, Lord Gillies, complimenting him on leaving the court with his “ character honorable and unsullied.” For more than a generation thereafter Mr Landale continued to live in Kirkcaldy, well known and greatly esteemed. The Bogwell-Stuart duel was woven into the lasting fabric of literary romance when Sir Walter Scott made it the basis for his duel scene in ‘St. liohau’s Well.’ But the Landale-Mor-gan duel might have provided the more really romantic subject had Scott been spared and able to make use of the 1829 incident, for another Mr Morgan, nephew of the dead hanker, to whose post he succeeded, afterwards fell in love with and married Mr Landale’s daughter.