The British Big-Game Hunting Tradition ... - LA84 Foundation

The Sports Historian No. 20 (1) 

70 

THE BRITISH BIG-GAME 

HUNTING TRADITION, 

MASCULINITY AND 

FRATERNALISM WITH 

PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO 

THE ‘THE SHIKAR CLUB’ 

Callum McKenzie 

University of Strathclyde 

Introduction 

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the 

twentieth century, a number of organisations were marshalled to protect, 

encourage or celebrate the killing of wildlife for sport. One such association, 

The Shikar Club, symbolised the virility of British imperial big-game 

hunting, a recreation which was increasingly contrasted with the artificial 

and emasculated sport to be had in the battue1 or fox-hunting in Britain, 

sports which by this time were suffering from varying degrees of plutocratic 

excess, urban decadence, industrial encroachment and, for some, the 

presence of women. 

Although the idea of an international sporting club had been mooted 

during the 1850s, to provide a forum for ‘comrades to discuss exploits in 

the field,’ 2 the belated emergence of the Shikar Club in 1908 may have 

reflected the difficulty of masculine and individualistic men conforming 

to club mentality. 3 The establishment in 1908 of the Shikar Club and 

Wildfowlers Association of Great Britain and Ireland, for manly types 

who pursued wildfowl on estuaries and foreshore, may also have reflected 

the perceived moral and humanitarian threats to big-game hunting and 

wildfowl shooting, sports which underpinned mainstream masculinity at 

this time. 

The Sports Historian, No. 20, 1 (May, 2000), pp. 70-96 

PUBLISHED BY THE BRITISH SOCIETY OF SPORTS HISTORY

'The Shikar Club' 

Although big-hunting has been portrayed as a solitary sport by historians, 4 

there were elements of fraternal association which became manifest in 

men’s sporting clubs, an area of research peculiarly lacking in the social 

sciences. 5 This paper will examine the British big-game hunting tradition 

and the development of the Shikar Club, to the 1930s, and the influence of 

big-game hunting and the associated moral imperatives of masculinity on 

the lives of some of its members. 

The Shikar Club and the British Big-Game Hunting Tradition. 

Given the continuity of masculine values from public school, university 

and the military, it is unsurprising that the Shikar Club was founded by 

former pupils of Eton and Rugby. Charles Edward Radclyffe and 

P.B.Vanderbyl 6 were both pupils at Eton during the 1870s, whilst Frederick 

Courtney Selous was at Rugby during the 1860s. 7 All three men attained 

the rank of captain in the British army, and, in keeping with military 

convention, married in later life, concentrating as young officers on 

soldiering and big-game shooting. 8 The Shikar Club established in 1907, 

remained a focus for military men, at least until the 1930s, when even then 

about half of the associations members were drawn from high-ranking 

officers, typified by father and son Brigadier-General Claude De Crespigny 

and Major Vivian De Crespigny of Champion Lodge, Heybridge in Essex. 9 

Sir Claude de Crespigny excelled in a variety of sports, and remained in 

later life, ‘one of the hardest and pluckiest men in England...ready to box, 

ride, walk, run, shoot (at birds for preference now), fence, sail or swim with 

any one of over fifty years on equal terms.’ 10 He lived according to spartan 

values, and enjoyed in particular shooting, riding, boxing, swimming, 

ballooning, sailing, pedestrianism and ‘a cold tub before breakfast’. 11 

Claude Crespigny clearly approached challenging situations with the 

same characteristic vigour, and was once observed by fellow club member 

and imperialist, Alfred Pease, ‘assisting’ in the hanging of three criminals 

as, ‘he would not care to ask a man to do what he himself was afraid of 

doing himself.’ 12 Aristocratic sporting pleasures and military duty, according 

to De Crespigny, went hand in hand, arguing that every able-bodied 

Briton had an obligation to defend his country and could not be considered 

a ‘man’ till he had done so. ‘Feather-bed aristocrats’, particularly those 

who declined duty were likened to the effeminate French aristocracy, and, 

in his view, had no place in the British social hierarchy. 13 

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De Crespigny senior served in both the Royal Navy (1860-5) and the 

Army, (1866-70) and, despite his advancing years, was anxious to play an 

active part in the Boer War. His son’s military success in the war was, 

according to his father, the result of the family’s predilection for field 

sports and riding: ‘men who have been good sportsmen at home are the 

men who will do best and show the greatest amount of resource when on 

active service.’ 14 Unsurprisingly, therefore, as was the convention, De 

Crespigny used field sports as a means of consolidating friendships with 

other high-ranking military officials. 15 Military life with field sports might 

have provided army careers, but it provoked condemnation from Humanitarians 

opposed to both. 16 However, Humanitarian criticism of soldier and 

huntsman, in a climate of rampant imperialism, 17 undermined its credibility 

and stigmatised the movement. Henry Salt, for example, reduced the 

effectiveness of his animal welfare programme by challenging the underlying 

ethos of masculinity upon which field sports rested. 18 Advocates of 

gun and hound protested that opposition to their manly pursuits was led by 

urban-based pacifists who led ‘effeminate and aesthetic lives’, and who 

had acquired a ‘righteous horror’ of anything involving the death of an 

animal. 19 Such ‘morbid enthusiasts’ were more vociferous, such advocates 

noted, during periods of national languor, an affliction which, according 

to Baily’s Magazine, assisted the Humanitarians’ ultimate objectives, 

namely the emasculation of British manhood and the end of war and 

nationalism. 20 

Scottish deer hunting was held up as a example of ‘masculine virtue’ over 

the ‘effeminate’ disregard for nation-hood. 21 Sir Ian Colquhoun, 22 a noted 

authority on Scottish deer-stalking used the sport as the ultimate test of 

masculine identity despite the increase in the use of stalkers and ghillies 

to assist in the hunt. 23 He lamented that contemporary youth had lost the 

tradition of hardihood, and were ‘fundamentally soft, and not the least 

ashamed of it. If they are tired, they say so with disarming frankness; if they 

are wet and cold and unwilling to suffer futher discomfort, they do not 

hesitate to let the stalker know.’ 24 Henry Seton-Karr 25 argued that those 

‘unpatriotically’ seeking to limit deer preservation in Scotland lacked 

‘virility and robustness.’ 26 Seton-Karr, like many others from his class, 

held that masculine identity was bound to nation-hood, and that ‘no race 

of men possess this desire more strongly than the Anglo-Saxons of the 

British Isles. This passion is an inherited instinct, which civilisation cannot 

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eradicate, of a virile and dominant race, and it forms a healthy natural 

antidote to the enervating refinements of modern life.’ 27 Nationalistic 

shibboleths emphasising personal and national regeneration through hunting 

underpinned the ideology of the Shikar Club. F.C. Selous, for example, 

argued that the British range of discovery and exploration should not be 

inhibited out of deference to the ‘delicate feelings’ of the anti-imperialists. 

28 Hunting, shooting, coursing, fishing were ‘natural outlets for masculine 

energy,’ which, of according to the Shikar Club’s first chairman, 

Hugh Cecil Lowther, 29 maintained Britain’s reputation as a virile and 

martial nation. 30 

The Shikar Club embodied and institutionalised this morally exalted 

position, extending it to include the concept of ‘fair-play’ as a peculiarly 

British invention. During the year of the Club’s inception, for example, 

Abel Chapman, 31 expressed the view, held by many upper-class men, that 

the ‘Boers did not understand the elementary significance of our British 

term, “sport”. No sense of respect for game, no admiration of its grace and 

beauty ever penetrated minds debased by decades of slaughter.’ 32 The Club 

considered itself an arbiter of ‘fair-play,’ in field sports being committed 

to maintaining ‘the standard of sportsmanship which has been handed 

down from the past’, a tradition which included restraint in the killing of 

game and other wildlife.(Emphasis added). 33 Humanitarians, of course, 

viewed the influence of ‘tradition’ in a different light; Henry Salt, for 

example, noted sardonically the amount of ‘sheer, untempered barbarism’ 

that characterised the sporting elite, adding that the ‘trouble is not so much 

that they are in reality savage, as that they suppose themselves to be 

civilised.’ Lowther however, was ‘proud of tradition in all its forms’ and 

felt ‘sportsmanship’ was a vital part of this hunting tradition and an 

influence on character formation. 35 Unsurprisingly, sports which deviated 

from the sporting code, such as trap pigeon shooting, were officially 

denounced by the Club. 36 As we shall see, driven-game shooting was 

similarly condemned. 

This role as forum for ‘fair-play’ in shooting derived from the chivalric and 

virtuous tradition of the elite British hunter-naturalist. That elite shots 

were becoming aware of their unique identities as ‘pioneering’ men is 

clear from contemporary sporting literature. In 1861, one hunter advised 

adventurous and hardy sportsmen to visit ‘brother sportsmen in America,’ 

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whilst others described their sporting peers in terms of a ‘ united freemasonry 

of true friends’. 37 Public fascination with hunting and big-game 

strengthened the myths associated with the virile stereotype of the frontiersman. 

By the 1860s, travelling shots were boasting of the authenticity 

of overseas sports. By now, a mass of sporting literature appeared aimed 

at inducing hunters to the Americas. Parker Gillmore’s Experiences of a 

Sportsman in North America, (1869) was written to ‘encourage British 

sportsmen to America, provided they were of the right stamp, and didn’t 

mind roughing it in search of sport.’ 38 Toughening sports in the New World 

fitted into prevailing notions of upper-middle class masculinity, since 

shooting there was unsuitable for the ‘feather-bed sportsman, or the 

shirker of hard work...provided you have the constitution, make a try, and 

on your return, you will recall with pleasure the hardships and misadventures 

you have gone through, for without an odd contretemps, we should 

become a very unimaginative, unambitious, namby-pamby lot, unfit for 

wear and tear, bustle and excitement, that all must endure before their 

course is run.’ 39 In Captain Flack’s Hunters Experiences in the Southern 

States of America (1866), hunting provided both physical and mental 

endurance, enabling the hunter to face bodily dangers and difficulties so 

discouraging to ‘men of weaker mould.’ 40 New sporting opportunities in 

the States provided virile sportsmen with an appropriate venue to display 

their economic advantages and physical prowess. Grantley Berkeley 41 

travelled from Liverpool to the States in August, 1859, returning in 

December in order to reveal to the ‘rich and rising, adventurous and hardy 

sportsmen’ the limitless hunting opportunities available to English sportsmen 

in America. 42 That Britain had ample sportsmen ready to take up the 

challenge of sport in the States was cited as evidence of the moral and 

physical superiority of the ‘established over the newer civilisations’. 43 

Given the emasculation of fox-hunting and the rise of driven-game 

shooting in Britain at this time, the United States, Africa, India and parts 

of Asia provided new and testing locations for British sportsmen after the 

1850s. Some historians have noted the development of new and more 

compassionate attitudes towards wildlife in Britain led by the urban 

middle-class. 44 Others have argued that the more savage aspects of foxhunting 

were ameliorated by a change in emphasis from killing the quarry 

to watching the dogs perform and the chase itself. 45 Arguably, such 

changes in the function of fox hunting were accompanied by a gradual 

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dissatisfaction with sporting opportunities in England, as industrial and 

urban encroachment and ‘plutocratic’ game shooting threatened to emasculate 

the more rigorous aspects of shooting and hunting with dogs. 46 

Driven-game shooting, for example had been stigmatised as ‘un-British, 

humiliating, effeminate and selfish’. 47 The sixty per cent increase in the 

number of gamekeepers between 1860 and 1900 was evidence of the 

controlled and synthetic nature of shooting as well as the influence of the 

plutocrat in the countryside, a situation in which shooting was often given 

priority over farming. 48 Advocates of more physically testing sport noted 

that shooting in England had become ‘artificial,’ and, despite testing 

marksmanship, failed to provide real ‘satisfaction’ in comparison to the 

hunting of ‘wild beasts and birds.’ 49 

Alternatively, overseas hunting was labelled ‘real sport’, in which the 

pursuit of wild animals on their own ‘primeval and ancestral ground, as yet 

unannexed and unappropriated in any way by man,’ assumed a mythical 

identity heightened by the masculine skills required to conquer it. 50 

Accordingly, ‘to find true wild pagan sport, such as stirs the blood and 

brings to the top the hardiest and manliest instincts in human nature, one 

must go to the hills of Northern India or the wildernesses of tropical 

Africa.’ 51 In these wild places, the urban restrictions of England were 

irrelevant, enabling the sportsman the space to leave ‘at least 25 miles 

between himself and the next hunter’. 52 

The Shikar Club therefore, was a product of a hunting tradition and became 

an institutional focus for socially powerful men who upheld the traditions 

of ‘true’ masculine shooting in which merit was derived from effort and 

respect for game and habitat. The Club rejected ‘squandered bullets and 

swollen bags,’ preferring a more cerebral approach to hunting which 

incorporated ‘a love of forest, mountain and desert; in acquired knowledge 

of the habits of animals;in the strenuous pursuit of an active and dangerous 

quarry; in the instinct for a well-devised approach to a fair shooting 

distance.’ 53 It was this ‘clean sport’ based on ‘pluck and chivalry’ which 

had built up the British Empire. 54 Those aspects of field sports which did 

not test physical prowess were sometimes derided by hardened shots. 

Trout-fishing, for example, ‘amused the ladies’, whilst grouse shooting 

was ‘a picnic on the moor.’ 55 Another Club member asserted that indiscriminate 

shooting of game without effort, softened by hot luncheons and 

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gun-loaders, was no way to acquire ‘fieldcraft’, 56 a requirement for all 

reputable shots. 57 C.V.A. Peel 58 dedicated his sporting book, Somali land, 

(1900) to his father, Charles Peel, who he proudly described as ‘a crack 

shot in the true sportsmanlike method of walking up birds with the aid of 

dogs, a clever rifle-shot, and a superb fly-fisherman.’ 59 

For such men, ‘real sport’, was a release for ‘blood-lust’, which contributed 

in some way to their innate sense of masculine identity. According to 

a Club stalwart, this lust to kill was not a product of social and economic 

advantage, but an instinctive phenomenon evident in ‘real’ men despite 

the emasculating tendencies of ‘civilisation’. 60 Other exponents of gun and 

hound argued that this ‘community of blood,’ tied by ‘sporting blood-lust’, 

was apparent in all classes of men. 61 For Henry Seton-Karr, the desire to 

obtain a ‘good head’ resulted from man’s predatory instincts in which the 

pursuit and ‘slaughter’ of wild game was a ‘perfectly natural healthy and 

widespread trait of humanity, even necessary in some cases, for health and 

happiness and probably intended as an antidote to the purple and fine linen 

and sumptuous fare of refined civilisations’. 62 The graphic, rational and 

unemotional written descriptions of ‘the kill’ was one way in which the 

hunter could distance himself and his sport from the moral criticisms of 

‘civilisation’. Maurice Egerton, 63 for example, described one foray : 

‘stalked an ‘old ram,’ on which one horn measured 33 inches, ‘so I decided 

to have him set up whole. What a difference to pheasant shooting this 1st 

of October!’ 64 Two days later, he killed another ram at 130 yards, ‘shot 

through the spine and kidney...small head, 22 inches, still very pretty and 

symmetrical.’ 65 In a sporting foray, Abel Chapman, extolled the virtues of 

his new express rifle, in combat with a ‘much coveted big beast...with head 

and neck exposed at 80 yards, his white ruff gave a splendid mark, and I 

dwelt on the aim. The express bullet struck to an inch of where I intended, 

the beast staggered and I saw he was mine. I spotted a second big buck-I 

planted the second barrel ball in his shoulder...when next I looked he was 

dead... a right and left for the first shots of my new express!! He is the most 

splendid beast I ever killed.’ 66 By masking big-game hunting in a 

pseudoscientific language, the sport was distanced from the non-experts 

and others of tender sensibilities. It also distinguished elite hunting from 

mere barbarism by necessitating a ‘civilised’ understanding of wildlife, 

habitats and hunting environments, attributes which capable and educated 

shooting men were expected to possess. The Club’s function in promoting 

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shooting at various international sporting exhibitions throughout Europe 

was one manifestation of the powerful international status of big-game 

hunting. 67 More than this, linking trophies with sporting art and relics 

enhanced the reputation of hunting as a refined and artistic phenomenon. 

Lord Desborough, Lonsdale, the President of the Shikar Club, and T.L. 

Fairholme, along with C.E. Fagan of the British Museum comprised the 

British delegation, which competed against the Austrian and German 

Empires in 1910. 68 The plethora of sporting exhibitions at this time was one 

expression of the importance of male- dominated hunting within national 

and cultural ‘identities’. 69 The Glasgow Exhibition of 1901, for example, 

was sardonically described as a ‘testament to the skill of the Englishman 

in Scotland’s sporting grounds.’ 70 

Although some men indulged in both big-game and domestic shooting, a 

subtle hierarchy emerged in which shots who took most risks in challenging 

more dangerous quarry species were singled out for especial praise. 71 

The veneration of successful big-game shots was reinforced by numerous 

written accounts of big-game hunting which emphasised the contest 

between strong men and wild beasts. Club member, Dennis Lyell, 72 for 

example, reiterated the peerless virtues of Captain Charles Hugh Stigand, 

who narrowly escaped death from rhinos, lion and elephant during various 

safaris, even punching a rogue lion who had him in a death grip! 73 Hunting 

hierarchies were implied from expertise in killing particular beasts and the 

type and calibre of weapon used. Samuel Baker, for example was revered 

for his criticism of ‘easy’ sport, and lamented that shooting had become a 

‘safe luxury’ with the introduction of the breech-loading rifle and the 

demise of the muzzle-loading gun. 74 Denis Lyell and Charles Stigand only 

used the .256 Mannlicher and .318 rifles for elephant hunting, thereby 

fulfilling the test of the ‘true’ hunter which required fieldcraft to be 

sufficiently close to the beast before killing it with an accurate shot to the 

vital organs. 75 

The Men of the Club 

Alfred Edward Pease, 76 was one of a number of Shikar Club members who 

rejected urban values in favour of rural life and sports despite dependency 

on industrial capitalism to support his lifestyle. 77 The family background 

was Quaker, closely associated with iron-mining near Middlesborough. 78 

During his Quaker childhood, despite the prohibition on dancing, novels 

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and music, field sports were not condemned, enabling Pease to fish, shoot 

and hunt throughout his youth. 79 Pease transferred his sporting proclivities 

to Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he excelled at football, 

athletics, cricket and hunting. 80 Fellow Club member, Robert Lyons 

Scott 81 also utilised industrial income to devote himself to big-game 

hunting. Such was his dedication to the hunting cult, that he singlehandedly 

furnished Greenock’s natural history museum with trophies 

between the 1890s and his death in 1939. 82 Interestingly, Robert Lyons 

Scott, Maurice Egerton and Abel Chapman, remained unmarried and were 

heavily influenced by their respective fathers, all of whom were committed 

travellers in search of sport and adventure. 83 Despite the restrictions of 

World War One, Scott shot, fished and collected in 1914 and 1915 in every 

Continent of the World. 

Whilst Scott’s personal image and public integrity was enhanced by his 

lust for hunting, Pease’s unconventional views on the Empire and shooting 

were unpopular in some quarters. The Spectator, for example, found ‘no 

fault with Mr Pease provided he keeps himself to his role of sportsman and 

traveller. When he leaves this as he is fond of doing, to instruct us in the 

grave matters of conduct and belief, he is less to be admired.’ 84 By 

advocating the colonisation of Africa for outdoor pursuits well away from 

the unwholesome influence of the plutocrat and asserting that the workingclasses 

could shoot big-game by diverting drinking expenditure towards 

travel and recreation, Pease gave new and often unwelcome meaning to 

notions of self-help. 85 His enlightened admiration for native cultures, 

futhermore, impugned an unsympathetic and prejudiced conservative 

opinion preoccupied with the notion of the ‘savage’, a concept which 

found ample expression through the hunting experience. 86 The notion of 

the safari, for example, appealed to upper-class Victorian and Edwardian 

prejudices by enabling the imposition of metropolitan racial and sporting 

values onto ‘lower races’. 87 Abel Chapman was able to assert with 

confidence that the ‘mob of savages’ required to attend a safari needed 

discipline to ensure a successful hunt. 88 His observation that natives were 

‘unalterably ‘lazy’ similarly endorsed the notion of hunting as a feature of 

European colonisation which reinforced moral and assumed physical 

divisions between virile and “other” inferior cultures, which was subsequently 

woven into the fabric of colonial ideology and given an aura of 

respectability. 89 In addition, many Victorian observers attacked the utili- 

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tarian killing of wildlife by natives because it lacked the ‘training and 

testing’ so essential for upper-class masculine identity. 90 Non-white shots 

inexcusably preferred to shoot game-birds sitting, because they were 

easier to kill... ‘skill and the exercise of it present no advantages. When he 

goes to shoot, he tries to kill as many birds as possible.’ 91 African field 

sports were described by one Victorian observer as savage, uncivilised, 

and ignorant, lacking in both refinement and ‘enlightenment’. 92 More than 

this, native inability to master the environment and the dangerous animals 

within it was construed as evidence of feebleness and lack of manly 

control. 93 Physical qualities, such as ‘endurance in the sun’ and ‘running 

from beasts’, as noted by one shot, was trivialised and dismissed because 

it had no moral purpose. 94 This flawed manhood was contrasted with 

European shots who had mastered the physical environment and its 

inherent dangers, achievements based on rationality, morality qualities, 

intelligence and physical ability. Consequently, native inadequacies in the 

face of wild beasts was seized upon by many European shots, eager to 

promote their role as guardians of the vulnerable. Richard Arkwright, 95 for 

example, was ‘amused when a rogue elephant ran amok amongst the 

kaffirs, and I watched them running up trees to hide. I eventually shot the 

beast, much to the delight of the kaffirs, and left them to the fat, abounding 

in their glory.’ 96 It was not until the early twentieth century that the African 

male received recognition of his skill with the gun. 97 

Although European shots readily criticised the moral and physical deficiencies 

of ‘inferior races’, loss of prowess with their own guns occasioned 

alarm. Shooting big-game in Norway in 1897, for example, Abel Chapman 

lost his ‘level head and fired too quick...both eyes open...fatal...an ignominious 

miss-disgrace. Oh Abel, is nerve and eye beginning to fail? If so 

farewell to the rifle! But may God forbid!’ 98 Chapman required a strong 

physique, as he devoted himself entirely to shooting, fishing and natural 

history after selling the family brewery-business in 1897. 99 His trophies 

represented a ‘long-series of the most strenuous endeavour, of tremendous 

hard work, plus the risk of adventuring into unknown regions, where we 

had no certainty of success or failure.’ 100 Like many hunting men, he 

considered himself a pioneer, and basked in the reflected glory of the 

‘frontiersman.’ ‘Searching’ for red-deer, wild-boar, lynx and other game, 

for example, he travelled the ‘distant Sierras and other remote areas of 

Spain’, which took him into ‘wholly unknown districts, wherein (so far as 

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Englishmen were concerned), we were actually pioneers.’ 101 Chapman’s 

rhetoric was supported by his appetite for travel and sport. He made 23 

hunting trips to Spain and Portugal, 46 to Scandinavia, including 

Spitzbergen, plus forays into France, Morocco, and Scotland, the Shetlands 

and Outer Hebrides, as well as occasional visits to the North American 

Continent. 102 That Alfred Pease was still able to locate wild and unexplored 

regions in Abyssinia for the purposes of hunting during the 1900s, 

perpetuated the masculine tradition of elite hunting during this period of 

challenge to the continuity of mainstream masculinity and its values. 103 

Accordingly, noted Club member, John G. Millais, reiterated in 1919 that 

it was the ‘sporting pioneer’ who had established the British Empire, since 

their ‘initial spearhead of courage and noble conduct was the apex of all 

future advancement. If these men were not our very best gentlemen, 

progress would have been lost to other nations.’ 104 

The Shikar Club included explorers, naturalists, authors and royalty. It 

provided a wide-range of middle and upper-class men with an opportunity 

to be ‘campfire chums, to cement friendships and revive memories of 

golden-days.’ 105 Many members of the Club provided large amounts of 

contemporary published shooting literature, including C.W.L. Bulpett, 

C.V. A. Peel, H.C. Maydon and H.A. Bryden. 106 In these ways, exploits in 

the field could be retold, a means of reinforcing distinct gender roles, clear 

gender identities and the security of superior separateness, since female 

experience in big-game hunting, such as it was, had not received sanction 

through any recognised association. 107 Big-game hunting experience was 

essentially for men. Henry Seton-Karr, asserted that his sporting articles 

were aimed at the ‘fraternity’ of fishing and shooting men, and that they 

had been ‘well-received by brother sportsmen’. Writing them, he noted 

was ‘pleasant work, since we all like to fight our battles over again.’ 108 

Reminiscences were also an important medium for indoctrinating the 

young into hunting and strengthening the imperial message. As noted by 

Lowther, the principal objective of the Shikar Club was the unification of 

‘hunting men, young and old, with the Empire-maker, whether soldier or 

civilian, and the humble globe-trotter who carries a gun.’(Emphasis 

added). 109 Accordingly, Sir Arthur Vivian, aged 75, rejoiced to see so many 

young sportsmen at the Club’s second annual meet, ‘ready to testify to the 

joys of a hunter’s life and to the blessing of health which resulted from the 

pursuit.’ 110 Fatherly expertise with the gun produced a similar devotion in 

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their offspring. Sir Robert Loder, an expert rider-to hounds and exponent 

of the sporting gun, was seen as a ‘good example’ of the Victorian country 

gentleman, emotionally undemonstrative, a good husband, father, administrator, 

‘exacting good conduct and regular habits from those over whom 

he was placed.’ 111 

Recreational hunting created and perpetuated enduring male-friendships, 

which fitted functionally into contemporary notions of male-bonding. 112 

Henry Seton-Karr, for example, remained close to many of his shooting 

colleagues throughout his life. In his view, shooting with other men 

produced a bond unequalled in any other social interaction. 113 Abel 

Chapman recorded his ‘close, constant and faithful’ friendship with 

Walter Buck and his son, Bertie, of Jerez, Spain, which lasted ‘without 

break or wrong-thought’ between March, 1872 and April 1917. 114 Similarly, 

Alfred Pease and Edmund G. Loder remained lifelong friends after 

an Eton education, often meeting each other in some outpost when 

hunting. 115 Respect between ‘guns’ was not only a consequence of a shared 

class identity, but an admiration for physically competent men, who 

combined a rational understanding of wildlife and the environment with 

marksmanship and emotional self-control. According to Pease, Edmund 

Loder and his six brothers, for example, represented the ideal of Victorian 

manhood, distinguishable by their ardour, vitality and attainment in 

outdoor pursuits, particularly shooting and athletics. 116 

Although big-game shooting endorsed the moral superiority of the masculine 

tradition, it was essential that hunting encompassed ‘civilised’ and 

‘gentlemanly’ values, necessary for social and moral leadership. In this 

way, the gentleman shot reinforced his social hegemony by confronting 

the wilderness and its animals, whilst retaining social behaviour suitable 

for leadership. Maurice Egerton, for example, tempered his sporting trips 

to the frontier with frequent visits to the theatre, music halls, society 

meetings and church. 117 Lord Lonsdale shot at Malakand whilst enjoying 

the cultural refinements of India and China at the turn of the century. 118 

The Shikar Club was not, of course, a homogenous association, but a 

striking symmetry existed between the lives of some of its members. 

Egerton, Chapman and Pease had a healthy aversion to urban culture, and 

all devoted themselves to big-game hunting, game-fishing and the acquisition 

and collation of hunting trophies. 119 Egerton was dedicated to 

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adventure, and had an aversion to feminine and domestic values. During 

his formative years, he befriended Richard Burton, a well-known hunterexplorer. 

120 Burton (Eton, Sandhurst and College of Agriculture, 

Cheltenham) was described as ‘a crack shot, a fine boxer, afraid of nothing 

that either walked, flew or swam’, 121 and once remarked that ‘every region 

is a strong man’s home.’ 122 The essence of Burton’s philosophy is captured 

in this extract from his biography, 

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‘’Wanted: Men. 

Not systems fit and wise, 

Not faiths with rigid eyes, 

Not wealth in mountain piles, 

Not power with gracious smiles, 

Not even the potent pen; 

Wanted, Men. 

‘’Wanted: Deeds. 

Not words of winning note, 

Not thoughts from life remote, 

Not fond religious airs, 

Not sweetly languid prayers, 

Not love of scent and creeds; 

Wanted: Deeds. 

‘’Men and Deeds. 

Men that can dare and do; 

Not longing for the new, 

Not pratings of the old: 

Good life and action bold - 

These the occasion needs, 

Men and Deeds.’’ 123 

Egerton developed a passion for shooting under the influence of his father, 

Alan Egerton, an enthusiastic shot and traveller. During the 1890s, both 

men were in South Africa hunting big-game, but included some military 

action against the Matebele tribe in 1896. 124 Maurice’s preoccupation with 

masculine values manifested itself in a patriarchal welfare programme for 

boys, notable for the marginalising of females. Boys from all classes were 

instructed in countryside activities, mirroring the priority given to manly 

activities for the young within the Edwardian Scout movement. 125 This


philosophy relied on, according to one contemporary, ‘military and moral 

discipline and sheer fun... it takes the zest of fishing, birds-nesting, 

collecting and all field sports and joins to them the delight of games and 

the romance of adventure stories. Close observation of the countryside 

includes knowing how to stalk and take cover. The boys trained in this way 

are by way of becoming an aristocracy, morally, physically and intellectually, 

with the added charm of brotherhood.’ 126 It was appropriate that 

Egerton supervised the schemes as, according to a contemporary maxim, 

manliness for boys should be taught by ‘men, not half men’. 127 The lessons 

of woodcraft and tracking were widely seen as an essential prerequisite for 

the future shot. According to one noted ‘shot’, such training encouraged 

the young to search out ‘foreign countries’ in order to ‘experience the 

exhilaration of nobler sports than we can find at home.’ 128 Unsurprisingly 

then, Egerton insisted that instruction was given in rabbit-shooting, how 

to use firearms, canoeing, swimming and walking on the estate. Boys from 

less wealthy backgrounds could now learn the values of ‘fair play’ in 

relation to field sports. When rabbit-shooting, for example, Egerton 

asserted that his young charges used only a .22 rifle, to give the quarry a 

reasonable chance of escape without being ruined by small shot. 129 

Academically able boys were helped towards special training, or even 

university. A fortunate few were even sent overseas for holidays. Egerton 

also financed Salford Lads Club, and the Cheshire Association of Boys 

Clubs. 130 Knutsford Town Hall was redeveloped into a sports equipment 

repository to be used by the boys of Cheshire. Viewing and studying 

Egerton’s collection of bows, arrows and knives, rare birds eggs and 

natural history specimens he had acquired on his hunting trips were an 

integral part of the programme. 131 

Egerton’s ‘patriarchal’ schemes continued the tradition of welfare which 

had been a feature of Tatton estate life during the nineteenth century. The 

Rostherne Boys School was owned and financed by his father, Alan 

Egerton. Fieldsports on the estate sometimes interrupted boys’ schooling, 

as did field sports. In March, 1878, for example, boys were allowed 

holidays to assist with the Cheshire Hounds meet at Bucklow Hill, whilst 

in December, 1884, boys’ attendance at school was ‘poor’ as many were 

needed to beat ‘the covers’ for two days. 132 Egerton subsequently maintained 

links with Knutsford Grammar School, where he oversaw the Rifle 

and Drill Corp. in the years prior to 1914. 133 

83


Matthew Egerton’s spartan and disciplined approach to life was reflected 

in a meticulous, self-reliant approach to hunting when overseas, where his 

hunting trips were invariably physically testing, requiring early starts, 

often accompanied by freezing temperatures and inclement weather. His 

preoccupation with early morning starts was important, as it was seen by 

‘traditionalists’ as a bulwark against moral and physical decadence. 134 The 

attention to detail and scientific observation, by means of barometers and 

telescopes, captured the seriousness of the hunt, distancing it from the 

frivolity of the battue or fox-hunt popular in Britain. Egerton, like many 

big-game shots, sometimes used local men as hunting guides. This 

relationship reflected more than ‘economic’ ascendancy, but imaged the 

hierarchical nature of mens’ relationships in particular settings, in which 

“hegemonic” and “subordinate” “masculinities” can be identified. 135 

Egerton’s quest for game began in earnest in 1900 in Sardinia, chasing 

unusual quarry not yet acquired by himself or other shots. 136 Rising at about 

6 a.m. for a number of weeks, Egerton killed a number of hill-sheep, 

assisted by local shooting guides. Subsequently, he shot in Canada on the 

Klondyke, hunting and fishing near the Campbell River, in pursuit of fish 

and game not available in such numbers on the Continent, such as moose, 

mule deer, muflon, elk and salmon. 137 Egerton kept concise records of the 

best heads from any area he hunted, specifying owner, location and size of 

quarry. Moose antlers were detailed by length to the longest line, circumference 

above the burr, greatest width, points and tip to tip. 138 Writing to 

the curator at South Kensington Museum, Egerton remarked that he was 

the first to shoot a Harvey’s Duiker on Mount Elgon in Kenya. 139 This 

killing of the first of a new game species brought distinction, although 

disputed kills sometimes provoked acrimonious debate, as with Abel 

Chapman and Francis Issacs over ownership of the first Bongo 140 to be shot 

in Central Africa. 141 The quality of the kill also brought merit. Of his first 

Scottish stag, Abel Chapman wrote, ‘curiously, this was the first, and at the 

time, the ONLY stag I had shot in a Scottish forest, yet it comes within the 

first dozen among the thousands of stags that have been shot in Scotland.’ 

142 Chapman also records that his African trophies comprised ‘fine 

examples of all the grandest game-beasts, which stand first on earth.’ 143 

North America, especially Upper Stickeen, the Yukon and Alaska, was a 

popular venue for members of the Shikar Club. 144 P. Van der Byl, Captain 

84


Radclyfe, J.G. Millais, F.C. Selous, and Edmund Loder were the established 

record-holders for these localities. The potential for trophies or 

memorable sport justified the expense and distance of these hunting trips, 

elements which deterred those with insufficient time or means and the 

mere “dilettante”. Since it was the norm for men rather than women to 

travel extensively in search of adventure, it was unsurprising that the 

search for new trophies had few geographical limitations. 145 In September, 

1902, Egerton fished for salmon on the Campbell River, beginning at 6 am, 

and caught a 49lb fish, 3 ft 8 inches in length, with a girth of 2 ft 4 inches. 146 

Others travelled well-beyond North America. Chapman travelled extensively 

in search of records, describing as ‘unique’ the acquisition of the 

‘Royal Mezquitillas’, 147 with ‘curious’ 8 point cast antlers, from the Sierra 

Morena. 148 Chapman shot Norwegian Elk, Newfoundland Caribou, Scottish 

and Spanish deer, during the early 1890s, and acquired some of the 

‘best’ trophies ever taken in Africa. 149 

Despite forays to Nort America, Africa was also Egerton’s first choice as 

a sporting destination. He eventually owned a number of farms and 

plantations at Njora in Kenya, to complement his hunting activities. 150 

From July 1921 to October 1939, Overall, Egerton shot about six-hundred 

head of game for display from the African Continent. 151 There, he developed 

close ties with Ewart Scott Grogan and Hugh Delamere, both 

members of Shikar Club. Grogan had four declared ambitions as a child: 

to slay a lion, rhinoceros and a elephant... and to see Tanganyika. He 

subsequently described his first lion-hunt as the ‘defining moment’ in his 

life. 152 Delamere was Egerton’s neighbour at Vale Royal in Cheshire, but 

disliked the emotional restrictions of English upper-class life. 153 In East 

Africa, he found financial security through farming and big-game hunting. 

He became the first man to penetrate East Africa from the North, instead 

of via Zanzibar and the Arab slave routes. In 1903, Delamere led the 

settlement drive of English aristocrats, including Ewart Grogan, interested 

in perpetuating a feudal lifestyle and developing the economic possibilities 

of East Africa. However, the Shikar Club’s sporting code seems to 

have gone unheeded by Delamere, who used live donkeys as bait for lionshooting 

at night. He also accrued £14000 worth of elephant ivory in one 

year from Kenya. 154 Less controversially, Delamere established the Masara 

Pack, a ‘proper hunt, complete with English foxhounds, redcoats, 

85


huntsman’s caps.’ 155 

Although the cult of shooting and collecting was still extant between the 

wars, there was by this time a greater emphasis on conservation, a 

development reflected within the Shikar Club, which increasingly sought 

the patronage of politically influential sportsmen, such as Robert Coryndon, 

Alfred Sharpe and A.L.Butler, all prominent members of the Society for 

the Preservation of the (Wild) Fauna of the Empire. By 1926, a number of 

distinguished members belonging to the S.P.F.E. had joined the Shikar 

Club, including Lord Elphinstone and Major Wigram of the Kashmir 

Game Preservation Department. 156 During the 1920s, the Club, anxious to 

publicise its role within the burgeoning conservation movement, condemned 

public films showing ‘unethical’ practices, including hunting 

from motor cars and the filming of wounded and dying animals. 157 The 

Committee complained that such practices were ‘utterly opposed to all 

ethics of good sportsmanship, and are liable to give uninitiated members 

of the public an entirely erroneous view of how real sportsmen behave on 

shooting expeditions.’ 158 Alternatively, Major Radclyffe-Dugmore’s production, 

‘The Wonderland of Big-Game’, presented shooting in a skilful 

and artistic way emphasising ‘fair-play’ towards game and an ecological 

awareness: ‘the test of the true hunter lay in his ‘love of forest, mountain 

and desert; in acquired knowledge of the habits of animals; in the strenuous 

pursuit of a wary and dangerous quarry; in the instinct for a well-devised 

approach to a fair shooting distance; and in the patient retrieve of a 

wounded animal.’ 159 However, despite these gestures to conservation, 

many observers remained sceptical about the Club. In February 1925, for 

example, Lonsdale looked to formalise ties with the S.P.F.E, to widen the 

Club’s sphere of influence in conservation politics. This prospect was 

greeted with alarm by many members of the Preservation Society. This, 

together with Lonsdales’s ultimate failure to incorporate the Club into the 

Society, cast doubt on the intentions of those who ostensibly embraced 

conservation whilst at the same time representing themselves as guardians 

of the masculine tradition through hunting. 160 

86


Conclusion 

The establishment of the Shikar Club during a period of transition for 

mainstream masculinity enables certain conclusions to be drawn about the 

relationship between masculine identity and field sports. 161 The Club grew 

out of the nineteenth century masculine tradition of British big-game 

hunting. Although many shots saw their sport as an extension of man’s role 

as a natural predator, 162 the club was clearly the product and celebration of 

cultural values, reflecting the political, social and economic power of 

physically competent, advantaged men. The social and material conditions 

under which elite hunting flourished enabled privileged men to 

indulge in sport sanctioned and legitimised by the wider community. 

Prowess with the gun symbolised ‘national,’ ‘personal’, political, economic 

and moral superiority over ‘others’. Membership of the Shikar Club 

demonstrated that access had been gained to those cultural resources 

which conferred manhood, since definitions of manhood were closely 

connected to these resources. Successful hunters remained the apotheosis 

of an ideal manhood, in both metropolitan and native societies. 163 Those 

who were unable or unwilling to participate in hunting were stigmatised. 

According to Club member, Dennis Lyell, civilisation, with its ‘false 

policy of nurturing the diseased and unfit’, was upsetting the balance of 

nature and threatening British virility. 164 As explained by H.Anderson 

Bryden, big-game hunting was the antidote to the degeneracy of the times, 

which enabled the celebration of great men, usually warriors as well as 

sportsmen. 165 

The Shikar Club was a symbol of ‘public patriarchy’, 166 which perpetuated 

an elite through the killing of wildlife to become part of a wider, subjective 

identity. The Club, in short, was an explicitly masculine organisation in 

which membership signified an advanced degree of manhood, based on 

both achievement in the field, and political and economic and social status. 

The collective consciousness of those men who made up the Shikar Club 

viewed hunting as way of transcending the mediocrity of artificial, 

bourgeois values. This elite was not to be bound by the work ethic or 

subservient to the laws of the market, and consequently sought the dignity 

of manhood and personal worth through leisure and the natural world. The 

dispensing of superfluous luxuries in the wild was another way of rejecting 

the cluttered, urban world of the plutocrat. As explained by Abel Chapman, 

87


‘one reads of pound sterling being paid for antiques or curios...and those 

articles may be worth it too. But we nature lovers enjoy our exquisite 

design, all pure and fresh, without cost.’ 167 In reality, of course, elite 

hunting was an expensive affair, clearly dependant upon those economic 

resources so readily dismissed by the gentleman shot. 

According to one eminent historian, ‘imperialism was a habit of mind, a 

dominant idea in the era of European world supremacy, which had 

widespread intellectual, cultural and technical expressions.’ 168 Despite the 

lack of formal record, membership of the Shikar Club perpetuated this 

habit, through ritual and hunting, and was thus one manifestation of 

territorial domination achieved by the English elite male in a period of high 

imperialism. 

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Primary Sources 

Arkwright, Robert Wigram, South African Diary, MS, T/B 577, held at Essex Record 

Office, Chelmsford. 

Chapman Archives held at the Hancock Museum, Newcastle University. 

Chapman, Abel, Catalogue of My Collections, n.d.; 

Diaries, AS/C3/S2, H130/11, 1882-4; Diary, 1905. 

Houxty Records and Results, MS, H130-139, 1918, 

Egerton, Maurice, Egerton Archives, DET/3229/123; 60/2;123/ 78; 

African Adventure, n.d. notes held at Tatton Park; 

Biographical Notes, n.d., held at Tatton Park. 

Manuscript Notes from Rostherne Boys School Log, 1863-1912, Cheshire Records Office. 

Personal Jottings, 1939 , held at Tatton Park. 

Letters to Oldfield Thomas, Natural History Museum, Ref DF232/6. 

Robb, Johnstone, Letter, October, 1999. 

Newspapers, Magazines, and Reviews 

The Field. 

Knutsford Guardian May 18, 1958, and Knutsford Guardian, August 8, 1997, p.6. 

The Meteor, Rugby School Magazine, June, 10, 1897, pp.58-61. 

The Spectator, Vol. 103, September 25, 1909. 

88


Essex Portraits, VIII, in Essex Review, 13, 1904. 

Essex Review, 44, 1935. 

Who’s Who in Essex, Worcester, 1935. 

Essex Leaders, Social and Political, Exeter; 

Grant, J., ed., Essex: Historical Biographical and Personal, 1913. 

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Berkeley, G. The English Sportsman in the Western Prairies, London, Hurst and Blackett, 

1861. 

Blaine, D.P., An Encyclopaedia of Rural Sports, London, 1840, reprinted 1875. 

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Burton, I., The Life of Captain Richard Burton, London, Henry and Company, 1893. 

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Connell, R., Masculinities, Cambridge, Polity, 1995. 

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Dawson, L. Lonsdale: The Authorised Life of Hugh Lowther Oldhams, London, Odhams 

Press, 1946. 

Escott, T.H.S., Society in London, London, Chatto and Windus, 1885. 

Faulkner, H. Elephant Haunts, Being a Sportman’s narrative of the Search for Dr. 

Livingston, London, 1868. 

Filene, P.G., Him/Her/Self, Sex-Roles in Modern America, New York, Harvard University 

Press, 1975. 

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1866. 

Gillmore, P. (Ubique), Accessible Fieldsports and the Experiences of a Sportsman in North 

America, London, 1869. 

Grogan, E.S. and Sharpe, A., From the Cape to Cairo, London Hurst and Blackett, 1902. 

Hall,S., and Gieben, B, .eds., Formations of Modernity, Cambridge, Cambridge University 

Press, 1992, pp. 177-228 

Harry Hieover, Sporting Facts and Fancies, London, Woking, 1853. 

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89


Huxley, E., White Man’s Country, London, Macmillan and Company, 1935. 

Hyam, R., Britain’s Imperial Century, 1850-1914, London, Batsford, 1976. 

Lowerson, J., Sport and the English Middle-Classes, 1870-1914, Manchester, Manchester 

University Press, 1992. 

Lyell, D., and Stigand, C., Central African Game and its Spoor, Seeley and Company, 

1906; Memories of an African Hunter, London, T.Fisher Unwin, 1923. 

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1986; and Walvin, J., (eds.,) Manliness and Morality, Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain 

and America, 1800-1950, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1987. 

Middleton, D., Baker of the Nile, London, Falcon Press, 1949. 

Millais, J., Wanderings and Memories, London, Longmans and Company, 1919. 

Mingay, G, ed., The Victorian Countryside, 2 Vols., 1981. 

Monkton, C.W., Experiences of a New Guinea President Magistrate, (London) nd. 

Nauright, J, and Chandler, T.L., eds., Making Men, Rugby and Masculine Identity , 

London, Cass, 1996. 

Pease, A.E., The Diaries of Edward Pease, London, Headley Brothers, 1907; The Book of 

the Lion, London, John Murray, 1913; Edmund Loder, London, John Murray, 1923; Half 

a Century of Sport, 1932, London, John Murray, 1932; 

Peel, C.V.A., Somaliland: An Account of Two Expeditions into the Far Interior, London, 

F.E.Robinson and Company, 1900. 

Portland, Fifty Years and More of Sport in Scotland, London, Faber and Faber, 1933. 

Prichard,H., Hunting Camps in Woods and Wilderness, London, William Heinemann, 

1910. 

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Ross, J., and Gunn, H (eds.), The Book of the Red Deer and Empire Big Game, London, 

Simpkin and Marshall, 1925. 

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Said, E., Culture and Imperialism, London, Vintage, 1994. 

Salt, H., Killing for Sport, 1913, and Seventy Years Among the Savages, London, Allen and 

Unwin, 1921; ‘The Sportsman at Bay,’ The International Journal of Ethics, XVI, 1906, 

p.491. 

Selous, F.C., Travel and Adventure in South East Africa, London, Rowland Ward and 

Company, 1893. 

Seton-Karr, H. My Sporting Holidays, London, Edward Arnold, 1904. 

90


Stigand, C., The Elephant in Africa, New York, Macmillan and Company, 1913. 

Thomas, K., Man and the Natural World, 1986. 

Thompson, J.O., Dr.Salter of Tolleshunt D’Arcy, London, Hamilton and Company, 1933. 

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Weiner, M., English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, Cambridge, 

Cambridge University Press, 1981. 

Notes 

1 The battue was a term for the shooting of driven-game as distinct from ‘walking-up’ 

game. 

2 H.A. Levenson, ‘An Old Shekarry’, ‘The Algerian Sporting Expedition’, The Field, 

Vol. 8, November 21, 1857, p.353. 

3 Membership of the the Shikar Club required that the hunter have corroborated proof 

that he had killed game in three separate Continents. I have been unable to locate any 

formal record books, but am grateful to Henry North of Clifford Hall, Yealand 

Conyers, Carnforth, whose family have been well-represented in the Club. The Club 

was administered by a Committee led by P.B.Vanderbyl and its chairman, Hugh Cecil 

Lowther and organised from their respective houses. (See below) The Club met for an 

annual dinner at various London hotels, but met informally at the Savoy Hotel. ( See 

below). 

4 See for example, Mackenzie, 1988 and Ritvo, 1987. 

5 Note John Lowerson’s observation in Sport and the English Middle-Classes, 1870- 

1914, 1992, pp.21-3. 

6 Charles Edward Radclyffe (1864-1915) served with the Rifle Brigade from the mid 

1880s, and was wounded in the Burmese War, 1885-7, and the South African 

Campaign, for which he received the D.S.O. P.B. Vanderbyl, (1867-1930), of 

Wappenham House, Towcester, Northampton. See The Field, Vol. CXLII, November 

15, 1923, p.717. Vanderbyl eventually married at the age of 60. 

7 Frederick Courtney Selous at Rugby School, see The Meteor, (Rugby School 

Magazine), June, 10, 1897, pp.58-61. 

8 Hyam, 1976, pp.50-1. 

9 I am grateful to Janet Smith at the Essex County Records Office for her kind assistance 

in locating sources for the De Crespigny family. 

10 Essex Portraits, VIII, in Essex Review, 13, 1904, pp. 241-2, and see, Essex Review, 

44, 1935, p.192, and, Who’s Who in Essex, Worcester, 1935, p.58, Essex Leaders, 

Social and Political Exeter, and J. Grant, ed., Essex: Historical Biographical and 

Personal, 1913. The multi-talented aristocratic sportsman, of course, was appreciated 

and respected by the Victorian public, exemplified by the likes of George Osbaldeston 

91


and Thomas Ashetton Smith. In this way, De Crespigny was continuing the tradition 

of the competent ‘all-round’ sportsman. (Emphasis added). 

11 de Crespigny, 1925, pp. 274-5 

12 Pease, 1932, p.100. 

13 Essex Review, 1904, and De Crespigny, Forty Years, ibid., pp. 230-2. 

14 De Crespigny, Forty Years, pp. 238, and 240-1. 

15 Essex Review, 1904, pp.341-2. 

16 Henry Salt, 1851-1939, son of Colonel T. Salt, was educated at Eton and Kings 

College, Cambridge. Assistant Master of Eton, 1875-84. Salt was the catalyst for the 

Humanitarian League, and particularly disapproved of ‘blood-sports.’ See, Killing for 

Sport, 1913, pp.152-5 edited by Salt, and Seventy Years Among the Savages, 1921. 

17 See J.A. Mangan, Continuities, paper forthcoming, 2000. 

18 Salt, Seventy Years p.11. 

19 ‘The Defence of Field sports,’ Baily’s Magazine, Vol.., August, 1885, pp.318-326. 

20 Ibid. 

21 Seton-Karr,1904, pp. 44, 68, 91-2. 

22 Iain Colquhoun, Bart., D.S.O., Lord-Lieutenant of Dumbartonshire. Major, Scots 

Guards, served in European War. Owner of Scottish deer-forest and authority on the 

sport. 

23 Portland, 1933, p.41. 

24 I. Colquhoun, ‘The Future of Deerstalking,’ in J. Ross and H. Gunn, eds.,1925, p.111. 

25 Henry Seton-Karr, C.M.G., M.P., son of George Berkeley Seton-Karr, an Indian Civil 

Servant. Educated at Harrow and Oxford, called to the Bar of Lincoln’s Inn, 

Conservative MP for St. Helens, 1885-1906, JP for Roxburghshire. Author of A Call 

to Arms, 1901, My Sporting Holidays, 1904, In Praise of Field sports, 1906, and 

contributor to Baily’s Magazine and the Badminton Volumes. 

26 Seton-Karr, 1904, pp. 44, 68, 91-2. 

27 Seton-Karr, 1904, pp. 5-6, and see, H. Salt, ‘The Sportsman at Bay,’ The International 

Journal of Ethics, XVI, 1906, p.491. 

28 Selous, F.C., 1893, p.91. 

29 Hugh Cecil Lowther, 1857-1944, son of Henry Lowther. Educated at Eton. Who’s 

Who in Cumberland and Westmoreland, 1937, pp. 147,48. Hugh Cecil Lowther was 

an extraordinary sportsman, an occasional big-game shot and Master of the Cottesmore 

and Quorn Hounds. See L. Dawson, Lonsdale: The Authorised Life of Hugh Lowther 

Oldhams, 1946 See also, D. Sutherland, The Yellow Earl, 1965, p.170 

30 J.0. Thompson, ‘ Lonsdale,’ preface to J.O. Thompson, Dr.Salter of Tolleshunt 

D’Arcy, 1933. 

31 Abel Chapman, 1851-1929, eldest son of T.E. Chapman, of Silksworth Hall, Sunderland. 

Abel was educated at Rugby, after which he became a partner in the family firm, 

brewers and wine merchants. See, ‘Memoir’ written by George Bolam in A. Chapman, 

Four Score Years Less Two, 1929. Chapman became a prolific writer and shot, the 

results of both are currently held at the Hancock Museum, Newcastle University, 

administered by Les Jessop, whose kind and authoritative assistance was invaluable 

in compiling a greater understanding of Chapman’s unerring ‘masculinity’! 

32 Chapman,1908, p.4. 

92


33 Lonsdale, The Field, Vol.122, June 14,1923, p.900. 

34 Salt, 1921, pp.14-15. 

35 Dawson, 1946, pp.21 and 58. 

36 Lonsdale, The Field, Vol 122, June 14, 1923, p.900. 

37 Berkeley, 1861, p.2 and Baker, 1874, p.xi/xii. 

38 Gillmore, (Ubique), 1869, preface. 

39 Ibid., pp. 2-3. 

40 Captain Flack’ 1866, p.1 

41 Grantley Berkeley, 1800-81, described as an ‘aristocrat in his own opinion but unable 

to convince the world to agree with him’, in C. Kirby, The English Country 

Gentleman, p.42. See Baily’s Magazine, X, June 1865, pp. 10-19, August, 1865, pp. 

118-24, and April, 1881, Vol. XXXVII, pp. 71-3. 

42 Berkeley, 1861, pp. 1-2. 

43 ‘The Englishman Abroad,’ Baily’s Magazine, January, 1895, p.10. 

44 Thomas, 1986. 

45 Ellias and E. Dunning, 1986, p.160. 

46 See’ Englishmen’s Sport in the Future’, Baily’s Magazine, Vol. 85, January-June, 

1906, p.347, ‘The Decadence of Sport,’ Baily’s Magazine, Vol. 83, January-June, pp. 

198-202, ‘The Future of Wildlife in England,’ The Field, Vol.. 113, May 29th., 1909, 

p.895. 

47 See The Field, XX, August 2, 1862, p.101, and The Times, August 4, 1862, p.8. 

Surtees commented on driven-game shooting, as the ‘old womanly sport of battuing’, 

see A.Steel, Jorrock’s England, 1932, p.167. 

48 Escott, 1886, p.22, and Thompson,‘Landowners and the Rural Community’, in G. 

Mingay, 1981, pp. 457-475. 

49 Felix, ‘Sport in England,’ Baily’s Magazine, Vol. 90, July-December, 1908, pp. 417- 

420. 

50 W. Bromley-Davenport quoted in Prichard, 1910, pp. 3-4. 

51 Selous,1893, p.91 

52 Stigand and Lyell, 1906, p.4. 

53 ‘The Shikar Club’, in Dawson, 1946, pp.205-6. 

54 ‘A Record of Clean Sport’, in the Field, Vol. 140, October, 28, 1922, p.648, reviewing 

Major-General N.Woodyatt, My Sporting Memories, (1922). 

55 Seton-Karr, 1904, pp. 66-7. 

56 Fieldcraft remains the gauge by which true sportsmen are measured, and indicates 

their knowledge of the natural environment as well as skill with the gun. 

57 Chapman, ‘On the Ethics of Sport’, Records, MS., No 3, p.10. 

58 Charles Victor Alexander Peel, F.Z.S., F.R.G.S., was a member of the Oxford Natural 

History Society, and Field Club. Peel contributed to the Field, the Sporting and 

Dramatic News and the Gentlewoman, and wrote three books: Wild Sport in the Outer 

Hebrides, 1900, Somaliland, An Account of Two Expeditions into the Far Interior, 

1901, and the Zoological Gardens of Europe, 1903. 

59 Peel, 1900, preface. 

60 Reminiscences of the Rockies,’ The Badminton Magazine, Vol. VIII, 1897, pp. 256- 

9 and H. Seton-Karr, My Sporting Holidays, 1904, p.145. 

93


61 Baily’s Magazine, September, 1912, p170. 

62 Seton-Karr, 1904, p.145. 

63 Maurice Egerton of Tatton Hall, Cheshire (1874-1958). 

64 Egerton Archives, DET/3229/60/2 

65 Ibid. 

66 Chapman, 1918. 

67 See for example, ‘The Vienna Sports Exhibition’, The Field, Vol.. 115, 1, 1910, p.480 

68 ibid. 

69 For a wider treatment of national identity, see, J.A. Mangan, Tribal Identities: 

Nationalism, Europe, Sport, 1996, and, G. Jarvie, ed., Sport in the Making of Celtic 

Cultures, 1999 

70 ‘The Glasgow Exhibition’, The Field, Vol. 97, April 27th., 1901, p.564 

71 See for example, R.S. Baden-Powell, Pigsticking or Hoghunting, 1924, pp. 29-30 

72 Dennis Lyell, (of Eastwood, Broughty Ferry, Forfarshire, Scotland.) 

73 Stigand and Lyell, 1906, pp. 142-3, and see, D.D. Lyell, 1924, p.140. 

74 See Baker, 1874, preface, and Wild Beasts and their Ways, 1890, quoted in Middleton, 

1940, p.35. For a wider treatment of guns, see, R. Riling, Guns and Shooting, A 

Selected Chronological Bibliography, New York, 1951. 

75 Lyell, 1924, p.147. 

76 Alfred Edward Pease, of Guisborough, 2nd. Bart., 1857-1939. 

77 Weiner, 1981. 

78 Pease, 1907. 

79 Pease, 1907, p.29, and see ‘Alfred Edward Pease’, Baily’s Magazine, Vol. CL, March, 

1914, pp. 161-163. 

80 Baily’s Magazine, Vol. CL, March, 1914, pp. 161-2. 

81 Robert Lyons Scott, (1871-1939), Chairman of Scotts, 1916-39. 

82 Information from Valerie Bough, Curator, Mclean Museum, Greenock. 

83 Robert’s father, John (1830-1903), was a devoted shot, and a Honorary Colonel of the 

Dumbarton Royal Garrison. Robert was schooled at Wellington College, and developed 

his shooting skills at an early age. I am grateful for assistance given by Johnstone 

Robb, Greenock, an ex-employee of Scotts. 

84 The Spectator, Review of Travel and Sport in Africa, Vol 59, 1903, p.536. 

85 Pease, 1913, Chapter One. 

86 See for example, Blaine, 1840. 

87 Hobson, 1902, pp. 223-4 and see, Russell, 1984, p.28, and Cartmill, 1993 pp. 136-7. 

88 Chapman, 1908, pp. 284-5 

89 Said, 1993, p.296, and see, S.H. Atlas The Myth of the Lazy Native, 1977. 

90 See Mangan, ed., 1986, pp.15-23. 

91 ‘The West Indian as a Sportsman,’ The Field Vol. 103, May 28 1904, p.86. 

92 Blaine, 1840, p.45. 

93 Ibid. 

94 Stigand, 1913, p.210 and pp.535-536. 

95 Richard Wigram Arkwright, 1822-88, eldest son of Joseph Arkwright, vicar of Latton, 

Essex. Robert attained the rank of Captain. 

96 Arkwright, p.89, and Stigand, 1913, p.205. 

97 See ‘The African Native as Sportsmen’, Baily’s Magazine, Vol. 112, July-December, 

94


1919, pp. 115-20. 

98 Chapman, M.S.1897. 

99 See His works, particularly Savage Sudan, Its Wild Tribes, Big-game and Bird life, 

(1921), On Safari, (1908), Unexplored Spain, (1910), Wild Norway, (1897) and Wild 

Spain, (1910) and Records and Results MS. 

100 Chapman, ‘African Big-Game,’ p.27, 1918. 

101 Chapman, 1918 p.8. 

102 Chapman, 1918, p.8. 

103 Letters to Oldfield Thomas, Natural History Museum, p.342. 

104 Millais, 1919, p.167 See also, H. Gunn and J. Ross, eds., 1925, pp.137-8. 

105 ‘The Shikar Club’, The Field, Vol.. 147, June 17, 1926, p.952. 

106 See for example, C.W.L. Bulpett, A Picnic in Africa, 1908, H.Anderson Bryden, Great 

and Small Game of Africa, 1899, Animals of Africa, 1900, Nature and Sport in Africa, 

1897. 

107 Nauright Chandler, 1996, for a wider discussion of male identity in sport. 

108 Seton-Karr, 1904, preface. 

109 ‘The Shikar Club,’ The Field, Vol. 147, June 17, 1926, p.952, and see, Dawson, 

Lonsdale, pp.205-6. 

110 ‘The Shikar Club’, The Field, Vol. 111, June13, 1908, p.1006. 

111 Pease, 1923, pp.54, 5. 

112 See, Jeffrey Richards in Mangan and Walvin, eds., 1987. 

113 Seton-Karr, 1904, p.97. 

114 Chapman, 1918, p.8. 

115 Edmund Loder, Ed. Eton and Cambridge, 1849-72. b Aug. 7 1849, d April 14 1920. 

116 Pease, 1923, pp.54-5 . 

117 This information is derived mainly from Egerton Diaries, DET/, Chester County 

Records Office and details from Tatton Hall, Cheshire. I am grateful for help received 

from Margaret Mckean, archivist at Tatton. 

118 Dawson, 1946 p.182. 

119 See African Adventure Notes n.d., and Egerton Diaries. 

120 African Adventure Notes, p.3. 

121 Monkton, n.d., p.111. 

122 Burton. 1893, p.17 

123 Ibid. 

124 For a full and detailed account of Maurice Egerton in South Africa, see Diaries, DET, 

and African Adventure, p.6. 

125 See J. Springhall, ‘Youth and Empire: A Study of the Propagation of Imperialism to 

the Young in Edwardian Britain,’ D.Phil. thesis, Sussex University, 1968. 

126 The Spectator, Vol. 103, September 25, 1909, pp. 463-4. 

127 Baden-Powell, 1908, p.266. 

128 Stigand, and Lyell, 1906, p.2. 

129 Biographical Notes, n.d. held at Tatton Park. 

130 From Personal Jottings, 1939 , and see, Knutsford Guardian May 18, 1958, and 

Knutsford Guardian, August 8, 1997, p.6. 

131 Biographical Notes n.d. 

132 Manuscript Notes from Rostherne Boys School Log, 1863-1912. 

95


133 Ibid.. 

134 See Blaine, 1840, p.155 and see Hieover, 1853. 

135 See Connell, 1995. 

136 Egerton, Diaries, DET/3229/60/2. 

137 Ibid. 

138 The location and holder of the ‘best’ moose were given in Egerton’s Diaries. 

W.W.Hart and F.B.Tolhurst held the record for Alaska, with beasts having over 20 

points. See DET/3229/60/2, Chester Records Office. 

139 Letters, from Lord Egerton, January 10th., 1925, DET/3229/107, N-R. 

140 The Bongo provoked a great deal of excitement amongst elite shots, probably owing 

to the difficulty of locating and acquiring it. It was described as ‘rare with a red coat, 

with ten, vertical silver stripes, ‘Bongo Safari,’ The Field, Vol 141, May 10, 1928, 

p.710. 

141 See The Times, 4th October, 1901, p.4, and Chapman, 1908, p.288. 

142 Chapman, ‘ Catalogue of My Collections’, p.3; and Chapman, 1918. 

143 Chapman, 1918. pp. 27-28. 

144 Chapman, 1918, pp.27-28. 

145 Hall, and Gieben, eds., pp. 177-228. 

146 Egerton, Diaries. . 

147 The ‘Royal Mezquitillas’ was a noted area for wild deer hunting in Spain. 

148 Chapman,1918, p.3. 

149 Chapman,1892, 1894, and 1918. pp. 27-8. 

150 Egerton, Biographical Notes, pp. 19-20. 

151 Egerton, Big-game Book, DET, 3229/123. 

152 Grogan and Sharpe, 1900, p.xv, and p.12. 

153 See Huxley, 1935. 

154 ‘Night Shooting’, Badminton Magazine, Vol. II, 1896, pp. 597-609 and R. Oliver, Sir 

Harry Johnson and the Scramble For Africa, 1957, p.295. 

155 Huxley, pp. 257-8. 

156 ‘The Shikar Club’, The Field, Vol. 147, June 17 1926, p.952. 

157 ‘The Shikar Club,’ The Field, August 23 1923, Vol. 142, p.275. 

158 Ibid. 

159 ‘The Shikar Club,’ The Field, Vol. 147, June 1926. 

160 Minutes of Meetings, S.P.F.E., 27 February 1925, pp. 16-17. 

161 Filene, 1975 

162 For a wider discussion of this, see R. Lee and I. Vore, eds., Man the Hunter, Chicago, 

1968, p.319. 

163 Faulkner,1868, pp. 27-28. 

164 Lyell,1923, p.19. 

165 Bryden,1897, p.281. 

166 The term ‘patriarchy’ in historical context is discussed in Tosh and Roper,1991, p.9. 

167 Chapman, 1905, pp. 7-8. 

168 Mackenzie,1988, p.ix. 

96

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