When two men fought a duel over “a fine looking woman” in Richmond

The captain had long harboured suspicions about the faithfulness of his wife, who was described as “a fine looking woman”. A husband’s intuition told him that his best friend, John Wycliffe, had formed an “improper relationship with his wife”, but he could not prove anything until, in the house in Millgate now occupied by a solicitor, he found the love letter that she had torn to tatters.

A 1960s picture of the bottom of Richmond Market Place with the building where the torn love letter was found on the far right

The solicitors' offices in Millgate is where the torn love letter was found in 1780, which sparked a fatal duel. Picture: Google StreetView

As Capt Dawson pieced the bits together, a sorry story emerged of infidelity and betrayal in which his wife’s honour was besmirched and his own good name was ridiculed.

He had no alternative but to challenge Wycliffe to a duel, with pistols, at dawn, on the racecourse on the edge of town.

It ended badly for all concerned. Wycliffe was seriously injured. A ball from Dawson’s pistol lodged in his body and could not be removed and, after lingering painfully for some time, he died.

Dawson, the cuckold turned killer, immediately fled from Richmond with his family – including his fine looking wife.

And Wycliffe’s second on the racecourse was Christopher Clarkson, the son of a local butcher who had intended to take Holy Orders. However, his involvement in something as unholy as a fatal duel scuppered these plans, and he left town to join a militia for a couple of years.

He returned, knuckled down, and in 1821 published an authoritative book, the History of Richmond, which ran to 446 pages but, perhaps a little oddly, didn’t have room to mention the duel at the racecourse.

That omission, though, is righted in the splendid booklet which has been produced to accompany the 950 Years of Richmond’s Communications exhibition that nearly 2,000 visitors saw in the Town Hall during August.

The exhibition was the Rotary Club’s contribution to the celebrations of the 950th anniversary of Richmond Castle, and the brochure gives an excellent bitesize view of Richmond’s history, from the arrival of the castle builders through to the coming of visitors and soldiers in Georgian times right up to the advent of the railways and the town’s struggles to get decent TV reception in the 1950s. The Darlington & Stockton Times, and its sister title, the Richmond & Ripon Chronicle, get a mention for bringing the right sort of messages to the town since 1847, but nowhere in the brochure is there a better example of communications going wrong than the torn love letter that sparked a duel.

The brochures are being distributed to local schools, and the pop-up panels from the exhibition can be borrowed from the Richmondshire Museum. The booklet itself is available at the information centre in the town hall.