Many criticisms may be laid at the door of James Brudenell, the 7th Earl of Cardigan, but cowardice was never one of them. Yet, when challenged to a duel in 1843 he declined, saying he would never again fight one in England.
Instead he was sued by Lord William Padgett in an action known as “crim con” — criminal conversation — which was neither criminal nor conversation. It was, in fact, an action against a man for seducing the plaintiff’s wife and damages could run into the thousands.
The reason Cardigan refused the duel was because he had already fought one on September 12, 1840 on Wimbledon Common against a Captain Harvey Tuckett in which Tuckett had been seriously wounded, shot in the ribs. The duel had been fought over articles by Tuckett writing as an “old soldier”, which had criticised the unpopular Cardigan’s command of the 11th Hussars, then stationed in Brighton, and in particular the “black bottle episode”, when Cardigan accused an officer of drinking porter at the mess table.
On October 20, a grand jury at the Old Bailey found a true bill of “intent to murder, main and cause grievous bodily harm to Tuckett”. Tuckett was also indicted, as was Cardigan’s second, John Douglas.
If convicted, the consequences for Cardigan were serious — transportation for life, and forfeiture of his lands to the Crown. To avoid the latter, Cardigan sensibly made a deed of gift in favour of Viscount Curzon, the son of his favourite sister.
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Fortunately he had the right to be tried by his peers and many members of the House of Lords dressed up for the vote.
Cardigan was fortunate in what now appears to have been a rigged trial. The indictment no longer read wounding, a move that removed the danger of transportation. On February 16, 1841, the day of the trial, the lord chancellor and the solicitor-general were taken ill simultaneously and Lord Denman, described as “one of the feeblest chief justices who ever presided over the court of the Queen’s Bench” was on the bench.
Much of the proceedings were ceremonial, with the House of Lords specially decorated in crimson and their Lordships fully robed, a ceremonial white staff was broken by the lord chancellor, and bows bedecked the chamber. Tuckett did not appear to give evidence and the indictment was drawn omitting his full names. There was therefore no proof that Harvey Tuckett was the man with whom Cardigan duelled. Denman duly advised their Lordships to acquit.
This newspaper in its report alleged that there was deliberate, high-level complicity to leave a loophole in the prosecution’s case, and it took the view that “in England there is one law for the rich and another for the poor”. A. fortnight later proceedings against Cardigan’s second failed at the Old Bailey, when the indictment failed to name Douglas properly. Tuckett went to live abroad where he died in poverty ten years later.
And so to the crim con action. Padgett — who was described as being “brutal, suspicious and himself unfaithful” — had had his wife, Lady Frances, watched. He was said to have employed a known blackmailer to hide for some two hours under a sofa in their house in Berkeley Square. Fortunately Her Ladyship took the visiting Cardigan into another room.
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As a result, the spy never saw what happened but shortly afterwards Lady Frances was seen with a black eye. Again Cardigan was fortunate when at the hearing in December 1843, the blackmailer failed to appear and the action failed with him.
In 1854 Lord Cardigan led the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava and three years later the Matrimonial Causes Act made divorce a less expensive and easier process, putting an end to the action for crim con.
James Morton is an author and former criminal law solicitor
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