Rita Singer: 'Of Cock Fights and Duels' (2022)

Description

Lede
On 9 June 1783, Carl Gottlob Küttner spent a day in Holyhead discovering the town’s diversions during his wait for the next boat to Dublin.

Story
In 1783, Carl Gottlob Küttner (1755-1805) travelled via Holyhead to Dublin for his new post as house teacher and travel companion in the household of George Beresford (1735–1800), the second Earl of Tyrone. Originally from the Electorate of Saxony, Küttner worked as tutor in Switzerland where he caught the Anglo-Irish earl’s interest. Tyrone hired the young German and invited him to join the family seat in Ireland. As an avid traveller with a keen interest in different cultures, Küttner kept a meticulous record of his journey.

After crossing the Channel at Calais, Küttner undertook a bit of sightseeing in England before heading westwards into Wales. Finding Anglesey’s ‘whole nature shrouded in sadness’ owing to the island’s sparse vegetation, Holyhead was more to his liking as he particularly enjoyed the view across the harbour from the window of his guesthouse. Waiting for the next mail boat for Dublin, Küttner discovered cockfighting and the town’s involuntary role in Irish duelling.

Unlike other towns in Wales, such as Conwy, Denbigh or Welshpool, Holyhead did not have a built cockpit. Instead, the fights took place on a grassy patch near Küttner’s guesthouse. In his travel account, he gives a detailed, if deeply disgusted description of the one and only time he witnessed the spectacle of two birds fight each other to the death. ‘At last,’ he writes, ‘the animals bowed their heads to the ground, but even then they were pushed against another, and even then they would attack each other, half dead and swaying, until one of them remained motionless stretched on the ground.’

Küttner also visited a location that occasionally served as a duelling ground for Irish opponents. At the time, while not outright banned by law, duelling was treated as a serious offence in Ireland. The regular mail boats across the Irish Sea therefore turned Holyhead into the first and most easily reached port of call for Irish noblemen seeking satisfaction. Thinking of the social norms and pressures at home in the German countries, but also in Britain and Ireland, he writes, ‘Man knows no higher good than life and places it above everything else – then he travels across the sea, braves a difficult crossing with the certainty, or at least probability, to destroy his life or that of another.’ Even today, it is possible to find traces of these Irish duels in Holyhead. Major William Houghton was shot dead in a duel with Captain Wolsely in 1796. He was subsequently buried in St Cybi’s churchyard where his tombstone can still be visited today.

The following morning, Küttner found a place on the next mail boat for Dublin where he landed thirty-six hours later after a stormy and rough crossing. He stayed in Ireland for the next two years, before setting out again as travel companion for his young charge through Italy, the Netherlands and France. In 1793, Küttner returned to Leipzig where he published several books about his many extensive travels through Europe.

• https://perma.cc/6P9X-44NL (link opens in new window)