Lieutenant-Colonel Sir John Dugdale Astley, 3rd Baronet (19 February 1828 – 10 October 1894) was an English soldier and sportsman.

Life

He was the son of the 2nd Baronet (created 1821) Sir Francis Dugdale Astley and wife Emma Dorothea Lethbridge, and a descendant of Lord Astley. From 1848 to 1859, he was in the

Scots Fusilier Guards Scots may refer to: People and cultures * Scots language * Scottish people * Scoti, a Latin name for the Gaels Other uses * SCOTS, abbreviation for Royal Regiment of Scotland * Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech (SCOTS), a linguistic resource * ...

, serving in the

Crimean War The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont fro ...

and retiring as a Lieutenant-Colonel. On 22 May 1858, he married an heiress, Eleanor Blanche Mary Corbett, of

Elsham Hall Elsham Hall is a 17th-century English country house situated in its own parkland in Elsham, North Lincolnshire. The park and gardens are open to the public. The house The present house dates back to the 1760s, on the site of an earlier dwelling o ...

, North Lincolnshire. Eleanor (died 7 June 1897) was the daughter of Thomas George Corbett (died 5 July 1868) and wife (married 15 December 1837) Lady Mary Noel Beauclerk (28 December 1810 – 29 November 1850), daughter of the 8th

Duke of St Albans Duke of St Albans is a title in the Peerage of England. It was created in 1684 for Charles Beauclerk, 1st Earl of Burford, then 14 years old. King Charles II had accepted that Burford was his illegitimate son by Nell Gwyn, an actress, and awa ...

. He thereafter devoted himself to sports including horse racing, boxing and

pedestrianism Pedestrianism was a 19th-century form of competitive walking, often professional and funded by wagering, from which the modern sport of racewalking developed. 18th- and early 19th-century Britain During the late eighteenth and nineteenth ce ...

. He was a popular figure at horse race meetings, known familiarly as "the Mate", and for winning and losing large sums of money. Two famous jockeys that rode regularly for him were

George Fordham George Fordham (1837–1887) was a British flat racing jockey. He was Champion Jockey every year between 1855 and 1863, as well as four other occasions in his own right and once as joint champion. He then won the Derby in 1879, won the Oaks f ...

and Charlie Wood. He succeeded to the baronetcy in 1873. From 1874 to 1880 he was the

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

Member of Parliament for

North Lincolnshire North Lincolnshire is a Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area with Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough status in Lincolnshire, England. At the 2011 United Kingdom census, 2011 Census, it had a population of 167,446. T ...

, like his father in law before him. Just before his death in October 1894, he published entertaining reminiscences under the title of ''Fifty Years of My Life''. This contains the first recorded appearance of the phrase "like a duck to water" – ''I always took to shooting like a duck to water''.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Astley, John Dugdale 1828 births 1894 deaths Baronets in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom British Army personnel of the Crimean War Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies Scots Guards officers UK MPs 1874–1880

Life

See also

References

Further reading

External links