John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry (20 July 184431 January 1900), was a
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies.
* British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...
nobleman of the
Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. Slightly different definitions are sometimes used. The era followed the ...
, remembered for his
atheism
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the Existence of God, existence of Deity, deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the ...
, his outspoken views, his brutish manner, for lending his name to the "
Queensberry Rules" that form the basis of modern
boxing
Boxing is a combat sport and martial art. Taking place in a boxing ring, it involves two people – usually wearing protective equipment, such as boxing glove, protective gloves, hand wraps, and mouthguards – throwing Punch (combat), punch ...
, and for his role in the downfall of the Irish author and playwright
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...
.
Biography
John Douglas was born in
Florence
Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025.
Florence ...
, Italy, the eldest son of
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 ...
politician
Archibald, Viscount Drumlanrig, and
Caroline Margaret Clayton. He had three brothers,
Francis
Francis may refer to:
People and characters
*Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church (2013–2025)
*Francis (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters
* Francis (surname)
* Francis, a character played by YouTuber Boogie2 ...
,
Archibald, and James, and two sisters, Gertrude and
Florence
Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025.
Florence ...
. He was briefly styled Viscount Drumlanrig following his father's succession in 1856, and on the latter's death in 1858 he inherited the
Marquessate of Queensberry. The 9th Marquess was educated in the training ships ''
Illustrious'' and ''
Britannia
The image of Britannia () is the national personification of United Kingdom, Britain as a helmeted female warrior holding a trident and shield. An image first used by the Romans in classical antiquity, the Latin was the name variously appli ...
'' at
Portsmouth
Portsmouth ( ) is a port city status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Hampshire, England. Most of Portsmouth is located on Portsea Island, off the south coast of England in the Solent, making Portsmouth the only city in En ...
, and served in the
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...
until resigning in 1864. He was Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the 1st Dumfriesshire Rifle Volunteers from 1869 to 1871.
In 1864, Lord Queensberry entered
Magdalene College, Cambridge
Magdalene College ( ) is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1428 as a Benedictine hostel, in time coming to be known as Buckingham College, before being refounded in 1542 as the College of St Mary ...
, which he left two years later without taking a degree. He was more distinguished in sport, playing college cricket as well as running, hunting, and steeplechasing.
He married Sibyl Montgomery in 1866. They had four sons and a daughter; his wife successfully sued for divorce in 1887 on the grounds of his adultery. She survived him to the age of 90, dying in 1935. Queensberry married Ethel Weeden in 1893, but this marriage was annulled the following year.
Queensberry sold the family seat of
Kinmount in
Dumfriesshire
Dumfriesshire or the County of Dumfries or Shire of Dumfries () is a Counties of Scotland, historic county and registration county in southern Scotland. The Dumfries lieutenancy areas of Scotland, lieutenancy area covers a similar area to the hi ...
, Scotland, an action which further alienated him from his family.
He died, two months after a stroke, and after a period of mental decline believed to be caused by
syphilis
Syphilis () is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium ''Treponema pallidum'' subspecies ''pallidum''. The signs and symptoms depend on the stage it presents: primary, secondary, latent syphilis, latent or tertiary. The prim ...
, in his club room in Welbeck Street, west London, aged 55, nearly a year before Oscar Wilde's death. He wrote a poem starting with the words "When I am dead cremate me." After cremation at
Woking Crematorium, his ashes were buried at Kinmount in the Douglas Mausoleum outside
Cummertrees Parish Church, a Church of Scotland.
His eldest son and
heir apparent
An heir apparent is a person who is first in the order of succession and cannot be displaced from inheriting by the birth of another person. A person who is first in the current order of succession but could be displaced by the birth of a more e ...
was
Francis, Viscount Drumlanrig, who was rumoured to have been engaged in a homosexual relationship with the Liberal Prime Minister,
the 5th Earl of Rosebery. Lord Drumlanrig died from a gunshot wound, unmarried and without children.
Douglas's second son,
Lord Percy Douglas (1868–1920), succeeded to the peerage instead.
Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, his third son, was a close friend of famous author and poet Oscar Wilde. Eventually it became known that Lord Alfred and Wilde had engaged in sexual intercourse on multiple occasions, severely damaging the reputation of both men and enraging Queensberry. Queensberry's efforts to end that relationship ultimately led to his famous dispute with Wilde, which would culminate in Wilde's eventual imprisonment, decline, and fall.
Contributions to sports

Queensberry was a patron of sport and a noted
boxing
Boxing is a combat sport and martial art. Taking place in a boxing ring, it involves two people – usually wearing protective equipment, such as boxing glove, protective gloves, hand wraps, and mouthguards – throwing Punch (combat), punch ...
enthusiast. In 1866 he was one of the founders of the Amateur Athletic Club, now the
Amateur Athletic Association of England, one of the first groups that did not require amateur athletes to belong to the upper-classes to compete. The following year the Club published a set of twelve rules for conducting boxing matches. The rules had been drawn up by
John Graham Chambers but appeared under Queensberry's sponsorship and are universally known as the "
Queensberry Rules". These rules were eventually to govern the sport worldwide.
He was one of the first people to bring
association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...
to Scotland, forming his own teamcalled Kinmountof which he was captain to take on the Annan N.B. team in matches in 1868. As the Annan side wore red caps, the Kinmount side wore blue caps.
A keen rider, Queensberry was also active in
fox hunting
Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase and, if caught, the killing of a fox, normally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds. A group of unarmed followers, led by a "master of foxhounds" (or "master of hounds" ...
and owned several successful race horses. As a rider his first winner was in the Dumfriesshire Hunt Club chase in 1865, and his last was at
Sandown Park in 1883. He was Master of the Worcester Fox Hounds in 1870. He was on the committee of the National Hunt but never won a
Grand National
The Grand National is a National Hunt horse race held annually at Aintree Racecourse in Aintree, Merseyside, England. First run in 1839, it ...
as a rider, a last-minute substitution on the victorious "Old Joe" keeping him out of the 1886 National. During his riding career he recovered from a series of serious injuries.
Political career
In 1872, Queensberry was chosen by the
Peers of Scotland to sit in the
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the lower house, the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. One of the oldest ext ...
as a
Scottish representative peer
This is a list of representative peers elected from the Peerage of Scotland to sit in the House of Lords after the Acts of Union 1707 abolished the unicameral Parliament of Scotland, where all Scottish Peers had been entit ...
. He served as such until 1880, when he was again nominated but refused to take the religious oath of allegiance to the sovereign. Viewed by some as an outspoken atheist, he declared that he would not participate in any "Christian tomfoolery" and that his word should suffice. As a consequence neither he nor
Charles Bradlaugh
Charles Bradlaugh (; 26 September 1833 – 30 January 1891) was an English political activist and atheist. He founded the National Secular Society in 1866, 15 years after George Holyoake had coined the term "secularism" in 1851.
In 1880, Br ...
, who had also refused to take the oath after being elected to the
House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of ...
, were allowed to take their seats in parliament. This prompted an apology from the new prime minister,
William Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone ( ; 29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British politican, starting as Conservative MP for Newark and later becoming the leader of the Liberal Party.
In a career lasting over 60 years, he was Prime Minister ...
. Bradlaugh was re-elected four times by the constituents of
Northampton
Northampton ( ) is a town and civil parish in Northamptonshire, England. It is the county town of Northamptonshire and the administrative centre of the Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority of West Northamptonshire. The town is sit ...
until he was finally allowed to take his seat in 1886. Queensberry, however, was never again sent to parliament by the Scottish nobles.
In 1881, Queensberry accepted the presidency of the
British Secular Union, a group that had broken away in 1877 from Bradlaugh's
National Secular Society
The National Secular Society (NSS) is a British campaigning organisation that promotes secularism and the separation of church and state. It holds that no one should gain advantage or disadvantage because of their religion or lack of it. The Soc ...
. That year he published a long philosophical poem, ''The Spirit of the
Matterhorn
The , ; ; ; or ; ; . is a mountain of the Alps, straddling the Main chain of the Alps, main watershed and border between Italy and Switzerland. It is a large, near-symmetric pyramidal peak in the extended Monte Rosa area of the Pennine Alps, ...
'', which he had written in
Zermatt
Zermatt (, ) is a Municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in the district of Visp (district), Visp in the German language, German-speaking section of the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It has a year-round population of about 5,800 and is cl ...
in 1873 in an attempt to articulate his secularist views. In 1882, he was ejected from the theatre after loudly interrupting a performance of the play ''The Promise of May'' by
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (; 6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of ...
, the
Poet Laureate, because it included a villainous atheist in its cast of characters. Under the auspices of the British Secular Union, Queensberry wrote a pamphlet entitled ''The Religion of Secularism and the Perfectibility of Man''. The Union, always small, ceased to function in 1884.
His divorces, brutality, atheism, and association with the boxing world made Queensberry an unpopular figure in London high society. In 1893 his eldest son Francis was made a baron in the
Peerage of the United Kingdom
The Peerage of the United Kingdom is one of the five peerages in the United Kingdom. It comprises most peerages created in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland after the Acts of Union in 1801, when it replaced the Peerage of Great B ...
, thus giving him an automatic seat in the House of Lords. Queensberry resented his son sitting in a chamber that had refused to admit him, leading to a bitter dispute between himself and both his son and the Earl of Rosebery, who had promoted Francis's ennoblement and who shortly thereafter became prime minister. Francis was killed in a shooting accident in 1894; the inquest returned an "accidental death" verdict, but his death may have been a suicide. Queensberry believed, as he put it in a letter, that "snob queers like Rosebery" had corrupted his sons, and held Rosebery responsible for Francis's death.
Dispute with Oscar Wilde

In February 1895, angered by the apparent ongoing homosexual relationship between his son
Alfred and
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...
,
Queensberry left a calling card reading "For Oscar Wilde, posing " at Wilde's club. Wilde sued for
criminal libel, leading to Queensberry's arrest.
The trial opened at the
Old Bailey
The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, commonly referred to as the Old Bailey after the street on which it stands, is a criminal court building in central London, one of several that house the Crown Court of England and Wales. The s ...
on 3 April 1895 before Justice
Richard Henn Collins amid scenes of near hysteria both in the press and the public galleries. Queensberry's lawyers, headed by barrister
Edward Carson
Edward Henry Carson, Baron Carson, Privy Council (United Kingdom), PC, Privy Council of Ireland, PC (Ire), King's Counsel, KC (9 February 1854 – 22 October 1935), from 1900 to 1921 known as Sir Edward Carson, was an Irish unionist politician ...
, presented Wilde as a vicious older man who seduced innocent young boys into a life of degenerate homosexuality. Wilde dropped the libel case when Queensberry's lawyers informed the court that they intended to call several male prostitutes as witnesses to testify that they had had sex with Wilde. According to the
Libel Act 1843, proving the truth of the accusation and a public interest in its exposure was a defence against a libel charge, and Wilde's lawyers concluded that the prostitutes' testimony was likely to do that. Queensberry won a counterclaim against Wilde for the expenses he had incurred from lawyers and private detectives in organizing his defence. Wilde was left bankrupt; his assets were later seized and sold at auction to pay the claim.
Queensberry then sent the evidence collected by his detectives to
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's London boroughs, 32 boroughs. Its name derives from the location of the original ...
, which resulted in Wilde being charged and convicted of
gross indecency under the
Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 and sentenced to two years' hard labour, which he served (1895-1897). Upon release, Wilde immediately went into exile in France, his health and reputation destroyed.
Queensberry died on 31 January 1900. Ten months later, Oscar Wilde died at the
Hotel d'Alsace in Paris.
Screen portrayals

Queensberry has been portrayed by a number of actors in later dramatisations of the Wilde-Alfred Douglas affair, notably:
*
Edward Chapman in
20th Century Fox
20th Century Studios, Inc., formerly 20th Century Fox, is an American film studio, film production and Film distributor, distribution company owned by the Walt Disney Studios (division), Walt Disney Studios, the film studios division of the ...
movie ''
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...
'' (1960).
*
Lionel Jeffries
Lionel Charles Jeffries (10 June 1926 – 19 February 2010) was an English actor, director, and screenwriter. He appeared primarily in films and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, Golden ...
in
United Artists
United Artists (UA) is an American film production and film distribution, distribution company owned by Amazon MGM Studios. In its original operating period, it was founded in February 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford an ...
movie ''
The Trials of Oscar Wilde
''The Trials of Oscar Wilde'', also known as ''The Man with the Green Carnation'' and ''The Green Carnation'', is a 1960 British drama film based on the libel and subsequent criminal cases involving Oscar Wilde and the Marquess of Queensberry. I ...
'' (1960)
*
Keith Richards
Keith Richards (born 18 December 1943) is an English musician, songwriter, singer and record producer who is an original member, guitarist, secondary vocalist, and co-principal songwriter of the Rolling Stones. His songwriting partnership wi ...
in promotional film for the
Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for over six decades, they are one of the most popular, influential, and enduring bands of the Album era, rock era. In the early 1960s, the band pione ...
song, “
We Love You” (1967)
*
Tom Wilkinson in
biographical film
A biographical film or biopic () is a film that dramatizes the life of an actual person or group of people. Such films show the life of a historical person and the central character's real name is used. They differ from Docudrama, docudrama films ...
''
Wilde'' (1997).
*Tom Andrews in
historical drama
A historical drama (also period drama, period piece or just period) is a dramatic work set in the past, usually used in the context of film and television, which presents history, historical events and characters with varying degrees of fiction s ...
''
A Thousand Blows'' (2025).
An effeminately flamboyant caricature of him, voiced by
Jim Rash, is featured as a main character in the
Adult Swim
Adult Swim (stylized as dult swimand s is an American adult-oriented television programming block that airs on Cartoon Network which broadcasts during the evening, prime time, and Late-night television, late-night Dayparting, dayparts. T ...
cartoon ''
Mike Tyson Mysteries'' in which he serves as a lifestyle coach to
Mike Tyson
Michael Gerard Tyson (born June 30, 1966) is an American former professional boxer who competed between 1985 and 2024. Nicknamed "Iron Mike" and "Kid Dynamite" in his early career, and later known as "the Baddest Man on the Planet", Tyson i ...
.
References
Notes
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Further reading
*
External links
*
Chapter One of ''Bosie'', by Douglas MurrayMike Tyson Mysteries
{{DEFAULTSORT:Queensberry, John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess Of
1844 births
1900 deaths
Nobility from Dumfries and Galloway
Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge
Creators of sports
Marquesses of Queensberry
Masters of foxhounds in England
Oscar Wilde
Scottish atheists
Scottish representative peers