Humphrey “Naked Gun” Howarth and the Earl of Barrymore
Considering their famed reputation for sexual repression, the British have a remarkable habit of stripping off at any given opportunity. This is especially the case when the sun comes out and temperatures soar to anything above 15 degrees Celsius, and when they go out and drink heavily. From an early 19th century anecdote, it appears another good opportunity to get out the skinsuit was during a duel to the death.
This is precisely what happened when two MPs (Members of Parliament), Humphrey Howarth and the Earl of Barrymore, got into a drunken disagreement at the Brighton races in 1806. The Irish Earl blackened the elderly MP’s eye during a particularly heated round of the card game Whist, and they decided to settle their dispute by dueling with pistols on the ground’s racetrack early the morning. Once both men had sobered up sufficiently, of course.
When Howarth turned up, however, it didn’t seem he’d quite managed to clear his mind. For the onlookers, excitement quickly turned to confusion, and then shock, as the right honorable (and rather obese) MP for Evesham stripped down completely before taking up position beside Barrymore; his pistol—for want of a better term—fully cocked.
There was in fact a method to his apparent madness. Before becoming a politician, Howarth had served as a surgeon in the British East India Company. There he had learned (quite before his time, in fact) that most gunshot fatalities weren’t caused by the bullet per se which rarely penetrated deep enough inside the body. Instead, fatalities were more likely to be caused by the infections that followed, as the shot embedded shreds of dirty clothing inside the body.
With his back against the wall, and not wishing to enter into the annals of history as the man who killed the naked warrior in puris naturalibus, Barrymore backed down. The matter was considered settled and both men walked, we can presume somewhat awkwardly, away.