John Hanning Speke - Death

Death

A debate was planned between the two before the geographical section of the British Association in Bath on 18 September 1864, but Speke had died the previous afternoon from a self-inflicted gunshot wound while hunting at Neston Park in Wiltshire. A contemporary account of the events surrounding his death appeared in the Times:

Speke set out from his uncle's house in company with his cousin, George Fuller, and a gamekeeper, Daniel Davis, for an afternoon's shooting in Neston Park. He fired both barrels in the course of the afternoon and about 4 p.m. Davis was marking birds for the two guns who were about 60 yards apart. Speke was seen to climb onto a stone wall about 2 feet high: for the moment he was without his gun. A few seconds later there was a report and when George Fuller rushed up Speke's gun was found behind the wall in the field into which Speke had jumped. The right barrel was at half-cock: only the left barrel was discharged. Speke who was bleeding seriously was sensible for a few minutes and said feebly, "Don't move me." George Fuller went for assistance leaving Davis to attend him; but Speke survived for only about 15 minutes, and when Mr. Snow, surgeon of Box, arrived he was already dead. There was a single wound in his left side such as would be made by a cartridge if the muzzle of the gun—a Lancaster breech-loader without a safety guard—were close to the body; the charge had passed upwards through the lungs dividing all the large blood vessels over the heart, though missing the heart itself.

An inquest concluded that the death was accidental, a conclusion supported by his only biographer, though the idea of suicide has appealed to some. Bearing in mind, however, that the fatal wound was just below Speke's armpit, suicide seems most unlikely. Speke was buried in Dowlish Wake, Somerset, the ancestral home of the Speke family.