An early item relating to “friendly fire.” Rare.
“Who lost his Life by an unintentional Shot, received in a Sham Fight”
Madden, Thomas. The Genuine Sermon, Occasioned by the much regretted Death of Mr. George Dewey, Wine Merchant, of Cloak-Lane, One of the Gentlemen of the Eighth Regiment of Loyal Volunteers Who lost his Life by an unintentional Shot, received in a Sham Fight, near Hornsey, Nov. 2d, 1803… London: G. Thompson, [1803]. Small 4to [20.5 x 12.8 cm], 24 pp., [1] f. Disbound, stab-stich holes present. Title toned with a few minor stains, a few contemporary annotations.
Very rare first and only edition of this unusual item recording an incident of “friendly fire” at the start of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-15). While friendly-fire incidents have been recorded since antiquity, they became much more frequent with the widespread use of guns and artillery in warfare — especially when such weapons were wielded by insufficiently trained soldiers — and today account for a significant percentage of battlefield injuries. Such accidents were, however, rather rare in 1803 at the commencement of hostilities between England in France. It was a news event of considerable note, then, when young London wine merchant George Dewey “lost his Life by an unintentional Shot, received in a Sham Fight” while drilling with the Eighth Regiment of Loyal Volunteers, so much so that the sermon delivered at his funeral (offered here) was printed and sold at six-pence made available “at Booksellers in Town and Country.”
The sermon itself refers only glancingly to the events which led Dewey’s injury, but the accident was widely reported in the popular press, as were the details of Dewey’s agonizing death. During “exercise on a skirmishing party,” at Hornsey, north of London, Dewey was fired upon at close range by a fellow soldier, but the shooter was never identified, and, “neither the deceased nor any other person ever imagined that the shot was fired with wilful intent to do any injury, but was merely an accident in the ardour and hurry of the moment,” although at the inquest it was revealed that, “on the morning when the corps assembled to march, not one of them, except four of the officers, knew where they were to go, what they were to do, or how they should be stationed” (Gentlemen’s Magazine, vol. 94, Nov. 1803, pp. 1096-98), all fog-of-war details reminiscent of many later friendly-fire incidents.
OCLC locates U.S. examples of this work at the New York Historical Society and University of Kansas
* Gentlemen’s Magazine, vol. 94, Nov. 1803, pp. 1096-98; G. Regan, Blue on Blue: A History of Friendly Fire; C. Kirke, Fratricide in Battle: (Un)Friendly Fire; M. J. Davidson, “Friendly Fire and the Limits of the Military Justice System,” Naval War College Review, vol. 64, no. 1 (2011), pp. 122-141.