The Art of Killing (article)
The Art of Killing is an article published in the Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle on 7 december 1889.
Report of a lecture The Art of Killing of the Portsmouth Literary and Scientific Society held at the Portsmouth Guildhall on 3 december 1889, attended by Arthur Conan Doyle where he spoke.
The Art of Killing
Major-General Drayson is a perfect encyclopaedia of all-round knowledge, gained in the course of extensive travel and scientific study. If there is one subject upon which, from the nature of his professional training, General Drayson should be more capable to speak than another, it is "The Art of Killing." Upon that he dilated at a meeting of the Portsmouth Literary and Scientific Society, at the Guildhall, on Tuesday evening, taking the place of an essayist on another subject, who was unable to attend. — In the absence of the President (Mr. H. P. Boulnois) the chair was occupied by Dr. W. H. Axford, and the following ladies and gentlemen were present:— General A. W. Drayson, F.R.A.S., Captain R. Jackson, R.N., Rev. — Trist, Dr. J. Ward Cousins (Hon. Sec.), Mrs. and Miss Cousins, Dr. A. Conan Doyle (Hon. Sec.), Dr. F. Way, Dr. C. C. Claremont and Mrs. Claremont, Dr. Bernard J. Guillemard, and Mrs. Guillemard, Dr. G. Kirker and Mrs. Kirker, Dr. de Fon Martin, Dr. N. Raw, Dr. E. J. Norris, Mr. and Mrs. A. Howell, Mr and Mrs. F. H. Wollaston, Mr. and Mrs. C. Foran, Miss A. Arnaud, Messrs. J. Robson, R.N., James L. Childes, A. W. Darley, G. A. Strong, W. Read, W. T. Pover, R.N., J. Watkins, G. A. Cook, R.N., Mr. R. Mayston, R.N., and Mrs. Mayston, R.N., Mr. H. C. Goldsmith, R.N., Mrs. Goldsmith, and Miss Pike, Mr. and Mrs. C. W. Ball, Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher, Mrs. and Miss Tomlinson, Messrs. E. R. Ramsay, W. Worthington, S. T. St. Clair, G. L. McGreggor, F. Archdale, G. R. McIntyre, J. W. Balfour, T. Simpson, W. M. Helby, G. F. Bell, &c. Dr. T. Austen, R.N., and Mr. H. S. Lilley were elected to membership.
General DRAYSON commenced his lecture with two seeming paradoxes. One was that they might, to a great extent, arrive at the amount of science and civilisation of a nation by examining the means possessed by the people of killing their fellow-creatures. The other was that the more destructive the weapons that were used in warfare the less was the amount of slaughter; so that they might call the large guns of the present day, the dynamite shells, and the torpedoes, life-preservers instead of life-destroyers. (Laughter.) Going back to the earliest days, one found great difficulty in telling how people killed each other, but it was evident that there had been a development from animal weapons and hand weapons to others of a more advanced kind. Giving details of this development, the gallant General spoke in turn of wooden and iron clubs, hand weapons with heads of iron and stone, slings, and spears propelled by hand or from the end of a cleft stick. Spears of all kinds were used very early in the history of the world, and the speaker had himself found assegais very useful in Kaffirland as a means of deliverance from the unwelcome attention of the howling curs. He did not know of any weapon he liked better than the assegai. He had seen a Kaffir who was so expert in throwing this beautiful weapon that he could keep three assegais in the air at the same time. It was all very well to dodge one weapon, but when it came to three at a time dodging them became a very difficult matter. (Laughter.) These assegais were usually so sharp that the Kaffir shaved himself with them. The speaker had known assegais to pierce a man's body through and through. Having spoken of the catapult, which was shown by an Egyptian design to have existed as far back as 2,000 B.C., General Drayson said the next great advance was the bow-and-arrow; and it had struck him as an extraordinary thing that, considering the accuracy and perfection to which archery had arrived two or three hundred years ago, that method of killing should have been superseded by the rough and imperfect muskets of those days. After telling from personal observation of the fatal poisoned arrows made and used by the Bushmen and Apache Indians, the lecturer came to the boomerang, which he described as one of the most marvellous weapons ever invented. The perfection attained by the native Australian in throwing the boomerang was such that the weapon would first skim along the ground for seventy or eighty yards at a height of four or five feet, and then, if it had struck nothing, would rise high into the air and ultimately return and fall just behind the thrower. If we could only do that with some of the expensive shot that was fired in the present day and never found the mark, there would be an enormous amount saved to the country. (Laughter.) Having touched briefly on the wonderful development of firearms, the lecturer said that some years ago he was rather surprised to read that in the days of "old Brown Bess" only was out of 180 shots fired either killed or wounded a man. But statistics he had since collected showed that at one battle during the Zulu War only a single bullet out of every 240 fired by the British troops killed a man. At the battle of Majuba Hill, too, in which over 2,000 men faced the Boers, only two of the latter were killed, although from ten to fifteen rounds of ammunition were expended by every Englishman. Half-a-dozen bad drains in such a place as Portsmouth, and half-a-dozen other insanitary evils, might cause a disease that would kill more people in a week than all our modern weapons would dispose of in the course of a long war. (Laughter and applause.)
Dr. GUILLEMARD proposed a vote of thanks to the lecturer, and said that wounds inflicted by modern projectiles were more difficult to deal with from a medical point of view than those caused by the projectiles from earlier weapons. — Dr. KIRK seconded the motion, but differed from the proposer as to the relative seriousness of wounds. At the same time he admitted that armies fought at such a distance in the present day that the wounds were indirectly often more serious. — Dr. CONAN DOYLE (Hon. Secretary) amusingly detailed how, when he voyaged to the West Coast of Africa as ship's surgeon, he innocently took out quite a battery of Birmingham guns and ammunition, expecting the negroes to gladly buy them with gold. He took the weapons up and down the coast, but found that the chiefs, who allowed nobody but themselves to acquire firearms, were already armed with Remington rifles, Winchester repeaters, and other modern makes which he himself had never seen. (Laughter.) Eventually he did succeed in bartering one of the weapons for a tooth-brush. (Renewed laughter.) — The motion was supported by Dr. CLAREMONT and Dr. J. WARD COUSINS (Hon. Secretary), the latter claiming that in the economy of nature there was a necessity for the continuance of what General Drayson called the art of killing. — The CHAIRMAN also supported the motion, which was carried unanimously, and the meeting terminated.
