John Sholto Douglas

John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry (20 July 1844, Florence, Italy - 31 January 1900, London, England) was a Scottish nobleman, as well as the creator of the important rules of modern boxing known as the "Marquess of Queensberry Rules". He is also known for the bitter dispute that he had with Oscar Wilde in 1895.

Biography

Douglas was born in Italy as the eldest son of Conservative politician Archibald, Viscount Drumlanring, and his wife Caroline Clayton. His father became the eighth Marquess of Queensberry, in 1856, and he succeeded in 1858.

He was educated at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, becoming a midshipman at 12 and a lieutenant at 15. He also commanded the 1st Dumfriesshire Volunteers as a lieutenant-colonel (1869-1871).

In 1864 he entered Magdalen College, Cambridge, leaving two years later without graduating. There, however, he distinguished himself as a cricketer, tracker, steeplechaser and chaser.

In 1866 he married Sibyl Montgomery with whom he had five children and whom he divorced in 1887 after being sued for adultery. In 1897 he remarried Ethel Weeden, but they divorced again the following year.

The aforementioned rules established a three-minute limit for each round, while the count for "knockouts" They were fixed in ten seconds. Along with this, this passionate boxer established the different weight categories of the specialty and the use of boxing gloves "of the best quality, and new". The code was written in 1867 by John Graham Chambers and published under the name of the marquess, who acted as sponsor and producer.

The mausoleum of the Douglass on the outside of the parish church of Cummertrees, place of traditional burial of the queens of Queensberry

From 1872 to 1880 he held a seat in the House of Lords as a representative peer for Scotland. In fact, he was re-elected in 1880 but refused to take a religious oath to the sovereign and said that he would not participate in a "Christian antics" since he was an atheist.

His divorce on the grounds of adultery, his atheism and his fondness for boxing made him an unpopular figure in London high society.

In February 1895, faced with the apparent homosexual relationship of his son, Lord Alfred Douglas, with the writer Oscar Wilde, he sent the latter a visiting card to his club calling him a 'sodomite'. Wilde sued him for libel and the marquess was placed under arrest. His lawyers, led by Edward Carson, portrayed Wilde as a vicious seducer of young men. He stopped the lawsuit when it became known that Queensberry would bring to court several prostitutes who had had sex with him. However, Wilde was accused of sodomy and indecency and the marquess won a lawsuit against him for the expenses in lawyers and detectives. Ultimately, Wilde was bankrupted and sentenced to two years of hard labor.

In 1900, after a stroke and suspected syphilis, he died in his club room in London at age 55. After being cremated, his ashes were interred in his family churchyard at Kinmount, Dumfriesshire.

Her eldest son and heir Francis, had an alleged homosexual relationship with Prime Minister Archibald Primrose and died in a hunting accident and childless.