Sir John Dugdale Astley, 3rd Baronet

"The Literary Mate"
Astley as caricatured by Spy (Leslie Ward) in Vanity Fair, July 1894

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir John Dugdale Astley, 3rd Baronet (19 February 1828 – 10 October 1894) was an English soldier and sportsman, son of the 2nd Baronet (created 1821) Sir Francis Dugdale Astley and wife Emma Dorothea Lethbridge and a descendant of Lord Astley.

From 1848 to 1859 he was in the Scots Fusilier Guards, serving in the Crimean War and retiring as a Lieutenant-Colonel. On 22 May 1858 he married an heiress, Eleanor Blanche Mary Corbett, of Elsham Hall, who died on 7 June 1897, daughter of Thomas George Corbett, of Elsham Hall (– 5 July 1868) and wife (m. 15 December 1837) Lady Mary Noel Beauclerk (28 December 1810 – 29 November 1850), daughter of the 8th Duke of St Albans, and thereafter devoted himself to sports including horse racing, boxing and pedestrianism. He was a popular figure on the turf, known familiarly as "the Mate" and for winning and losing large sums of money. Two famous jockeys that rode regularly for him were George Fordham and Charlie Wood.^[1]

He succeeded to the baronetcy in 1873. From 1874 to 1880 was the Conservative Member of Parliament for North Lincolnshire. Just before his death in October 1894, he published some entertaining reminiscences under the title of Fifty Years of My Life. This contains the first recorded appearance of the phrase "like a duck to water" - I always took to shooting like a duck to water.

Descendants include Samantha Cameron, wife of Conservative Leader David Cameron.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs
• Leigh Rayment's list of baronets

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sir John Dugdale Astley
• Astley, Sir John Dugdale, Fifty years of my life in the world of sport at home and abroad, 1894