Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Duncan, Francis

by Ernest Marsh Lloyd

DUNCAN, FRANCIS (1836–1888), colonel, born at Aberdeen on 4 April 1836, was the eldest son of John Duncan, advocate, by Helen Drysdale, daughter of Andrew Douglass of Berwick-on-Tweed. His father took a leading part in the Marnock secession of 1841, a step in the disruption of the church of Scotland.

He was educated at Aberdeen grammar school, and graduated M.A. at Marischal College in March 1855, being honourably distinguished. He obtained a commission as lieutenant in the royal artillery on 24 Sept. 1855, being third in the list of successful candidates at the first open examination. He served in Nova Scotia and Canada from 1857 to 1862, and accompanied the force sent to the frontier at the time of the Trent affair. He was promoted captain on 10 Aug. 1864, and was made adjutant of the 7th brigade. In 1871 he was appointed superintendent of regimental records at Woolwich, and this led him to undertake his history of the royal artillery, which he carried down to 1815. He had great powers of work, and had the faculty of writing rapidly and without erasure, even in the midst of conversation.

He was promoted major on 4 Feb. 1874, and in May 1876 he was sent to Jamaica, where he drew up a report on the island and its defences. On 15 Jan. 1877 he was appointed an instructor in gunnery, and was employed for the next five years in the instruction of militia and volunteer artillery at the Repository, Woolwich. Having himself entered the army direct from a university, without passing through the Royal Military Academy, Duncan was anxious to give future officers the opportunity of university training. He had helped to write a pamphlet on the subject in 1872 'The Universities and the Scientific Corps' and he took part in the foundation of the Oxford military college, which was opened in September 1876, and became chairman of the committee of management of it a year afterwards. He was a zealous and indefatigable member of the order of St. John, which he had joined in 1875, and was director of the ambulance department. He was active in other philanthropic movements. He became lieutenant-colonel in the army on 1 July 1881, and in the royal artillery on 1 Oct. 1882. At the end of that year he accepted the command of the Egyptian artillery, and held it from 18 Jan. 1883 till 19 Nov. 1885. At Cairo, as the Khedive said, 'he did the work of two men,' and at Wady Haifa in 1884 he did much to forward the Gordon relief expedition, of which he gave an account at the Artillery Institution on 6 Oct. 1886. He became colonel in the British army on 15 June 1885, and was made C.B. on 25 Aug. He also received the order of the Osmanieh (3rd class). On 26 Nov. he was returned as M.P. in the conservative interest for the Holborn division of Finsbury, and was re-elected in July 1886. He had previously stood unsuccessfully for Morpeth in 1874, and for Durham city and Finsbury in 1880. He spoke frequently on professional and other subjects on the conservative side. His speech in seconding the address on 9 Feb. 1888 was described by Gladstone as one of the shortest and one of the very best he had heard on such an occasion. Duncan went to Nova Scotia in the autumn to obtain rest from overwork, but he died shortly after his return, on 16 Nov. 1888, at Woolwich. He married, on 24 Aug. 1858, Mary Kate, daughter of Rev. William Cogswell, rector of St. Paul's, Halifax, Nova Scotia, who survived him. He was a fellow of the geological and other societies, LL.D. of Aberdeen, and D.C.L. of Durham.

He wrote, besides lectures and pamphlets:

1. 'Our Garrisons in the West; or Sketches in British North America,' 1864.
2. 'History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery,' 1872-3, 2 vols.; 2nd edit. 1874.
3. 'The English in Spain; or the Story of the War of Succession, 1834-40,' 1877.
4. 'The Royal Province of New Scotland and her Baronets,' 1878.

[Life by Rev. H. B. Blogg, 1892; Times, 17 Nov. 1888.]

E. M. L.