Just before the Royal couple on their journey Citywards were passing Marlborough House the Guards formed into troops across the road. The last troop to wheel into line was headed by the Marquis of Tullibardine, the heir to the Dukedom of Athole. Suddenly the young lieutenant’s horse reared with its forefeet striking the air. A moment more and it had fallen backwards, with its rider beneath. Those near seemed to be paralysed for a moment, and then they rushed forward, but before anybody could reach the unfortunate officer, who, after he fell, had managed to extricate himself from the stirrups, the horse had galloped wildly away, kicking his hind legs in the air. There was nothing, so far as one could tell, between it and the Royal carriage, just then entering the yard, except a stray policeman or two. A moment of breathless suspense, and a policeman rushed out into the roadway, and caught the horse by the bridle just in the nick of time, and Lord Tullibardine was carried across the road and laid on an ambulance couch as the Royal carriage came by. If, as is possible, the Duke and his Duchess thought their reception somewhat cold at this point, this is the explanation. The hinder squadron of Guards having passed, the attention of all present, momentarily abstracted, was turned to the gallant young Guardsman stretched under the arches of St James’s Palace, where the ambulance corps were doing their best to revive him. They were successful after a time, and the poor fellow with a faint smile was able to tell the surgeon when he arrived that he was “all right,” though his spine hurt him. Then he was tenderly lifted onto an ambulance and carried to Mr. Kingcote’s apartments in the palace, where the surgeon attended him. The man who stopped the horse in so gallant a manner was Walter Peacock, 39 B R.
The Illustrated Police News, Saturday 15 July 1893
An Extraordinary Incident 