- William Horwood Stuart
William Horwood Stuart was a British diplomat who was murdered in
Batum , Georgia, in 1906.He was born in
Harrow, London , in 1857 to the Rev. William Stuart M.A. (1816-1896), who later served as Vicar ofMundon ,Essex (1862-1889), and Rector ofHazeleigh ,Essex (1889-1896). His mother was Caroline (1834-1921), youngest daughter of Edward Horwood of The Manor House,Weston Turville ,Buckinghamshire . He was also a nephew of the diplomat MajorRobert Stuart , a great-nephew of the IndophileMajor-General Charles Stuart , and a descendant ofLieutenant-General William Spry .In 1873 Stuart was serving as Private Secretary to his uncle Major
Robert Stuart (British Consul-General for the Russian ports in theBlack Sea and theSea of Azof ) atOdessa ,Ukraine . In the 1880s he was based atBrăila inRomania , where, in July 1885, his younger brother Charles Leader Justice Stuart drowned in theDanube at the age of 16.By the early 1890s, Stuart had moved to
Batum , Georgia, where he remained until his death. In 1904 he became American Vice-Consul and in 1906 was also serving as acting British Consul. Stuart had been named Japanese Consul but his appointment was deferred owing to the outbreak of theRusso-Japanese War .He was the representative of several British companies, including MacAndrew Forbes. He was also a manager of the Caucasus Copper Company Limited and a managing partner of F. A. Mattievich and Co.
At about 11 p.m. on the evening on
21 May 1906 , Stuart was returning to his home at Makhinjauri, 5 miles from Batum, after dining with a friend, when he was shot three times from behind a tree. He was taken to a nearby military barracks but died within an hour.It seems likely that the murder was committed for personal reasons and that the murderers were paid to carry out the act. Stuart had spent most of his life in Eastern Europe and could speak several local languages; he was respected by the local populations but during the revolutionary uprisings of the previous year (in which
Joseph Stalin may have been active in Georgia), his life was threatened and he was obliged to hand over large amounts of cash.In a letter to the
United States Secretary of State on31 May 1906 , AmbassadorGeorge von Lengerke Meyer wrote that two men, "Kassim Didjavadgé and Ali Porkhall Oghly" had been arrested.Reaction to the murder
The matter of the murder was taken up by all levels of the American, British and Russian diplomatic services, and letters and memoranda to and from
Elihu Root (United States Secretary of State ,George von Lengerke Meyer (US Ambassador to Russia),Whitelaw Reid (US Ambassador to the UK),Cecil Spring-Rice (British Chargé d'Affaires at Saint Petersburg, and author of the lyrics to thehymn "I Vow to Thee My Country "), Patrick Stevens (British Consul at Batum), Alexander Petrovich Izvolsky (Russian Foreign Minister) and Baron Roman Romanovitch Rosen (Russian Ambassador to the US) can be found in the archives of the Foreign Relations of the United States website: [http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=turn&entity=FRUS000100290474&isize=M&q1=Stuart%20was%20in%20full%20charge] .
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