Sir George Duckett, 3rd Baronet

Sir George Floyd Duckett, 3rd Baronet (1811–1902) was an English army officer, antiquarian and lexicographer. He wrote on his Duckett ancestry, his paternal grandfather having married a Duckett heiress. Life Born at 15 Spring Gardens, Westminster, London on 27 March 1811, he was the eldest child of Sir George Duckett, 2nd Baronet (1777–1856), M.P. for , by his first wife Isabella (1781–1844), daughter of Stainbank Floyd of Barnard Castle; his grandfather Sir George Jackson, 1st Baronet assumed the surname of Duckett in 1797, having married the heiress of that family. After attending private schools at Putney and Wimbledon Common, he was at Harrow School from 1820 to 1823, when he was placed with a private tutor in Bedfordshire. In 1827–8 he studied German at Gotha and Dresden. Matriculating on 13 December 1828 as a gentleman commoner of Christ Church, Oxford, he spent much time hunting, and left the university without a degree. Joining the West Essex Corps of Yeomanry Cavalry, Duckett on 4 May 1832 was commissioned a sub-lieutenant in the 2nd Regiment of Life Guards. On his coming of age in 1832, his father was ruined by speculations. Duckett then exchanged for financial reasons from the Guards in 1834 into the 15th Hussars, and subsequently into the 82nd Regiment, in which he remained until 1839. Having obtained his company, he exchanged in 1839 into the 87th Fusiliers, and joined its depot in Dublin. He took leave to work on a book. On resuming his commission on full pay he was placed at the bottom of the captains' list of the reserve battalion of the 69th Regiment. On the death of his father on 15 June 1856 Duckett became the third baronet, and began to write as an antiquarian. He was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 11 February 1869. In old age blindness put an end to his literary activities. He died at Cleeve House, Cleeve, Somerset, on 13 May 1902, at the age of 91, and was buried in the cemetery at Wells, Somerset.