Overall: 23cm (9in) x 29.5cm (11.6in)
Printed card and envelope with ink inscriptions. The ticket decorated with Greek key border and ducal coronet, and named to 'The Rt Hon W.F. Tighe, Privy Councillor, M.P.,’ for a place in the ‘Centre area under the Dome’ for the Iron Duke’s funeral at St. Paul’s Cathedral on 18 November 1852. Envelope 11.7cm x 18.4cm. Contained verre eglomise frame.
Read more
William Frederick Fownes Tighe (1794-1878) was an Irish landowner, Member of Parliament and Privy Councillor, as such was at the head of the 10,000 strong funeral cortege led by Prince Albert that processed behind the Duke’s 18-ton funeral car from Horse Guards, before a million or more mourners, to St Paul’s Cathedral. Educated at Trinity College Dublin, Tighe was Lord Lieutenant of Kilkenny from 1847 to 1878. in 1825 he married Lady Louisa Lennox, a goddaughter of the Duke of Wellington. Louisa was with her parents in Brussels at the time of the Waterloo campaign and witnessed the ball famously given by her mother on 15 June 1815, the night before the Battle of Quatre Bras. Tighe’s brother Daniel was then an Ensign in the 1st Foot Guards and, was named in Captain Gronow’s ‘Recollections’ as one ‘of the handsomest young men in England’ that officered the regiment at the time. Ensign Tighe was at the Duchess of Richmond's ball when news was received of Napoleon’s advance, and was thus one of those ordered to rejoin his battalion at Quatre Bras. He later carried of the King’s Colour at Waterloo and was wounded.
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was laid to rest in St Paul's in a State Funeral on 18 November 1852. It was one of the most spectacular London events of the 19th century. The body was received at St. Paul’s Cathedral by the Dean of St Paul’s, Henry Milman with clergy and choir at the West Door, and conducted to the central area under the Dome, giving the Rt Hon WF Tighe a ring side seat. The pall was borne by eight of the most distinguished surviving general officers who had fought under the Duke’s command. The congregation included both Houses of Parliament in full, and a huge contingent of foreign and British dignitaries and civic authorities. When the congregation was asked to repeat the Lord's Prayer - Dean Milman thought it comparable to the Biblical phrase 'like the roar of many waters’. Finally, the Duke's coffin was lowered into the Crypt, towards the black sarcophagus of a previous arrival, Admiral Lord Nelson. In Milman’s words: ‘the gradual disappearance of the coffin, as it slowly sank into the vault below, was a sight which will hardly pass from the memory of those who witnessed it.’