Arthur George FultonDCMMBE (16 September 1887 – 26 January 1972) was a British sport shooter who competed at the 1908 Summer Olympics and 1912 Summer Olympics. He was the first person to win the prestigious King's Prize at Bisley three times, a record not matched until 1996 – over twenty years after his death.
Fulton won the King's Prize again in 1926 and in 1931. During the Second World War, he served as an officer in the Home Guard. He was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1959 for services to shooting. On his death, he was described in the shooting press as "the most famous rifle shot the world has ever known".[1]
Early life
Arthur George Fulton was the second child of Isabella Savage and her husband, the wood-engraver and noted marksman George Edmonton Fulton.[2] He was born on 16 September 1887 in their house at 57 Rosenau Road, Battersea, London.[3] Arthur's elder sister, Ethel, had been born in 1886.[4] The year after Arthur was born, George Fulton, a soldier then in the Middlesex Regiment of the part-time Volunteer Force,[5][a] won the Queen's Prize, the most prestigious trophy in British rifle shooting.[7] He subsequently used the prize money he had earned from shooting to establish an armourer's shop in Wandsworth around the year 1895.[8]
Illustration from The Ashbourne Telegraph of Arthur Fulton being "chaired" from the range after winning the King's Prize in 1912
Following the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Fulton was deployed to France with the Queen's Westminsters, which had been redesignated the 1/16th (County of London) Battalion (Queen's Westminster Rifles) and were now part of the Territorial Force. The regiment landed at Le Havre on 3 November;[15] Fulton was recorded as entering the theatre of war with an administrative date of 1 November.[16]
Fulton was rapidly promoted to sergeant[b] and initially served as a machine-gunner, but subsequently became a sniper.[9] In this capacity, he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, Britain's second-highest military award for gallantry,[18] and is generally considered to have made around 130 kills.[19] His biographer, Tony Rennick, writes that Fulton was often "borrowed" by other regiments on account of his sniping skills.[3] He married his wife, Madge,[20] in 1916.[4] He was recalled from active service to work alongside other pre-war target shooters with John Herschel Hardcastle, an officer of the Royal Artillery conducting experiments in ballistics and rifle design at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, London.[21] By the war's end, Fulton had received the 1914 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.[16] His younger brother, Frank Laurence Fulton, died of wounds at Karasouli (now Polykastro) in Greece on 17 March 1917, after being hit by mortar fire during a failed offensive towards the Vardar river.[4]
Later life
In 1920, Fulton won the first stage of the King's Prize.[12] He worked for most of his life in the shop his father had established;[3] he became a partner in the business in 1923.[12] He went on to repeat his King's win in 1926, after scoring 272 points out of 300 and winning a four-way tie shoot[12] – the first time the match had ever been tied between so many people.[5] This made him the fourth shooter to win the Sovereign's Prize twice, and the first to have won all three of its constituent stages.[12] By this point he had competed in fourteen Sovereign's Prize finals.[22]
Fulton's third King's win came in 1931 with a score of 285 out of 300; he also won the competition's second stage.[23] His three-win record would not be matched until the Canadian shooter Alain Marion equalled it in 1996; as of 2023, it has yet to be surpassed.[24] He also held the record, at twenty-eight, for the most times qualifying for the Sovereign's Final. He gained the nickname "the rifle visitor" for his frequent tours with the National Rifle Association team to Africa, Scandinavia and North America. In total, he represented Great Britain twenty times and England forty-four times,[3] including serving as captain for the British victory in the 1959 Empire Match.[25]
During the Second World War, Fulton joined the Home Guard as a lieutenant. His son, Robin, won the Queen's Prize in 1958. Arthur Fulton was appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 1959 New Year Honours for services to rifle shooting.[26] He died on 26 January 1972 at his home, Oak Tree Cottage in Pirbright, near Bisley Camp.[27] In addition to his son, he had a daughter named Josephine.[20] On his death, he was described in the shooting press as "the most famous rifle shot the world has ever known".[1]
Footnotes
Explanatory notes
^George Fulton later became the armourer for the Queen's Westminsters.[6]
^He was a private in late July 1914, as recorded in the Daily News (London),[17] but a sergeant in the initial stages of the war.[9]
^Rennick 2004; The Daily Telegraph, 22 July 1912: "Private Arthur G. Fulton, of the Queen's Westminsters, secured the honour this year of King's Prizeman at Bisley. His father, who was the armourer of the same regiment, won the coveted distinction in the shooting world in 1888."
^The Surrey Advertiser, 24 July 1926: "For the second time Sergt H. [sic] G. Fulton, who resides at Bisley, has won the King's Prize at Bisley, ... Sergt. Fulton first won the King's Prize in 1912, and he has been in the final no fewer than 14 times."
^The Observer, 19 July 1931: "Sergt. Arthur Fulton, of the Queen's Westminsters, to-day won the King's Prize of £250, a gold medal and gold badge, with a score of 285 out of 300 points. In doing so he has definitely established himself as the finest marksman of recent years, for he has now won the gold medal three times, a feat never before accomplished, and also this year he won the silver medal for the highest score in the second stage."
Bunch, Christopher (2019). The National Rifle Association: Its Tramways and the London & South Western Railway: Targets and Tramways. Barnsley: Pen and Sword Books. ISBN9781473891760.
