Douglas Robert Hadow

Douglas Robert Hadow (30 May 1846 – 14 July 1865) was a British novice mountaineer who died on the descent after the first ascent of the Matterhorn.

Hadow was born in 1846 at 49 York Terrace, Regent's Park, London, the son of Patrick Douglas Hadow (Chairman of the P. & O. Steam Navigation Company) and Emma Harriett Nisbet (daughter of Robert Parry Nisbet, of Southbroom House, Wiltshire), who married at Southbroom on 28 January 1845. Hadow's paternal great-grandfather was George Hadow, professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages at the University of St Andrews, and one of his younger brothers was Frank Hadow, who won the Wimbledon championship in 1878.

Hadow was educated at Harrow School, where he and six of his brothers who also attended the school were known as the 'Harrow Hadows'.

In 1865, at the age of nineteen, Hadow undertook his first trip to the Alps as a protégé to Charles Hudson, a clergyman from Skillington in Lincolnshire, and a leading advocate of guideless climbing. Together they made a swift ascent of Mont Blanc and a number of other climbs; these ascents – together with the backing of a climber of Hudson's stature – persuaded Edward Whymper that Hadow was a suitable companion for an attempt on the Matterhorn.

Whymper later wrote:

Before admitting his [Hudson's] friend—Mr. Hadow—I took the precaution of asking what he had done in the Alps, and, as well as I remember, Mr. Hudson's reply was, "Mr. Hadow has done Mont Blanc in less time than most men." He then mentioned several other expeditions that were unknown to me, and added, in answer to a further question, "I consider he is a sufficiently good man to go with us."

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