Neville Bertie-Clay

Life & Legacy

Lt.-Col. Neville Sneyd Bertie-Clay (22 July 1864 – 17 October 1938) was a British army officer. He served in the Royal Artillery and in the Royal Garrison Artillery, but spent much of his career on secondment to the Indian Ordnance Department of the Indian Army. Bertie-Clay invented the dum dum soft-pointed bullet in 1896 as the Mark II Lee-Metford bullet then in use was perceived to leave a small wound with insufficient stopping power to halt a determined charge. The dum dum would later be outlawed for use in warfare by the Hague Convention of 1899 but remains in use for police firearms and hunting.