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The Cleveland Street scandal occurred in
1889, when a homosexual male brothel in Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia, London, was discovered by
police. At the time, sexual acts between men were illegal in Britain, and
the brothel's clients faced possible prosecution and certain social ostracism
if discovered. It was rumoured that one client was Prince Albert Victor, who
was the eldest son of the Prince of Wales and second-in-line to the British
throne, though this rumour has never been substantiated. The government was
accused of covering up the scandal to protect the names of any aristocratic
patrons.
Another client was said to be Lord Arthur
Somerset, an equerry to the Prince of Wales. Both he and the brothel keeper,
Charles Hammond, managed to flee abroad before a prosecution could be brought.
The male prostitutes, who also worked as telegraph messenger boys for the Post
Office, were given light sentences and no clients were prosecuted. After Henry
James FitzRoy, Earl of Euston, was named in the press as a client, he
successfully sued for libel. The British press never named Prince Albert
Victor, and there is no evidence he ever visited the brothel, but his inclusion
in the rumours has coloured biographers' perceptions of him since.
The scandal fuelled the attitude that male
homosexuality was an aristocratic vice that corrupted lower-class youths. Such
perceptions were still prevalent in 1895 when the Marquess of Queensberry
accused Oscar Wilde of being an active homosexual.
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In July 1889, the Metropolitan Police
uncovered a male brothel operated by Charles Hammond in London's Cleveland Street. Under police
interrogation, the male prostitutes and pimps revealed the names of their
clients, who included Lord Arthur Somerset, an Extra Equerry to the Prince of
Wales. At the time, all homosexual acts between men were illegal, and the
clients faced social ostracism, prosecution, and at worst, two years' imprisonment
with hard labour.
The resultant Cleveland Street scandal implicated other
high-ranking figures in British society, and rumours swept upper-class London of the involvement
of a member of the royal family, namely Prince Albert Victor. The prostitutes
had not named Albert Victor, and it is suggested that Somerset's solicitor,
Arthur Newton, fabricated and spread the rumours to take the heat off his
client.Letters exchanged between the Treasury Solicitor, Sir Augustus
Stephenson, and his assistant, Hamilton Cuffe, make coded reference to Newton's
threats to implicate Albert Victor.
The Prince of Wales intervened in the
investigation; no clients were ever prosecuted and nothing against Albert
Victor was proven. Although there is no conclusive evidence for or against his
involvement, or that he ever visited a homosexual club or brothel,[38] the
rumours and cover-up have led some biographers to speculate that he did visit
Cleveland Street,[39] and that he was "possibly bisexual, probably
homosexual".[40] This is contested by other commentators, one of whom refers
to him as "ardently heterosexual" and his involvement in the rumours
as "somewhat unfair". The historian H. Montgomery Hyde wrote,
"There is no evidence that he was homosexual, or even bisexual."
Somerset's sister, Lady Waterford, denied that her brother knew anything
about Albert Victor. She wrote, "I am sure the boy is as straight as a
line ... Arthur does not the least know how or where the boy spends his time
... he believes the boy to be perfectly innocent." Lady Waterford,
however, also believed Somerset's
protestations of his own innocence. In surviving private letters to his friend
Lord Esher, Somerset denies knowing anything directly about Albert Victor, but
confirms that he has heard the rumours, and hopes that they will help quash any
prosecution. He wrote, "I can quite understand the Prince of Wales being
much annoyed at his son's name being coupled with the thing but that was the
case before I left it ... we were both accused of going to this place but not
together ... they will end by having out in open court exactly what they are
all trying to keep quiet. I wonder if it is really a fact or only an invention
of that arch ruffian Hammond." He continued, "I have never mentioned
the boy's name except to Probyn, Montagu and Knollys when they were acting for
me and I thought they ought to know. Had they been wise, hearing what I knew
and therefore what others knew, they ought to have hushed the matter up,
instead of stirring it up as they did, with all the authorities."
The rumours persisted; sixty years later
the official biographer of King George V, Harold Nicolson, was told by Lord
Goddard, who was a twelve-year old schoolboy at the time of the scandal, that
Albert Victor "had been involved in a male brothel scene, and that a solicitor
had to commit perjury to clear him. The solicitor was struck off the rolls for
his offence, but was thereafter reinstated." In fact, none of the lawyers
in the case was convicted of perjury or struck off during the scandal, but
Somerset's solicitor, Arthur Newton, was convicted of obstruction of justice
for helping his clients escape abroad, and was sentenced to six weeks in
prison. Over twenty years later in 1910, Newton
was struck off for twelve months for professional misconduct after falsifying
letters from another of his clients, the notorious murderer Dr Crippen. In
1913, Newton
was struck off indefinitely and sentenced to three years imprisonment for
obtaining money by false pretences.
During his life, the bulk of the British
press treated Albert Victor with nothing but respect and the eulogies that
immediately followed his death were full of praise. The radical politician,
Henry Broadhurst, who had met both Albert Victor and his brother George, noted
that they had "a total absence of affectation or haughtiness". On the
day of Albert Victor's death, the leading Liberal politician, William Ewart
Gladstone, wrote in his personal private diary "a great loss to our
party". However, Queen Victoria referred to Albert Victor's
"dissipated life" in private letters to her eldest daughter, which
were later published and, in the mid-20th century, the official biographers of
Queen Mary and King George V, James Pope-Hennessy and Harold Nicolson
respectively, promoted hostile assessments of Albert Victor's life, portraying
him as lazy, ill-educated and physically feeble. The exact nature of his
"dissipations" is not clear, but in 1994 Theo Aronson favoured the
theory on "admittedly circumstantial" evidence that the
"unspecified 'dissipations' were predominantly homosexual".Aronson's
judgement was based on Albert Victor's "adoration of his elegant and
possessive mother; his 'want of manliness'; his 'shrinking from horseplay'; and
his 'sweet, gentle, quiet and charming' nature", as well as the Cleveland
Street rumours and his opinion that there is "a certain amount of
homosexuality in all men". He admitted, however, that "the
allegations of Prince Eddy's homosexuality must be treated cautiously."
Rumours that Prince Albert Victor may have
committed, or been responsible for, the Jack the Ripper murders were first mentioned
in print in 1962. It was later alleged, amongst others by Stephen Knight in
Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, that Albert Victor fathered a child with a
woman in the Whitechapel district of London, and either he or several
high-ranking men committed the murders in an effort to cover up his
indiscretion. Though such claims have been repeated frequently, scholars have
dismissed them as fantasies, and refer to indisputable proof of the Prince's
innocence. For example, on 30 September 1888, when Elizabeth Stride and
Catherine Eddowes were murdered in London, Albert Victor was over 500 miles (over 800 km) away at Balmoral,
the royal retreat in Scotland, in the presence of Queen Victoria, other family
members, visiting German royalty and a large number of staff. According to the
official Court Circular, family journals and letters, newspaper reports and
other sources, he could not have been near any of the murders. Other fanciful
conspiracy theories are that he died of syphilis or poison, that he was pushed
off a cliff on the instructions of Lord Randolph Churchill or that his death
was faked to remove him from the line of succession.
Albert Victor's posthumous reputation
became so bad that in 1964 Philip Magnus called his death a "merciful act
of providence", supporting the theory that his death removed an unsuitable
heir to the throne and replaced him with the reliable and sober George V. In
1972, Michael Harrison was the first modern author to re-assess Albert Victor
and portray him in a more sympathetic light. In recent years, Andrew Cook has
continued attempts to rehabilitate Albert Victor's reputation, arguing that his
lack of academic progress was partly due to the incompetence of his tutor,
Dalton; that he was a warm and charming man; that there is no tangible evidence
that he was homosexual or bisexual; that he held liberal views, particularly on
Irish Home Rule; and that his reputation was diminished by biographers eager to
improve the image of his brother, George.
The conspiracy theories surrounding Albert
Victor have led to his portrayal in film as somehow responsible for or involved
in the Jack the Ripper murders. Bob Clark's Sherlock Holmes mystery Murder by
Decree was released in 1979 with "Duke of Clarence (Eddy)" played by
Robin Marshall. Jack the Ripper was released in 1988 with Marc Culwick as
Prince Albert Victor. Samuel West played "Prince Eddy" in The Ripper
(1997) and Albert Victor as a child (with Jerome Watts and Charles Dance
playing the character at older ages) in the TV miniseries Edward the Seventh,
which starred West's father Timothy West as the title character. The Hughes
brothers' From Hell was based on the graphic novel of the same name by Alan
Moore and Eddie Campbell, and was released in 2001. Mark Dexter portrayed both
"Prince Edward" and "Albert Sickert". The story is also the
basis for the play Force and Hypocrisy by Doug Lucie.
A pair of alternative history novels,
written by Peter Dickinson, imagine a world where Albert Victor survives and
reigns as Victor I. In Gary Lovisi's parallel universe Sherlock Holmes short
story, "The Adventure of the Missing Detective", Albert Victor is
portrayed as a tyrannical king, who rules after the deaths (in suspicious
circumstances) of both his grandmother and father. The Prince also appears as
the murder victim in the first of the Lord Francis Powerscourt crime novels
Goodnight Sweet Prince,[108] and as a murder suspect in the novel Death at
Glamis Castle by Robin Paige. In both The Bloody Red Baron by Kim Newman and
the novel I, Vampire by Michael Romkey, he is a vampire. In the former, he is
the British monarch during World War I.
"Set against the vivid backdrop of this demi-monde,
Theo Aronson presents the first full account of the curious life of Queen Victoria's grandson,
Prince Albert Victor, known as Prince Eddy. The author explores the Prince's
upbringing, his university and military careers, his alleged "secret marriage,"
his links with the Jack-the-Ripper murders, his early death, and, above all,
his sexual orientation. For it was this that linked the young Prince's name to
the Cleveland Street Scandal, the notorious homosexual brothel case that led to
an extraordinary cover-up by the British government. " Prince
Eddy...presents Victorian male homosexuality as a vibrant folk culture, one
that pervaded all official institutions. Students of the erotic will love this
book, and so will royal-watchers, but arbiters of sexual purity should hate it,
for Mr. Aronson displays an underground culture that exposed its judges as
upright liars."--Nina Auerbach,
New York Times Book Review.
B&W photos."
The Cleveland Street Scandal | London 1889 | Telegraph
Rent Boys
The Cleveland Street Scandal
HISTORICAL NOTES: In 1889, the year in
which this scandal takes place, it is legal for girls aged 12 and boys aged 14
to marry (with parental consent). Most people started work at the age of 6 (or
younger) to help support their families and men had a life expectancy of just
40-45 years of age. Male homosexuality was illegal and punishable, if convicted
of buggery, to penal servitude for life or for any term of not less than ten
years. The death penalty for buggery had only recently been abolished in 1861.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century a
gentleman by the name of Charles Hammond ran a male brothel located at No 19
Cleveland Street in London,
just north of Oxford Street
near Tottenham Court Road.
Hammond catered for a largely aristocratic clientele and for a number of
years the existence of his establishment remained unknown to the authorities.
This all changed on 4th July 1889 when a
telegraph boy called Charles Swinscow was searched as part of an ongoing
investigation into money theft at his employers, the General Post Office.
Eighteen shillings were found in his pockets, which at the time was worth more
than a weeks salary to such a young man. Swinscow was taken in for questioning
as part of the police operation.
When asked how he came to have such a large
sum of money in his possession, Swinscow panicked and confessed he'd been
recruited by Charles Hammond to work at a house in Cleveland Street where, for
the sum of four shillings, he would permit the brothel's clients to "have
a go between my legs" and "put their persons into me".
He then identified a number of other young
telegraph boys who were also renting themselves out in this manner at the Cleveland Street
establishment, leading to the apprehension and questioning of Henry Newlove,
Algernon Allies and Charles Thickbroom.
Who Was Involved:
Henry Horace Newlove 16 yrs Telegraph Boy -
GPO 'Recruiter' for Hammond
Charles Thomas Swinscow 15 yrs Telegraph
Boy - First boy arrested for 'theft'
George Alma Wright 17
yrs Telegraph Boy - 'Performed' with
Newlove for voyeurs
Charles Ernest Thickbroom 17 yrs Telegraph
Boy
William Meech Perkins 16 yrs Telegraph
Boy - ID's Lord Alfred Somerset as a 'client'
Algernon Edward Allies 19 yrs Houseboy
- The Marlborough Club, used by Lord Somerset
George Barber 17 yrs George
Veck's 'Private Secretary' and boyfriend
John Saul 37
yrs Infamous London rent boy - Possibly
aka Jack Saul
Charles Hammond 35 yrs Brothel keeper of 19 Cleveland Street, London
George Daniel Veck
aka Rev George Veck
aka Rev George Barber
40 yrs Ex
General Post Office (GPO) employee, sacked for indecency with Telegraph boys.
Lives at 19 Cleveland Street.
Kept a coffee house in Gravesend,
Kent. Has an 18
year old 'son' that travels with him.
PC Luke Hanks Police
officer attached to the General Post Office
Mr Phillips
Snr postal official who
questions Swinscow with Hanks
Mr C H Raikes The
Postmaster General
Mr James Monro Metropolitan
Police Commissioner
Frederick Abberline 46 yrs Police Chief Inspector,
infamous for the 'Jack the Ripper' investigations in 1888, London's Whitechapel district
PC Richard Sladden Police officer who
carried out observations on the Cleveland
Street brothel following Swinscow's arrest
Arthur Newton Lord
Arthur Somerset's solicitor. Later to defend Oscar Wilde at his trial in 1895
and notorious murderer Dr Crippen
Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence 25 yrs Rumoured
to be a 'Brothel Client' - Went on a seven month tour of British
India in Sept 1889 to avoid the press & trials
Colonel Jervois of the
2nd Life Guards
'Brothel Client' - Winchester Army Barracks
Lord Arthur Somerset
aka Mr Brown 37 yrs 'Brothel
Client' - Named in Allies letters as 'Mr Brown'
Henry James Fitzroy
39 yrs Accused
of being a 'Brothel Client' - Earl of Euston
Sir Augustus Stephenson Director
of Public Prosecutions (DPP)
Hon Hamilton Cuffe Assistant DPP -
Six years later he would prosecute Oscar Wilde at his trial in 1895 as the
Director of Public Prosecutions
Ernest Parke Journalist - North London Press
After The Arrests
The officer in charge of the case, Chief
Inspector Frederick Abberline, procured a warrant to arrest Charles Hammond on
a charge of conspiracy to "to commit the abominable crime of
buggery", but when he went to Cleveland
Street, he found that Hammond had already disappeared.
The police made arrangements to observe the
comings and goings at No 19 Cleveland Street, noting that a 'Mr Brown' called
there on the 9th and 13th July 1889, following which on the 25th July both
Swinscow and Thickbroom identified Mr Brown as one of the their clients.
Mr Brown was followed by police back to
army barracks in Knightsbridge where he was soon identified as Lord Arthur
Somerset, a younger son of Henry Charles Somerset, 8th Duke of Beaufort, a
Major in the Royal Horse Guards and equerry to Edward, Prince of Wales, later
King Edward VII.
Papers were sent to the Director of Public
Prosecutions with a view to prosecuting Lord Arthur on a charge of gross
indecency. The Prince of Wales was incredulous when he heard of it
"I won't believe it, any more than I
should if they accused the Archbishop of Canterbury" he said.
Despite this gesture of support, Lord
Somerset placed the matter in the hands of his solicitor Arthur Newton who
contacted the DPP simply to mention the fact that his client, if prosecuted,
might well name the Duke of Clarence whilst he was giving evidence in court.
Given that Albert, Duke of Clarence was the
eldest son of the Prince of Wales and second in line to the throne, it was
clear that the government would not want his name associated with the
homosexual brothel at Cleveland
Street. The authorities appeared to drag their
heels over the matter, and in bringing Lord Arthur Somerset to trial, allowing
him the opportunity to flee abroad. By the 18th October he was safely in Boulogne, France.
He remained in exile for the remainder of his life and eventually died in the
French Riviera in 1926.
But whilst Somerset escaped prosecution, the same could
not be said of the unfortunate 'rent boys' caught up in the investigation.
Swinscow together with Henry Newlove, Algernon Allies and Charles Thickbroom
were brought before the Old Bailey in September 1889 and charged with gross
indecency. They were all convicted. Newlove received a sentence of four months
with hard labour whilst the others each got nine months.
This might have been the end of the story
had it not been for a journalist named Ernest Parke, who ran a story on 28th
September 1889 in
the 'North London Press', claiming that the "heir to a duke and the younger
son of a duke" had frequented Cleveland Street.
Again, on the 16th November he went so far
as to name both Arthur Somerset and Henry James Fitzroy, the Earl of Euston, as
the men in question and dropped a broad hint to his readers, by referring to a
gentleman "more distinguished and more highly placed", that a member
of the royal family was also involved.
Ernest Parke believed that it was safe to
name the two young aristocrats as they had both fled the country. He was
correct as far as Lord Arthur Somerset was concerned, but the Earl of Euston
was not, as he thought, in Peru, but rather in England, and thus in order to
defend his reputation felt obliged to bring a charge for criminal libel against
Edward Parke.
The trial was heard at the Old Bailey on
the 19th January 1890. Whilst Henry Fitzroy admitted that he had been to 19 Cleveland Street
he claimed that it was all a mistake. According to his own testimony, he had
only gone there after being given a card touting a 'tableaux plastique' (nude
women) at the address, and that once he realised the true nature of the
establishment, made his excuses and left.
Ernest Parke however produced a witness
named John Saul, who went into some detail describing the kind of services that
he had provided for Henry Fitzroy at Cleveland
Street. Being a self-confessed prostitute, Saul's
evidence was easily 'discredited' and so Ernest was found guilty of libel
without justification and sentenced to one year's imprisonment with hard
labour.
One more trial was to arise as a result of
the Cleveland Street
scandal in respect of the activities of Arthur Newton, defence solicitor to the
aforementioned Arthur Somerset who, it was believed, had helped Somerset evade justice. Newton was brought before the court on the 12th December
1889 and charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice for allegedly
interfering with witnesses and arranging their disappearance to France.
He was convicted but received the
relatively mild punishment of six weeks in prison. He was even allowed to
resume his legal practice afterwards and was later to become better known for
representing the author and playwright Oscar Wilde.
This was still not quite the end of the
matter as the MP Henry Labouchère, a noted campaigner against 'homosexual vice',
who had earlier been responsible for including the offence of 'gross indecency'
within the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, became convinced that some kind of
'cover-up' had been launched by the authorities.
On the 28th February 1890 he tried to persuade
Parliament to establish a committee to investigate the whole affair, but his
motion was defeated by a vote of 204 to 66. Henry felt so strongly on the
matter that he became over animated during the debate on his motion and he was
suspended from Parliament for a week.
Finally...
Thus the Cleveland Street Scandal passed
into history and ceased to be a matter of contemporary significance, however,
from evidence that has since become available, it now appears that the Duke of
Clarence was indeed a likely client of the Cleveland Street brothel. If indeed it
were true, it would be very likely that some kind of damage limitation exercise
was carried out at the highest levels of the British Government to protect him.
I grateful acknowledge the following works
used in my research:
The Cleveland Street Affair - Colin Simpson,
Lewis Chester & David Leitch
The Cleveland Street Scandal - H Montgomery Hyde
Cleveland Street 'The Musical' - Glenn Chandler & Matt Devereaux
Inside story: 19 Cleveland Street
Officially,
this house no longer exists, thanks to an 'indescribably loathsome scandal'.
But Matthew Gwyther finds life goes on there
IF you wander up and down Cleveland Street in
the fashionable Fitzrovia area of London,
you will look in vain for Number 19. Officially, it no longer exists. This is
because the house was once the venue for one of the most notorious sleaze
stories in late-Victorian England
and was quietly removed from the Land Register.
"Den of
infamy": Lord Arthur Somerset, at the heart of the Fitzrovia based scandal
The "indescribably loathsome
scandal", as one newspaper called it, began in the late summer of 1889
when PC 718, Luke Hanks of the General Post Office's own police force, stopped
and interviewed a 15-year-old telegraph boy called Charles Swinscow, who worked
at St Martin's Le Grand and who had been found
carrying 18 shillings. This was the equivalent of two months' wages, and he was
immediately accused of stealing.
Swinscow protested that he had earned the
money by "going to bed with gentlemen" at the rate of four shillings
a time at Number 19. He revealed that several other telegraph boys did the same
thing to supplement their wages.
Scotland Yard put the house under watch and
confirmed that "a number of men of superior bearing and apparently good
position" were frequent visitors. When they finally raided Number 19, the
owner, Charles Hammond, had already fled to France after a tip-off. (Hammond pocketed the
other 16 shillings of each sovereign that customers paid for the boys'
services.)
Some of the men calling at the house were,
indeed, of good position, and when word got out of their identity, the scandal
began. They were said to include Lord Arthur Somerset, son of the Duke of
Beaufort, the Earl of Euston and a Colonel Jervoise from Winchester. Worse, was the speculation that
Prince Albert Victor, or Prince Eddy, eldest son of the Prince of Wales, was
another visitor.
Although his name was never mentioned in
the British press, the American and French newspapers discussed his alleged
involvement quite openly. The affair was to cause the Prime Minister, Lord
Salisbury, no end of embarrassment.
The evidence against Lord Arthur was
strong. The police had letters to him from one of the prostitutes and several
statements from other boys. He was allowed to escape to Vienna and resigned from the Guards and the
royal household. He died in France
in 1926.
The events at the "den of
infamy", as the Illustrated Police News termed the establishment in Cleveland Street,
led to three trials. One was for commissioning acts of impropriety; one for libel,
in which the Earl of Euston sued Ernest Parke, the editor of The North London
Press (circulation 4,500), for defaming him; and one for conspiracy to pervert
the course of justice because witnesses were spirited out of the country.
At the first trial, Henry Newlove and
George Veck (who had tried to escape dressed as a vicar) were found guilty of
procurement but received light sentences of less than a year. (Within a decade,
Oscar Wilde was to be sentenced to two years' hard labour for similar offences.)
During the second trial, Euston claimed in
the box that he had attended the house in the belief that he was going to watch
heterosexual poses plastiques, or the Victorian version of a strip show.
Despite some compelling evidence in his favour, Parke received 12 months in
jail, which the Victorian writer Frank Harris described as "infamous and
vindictive". Prince Eddy was sent off to India on a lengthy tour of duty.
The renumbered house is now divided into
three flats, and Flat Two - where the bedrooms used to be - is owned by a
German chef, Michael von Hruschka. He is the boss at The Birdcage in nearby Whitfield Street
and has been hailed by Vogue as one of London's
leading exponents of "Bohoco", or bohemian cool. Typical menus at his
restaurant might include deep-fried maggots, crickets and scorpions served with
a soy sauce dip.
Unfortunately, Mr von Hruschka has injured
his back and finds it nearly impossible to stand for long periods at his stove.
So his two-bedroom flat is now for sale. It is fairly small, the kitchen is
contained in an alcove off the living room and the carpets need a clean, but
the asking price for this blue plaque-free piece of history is a cool £280,000
- about double its value two years ago. Such prices are not uncommon for Noho
(north of Soho) or Fitzrovia, which has been hailed as "the new
Docklands" by some, although the view from this section of Cleveland Street is
restricted to the wall of University
College Hospital.
Mr von Hruschka's business partner,
Caroline Faulkner, from whom he bought the place, acknowledges that the area is
a "very-on-the-edge sort of place. It's still a bit seedy". But as an
added incentive, the purchaser will get a free meal for two at The Birdcage.
The flat can be viewed through Foxtons in Mayfair on 020 7973 2000.
