Cleveland Street scandal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In 1889, a male brothel in Cleveland Street, London, was uncovered by police. At the time, sexual acts between men were illegal in Britain and most members of society considered such acts to be a vice. The brothel's clients faced possible prosecution and certain social ostracism if discovered. It was rumoured that one of the brothel's clients was the second-in-line to the throne, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale. Officials were involved in a cover-up to keep the prince's name and others out of the scandal.

One of the clients, Lord Arthur Somerset, was an equerry to the Prince of Wales but he, as well as the brothel keeper, Charles Hammond, managed to flee abroad before a prosecution could be brought. The rentboys, who also worked as messenger boys for the Post Office, were given light sentences and none of the clients were prosecuted. After the story appeared in the press, one of the alleged clients, the Earl of Euston, successfully sued for libel and cleared his name. 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 fueled the attitude that male homosexuality was an aristocratic vice that corrupted lower-class youths. Such perceptions fed the scandal which involved Oscar Wilde in 1895.

Contents 1 Male brothel 2 Notable clients 3 Public revelations 4 Aftermath 5 See also 6 Notes and sources 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Male brothel

In July 1889 Police Constable Luke Hanks was investigating the theft of some cash from the London Central Telegraph Office. During the investigation a fifteen-year old telegraph boy named Charles Swinscow was discovered to be in possession of 14 shillings, representing several weeks' wages. Suspecting the boy's involvement in the theft, Constable Hanks brought him in for questioning. After some hesitation, Swinscow admitted that he got the money as a rentboy working at a male brothel at 19 Cleveland Street, for a man named Charles Hammond. According to Swinscow, he was introduced to Hammond by the latter's accomplice, eighteen-year old Henry Newlove. In addition, he named two other telegraph boys who worked for Hammond, seventeen-year old George Wright and Charles Thickbroom. Constable Hanks obtained corroborating statements from Wright and Thickbroom and, armed with these, a confession from Newlove.^[1]

Constable Hanks reported the matter to his superiors, and the case was placed in the hands of Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline. Inspector Abberline went to the brothel on 6 July with a warrant to arrest Hammond and Newlove for violation of Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. The Act made all homosexual acts between men, as well as procurement or attempted procurement of such acts, punishable by up to two years imprisonment with or without hard labour. He found the house locked and Hammond gone, but Abberline was able to apprehend Newlove at his mother's house in Camden Town.^[2] The police were also able to arrest the other boys named by Swinscow.

[edit] Notable clients

Newlove immediately named Lord Arthur Somerset, head of the Prince of Wales's stables, the Earl of Euston and an Army Colonel by the name of Jervois as visitors to Cleveland Street.^[3] A watch was placed on the now empty house and a further arrest warrant was issued in the name of George Veck, an acquaintance of Hammond's who had previously worked at the Telegraph Office but who had been sacked for "improper conduct" with the messenger boys.^[4] Acting on a tip-off from a youth found in his lodgings, the police arrested Veck at Waterloo railway station in London. In his pockets they discovered letters from Algernon Allies. Abberline sent Constable Hanks to interview Allies at his parents' home in Sudbury, Suffolk. Allies admitted to receiving money from Lord Arthur Somerset, having a sexual relationship with him, and working at Cleveland Street for Hammond.^[5]

Details of the case shuttled between government departments. Although Somerset was interviewed twice (he denied everything), no immediate action was taken against him and the authorities were slow to act on the allegations of Somerset's involvement.^[6] There was a cover-up at the highest levels to protect the upper-class clientele, and Somerset was given enough time by Augustus Keppel Stephenson, Director of Public Prosecutions, to flee to the Continent. For their cooperation Newlove and Veck were given reduced sentences of four and nine months' hard labour respectively after pleading guilty to indecency on 18 September. The boys were also given sentences which were considered at the time to be very lenient.^[7] Hammond escaped to France, and from there to Belgium, and eventually the United States. On the advice of the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, no extradition proceedings were attempted, and the case against Hammond was quietly dropped.^[8]

Somerset returned to Britain on 30 September and still no action was taken. A few days later his grandmother died and he attended her funeral.^[9] Rumours of his involvement were circulating and on 19 October Somerset fled back to France. Lord Salisbury was later accused of warning Somerset through Sir Dighton Probyn, who had met Lord Salisbury the evening before, that a warrant for his arrest was imminent.^[10] The Prince of Wales wrote to Lord Salisbury expressing satisfaction that Somerset had been allowed to leave the country and asked that if Somerset should "ever dare to show his face in England again" he would remain unmolested by the authorities,^[11] but Lord Salisbury was also being pressured by the police to prosecute Somerset. On 12 November a warrant for Somerset's arrest was finally issued.^[12] By this time Somerset was already safe on the Continent and the warrant caught little public attention.^[13] Somerset lived the rest of his life in self-imposed and comfortable exile in the South of France.^[14]

[edit] Public revelations

Because the press barely covered the story, the affair would have faded quickly from public memory if not for journalist Ernest Parke. The editor of the obscure radical weekly The North London Press, Parke got wind of the affair when one of his reporters brought to him the story of Newlove's conviction. Parke began to question why the rentboys had been given such light sentences relative to their offence (the usual penalty for "gross indecency" being two years) and how Hammond had been able to evade arrest. His curiosity aroused, Parke found out that the boys had named prominent aristocrats and consequently ran a story on 28 September hinting at their involvement but without naming specific names. It was only on 16 November that he ran a follow-up story specifically naming Euston in "an indescribably loathsome scandal in Cleveland Street".^[15] He further alleged that Euston may have gone to Peru and that he had been allowed to escape to cover up the involvement of a more highly-placed person.^[16] Some believed that this person was Prince Albert Victor, the son of the Prince of Wales.^[17]

The Earl of Euston was in fact still in England and immediately filed a case against Parke for libel. At the trial Euston admitted that when walking along Piccadilly he had been given a card by a tout, which read "Poses plastiques. C. Hammond, 19 Cleveland Street". Believing Poses plastiques to mean a display a female nudes, Euston testified, he went along to the house, paying a pound to get in. On entry, Euston said he was appalled to discover the "improper" nature of the place and immediately left. The defense witnesses contradicted each other, could not describe Euston accurately, or had prior form. Parke was found guilty and sentenced to twelve months in prison.^[18] H. Montgomery Hyde, an eminent historian of homosexuality, later wrote that there was little doubt that Euston was telling the truth and only visited Cleveland Street once because he was misled by the card.^[19]

The judge, Mr. Justice Hawkins, had a distinguished career, as did the other lawyers employed in the case. The prosecuting counsels, Charles Russell and Willie Mathews, went on to become Lord Chief Justice and Director of Public Prosecutions, respectively. The defence counsel, Frank Lockwood, later became Solicitor-General, and he was assisted by H. H. Asquith, who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twenty years later.^[20]

While Parke's conviction cleared Euston, another trial that began on 12 December proved Parke's case for conspiracy when Newlove's and Somerset's solicitor, Arthur Newton, was charged with obstruction of justice. It was alleged that he warned and assisted Charles Hammond in fleeing the country to prevent Hammond from testifying against his clients. Newton was defended by Charles Russell, who had prosecuted Ernest Parke, and the prosecutor was Sir Richard Webster, the Attorney General. Newton pleaded guilty to one of the six charges against him, claiming that he had assisted his clients to flee merely to protect them from potential blackmail.^[21] The jury accepted his pleas, and the judge, Mr. Justice Cave, sentenced Newton to six weeks in prison.^[22] It is suggested that Newton also invented and spread the rumours about Prince Albert Victor in an attempt to protect his clients from prosecution by forcing a cover-up.^[23] State papers on the case in the Public Records Office provide no information on the prince's involvement other than Newton's threat to implicate the prince.^[24] Surviving private letters from Somerset to his friend Lord Esher, confirm that Somerset knew of the rumours. He writes, "I can quite understand the Prince of Wales being much annoyed at his son's name being coupled with the thing…we were both accused of going to this place but not together…I wonder if it is really a fact or only an invention."^[25] If Newton did invent the story to protect his clients, the tactic worked. Sixty years later the official biographer of King George V, Harold Nicolson, was told by Rayner Goddard, Baron 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".^[26] The rumours led subsequent biographers to suppose that Albert Victor was bisexual,^[27] but this is strongly contested by others who refer to him as "ardently heterosexual" and his involvement in the rumours as "somewhat unfair".^[28]

After Newton's conviction, a motion was brought forth in Parliament to further investigate Parke's allegations of a cover-up. Henry Du Pré Labouchère, a Member of Parliament of the Radical wing of the Liberal Party and an ardent homophobe, watched the trials with interest. Having campaigned successfully for adding the "gross indecency" amendment (Labouchere Amendment) to the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, he was convinced that the conspiracy to cover-up the scandal went further up the government than assumed. Labouchère made his suspicions known in Parliament on 28 February 1890. He denied that "a gentleman of very high position"—presumably Prince Albert Victor—was in any way involved with the scandal, but accused the government of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by allowing Somerset to escape, hampering the investigation, delaying the trials and failing to prosecute the case with vigour. Despite a considerable and often passionate debate, in which Labouchère was expelled from Parliament after insulting the Prime Minister and refusing to withdraw his remark, the motion was defeated by a wide margin.^[29]

[edit] Aftermath

Public interest in the scandal eventually faded. Nevertheless it reinforced attitudes about male homosexuality as an aristocratic vice, presenting the telegraph boys as innocents corrupted by members of the upper class. This attitude reached its climax a few years later when Oscar Wilde was tried for gross indecency as the result of his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas and subsequently sentenced to two years hard labour.

[edit] See also

• Vere Street Coterie

[edit] Notes and sources

[edit] References

• Aronson, Theo (1994). Prince Eddy and the Homosexual Underworld. London: John Murray. ISBN 0-7195-5278-8
• Bradford, Sarah (1989). King George VI. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-79667-4
• Chester, Lewis; Leitch, David and Simpson, Colin (1977). The Cleveland Street Affair. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
• Cook, Andrew (2006). Prince Eddy: The King Britain Never Had. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Tempus Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0-7524-3410-1.
• Hyde, H. Montgomery (1970). The Other Love: An Historical and Contemporary Survey of Homosexuality in Britain. London: Heinemann. ISBN 0-434-35902-5
• Hyde, H. Montgomery (1976). The Cleveland Street Scandal. London: W. H. Allen.
• Lees-Milne, James (1980–81). Harold Nicolson (two vol.), Chatto & Windus.

[edit] External links

• Prince Eddy: The King We Never Had. Channel 4. Accessed 28 March 2008.
• Wikholm, Andrew (1999). Scandal on Cleveland Street. Accessed 28 March 2008.