Cleveland Street Scandal
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The Cleveland Street Scandal was a social scandal in Victorian Britain. The scandal promoted the idea that male homosexuality was a common vice in aristocratic circles that corrupted the youth of the lower classes. This view was also supported by the scandal of 1895 in which Oscar Wilde was involved.
In 1889 a brothel for men on Cleveland Street in London was discovered by police. At the time, sexual acts between men in Britain were prohibited by law and were perceived as a moral offense by large parts of the population. If they were discovered, the customers of the brothel had to fear both persecution by the law and social ostracism. It was rumored that one of the customers was Prince Albert Victor , second in line to the British throne. Officials were involved in the cover-up designed to keep the names of both the prince and other dignitaries out of the scandal.
One of the brothel’s customers, Lord Arthur Somerset , was a major in the Royal Horse Guards of the Prince of Wales , but, like the brothel’s owner, Charles Hammond , managed to escape abroad before he could be caught. The young prostitutes , who also worked as delivery boys for the post, received only relatively mild sentences, while none of their suitors were convicted. After the story hit the press, one of the alleged customers, the Earl of Euston Henry James FitzRoy , successfully sued the press for defamation and washed his name. The name of Prince Albert Victor was never mentioned in the British press, but after his name surfaced in the rumors of the scandal, the former has been popular with biographers.
Men's brothel
In July 1889, Constable Luke Hanks investigated the theft of some cash in the central London Telegraph Office . During the investigation, cash was found on 15-year-old delivery boy Charles Thomas Swinscow. The value of the money, 14 shillings , corresponded to several weekly wages at that time. Constable Hanks suspected the boy of being involved in the theft and brought him for questioning. After some hesitation, Swinscow finally admitted that he had made the money as a hustler in a brothel at 19 Cleveland Street. The owner of the brothel is a certain Charles Hammond. According to the boy's testimony, he was introduced to Hammond by Henry Newlove, his 18-year-old accomplice. He also named two other messenger boys who also worked for Hammond, George Wright and Charles Thickbroom, both 17 years old. The statements of Wright and Thickbroom confirmed the information and with these results Constable Hanks was able to obtain a confession from Newlove.
The constable reported this to his superiors, and the case was put on Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline . Abberline went to the brothel on July 6th, carrying an arrest warrant for both Hammond and Newlove for offenses against Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. This enactment stopped all homosexual acts between men, including attempts to do so, under penalty, with a sentence of up to two years in prison with or without forced labor. Abberline found the house locked but was able to pick up Newlove at his mother's house in Camden Town . Police also managed to arrest the other boys named by Swinscow.
Well-known customers
Newlove immediately named Lord Arthur Somerset, the royal equerry to the Prince of Wales, as well as the Earl of Euston and an army colonel named Jervois as visitors to the Cleveland Street house. A guard was posted in front of the now empty house, and an arrest warrant was issued for George Veck, another of Hammond's accomplices. He had previously also worked in the telegraph office, but had been dismissed for "improper handling" with the messenger boys. Veck was arrested at Waterloo Station in London following a tip the police received from a youth they found in his quarters . Letters from an Algernon ally were found in his pockets. Abberline sent Constable Hanks to interview Allies at his childhood home in Sudbury , Suffolk . Allies admitted to receiving money from Lord Somerset, having had a sexual relationship with him and working for Hammond on Cleveland Street.
The details of the case were passed back and forth between different government agencies, and although Somerset was questioned twice, denying any involvement, initially nothing was done. The authorities took their time to respond to and review the allegations. The matter was covered up at the highest level to protect upper-class customers, with Somerset given enough time to escape to the continent by law enforcement chief Augustus Keppel Stephenson.
For their cooperation, Newlove and Veck received reduced sentences of four and nine months of hard labor, respectively, on September 18 after they had pleaded guilty to immoral behavior. These judgments were considered very mild for the circumstances at the time. Hammond managed to escape to France and from there to Belgium, possibly he continued his escape to the United States. On the advice of Prime Minister Lord Salisbury , no extradition request was made and the charges against Hammond were quietly dropped.
Somerset returned to the UK on September 30th with no action taken about him. A few days later his grandmother died and he attended her funeral. Rumors of his involvement in the scandal rose and he fled back to France on October 19. Lord Salisbury was later charged with warning Somerset of the imminent arrest by Sir Dighton Probyn for having met him the previous evening. The Prince of Wales wrote to Lord Salisbury expressing his satisfaction that Somerset had been allowed to leave the country. The Prince also asked if Somerset would go unmolested if he ventured back to England, but Lord Salisbury was also pressured by the police to pursue Somerset. Finally, on November 12, an arrest warrant was issued against Somerset. At that time Somerset was already safe on the continent and the warrant was barely heeded by the public. Somerset spent the rest of his life in his self-chosen and pleasant exile in the south of France.
Public reactions
The affair would have quickly disappeared from the public eye without the journalist Ernest Parke, as the press barely covered the story. Parke, the editor of the infamous and radical weekly newspaper The North London Press , got wind of what had happened when one of his reporters told him about Newlove's conviction. Parke began to question why the messenger boys had to pay relatively small sentences instead of the usual two years for "grossly immoral behavior" and how Hammond had managed to evade arrest. His curiosity was piqued and he found out that the boys had accused prominent aristocrats and published an article on September 28th in which he hinted at the matter, but gave no specific names. On November 16, he published a sequel to the story, naming Euston as a participant in the "indescribably despicable scandal on Cleveland Street." He speculated that Euston might have gone to Peru and that he had been allowed to escape to cover up the involvement of an even higher-ranking nobleman. Some believed that this person was Prince Albert Victor, the son of the Prince of Wales.
Indeed, the Earl of Euston was still in England and immediately reported Parke for defamation. During the trial, the Earl admitted that while walking down Piccadilly he had been handed a card from an advertiser that read " Poses plastiques . C. Hammond, 19 Cleveland Street". Believing that poses plastiques was referring to the display of naked women, Euston confessed to paying a pound and going into the house. When he entered he was disgusted by the immoral behavior and left the house immediately. The defense witnesses contradicted each other, unable to clearly describe or identify Euston. Parke was found guilty and was sentenced to twelve months in prison. A major historian on homosexuality, H. Montgomery Hyde, later wrote that there was little doubt that Euston had been telling the truth and had actually mistakenly visited Cleveland Street for the map.
The career of Judge Henry Hawkins , like that of the lawyers involved, was extremely positive. The two prosecutors, Charles Russell and Willie Mathews , were later appointed Lord Chief Justice and Chief Law Enforcement Officer, respectively. Defense attorney Frank Lockwood was later appointed crown attorney , and his assistant Herbert Henry Asquith became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 20 years later.
While Euston was cleared of the suspicions by the Parke conviction, Parkes' allegation that Newlove and Somerset's attorney Artur Newton had worked together to obstruct justice was upheld in a December 12 trial. It was alleged that he warned Charles Hammond and helped him flee the country to prevent him from testifying against clients of the brothel. Newton was represented by Charles Russell, prosecutor in the Parkes case, while the prosecutor was represented by Sir Richard Webster , attorney general . Newton pleaded guilty to one of six charges against him, alleging that he only assisted the escape to protect his clients from possible blackmail attempts. The jury accepted his confession and the judge, Mr. Justice Cave, sentenced him to six weeks in prison. It has also been suggested that Newton started the Prince Albert Victor rumors to protect his clients from persecution by forcing the authorities to cover up the alleged involvement of the Prince. State records and files on the case, apart from Newton's threat to embarrass the prince, give no further evidence of the prince's involvement. Personal letters from Somerset to his friend Lord Esher confirm that Somerset was aware of the rumors. He wrote: “I can understand that the Prince of Wales is upset that his son's name is being linked to the matter ... We were both accused of going to this place, but never together ... I ask me whether it's really a fact or just an invention. ”If the story was really made up by Newton, the tactic worked. Sixty years later, King George V's official biographer, Harold Nicolson , learned from Baron Goddard , a 12-year-old schoolboy at the time of the scandal, that Albert Victor “was involved in, and that the Attorney had to commit perjury to keep him out ”. The rumors led later biographers to the assumption that Albert Victor was bisexual , but this representation is violently contradicted by others who describe him as a "fiery heterosexual" and regard his inclusion in the rumors as "unfair".
Following Newton's admission, Parliament proposed further investigations into Parke's cover-up allegations. Henry du Pré Labouchère , a member of parliament from the radical wing of the Liberal Party and a die-hard homophobe, watched this movement with great interest. After successfully campaigning for the addition of "grossly immoral behavior" ( Labouchere Amendment ) to the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 , he was convinced that the conspiracy necessary to cover up the scandal was far higher in the government circles passed as generally accepted. Labouchère explained his suspicions to Parliament on February 28, 1890. Although he doubted that a very high-ranking member of society - presumably he meant Prince Albert Victor - was in any way involved in the scandal, but accused the government of the conspiracy. She had circumvented the regular course of justice by allowing Somerset to escape, hindered investigations, delayed the trial and failed to pursue the case with the necessary vehemence. Despite a considerable and often passionate debate, during which Labouchère was expelled from parliament for insulting the Prime Minister because he refused to retract his remark, the proposal was rejected by a large majority.
Consequences of the scandal
The public interest slowly subsided. The scandal promoted the idea that male homosexuality was a vice common in aristocratic circles that corrupted the innocent youth of the lower classes portrayed by the messenger boys. This view reached its climax during the scandal of 1895, in which Oscar Wilde was involved, who was sentenced to two years of hard labor for grossly immoral behavior after an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas .
literature
- Theo Aronson: Prince Eddy and the Homosexual Underworld. John Murray, London 1994, ISBN 0-7195-5278-8 .
- Sarah Bradford: King George VI. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1989, ISBN 0-297-79667-4 .
- Lewis Chester, David Leitch, Colin Simpson: The Cleveland Street Affair. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1977, ISBN 0-297-77113-2 .
- Andrew Cook: Prince Eddy. The King Britain never had. Tempus Publishing Ltd., Stroud Gloucestershire 2006, ISBN 0-7524-3410-1 .
- H. Montgomery Hyde: The Other Love. An Historical and Contemporary Survey of Homosexuality in Britain. Heinemann, London 1970, ISBN 0-434-35902-5 .
- H. Montgomery Hyde: The Cleveland Street Scandal. WH Allen, London 1976.
- James Lees-Milne: Harold Nicolson. Chatto & Windus, London
- Vol. 1: 1886-1929. 1980, ISBN 0-7011-2520-9 ;
- Vol. 2: 1930-1968. 1981, ISBN 0-7011-1602-7 .
Web links
- Channel 4: Prince Eddy: The King We Never Had
- Andrew Wikholm: Scandal on Cleveland Street , 1999
- The Cleveland Street Scandal website
Notes and individual references
- ^ Theo Aronson: Prince Eddy and the Homosexual Underworld , London: John Murray, 1994. Pages 8-10. ISBN 0-7195-5278-8
- ↑ Aronson, pp. 11, 16-17
- ^ Aronson, page 11
- ^ Aronson, pp. 11, 133
- ↑ Aronson, pp. 134-135
- ^ Aronson, page 135
- ^ Aronson, page 137
- ^ Aronson, p. 136
- ^ Aronson, page 140
- ^ Aronson, page 142
- ^ From the biography of Edward VII by Sir Philip Magnus, 1964. Quoted in H. Montgomery Hyde: The Other Love: An Historical and Contemporary Survey of Homosexuality in Britain , Heinemann, 1970. Page 125. ISBN 0-434-35902-5
- ^ Aronson, page 144
- ^ Aronson, page 150
- ^ Aronson, p. 175
- ^ North London Press, November 16, 1888
- ^ Hyde, The Other Love, 125 and Aronson, 150
- ^ Hyde, The Other Love, 123
- ↑ Aronson, pages 151-159 and Hyde, The Other Love , pages 125-127
- ^ Hyde, The Other Love, 127
- ^ Aronson, page 153
- ^ Aronson, p. 172
- ^ Aronson, page 173
- ↑ Channel 4: Prince Eddy: The King We Never Had .
- ↑ Cook, pp.172-173
- ↑ Lord Arthur Somerset to Reginald Brett, 2nd Viscount Esher on December 10, 1889: “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. ”Quoted in Andrew Cook: Prince Eddy: The King Britain Never Had, Tempus Publishing Ltd., 2006, ISBN 0-7524-3410-1 , page 197.
- ↑ Lees Milne: "Harold Nicolson: had been involved in a male brothel scene, and that a solicitor had to commit perjury to clear him, " p. 231, cited in Aronson, p. 177
- ↑ Aronson, pp. 116-120, 170, 217
- ↑ Sarah Bradford: King George VI. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989, ISBN 0-297-79667-4 , p.10.
- ^ Aronson, p. 174