by Theo Aronson
The coupling of Lord Euston’s name with that of Lord Arthur Somerset came as a considerable shock to the general public. Henry James Fitzroy, Earl of Euston, now in his early forties, was – as that celebrated authority on sexual matters, Frank Harris, put it – ‘the last man in the world to be suspected of abnormal propensities’.7 Indeed, Euston was generally regarded as one of the most rampantly heterosexual of men. Over six feet tall, well-built, manfully moustached, he had a reputation as a ‘stage-door Johnny’. Euston’s addiction to chorus girls was so whole-hearted that, at the age of twenty-three, he married one: a variety theatre actress named Kate Cook. Unfortunately, and unknown to Euston, the new Lady Euston was already married; but as her commercial traveller husband had, in turn, been already married at the time of his marriage to her, Kate Cook’s marriage to Euston was problematic. The couple obtained a divorce. This unhappy experience seems in no way to have blunted Euston’s sexual appetite; indeed, it now encompassed, if Parke was to be believed, men as well as women.
The publication of his name in the North London Press brought an immediate reaction from Lord Euston. He instructed his solicitor to institute proceedings against Parke for criminal libel. A warrant was issued for Parke’s arrest and on 26 November he faced a committal hearing. By then, however, Parke had published another article in the North London Press in which his suspicions of a cover-up in the Cleveland Street affair were admirably set out.
‘The information affecting Lord Arthur Somerset, the man Hammond, and other persons, distinguished and undistinguished, was in the hands of the authorities at the end of July …’ claimed Parke. But it was not until mid-October, ‘in obedience to a hint from a high official at Court, and [after] his resignation of his command and of his office of Assistant Equerry to the Prince of Wales was gazetted’, that Somerset disappeared. ‘When the warrant against him was issued, he was safe from arrest. In the same way Hammond, the keeper of the den of infamy at Cleveland Street, had been able to put himself beyond the reach of the law. He fled to France, where, at the suggestion of our own Foreign Office, he was expelled as a mauvais sujet, and he has fled, it is feared, without any prospect of his being brought to justice.
‘The result, therefore, of these extraordinary – these unheard of – delays in fulfilling the forms of law, and protecting the community against nameless crimes, has been that two of the chief offenders have disappeared. But that is not all. Two minor members of this vile conspiracy [Newlove and Veck] were committed for trial and pleaded guilty to the charge at the Old Bailey. Their cases were brought on at the end of the day’s proceedings, when few spectators were left and when everybody supposed that the sitting was over. Hurried clandestinely into the dock, these guilty wretches, condemned out of their own mouths, were awarded sentences of four and nine months respectively for offences for which, at a previous Sessions, a minister at Hackney had been condemned to penal servitude for life …’
‘And now’, concluded Parke, ‘a word as to our own action … The North London Press is now the subject of a criminal libel. It is one small newspaper, fighting wealth, position, the ablest criminal lawyer in London, and the reluctance of those in authority to do their duty … If the half of what we know, and are learning from day to day, comes out in a court of law, there has been accumulating under our feet a store of moral dynamite sufficient to wreck the good name of the nation …’8
What Parke was referring to here, of course, were the allegations of Prince Eddy’s involvement. If the Heir Presumptive to the throne were to be revealed as a frequenter of a male brothel he would face, not only a scandal of tremendous proportions but, even more seriously, arrest, trial and the possibility of imprisonment.
At the committal hearing at Bow Street court, Lord Euston conducted himself with admirable aplomb. He scored an immediate advantage by denying Parke’s claim that he had fled to Peru to escape justice. He had never been to Peru. In fact, he had not left England at any time during the last eight years.
Although not denying that he had ever been to the house in Cleveland Street, Euston gave the court his account of what he claimed to be his one brief association with it. One night in May or June that year, as he was walking home along Piccadilly, a card was pushed into his hand. On it was written, ‘Poses plastiques. Hammond, 19 Cleveland Street.’ (Poses plastiques were the Victorian equivalent of strip-tease.) About a week after that, Euston one night decided to visit the Cleveland Street address. His knock was answered by a man who asked him for a sovereign as entrance fee. Euston paid the money and asked when the poses plastiques were due to take place.
‘There is nothing of that sort here,’ answered the man. He then went on to enlighten Euston as to the services offered by the house.
Euston was, he assured the magistrate, appalled. ‘You infernal scoundrel,’ he exclaimed. ‘If you don’t let me out I will knock you down.’9
He left the house immediately.
The magistrate, considering the libelling of Lord Euston to be a matter of ‘very great gravity’, directed Ernest Parke to stand trial at the next sessions of the Central Criminal Court.
The trial of Ernest Parke of the North London Press for criminally libelling the Earl of Euston opened at the Old Bailey on 15 January 1890 before Mr Justice Hawkins. To know that one was being tried by a judge whose nickname was ‘Hanging Hawkins’ was not exactly reassuring. The members of the prosecuting and defending counsels were hardly less famous. For the prosecution Sir Charles Russell QC, later to become Lord Chief Justice, was assisted by Mr William Matthews, later Director of Public Prosecutions. For the defence, Mr Frank Lockwood QC, later Solicitor-General, was assisted by Mr Herbert Asquith, afterwards Liberal Prime Minister. It was an impressive line-up.
Lord Euston’s counsel opened the case by outlining his client’s version of his visit to 19 Cleveland Street, ostensibly to see the advertised poses plastiques. He had spent less than five minutes in the house and had stormed out on realizing the true nature of the establishment. Contrary to what Parke had claimed, Lord Euston had not left the country after the flight of Hammond and the arrest of Veck and Newlove; nor had he ever been to Peru. He also denied Parke’s written plea of justification in which it was alleged that Lord Euston had had sex in the Cleveland Street house with two men: Jack Saul and Frank Hewitt. Far from having been to bed with them, claimed his counsel, his lordship had never even heard of them.
Parke’s counsel then called its six witnesses, the first five of whom were meant to identify Lord Euston as having been the man whom they had frequently seen visiting 19 Cleveland Street. Their performance was farcical. Two of them were barmen, one a coal-merchant, another a railway porter and a fifth a woman who lived opposite and who had seen, she assured the fascinated courtroom, as many as fifty or sixty men visiting the house. All five witnesses were unsophisticated people whose quaint turns of phrase and often unintelligible accents caused considerable amusement.
Their testimony was easily demolished. The first admitted to bad eyesight and an inability to tell one sort of carriage from another. The second disagreed with the first about the gentleman’s height, clothes and carriage. The third swore to having seen Lord Euston enter the house on 9 July until he was told that the house had been empty since Hammond’s flight on the 5 July. Mrs Morgan, the fourth witness, could not explain why, of all those fifty or sixty men she had seen visiting the house, Lord Euston happened to be the one she could remember. Nor, she was told, did Lord Euston own a blue top-coat with a velvet collar such as she described. The fifth witness admitted to having been told, by the second witness, that the man he had seen leaving the house was Lord Euston: he had never, in fact, seen him until that day in court. None of the witnesses remarked on Lord Euston’s exceptional height of six foot four; most seem to have been in the pay of private detectives. All in all, their testimony proved worthless.
The sixth, and final defence witness, was very different. There was nothing unsophisticated or unintelligible about him.
This was Jack Saul, the notorious male prostitute and pimp, co-author of The Sins of the Cities of the Plain, who claimed to have had sex with Lord Euston at 19 Cleveland Street. By now in his late thirties, with his best years behind him, Saul proved to be a sharp, witty and unashamedly outspoken witness. Throughout his cross-examination, his tone was pert and self-confident.
He was questioned first by Lockwood, for the defence. Saul had known Hammond for ten years. Despite the fact that Hammond had been married and had a son, the two of them earned their livings ‘as sodomites’. He had lived in Hammond’s Cleveland Street house for about eight weeks in the spring of 1887, and had given Hammond all the money he earned. He often earned as much as £8 a night.
‘Do you see any person in this court you have ever seen in Hammond’s house in Cleveland Street?’ asked Lockwood.
‘The gentleman there with the moustache,’ answered Saul, pointing to Lord Euston.
‘Was that the first time he had been there?’
‘Yes, I believe.’
‘When was that?’
‘Some time in April or May 1887.’
‘Where did you meet this person?’
‘In Piccadilly, between Albany courtyard and Sackville Street. He laughed at me and I winked at him. He turned sharp into Sackville Street.’
‘Who did?’ asked the judge.
‘The Duke, as we used to call him,’ answered Saul.
‘Go on,’ prompted Lockwood, ‘and tell me what happened.’
‘The Duke, as we called him, came near me, and asked me where I was going,’ explained Saul. ‘I said “Home” and he said “What sort is your place?” “Very comfortable,” I replied. He said, “Is it very quiet there?” I said yes it was, and then we took a hansom cab there. We got out by the Middlesex Hospital, and I took the gentleman to 19 Cleveland Street, letting him in with my latchkey.
‘I was not long in there, in the back parlour or reception room before Hammond came and knocked and asked if we wanted any champagne or drinks of any sort, which he was in the habit of doing.’
This brought forth gales of knowing laughter which the judge immediately silenced. Saul then related what had happened between him and Lord Euston in terms which The Times reporter described as unfit for publication. The gist of it was that Lord Euston was ‘not an actual sodomite. He likes to play with you and then “spend” on your belly.’ The other spending done by Lord Euston that night was to leave a sovereign on the chest of drawers as he went out.
‘Did you see Lord Euston at this house again?’ continued Lockwood.
‘Once, and I did not forget it,’ answered Saul. Two others had been present on this occasion: Frank Hewitt, who had since been spirited abroad, and Henry Newlove, who was now in prison. The occasion had been made memorable because of Saul’s quarrel with Hammond. He had complained bitterly to Hammond about the number of Post Office employees, boys with perfectly good jobs, who were being allowed to earn extra money in the house while he was obliged to walk the streets. With this Saul tossed his head in what was described as ‘a theatrical gesture’.
Sir Charles Russell now rose to cross-examine the witness on behalf of the prosecution.
‘Where are you living now?’ he asked.
With some very respectable people in Brixton, answered Saul. The man in whose house he was living was known, he added, as ‘Violet’.
‘When did you first give evidence?’
Saul’s answer to this question caused a sensation. ‘The first statement I made was at the Criminal Investigation Office to Inspector Abberline.’
This meant that Saul had told the police, many months before, of Lord Euston’s visits to Cleveland Street and that no action had been taken against Euston. (Nor, apparently, had the police followed up – or been allowed to follow up – the charges made against Euston by Newlove at the time of his arrest.)
Before he went to Hammond’s with Lord Euston in a cab, continued Saul, he had had no idea who he was. ‘I picked him up just as I might have picked up any other gentleman,’ he explained.
‘When did you first learn Lord Euston’s name?’
‘About a fortnight or three weeks after the first occasion on which Lord Euston visited 19 Cleveland Street.’
‘Who told you?’
‘A friend of mine in the street.’ On being pressed, Saul admitted that the friend’s name was Carrington. He was known as ‘Lively Poll’ and he had a considerable knowledge of the members of the aristocracy.
When he and Lord Euston had parted after their first meeting, continued Saul, Euston had said to him, ‘Be sure, if you see me, don’t speak to me in the street.’ Consequently he had never spoken to him, although he often saw him in Piccadilly and elsewhere.
On being asked by Russell what he had ever done to earn his living, Saul answered, ‘Not much.’
‘What?’ pressed Russell.
‘I worked hard at cleaning the houses of the gay people,’ he replied. The word ‘gay’ at this time was used to describe prostitutes: they were often known as ‘gay ladies’. He had also done some casual work in two theatres but had not earned much. His earnings, while ‘practising criminality in other houses’, had been rather better; he had once lived in a house in Nassau Street where ‘vicious practices were carried on’.
‘Did you live with a woman known as Queen Anne in Church Street, Soho?’ asked Russell.
Queen Anne, explained Saul, was a man. Russell asked if this man was in court.
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Saul. His name was Andrew Grant.
‘Did you live with this man Grant?’ asked Russell.
‘No,’ said Saul saucily, ‘he lived with me.’
‘And were you hunted out by the police?’
‘No, they have never interfered,’ answered Saul. On the contrary, the police had always behaved very ‘kindly’ towards him as he walked the streets by night.
Sir Charles Russell was shocked. ‘Do you mean they have deliberately shut their eyes to your infamous practices?’ he asked.
‘They have had to shut their eyes to more than me,’ was Saul’s wry answer.
On handing Saul a photograph of Lord Euston, Russell asked if he recognized him.
‘Yes,’ answered Saul. ‘You could tell him by his big white teeth and his moustache.’
Lord Euston’s behaviour in the witness box was, as it had been during the preliminary hearing, exemplary. He repeated the story of the poses plastiques. He denied having visited the house on any other occasion. He had never seen Jack Saul before. While admitting that he knew Lord Arthur Somerset socially, Euston denied having visited him in Boulogne recently. In fact, he had not been out of England for eight years. He had certainly never been to Peru.
This concluded the evidence. The jury having been addressed, Mr Justice Hawkins announced that he would postpone his summing-up until the following morning.
In the course of his two-and-a-half-hour-long summing up, the judge had no difficulty in rejecting the evidence of the first five defence witnesses. This meant that the decision of the jury would rest largely on the testimony of Jack Saul. Describing him as ‘a melancholy spectacle’ and ‘a loathsome object’, the judge asked in which of the two men’s oaths the jury could place more confidence: the oath of Lord Euston or the oath of this despicable creature. In other words, would they believe the titled gentleman or the low-born male prostitute?
On this point, the jury obviously had very little doubt. They were out for less than three-quarters of an hour. They returned a verdict which found Ernest Parke ‘guilty of libel without justification’.10 The judge sentenced him to twelve months’ imprisonment.
The trial of Ernest Parke left several questions unanswered. Why was Lord Euston allowed to appear last, to remain unexamined until all the defence witnesses had given evidence? This gave him every sort of advantage, including an important psychological one.
Although Hammond had been allowed to flee the country, another person who would have been able to
identify Lord Euston was the young procurer, Henry Newlove, now in prison. Why was he not called to corroborate Saul’s evidence? After all it was Newlove who first told Inspector Abberline that Somerset and Euston were regular visitors to Cleveland Street. Newlove was an unsophisticated boy, who would not have mentioned Lord Euston’s name without good reason. In fact, when preparing his client’s defence, Parke’s solicitor had written to the Home Office requesting that he should be supplied with the depositions of Newlove and the other Post Office boys. This request was refused. But Parke’s solicitor was told that he could subpoena the Director of Public Prosecutions for any documents that he might want. These documents would then be brought into court but could only be produced by order of the judge. But Parke’s solicitor appears not to have acted on this advice. It was a curious omission. The defence was left to rely on the testimony of Jack Saul alone and, as a male prostitute, his testimony was bound to be suspect.
And why did Inspector Abberline, on being told months before by Saul of Lord Euston’s visits to Cleveland Street, not act on this evidence? Perhaps he wanted to and perhaps he was prevented from doing so by his superiors. Certainly, at the time of Parke’s committal hearing at Bow Street, Abberline asked permission of the Police Commissioner to take two of the Post Office boys – Thickbroom and Swinscow – to the proceedings, in the hope that they might be able to identify Lord Euston. The Commissioner passed the request on to the Attorney General. He turned it down. ‘We should keep aloof from the present proceedings,’ he answered. For what reason?
