by Roy Jenkins
George Ball, however, went much further in his testimony than this. He did not merely add to the already formidable pile of evidence that Mrs. Crawford had known Forster long before the date to which she had sworn in the witness-box. He also provided information about Mrs. Crawford’s activities upon one of the specific dates which she had alleged against Dilke. This was February 13th, 1883, one of the only two occasions on which she said that she had spent the night at 76, Sloane Street. She had been free, she told the court, because she had returned from Scotland that morning, twenty-four hours in advance of her husband; and she had gone to Sloane Street, waited for Dilke until he had returned from addressing his constituents at the Kensington Town Hall, and stayed with him until 7-30 the following morning. Ball’s testimony was as follows:
“I distinctly recollect that one night in February, 1883 (and on 13th February ’83 to the best of my recollection and belief), Mrs. Crawford dined with Mrs. Harrison at 73 Cromwell Road about seven o’clock in the evening. I waited upon them at dinner and gathered from their conversation that Mrs. Crawford had just arrived from Scotland. Just before ten o’clock on that evening I was directed to call a hansom cab for Mrs. Crawford, which I did and handed her into it, at the same time asking her where I should tell the cabman to drive. She replied, ‘Straight on—I will tell him where to stop.’ My curiosity was rather excited and I made a move as if to return to the house but instead of doing so I remained on the pavement kerb and distinctly heard Mrs. Crawford tell the cabman through the trap in the roof of the cab as it was pulling off from the door to drive to Earls Court Gardens. When she said this I was standing behind the back of the cab, which drove off in the direction of Earls Court.”9
Ball added that Earls Court Gardens was a significant address to him because a messenger who had often brought notes from Forster to Mrs. Harrison had told him that he (the messenger) kept a lodging-house there.
This statement obviously offered a whole new line of enquiry which the Dilke partisans were quick to follow up. They discovered a Mrs. Julia Medland who, with her daughter, of the same name, kept a lodging-house at 32, Earls Court Gardens. She recognised photographs of Forster, Mrs. Crawford (who had “a peculiarly loud voice”) and Mrs. Harrison, and linked them with a Mr. de Jersey,[8] who, she said, had lodged with her from December, 1882, to February, 1883, and had occupied a front sitting-room on the first floor and a back bedroom on the second floor. Forster, Mrs. Medland said, used frequently to be in de Jersey’s rooms, and they were on many occasions visited by Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Crawford. After de Jersey left the two sisters continued to visit a Mr. Stewart, who was another lodger in the house.
Mrs. Medland continued:
“I recollect on one particular occasion in the middle of February, 1883, Mr. de Jersey informed me that a friend of his who was a stranger in town was going to occupy his room for one night and would dine with him that evening. The ladies whom. I have identified as Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Crawford came to tea in the afternoon of the same day. About midnight the same night my door was opened by a latchkey by Mr. de Jersey’s friend and I distinctly heard the rustle of a lady’s dress ascending the stairs talking very loud to the gentleman who was accompanying her. I heard them enter Mr. de Jersey’s bedroom and heard the door closed and both my daughter and myself heard their voices in conversation for a very long time during the night. At about six o’clock in the morning I heard the bedroom door open and I heard both the lady and the gentleman descend the stairs. I heard the front door closed after the lady and the gentleman returned to his room and remained there until about two o’clock in the afternoon, and then he sent down to see if there was any breakfast for him. My daughter informed him that no breakfast was provided for him. I saw him leave the house about two o’clock in the afternoon and I recognise him as the same gentleman whose photograph is now produced and shown to me. . . .”10
This story was fully corroborated by Mrs. Medland’s daughter. It was also to some extent supported by a Mrs. Castell, who kept another lodging-house at 28, Earls Court Gardens, and made a signed declaration that Forster engaged a room at her house for the night, but did not occupy it, returning in the middle of the following day in evening clothes and without an overcoat.
Unfortunately, however, from the point of view of neatness at least, Mrs. Medland’s statement cannot be accepted in its exact form. C. J. C. Pridham, a solicitor who was in charge of this part of the enquiry, wrote to Dilke in 1891 to say that Forster was in fact much better known at the Medlands’ house than the statement implies. He lodged there frequently when on leave, and he merely took a room at No. 28 in order to change because the house was full that evening. Later Miss Medland left to stay with relatives at Acton so that a room might be freed for Forster and his guest. She and her mother were thus much more privy to what was going on than they admitted. “This is what the Medlands are ashamed of,” Pridham wrote. But their evidence was nevertheless substantially true, he believed.
A further element of confusion was provided by Mrs. Harrison who, Dilke noted, “positively denies that Forster lodged in Earls Court Gardens at any time, and does so with so much vehemence, while admitting her own adultery with him both at Hill Street and at the British Hotel in Jermyn Street, that there seems to be some strong motive in the denial.”11 Whatever the motive there is no indication that it was ever discovered.
This completes the evidence touching on Mrs. Crawford’s relations with Forster. It should perhaps be noted that the dates of his leaves from the Curragh, where he was in charge of the gymnasium in 1882-3, fit in well enough with the dates mentioned. In 1882 he was on leave from February 6th to 28th, and from July 7th to 30th (the time of the assumed Cowes visit); in 1883 he was on leave from February 1st to March 9th.
The next section of subsequently accumulated evidence concerned Mrs. Crawford’s relations with men other than Forster, and was of a much more tenuous nature. The most important figure was Warner. He was traced with difficulty and found to be in practice as a doctor at 140, Fulham Road. He was described as very good-looking, lately married to a rich wife, and having previously “led a fast life.” No information was apparently forthcoming from him. He had been a student at St. George’s Hospital in 1882, and had come into contact with Mrs. Harrison there, and through her with Mrs. Crawford. Mrs. Harrison and to a lesser extent Mrs. Crawford had been frequenting the hospital because Robert Harrison, as a result of a riding accident in Hyde Park, had been a patient there for nearly two months. It will be remembered that the first of the anonymous letters received by Crawford, which ended with the phrase “beware of the member for Chelsea,” had referred also to the flirtations which his wife and her sister were carrying on with students at the hospital. Crawford in his evidence at the first trial said that he received this letter while Harrison was a patient there, but that he thought the date was March or early April. Records showed, however, that Harrison had in fact left the hospital on February 23rd, the date of Mrs. Crawford’s alleged first seduction by Dilke. This was thought to be of importance because it showed, first, that Mrs. Crawford’s relations with Warner must have begun before February 23rd, and second, that the reference to “the member for Chelsea” could have been at most no more than a prophecy.
The investigations of an enquiry agent succeeded in producing the information that Mrs. Harrison, apart from her activities at 9, Hill Street (where, it was said, both she and Mrs. Crawford used to be taken by Mr. Hugh Hammersley and the Honble. A. Grosvenor of Moor Park, Rickmansworth), had rooms during her husband’s period in hospital at 27, Chester Street. There both she and Mrs. Crawford were visited by several of the students from St. George’s, “including Freddy Warner.”
Rather harder evidence was forthcoming later when Dilke obtained possession of some letters from Warner to Mrs. Harrison. They were dated between March and May, 1882. There was a mystery about how the letters had been obtained, and there is a note in the papers saying: “Dilke cannot state the circumstances u
nder which a large collection of Mrs. Harrison’s letters came into his hands, but two persons are implicated in the larceny.”12 He made no attempt to conceal that he had them, however. He first showed them to Steaven-son, who expressed the view that they were of great importance, so much so that had they been in the hands of the Queen’s Proctor at the time of Mrs. Crawford’s cross-examinations they would have been sufficient to win his case. Through solicitors Dilke then informed Mrs. Crawford that the letters were in his possession and asked her to meet him. She refused at first, but when he had sent her one of the letters she agreed to come. They met in Sir George Lewis’s office, with Humbert also present. But the interview was ineffective. Mrs. Crawford said “she could do nothing and that I must do what I must.”
Two of the letters pointed only to a liaison between Warner and Mrs. Harrison, but a third was in the following terms:
“My dear Nell: I found your letter . . . awaiting me . . . to-day and it kept me in roars of laughter. It was so characteristic of you in your supreme moment of bliss. Just as I was leaving I got your card asking me to tea to-morrow, which I shall be most happy to do, provided no one else besides yourself and Nia will be there. . . . With very much love to you pet and Nia.”[9]13
The letters were clearly much more damaging to Mrs. Harrison than to Mrs. Crawford, but they tended strongly to contradict the latter’s assertion that her acquaintanceship with Warner was of the slightest nature; and their suggestion of a curious, tri-partite relationship between Warner and the two sisters, together with other similar hints in the Hill Street evidence and the Chester Street report, was thought, perhaps rightly, to be of great significance, and to offer a possible explanation of Mrs. Crawford’s “invention” of the sensational Fanny story.
There was also some further information relating to Robert Priestley, Mrs. Crawford’s brother-in-law. This was contained in a letter from Mrs. Rogerson to Lady Dilke, dated September 22nd, 1886. The letter itself has a note of conviction, although Mrs. Rogerson cannot in general be regarded as a reliable witness of the truth, or indeed of anything else.
“I cannot for a moment go back from what I said that Mrs. Crawford had told me of repeated adulteries with Mr. Priestley,” it ran. “She told me with the fullest particulars. She said that it had been so constantly before and in August, 1884, up till he went to Scotland or somewhere north. A week later he wrote he was engaged to her sister.[10] She also mentioned a Mr. Warner but quite casually. I feel I must now say this because she has denied having told me. of it. As I never knew there were such men till she told me, I can hardly be even confused. It was from herself and no one else I heard of these adulteries at first.”14
Mrs. Harrison also referred to the liaison between Mrs. Crawford and Priestley as something which was beyond dispute. She said that Mrs. Ashton Dilke was aware of the relationship with Priestley, but not of that with Warner. There were also a few snippets of information suggesting that at Edinburgh in the autumn of 1881 Mrs. Crawford had another lover—perhaps her first—called Captain Ernest Graham. The initials “E.G.” had appeared in her diary for these months in the same way as the others already noted. In addition there was mention of another gentleman referred to simply as “Fleming,” who appeared later in the period under review. But these suggestions were not supported by evidence. They complete the subsequently obtained information relating to Mrs. Crawford’s conduct.
The next group of evidence related to 65, Warren Street, and Anna Dessouslavy. This began with a series of statements from a variety of apparently impeccable sources testifying to the relationship of the Dessouslavy family to the Dilke family being as Sir Charles had stated it in his evidence, to the pension paid to Anna being a perfectly open arrangement, and to the Dessouslavys being thought to be a family of excellent character. These statements were not of major importance, as the judge in his summing-up, even if not the public, had been prepared to concede at least the first two points to Dilke.
Next came a further series of statements from those intimately connected with Warren Street which were designed to show that the house could not have been used for immoral purposes. These were taken by McArthur and Howel Thomas from Mrs. Goudge, the landlady, from Mr. Collins, the beadle at Trinity Church, St. Marylebone, who had lodged there with his wife, and from Mr. and Mrs. Williams, who had also lodged in the house. Moreover, they all swore that the description of the interior of the house, supported by a plan, which Mrs. Crawford had given in the witness-box and which had so impressed the court, was wrong in every respect. She was wrong as to the position of the staircase (which was remarkable as it ran from the back of the house to the front), she was wrong as to the position of the door leading into the bedroom, and she was wrong as to the shape of the bedroom and the position in it of the window. A surveyor’s plan of the house was then made, which confirmed the accuracy of these witnesses and the inaccuracy of Mrs. Crawford.
Mrs. Goudge made one other statement which was thought to be of importance. She said that some time before the trial began (she did not specify which trial), two ladies whom she had seen wandering up and down the street on several previous occasions called and asked if Mrs. Dessouslavy lived there. The suggestion was that the two ladies were Mrs. Crawford and Mrs. Ashton Dilke, looking for the house with more difficulty and by a somewhat different method from that which Mrs. Crawford had described in her evidence. It was also pointed out in the papers, as was indeed confirmed by the author on a visit to Warren Street, that had Mrs. Crawford looked for the house, as she told the court, in the belief that it was one of two which were taller than their neighbours, she would indeed have found difficulty in identifying it; it is in fact one of a group of five which are all taller than the others in the street.
The Dilke investigators also reverted to the problem of Giuliano, whose production by Phillimore had failed so signally either to confuse the Hilliers or to impress the court. There was a statement by Chesson testifying that Giuliano, with his hat on, did in fact look remarkably like Dilke. There was not perhaps very much to this, and there may have been more value in the investigators’ refutation of the judge’s strongly made dialectical point that, when it was suggested by Sir Walter Phillimore that it was Giuliano and not Dilke who had been to the house under the circumstances described by the Hilliers, Sir Walter was apparently abandoning his attempt to defend Mrs. Dessouslavy’s reputation to the court. Giuliano was shown by the new evidence to be a man of accepted respectability, well known to the other inhabitants of the house as a friend of Mrs. Dessouslavy’s. His wife was also a close friend of Anna’s and he used frequently to meet her in the latter’s rooms. McArthur and Howel Thomas also took statements from Mrs. Hillier and Miss Hillier, who had been such important witnesses at the second trial. They both said that they regretted the certainty which they had then displayed about the man who frequently visited the house being Sir Charles Dilke. They were now extremely doubtful about his identity.
All this, so far as it went, was clearly in Dilke’s favour, but one other subsequent development in regard to Mrs. Dessouslavy, had it been known, must have told the other way. On July 29th, 1890, she wrote to Dilke, in French, what appeared to be a letter of half-apology. She wrote that, as a result of delusions, she had been saying things about him to which “il ne faut pas attacher trop d’importance.” The only clue to the nature of these remarks comes from a note which Dilke attached to Mrs. Dessouslavy’s letter.
“Anna went cracky (sic) (she has been so since her cross-examination but got much worse),” he wrote, “and at last wrote to me that I had seduced her sister, was the father of her son, and (had) induced her to give false evidence.” He added, a little inconsequently: “The son was born in wedlock, the sister has been all along in place, and I have hardly ever set eyes on the one she means (Eliza, I think it is).”15
The only subsequent record of Mrs. Dessouslavy was in 1907 when she was writing to Dilke with complete friendliness and apparent sanity.
The next
section of evidence related to Fanny Stock. First there was the signed statement which Humbert had taken from her in April, 1886.[11] In this statement she denied the charge made against her. “I certainly never saw Mrs. Crawford at Sloane Street or any other lady, I did not even see Sir Charles Dilke. I never heard of Mrs. Crawford until the commencement of this case and I should not know her if I saw her.” She insisted, however, that she was frightened to go into the witness-box and said that her husband was also most anxious that she should not do so. That was why they had disappeared for several months. She gave an account of the places where she had been in service which was complete except for the fifteen months before she went to Warren Street.
About this period she was firmly reticent: “I decline to say where I was between March, 1883, and July, 1884—it has nothing whatever to do with this case.16
After this statement was taken the Stocks disappeared again, and sought on this occasion to cover their traces by assuming a false name. By the beginning of 1887 they had been tracked down by detectives employed by Dilke’s solicitor. Chesson then went to see Fanny and wrote this account of his interview:
“On Tuesday, January 28th, 1887, Lady Dilke and I visited Fanny Stock (alias Archer) at Foot’s Cray. We questioned her on the subject of her disappearance during the year 1883-4. Her story was as follows: when residing at 16, Curzon Street, as housemaid to Mrs. Charles Roundell she made the acquaintance of a man who visited at the house, and at his insistence she left her situation and went into lodgings somewhere, as it would seem, in the suburbs of London. She entered the service of a lady of his acquaintance, and passed a certain number of hours daily with her in doing needlework, and taking charge of her clothes. Both parties were married, but the lady’s husband was away; and she and her paramour met, from time to time, at Fanny’s lodgings. The lady lived about ten minutes’ walk from Fanny’s lodgings; and it would take about an hour to walk from Sloane Street to the place in question. She refused to give the name of either of the parties concerned in the intrigue. . . . She declared that she had never had relations of any kind with Sir C. Dilke, and could hardly say that she knew him; that she never saw Mrs. Crawford in her life; and that she met Anna Dessouslavy by pure accident when she went to Shoolbred’s to buy a cloak. She was not in want, but was glad to take service with her, because having left Mrs. Roundell’s for more than a year, she was without a character and would have found it difficult to get a place.”17
