The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse

by Piu Marie Eatwell

  p. 9 two or even three overcoats (whatever the weather). There are many testimonies to the 5th Duke’s eccentric style of dress. See, for example, the evidence of estate worker, the engineer Mr James Rudd, reported in the Lichfield Mercury, Friday, 13 December 1907; also the Daily Chronicle, 15 March 1898.

  p. 9 vast umbrella. See William Day, Reminiscences of the Turf, London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1886, p. 137.

  p. 10 on pain of immediate dismissal. See obituary notice of the 5th Duke in The Times, 8 December 1897; also Charles J. Archard, The Portland Peerage Romance, London: Greening & Co. Ltd, 1907.

  p. 10 kindly and generous employer. See obituary of the duke in The Times, 8 December 1879.

  p. 10 donkeys… umbrellas. See account of Lady Ottoline Morrell in Men, Women and Things, op. cit., p. 36.

  p. 10 skating rink. See account of Lady Ottoline Morrell in Men, Women and Things, op. cit., p. 36.

  p. 10 listening to the men singing. See proof of Joseph Harvey at NU PL L1/2/6/4.

  p. 12 no beauty in these rooms. See account of Lady Ottoline Morrell in Men, Women and Things, op. cit., p. 35.

  p. 12 leaving… the lonely figure. See account of Lady Ottoline Morrell in Men, Women and Things, op. cit., p. 34.

  p. 14 Rugeley Poisoner. See the memoirs of the politician and journalist Louis John Jennings (1836–1893).

  p. 14 several eye-witnesses at the inquest. See Daily Express, 10 July 1903.

  p. 14 body laid out. The 6th Duke notes in his autobiography that he never met his predecessor in life, although he saw him in death: Men, Women and Things, op. cit., p. 30.

  p. 16 Medici lace collar. See Archard, op. cit.

  p. 16 ‘The City? I have only been here in processions.’ See Chips: the Diaries of Sir Henry Channon, ed. R. R. James, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967, p. 468.

  SCENE TWO

  p. 18 Proceedings of the 9 March 1898 consistory court hearing. The dialogue in this chapter is taken from the record of the court proceedings in the London Consistory Court of 9 March 1898 and the interview with Mrs Druce and Dr Forbes Winslow reported in Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper of 13 March 1898.

  p. 18 Wellington Chapel of St Paul’s Cathedral. See Besterman, op. cit., p. 18. The description of the chapel here is based on the contemporary description given by the Rev. Arthur Dimock MA, St Paul: An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch, London: George Bell & Sons, 1900.

  p. 19 a diminutive and portly figure. Physical descriptions of Chancellor Tristram are taken from Thomas Hutchinson Tristram: For Forty Years Chancellor of London: A Memoir, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1916, pp. 24–5.

  p. 19 Smith and Others v. Tebbit and Others, 1867. See the account of this case in Thomas Hutchinson Tristram: For Forty Years Chancellor of London: A Memoir, op. cit., pp. 24–5.

  p. 20 middle classes fallen on hard times. The physical description and clothing of Anna Maria Druce is taken from illustrations in newspaper reports of the time. She is referred to as having once been handsome in a number of newspaper reports, for example, in Society, 3 December 1898.

  p. 24 a fact that bothered the chancellor. The chancellor in his judgments repeatedly referred to the significance of T. C. Druce’s medical certificate not being signed by a doctor.

  p. 25 Dr Lyttleton Stewart Forbes Winslow. The physical description of Forbes Winslow is taken from contemporaneous portraits and photographs.

  SCENE THREE

  p. 29 gaunt figure in widow’s weeds. See the interview with Mr T. E. Bois (mis-named as ‘Tu’ Bois in some accounts), superintendent of Highgate Cemetery, reported in Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 13 March 1898. He states to the reporter that Mrs Druce had been ‘worrying’ him for some time.

  p. 29 She had even brought a mining engineer. See Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 12 June 1898.

  p. 30 firm of undertakers. See Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 13 March 1898.

  p. 30 ‘Depend upon it… ’ Quoted in Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 13 March 1898 (as are Mr Bois’ misgivings on the issue).

  p. 33 revelatory biography. Tomalin, Claire The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens, London: Viking, 1990.

  p. 33 ‘Official’ account of Dickens’ death was a fabrication. As argued by Tomalin in The Invisible Woman, op. cit.

  p. 34 Henry Wainwright. The full story of the Wainwright saga is recounted in grisly detail in Judith Flanders’ The Invention of Murder, London: HarperPress, 2011.

  p. 35 a ‘certain impatient gaiety of disposition… profound duplicity of life’. Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886): Norton Critical Edition, 2003, p. 48.

  p. 36 high moral tone. Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Bantam, 2005, p. 465.

  SCENE FOUR

  p. 38 to work as a salesman for old Mr Munns. See statement of Josh Cooke, cabinet maker, at NU PI/LI/1/1/29.

  p. 38 The Pantheon Bazaar. See Knight, Charles, Knight’s London, London: Charles Knight & Co., 1841–44; also Physiology of the London Idler, Chapter IV – Of the Pantheon, considered in relation to the Lounger, in Punch, Jul–Dec 1842.

  p. 40 discreet brougham. See statement of Josh Cooke, op. cit., NU PI LI/1/1/29.

  p. 40 the sight of red meat was abhorrent to him. See the Daily Express, 22 June 1903.

  p. 40 a particular fondness for wigs. See the Daily Express, 22 June 1903.

  p. 40 rose or flower in his buttonhole. See NU Pl L1/1/1/29.

  p. 40 jaundiced appearance… brooked no contradiction. See interview with former employee of Baker Street Bazaar, Mr Redgell, in the Daily Express, 26 June 1903.

  p. 40 ‘The old man… had an eye that could see right through you.’ See the deposition evidence given by George Druce’s son Charles at NU PL L1/2/4/2/23/2.

  p. 40 underground passages… red curtains. Interview with former employee of Baker Street Bazaar in P. T. O., 2 February 1907. There was much dispute about whether Druce’s office had curtains or not, but in the end Herbert Druce actually admitted as much in the perjury proceedings of 1908, as did Mrs Stoward, widow of the former partner of T. C. Druce (see NU Pl L1/4/2/12; NU Pl L1/2/6/12).

  p. 41 ‘sprung from the clouds… profound secret’. Comments such as this were frequently made of T. C. Druce. See, for example, the Daily Express, 20 July 1903; P. T. O., 2 February 1907; interview with J. G. Littlechild on 5 December 1898, NU Pl L1/9/1/2.

  p. 41 refusing to deal with all but his regular business acquaintances. See, for example, the affidavit of James Smeaton of the horticultural engineers Gray & Ormson of Chelsea, filed in support of Mrs Druce’s probate action, which states that Druce refused to meet him when the partner of the firm that he usually dealt with was sick (NU PI L1/1/2). Also interview with Smeaton in the Daily Mail, 30 August 1898.

  p. 41 Mill Hill… Holcombe House. See ‘Hendon: Growth before 1850’, in A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 5: Hendon, Kingsbury, Great Stanmore, Little Stanmore, Edmonton Enfield, Monken Hadley, South Mimms, Tottenham, eds T. F. T. Baker and R. B. Pugh, London: Victoria County History, 1976, pp. 5–11; also the statement of the cook employed at Holcombe House, Charlotte High, at NU Pl L1/11/6/799/2.

  p. 42 ‘not even so much as a pair of gloves’. See interview with former Baker Street employee Mr Redgell, in the Daily Express, 26 June 1903.

  p. 43 ‘I see him now, the dead man!’ See NU Pl L1/1/2/1.

  p. 43 Harcourt House. Cited by Tim Knox in Precautions for Privacy: The ‘Mole Duke’s’ Secret Garden at Harcourt House, Cavendish Square, in The London Gardener, volume 2, 1996–1997, 2:27–33.

  p. 44 circular path. See Knox, op. cit.

  p. 45 Sir William Folkes. See NU Pl L1/2/8/2/20.

  p. 45 farewell speech. See summary of events in 5th Duke’s life complied by Baileys, Shaw & Gillett at NU Pl L1/2/8/2/20.

  p. 46 contemporary newspaper report. See summary of events in 5th Duke’s life compiled by Baileys, Shaw & Gillett at NU Pl L1/2/8/2/20.

&
nbsp; p. 46 the old Duchess never forgave Lord John. See statement of the widow Mrs Bethia Hartley at NU Pl L1/2/6/13.

  p. 46 Hayter. The incident of Hayter being recalled to Harcourt House to take away the pastels of Adelaide is recounted by Flora Northesk-Wilson, the painter’s granddaughter. The pastels remained with Hayter for the rest of his life. On his death in 1895, they reverted to Welbeck Abbey, but the 6th Duke gave Hayter’s daughter one of them as a gift (see letter from Flora Northesk-Wilson published in the Daily Mail, 20 December 1898).

  p. 47 Lady Londonderry. Cited in Masters, op. cit., p. 162.

  p. 47 repressed homosexual. See, for example, Gwyn Headley and Wim Meulenkamp, Follies: Grottoes, Gardens and Buildings, London: Aurum Press, 1999, p. 404.

  p. 47 carriage accident. Details of the carriage accident were related in court depositions by the duke’s close friends the Dowager Countess Manvers (NU Pl L1 2/4/22) and the Dowager Countess of Cork (NU Pl L1/2/4/29).

  p. 48 average height of the Victorian male. See statistical analysis for the Galton Institute, by Gary E. Pittman in their December 1999 Newsletter: ‘We see that the average height of an Englishman [in the Victorian age] is 5’6” and the range of heights is between 5’3” and 5’9”. An Englishman less than 5’3” would be considered unusually short, and one taller than 5’9” would be unusually tall. You would expect to see only about one in a thousand Englishmen above or below the normal range.’

  p. 48 unhealthy pallor. See proof of Charles Nevett at NU Pl L1/ 2/6/13.

  p. 48 a form of eczema. See interview with the foreman of Truefitt & Co., Daily Express, 22 June 1903.

  p. 48 ‘intense irritation of the skin’. Cited in A. S. Turbeville, A History of Welbeck Abbey and its Owners, London: Faber & Faber, 1934, p. 434.

  p. 48 Henry Powell, recollected. See proof of Henry Powell at NU Pl L1/2/6/13.

  p. 49 averse to red meat. See the Daily Express, 26 June 1903.

  p. 49 Descriptions of the 5th Duke’s mode of dress. Descriptions of the oddities of the 5th Duke’s manner of dress are legion: see, for example, the Daily Express, 22 June 1903; also the Daily Chronicle, 15 March 1898.

  p. 50 ‘inclemency of a Siberian winter’. See Day, op. cit., p. 137.

  pp. 49–50 Particulars of clothes orders of duke from Messrs Batt & Co. See interview with Mr Batt Jnr, son of the firm, in the Daily Mail, 26 August 1898. Several details given by Mr Batt – including the mysterious use of different initials on linen – are echoed by Lady Ottoline Morrell in her account of the 6th Duke’s discoveries during their early days at Welbeck.

  p. 51 quite bald. See statement of the duke’s coachman Thomas Keetley at NU Pl L1/2/7/99.

  p. 51 Wig-maker’s visit to Harcourt House. See interview with former foreman of Truefitt & Co., Daily Express, 22 and 26 June 1903. The description of the room honeycombed with wigs in pigeonholes at Harcourt House mirrors that of the description of a room at Welbeck Abbey given by Lady Ottoline Morrell and recounted in Men, Women and Things, op. cit.

  pp. 51–2 Duke’s handling of newspapers and coins. See interview with former servant of 5th Duke of Portland in the Daily Express, 1 July 1903. Several accounts of servants and tradesmen refer to the peculiarity of coins having to be washed before the duke would touch them (see, for example, the interview with the duke’s tailor, Mr Batt, in the Daily Mail, 26 August 1898, and also the proof of the valet William Kerridge at NU Pl L1/2/6/13).

  p. 52 letter boxes… As his own valet conceded. See interview with duke’s former valet in P. T. O., 2 February 1907. William Day in his Reminiscences of the Turf (op. cit., p. 137) also remarks that, in later years, the duke would scarcely see anybody except a few of his old servants. The young Lady Ottoline had noticed the heavy brass letter boxes on the duke’s door.

  p. 53 left Welbeck Abbey for the last time. See proof of Thomas Hardwick at NU Pl L1/2/6/13.

  SCENE FIVE

  p. 54 the best ‘rummy go’. The Daily Mail, 25 August 1898.

  p. 56 Great Expectations. For an enlightening discussion of the meaning of the word ‘gentleman’ in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, see Rupert Christiansen, ‘What is a Gentleman?’ in ‘Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations: a new interpretation for students’, http://exec.typepad.com/greatexpectations.

  p. 57 Boucicault, London Assurance. See Dion Boucicault, London Assurance, stage adaptation by Ronald Eyre, London: Methuen & Co., 1971, Act Five, Scene I.

  p. 57 Self-Help by Samuel Smiles. See Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, 1859, Project Gutenberg ebook.

  p. 60 letter… to the Home Office. See NA X27066.

  p. 61 Memorandum of Edwin Freshfield. See Memorandum of Freshfields to the Home Office dated March 1899, NA BT 31/12141/95200.

  pp. 61–2 As one contemporary newspaper. See Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 27 March, 1898.

  p. 64 private investigators. The files of the private investigator concerned – J. G. Littlechild – are now part of the Portland (London) Collection at Nottingham University.

  p. 64 Duke and Herbert Druce collaboration. The Portland (London) Collection includes extensive correspondence between Baileys, Shaw & Gillett (on behalf of the duke) and Freshfields (on behalf of Herbert Druce) and exchanges of evidence and information.

  p. 65 long vacation. See the description of the long vacation in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, Chapter 19.

  p. 66 ghost of the unburied ducal tradesman. The Daily Mail, 27 August 1898.

  p. 66 spiritualistic séance. The People, 13 March 1898.

  p. 66 ‘the most interesting woman in England’. The Daily Mail, 2 September 1898.

  p. 66 Serial on The Double Duke. The Daily Mail, 29 August 1898. The series, The Double Duke, penned by the pot-boiler author Houghton Townley, ran 5 September–15 October 1898.

  p. 66 ‘I myself was a Miss Butler’. See interview in Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 13 March 1898. Anna Maria’s story was contradicted by Mr Stoward in an interview with J. G. Littlechild (see note below).

  p. 66 daughter of a humble Irish paperhanger. See the private-investigator reports of J. G. Littlechild for the duke’s solicitors, Baileys, Shaw & Gillett, interview with Mr Stoward (a partner and old acquaintance of T. C. Druce), NU PI LI/1/3/3. Anna Maria several times referred in newspaper reports to her birth in Ireland, and gave Ireland as her place of birth in the 1881 English census.

  p. 67 Caroline Graves. See Lyn Pykett, Wilkie Collins, Oxford World’s Classics, ebook 2005.

  p. 67 new, cannier, more upwardly mobile type. See Kathryn Hughes, The Victorian Governess, London: Hambledon, 2001, Chapter 3.

  p. 67 Lady Elizabeth Eastlake. From Vanity Fair, Jane Eyre, and the Governess’ Benevolent Institution, Quarterly Review, 84 (December 1848), p. 176.

  p. 69 carriage and pair… Brighton. Note of evidence of Anna Maria Druce in the consistory court proceedings, NU PI LI/1/1/5.

  p. 69 three children. The 1871 census return shows Annie May at 43 Belsize Square with Florence, Walter and Bertha. Mr Stoward (see note below) refers to Walter being persuaded to leave Anna Maria and return to Belsize Park.

  p. 70 mystery about him… guarded her dead husband’s secrets. Note of evidence of Anna Maria Druce in the consistory court proceedings, NU PI LI/1/1/5.

  p. 70 Staffordshire. The 1876 Kelly’s Directory of Stafford gives Walter Druce as living in Little Haywood. The 1880 Directory gives him as living in Hopton Hall, Hopton. Both are in Staffordshire.

  p. 70 business failures. The accountant and executor of T. C. Druce’s will, Alexander Young, mentioned in his evidence during the proceedings in the probate court that Walter Druce had lost his legacy in failed farming ventures (NU PI/d/2).

  p. 70 relations with old Mrs Druce. See interview with Anna Maria Druce in Society, 3 December 1898.

  p. 71 the workhouse. The records of the Examinations for Settlement of the Marylebone Workhouse record an entry for Anna Maria Druce being examined for eligibility for entry to the workhouse in February 1884 (LMA ST/M/BG/165/10). The Creed
Register for 1884 records the entry in February of Anna Maria and her children Margaret (Marguerite), Sidney, Walter and Nina. Florence was presumably out at work as a house servant at this point (see later note). Anna Maria described her time in the Marylebone Workhouse in an interview with Society on 3 December, repeating this story in an interview with the Modern Detective (30 March 1898). Mr Stoward in his interview with J. G. Littlechild stated that she had been ‘living on the public’ since 1881 (NU PI LI/1/3/3).

  p. 71 arrival at the workhouse. This routine treatment of new arrivals at the workhouse is described in many contemporary accounts, such as the writer Charles Shaw’s account of a temporary stay at the Wolstanton and Burslem Union Workhouse at Chell in 1842, in his autobiography When I was a Child (1903).

  p. 71 ‘workhouse stripe’. The description of female inmates’ garb is given by the master of Marylebone Workhouse, George Douglas, in his 1892 Report on the Management of the Workhouse, presented to the Workhouse Visiting Committee of the Guardians of the Poor (London Metropolitan Archives).

  p. 71 silent rows… scarlet-lettered anger. See contemporary photo-graphs of meals taken in Marylebone and other workhouses in Peter Higginbotham, The Workhouse Encyclopaedia, Stroud: The History Press, 2012; photograph of the new casual ward in the Marylebone Workhouse designed by Henry Saxon Snell in 1867, featured in The Illustrated London News.

  pp. 71–2 Daily routine. Based on the 1835 Poor Law Commissioners’ daily routine for able-bodied inmates.

  p. 72 gossip and whisper tales. See Shaw, op. cit.

  p. 72 the rest of Walter’s family. In the 1891 census, Florence is listed as a ‘general servant’ to a family in Willesden and Nina as an inmate of the Field Lane Industrial School for Girls in Church Row, Hampstead. According to the New South Wales Unassisted Passenger Lists, Sidney Druce arrived in Sydney, New South Wales, on 17 August 1895. According to the 1891 census return for Marylebone Rackham Infirmary, Walter Druce (aged fourteen) spent census night in April as a patient on the premises. He is described as a ‘sailor seas’.

  p. 72 died there in 1891… buried in a pauper’s grave. In her interview referring to her time spent in the Marylebone Workhouse with Society on 3 December 1898, Anna Maria stated that she had a son who ‘died there’ and was buried in a pauper’s grave. She repeated this story in an interview with the Modern Detective (30 March 1898). The Marylebone Workhouse Creed Register shows that a Walter Druce was admitted from the training ship Exmouth and discharged to the Rackham Street Infirmary on 4 March 1891 (LMA X095/913). There is an entry for a Walter Druce, aged fourteen, in the records of the Rackham Street Infirmary for the April 1891 census, showing he was still there at this point. The records of the London Borough of Kensington include the death certificate of one Walter Druce, aged fourteen, apprentice from the training ship Exmouth, who died on 13 June 1891 at the Marylebone Infirmary.