Frederick Lindsay was born at Chatswood, New South Wales, on the 10th July 1922 to Frederick George Rickinson Pickhills and Ethel Osmond, both from Bourke. He was the second-eldest child of four siblings, and the only male. His sisters are Dorothy, Dulcie and Eileen. I know little about his younger years other than that he was trained as a motor mechanic and a carpenter, two trades he was proficient in till the day he died. Photographs of the young (and the older) Frederick are few and far between, though what I do have show a man who was perhaps happier pre-war than post-war. There are photographs of him in overalls outside a garage where he worked during the 30’s; in Army uniform, and with his slightly cocked hat shows quite a handsome man; a casual photo in shorts; a small photo with his three sisters as youngsters: on a motor bike with a friend, a personal passion until a serious accident in the late 50’s; a lovely photograph with my mother that looks very 40’s; and a wedding photograph outside the church they were married in. He never, ever spoke about his military service and I have no idea of how his war experiences affected him other than that, apart from taking me to several ANZAC day marches, he never really approved of this wartime celebration and had nothing to do with his war comrades. However, I do have his war record and know that he enlisted at the Martin Place Recruiting Depot in Sydney on the 3rd of November 1941. His army number is NX50073. He had obviously lied about his age (he was 19 at the time of enlistment) as it is listed as 21 and three months which is then struck through and his true age inserted. He is listed as being single and a motor mechanic. A surprising find on the Attestation Form is his next of kin, noted as a Norman Emmanuel, who lived in Hillside Flats in Elizabeth St, Artarmon., and is an uncle. It is odd that he didn’t have a parent with him, and I have absolutely no idea who this supposed relative is. He took his oath of allegiance on the same day. There are small front and side photo’s at the bottom of the form. I also have his Army driving license no. 246312 which shows his rank as CFN (Craftsman), and lists the vehicle types he could drive. I also have his Record of Service Book which tells us he was 5’91/2″, weighed 131 lbs, had a 331/2″ chest, fair complexion, light brown hair, hazel eyes and a small scar right frontal region. He had qualified on the firing range, had done a motor mechanics course, he appears to have been appointed as a mechanic in 1941, and was a tester of motor vehicles in 1943. I’m of the thinking that he was a driving instructor. There is a listing of his leave, including in New Guinea and Borneo up till his discharge. We know he passed a chest x-ray in 1941. As for medals he received the 1939/45 Star, and the Pacific Star. His next of kin is listed here as Ethel Pickhills (mother) at 14 Saywell St, Chatswood. We also have all his Proceedings for Discharge, Determination of Demobilisation Priority, his Service and Casualty Forms and a copy of his Certificate of Discharge No. 401253 which informs us that No. NX50073 Craftsman Frederick Lindsay Pickhills of the 2/53 Aust Light Aid Detachment served on continuous full-time war service in the Australian Imperial Force from 3/11/1941 to 14/2/1946 for a total effective period of 1,565 days which included Active Service in Australia for 819 days and outside Australia for 584 days. He received the War Badge R.A.S. No. A.234189 and that he was discharged from the AIF on 14/2/1946.
I believe that the Australia he returned to was not the Australia he left, and I don’t think he ever came to terms with that. He maintained his 1940’s attitudes throughout the rest of his life which made him a difficult father as he could never reconcile himself to a more contemporary age. No wonder I rebelled. He never claimed his military service medals. I have attempted to claim them over the last couple of years, but due to his Last Will and Testament being made out in my step-mother and step-brothers favour I have not been able to procure them. I will follow this up at a later time.
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst reviews Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb
12:01AM GMT 03 Nov 2003
How do you pick out a gay man in a crowd? According to Dr La Forest Potter’s Strange Loves, published in 1933, “the average homosexual” differs from “ordinary men” in 10 easily identifiable ways: he has “large, easily aroused nipples”, “a mincing walk”, “sloped and rounded shoulders”, “thick, luxuriant hair”, “a hairless chest”, “soft, delicate skin” free of manly spots, a lack of “dogmatic energy”, a “peculiar swinging motion of the hips” due to anatomical defects in the spine and pelvis, “a considerable deposit of fat in the region of hips, breasts and thighs”, and – the clinching clue – “feminine buttocks”.
Clearly the author of Strange Loves was a little peculiar himself (how could he know that homosexual nipples were “easily aroused”?), but he is hardly an isolated figure in the troubled history of 20th-century attitudes towards homosexuality. From Raphael Kirchner’s 1908 German handbook, How to Recognise Homosexuals, to the two-page guide on “How to Spot a Possible Homo” published in the Sunday Mirror in 1963 (“shifty glances”, “dropped eyes”, “a fondness for the theatre”), it has long been popular wisdom that “one of them” is easily distinguishable from “one of us”. Whether seen as a choice or a compulsion, in everything from lifestyle to hairstyle, the assumption has been that homosexuality is a secret that simply cannot be kept. It is as if the world had been told that the root of “homosexual”, “homos”, is Greek for “same”, meaning that there are men who fall in love with other men, and had misunderstood it to mean that homosexuals are all the same.
Recently, much of the blame for this sorry state of affairs has been laid at the door of the Victorians. According to the most popular line of argument, although there had always been same-sex activity between men, only during the 19th century did the exclusively homosexual person emerge as a distinct social type. Both as a word and a concept, “homosexuality” was a Victorian invention. From the doctors who attempted to diagnose homosexuality (Ambroise Tardieu claimed in 1857 that the telltale signs in men included a corkscrew-shaped penis and a large bottom: “I have seen one pederast whose buttocks were joined and formed a single, perfect sphere”) to the politicians who attempted to legislate against it, the 19th century gave birth not only to “the homosexual” but to the repressive social forces that continued to echo through the 20th century.
This, at least, is the version of events, much influenced by Michel Foucault’s writings on sexuality, which is dutifully wheeled out by most histories of gay life. But then, Foucault was never one to let the facts get in the way of a good theory and, as Graham Robb’s revisionist account proves, the truth was rather more complicated and a lot more interesting.
Almost every page of this book reverberates with the sound of stereotypes being flattened. For example, the assumption that the Victorians were repressive in their attitudes towards illicit sexual behaviour hardly squares with what was accepted and even celebrated. Consider the case of “Fanny” Park, a drag queen arrested for using the ladies’ room at the Strand Theatre, whose acquittal on sodomy charges in 1870 – secured by his solicitor, the wonderfully named Mr Straight – was loudly cheered; or the tight-trousered rent boys (“mollies”) who were an established tourist attraction in both London and New York; or the odd couples, such as the “married” artists Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, whose unconventional households attracted some notoriety and a great deal of indifference.
Indeed, for a love that supposedly dared not speak its name, homosexuality was a surprisingly noisy part of Victorian life, less a subculture than a parallel culture that ran alongside and occasionally ran into the heterosexual mainstream. Even Jane Austen, who was hardly in the vanguard of permissiveness, allowed herself a sly joke about gay sex, when Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park discusses her knowledge of admirals: “Of Rears, and Vices, I saw enough. Now, do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat.”
Not that the 19th century was an oasis of tolerance and good sense. Most gay men and women remained strangers to the society that had the power to ostracise them or lock them up. Many also remained strangers to one another. It could be hard to recognise a like-minded soul, and Robb has some moving examples of the tactics needed to sound someone out about their sexuality, simultaneously leading on and backing off, without risking rejection or assault.
Even if this hurdle was overcome, there was no guarantee that two gay people, like any other two people, would have anything to talk about. Oscar Wilde cannot have been alone in finding it hard to reconcile his ideals of a pure Grecian love with the pimply youths he took to bed, like the two Cockney lads Frank Harris recalled seeing him with at the Café Royal, talking about the Olympic Games. “‘Did you sy they was niked?’ ‘Of course,’ Oscar replied, ‘nude, clothed only in sunshine and beauty.'”
Perhaps inevitably, such public displays in the period are rare; the history of Victorian gay life is less one of explicit confessions than it is of flirtatious hints and glimpses. Fleshing out these details into a rich and satisfying narrative, Robb is an ideal guide to the period – unfailingly intelligent, compassionate and discreetly witty.
His earlier biographies of Hugo and Rimbaud showed that he has a sharp eye for the way that real lives tend to resist the neat shapes we impose on them, and Strangers is crammed with statistics and anecdotes that succeed brilliantly in changing what we thought we knew about homosexuality, both then and now. In seeking to explain some of the messy and unpredictable workings of love, Robb has produced a rare thing: not just a book with ideas, but a book with heart.
How to spot a homosexual: A step by step guide – 11-07-2010, 04:56 PM
Homosexuals are amongst us. Every day, they discreetly pollute the Good Lord’s Earth with their filthy ways. Luckily, me and Dimitri, at the Domnino League Against Sodomites, have compiled a list of data that will assist you in telling whether your closest friends are secretly queers.
Eating and Drinking:
Whether at the bathhouse, drinking beverages (in appropriate amounts, as prescribed in Timothy 5:23) in the company of fellow Christians, or simply eating lunch on the truck roads of northern Siberia, eating and drinking habits of those within your group of friends will reveal whether or not they are Closetfags™. Foods consumed by men:
Anything with more than half a pound of meat.
Anything fried or deep fried.
Anything pie-like of the appropriate size.
Anything hunted/skinned yourself and cooked by your wife and/or daughter(s).
Foods consumed by homosexuals:
Anything that comes in small, faggy portions (Sushi, “Cocktail Snacks”)
Anything with a foreign name (Especially if in French)
Anything that is shared with other men (Tapas)
Drinks consumed by men:
Wine (Only if you are depressed. Wine must have a pronouncable name to avoid being mixed with “Faggy wine” [See below] ) Proverbs 31:6-7
Spirits (See Wine)
Beer (See Wine)
Water
Anything produced by the Coca-Cola Company, except drinks which reference fruit. These are considered “fruity”, e.g. homosexual beverages.
e.g. Coca-Cola Cherry.
Drinks consumed by homosexuals:
Cocktails (Notice the name!) – Not a proper drink. Any drink that is a mixture of two or more normally separate drinks is considered a cocktail.
Faggy Wine – Wine made outside of own country, probably in France. The name is distinctly not-English sounding and the label will most likely have pictures of men holding hands.
Conversation:
Homosexuals can often be caught out by listening to their conversation.
Conversation Word Limit
Men talk to exchange information. If any man exceeds the standard limit of 20 words per minute (Unless he is recounting a glorious story of conquest, preaching or praying), he is surely a homosexual.
If you fear you are nearly exceeding this limit in daily conversation, try the following tricks:
* Cut down on words like “Sure.”, “Okay.”, “Nah.” and replace them with indistinct grunts, or glares in the general direction of the person with whom the conversation is occuring.
* Ignore questions, then reproach them for asking you the same thing twice.
Topics of conversation suitable for men;
Comparing engine/tyre/gas tank sizes
Car/truck/van mechanical problems
Comparing your current events (Awful times) to similar events occuring 1/5/10/20 years ago (Good, Holy Christian times)
Your wife/daughter’s inability to cook/clean/etc.
Most recent [manly sport of your choice] game.
Women (In appropriate Christian fashion)
The Bible.
Topics of conversation considered homosexual:
The Weather (In a positive manner):
e.g. “The stars are so beautiful today.”
‘Famous people’ you haven’t heard of.
Clothes
Anything that uses the word “Gorgeous” or synonyms.
Indepth descriptions of sexual activities with other men.
Anything that is prefaced with “You’ll never guess what I saw in Vogue today!”
Other Signs
* In public toilets, a man uses a urinal next to your own.
* He often walks like a cowboy, but you have never seen him ride a horse.
* When you take a shower, he looks through your bathroom window.
Please add to our list if you find anything that is miss. Dimitri & I work very hard and will update once we discover more about this plague. If you suspect you have homosexuals in your neighbourhood, please seek professional aid and do not go outside alone.
Praise Christ.
Tim Alderman 2015
The Cleveland Street scandal occurred in 1889, when a homosexual male brothel in Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia, London, was discovered by police. At the time, sexual acts between men were illegal in Britain, and the brothel’s clients faced possible prosecution and certain social ostracism if discovered. It was rumoured that one client was Prince Albert Victor, who was the eldest son of the Prince of Wales and second-in-line to the British throne, though this rumour has never been substantiated. The government was accused of covering up the scandal to protect the names of any aristocratic patrons.
Another client was said to be Lord Arthur Somerset, an equerry to the Prince of Wales. Both he and the brothel keeper, Charles Hammond, managed to flee abroad before a prosecution could be brought. The male prostitutes, who also worked as telegraph messenger boys for the Post Office, were given light sentences and no clients were prosecuted. After Henry James FitzRoy, Earl of Euston, was named in the press as a client, he successfully sued for libel. 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 fuelled the attitude that male homosexuality was an aristocratic vice that corrupted lower-class youths. Such perceptions were still prevalent in 1895 when the Marquess of Queensberry accused Oscar Wilde of being an active homosexual.
Male brothel
Illustration of Inspector Frederick Abberline from a contemporary newspaper
In July 1889, Police Constable Luke Hanks was investigating a theft from the London Central Telegraph Office. During the investigation, a fifteen-year-old telegraph boy named Charles Thomas Swinscow was discovered to be in possession of fourteen shillings, equivalent to several weeks of his wages. At the time, messenger boys were not permitted to carry any personal cash in the course of their duties, to prevent their own money being mixed with that of the customers. Suspecting the boy’s involvement in the theft, Constable Hanks brought him in for questioning. After hesitating, Swinscow admitted that he earned the money working as a prostitute for a man named Charles Hammond, who operated a male brothel at 19 Cleveland Street. According to Swinscow, he was introduced to Hammond by a General Post Office clerk, eighteen-year-old Henry Newlove. In addition, he named two seventeen-year-old telegraph boys who also worked for Hammond: George Alma Wright and Charles Ernest 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 given to Detective 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 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] In the time between his statement to Hanks and his arrest, Newlove had gone to Cleveland Street and warned Hammond, who had consequently escaped to his brother’s house in Gravesend.[3]
Notable clienrs
Caricature of Lord Arthur Somerset, 1887
On the way to the police station, Newlove named Lord Arthur Somerset and Henry FitzRoy, Earl of Euston, as well as an army colonel by the name of Jervois, as visitors to Cleveland Street.[4] Somerset was the head of the Prince of Wales’s stables. Although Somerset was interviewed by police, no immediate action was taken against him, and the authorities were slow to act on the allegations of Somerset’s involvement.[5] A watch was placed on the now-empty house and details of the case shuffled between government departments.[6]
On 19 August, an arrest warrant was issued in the name of George Veck, an acquaintance of Hammond’s who pretended to be a clergyman. Veck had actually worked at the Telegraph Office, but had been sacked for “improper conduct” with the messenger boys.[7] A seventeen-year-old youth found in Veck’s London lodgings revealed to the police that Veck had gone to Portsmouth and was returning shortly by train. The police arrested Veck at London Waterloo railway station. 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 Somerset, having a sexual relationship with him, and working at Cleveland Street for Hammond.[8] On 22 August, police interviewed Somerset for a second time, after which Somerset left for Bad Homburg,[9] where the Prince of Wales was taking his summer holiday.[10]
On 11 September, Newlove and Veck were committed for trial. Their defence was handled by Somerset’s solicitor, Arthur Newton, with Willie Mathews appearing for Newlove, and Charles Gill for Veck. Somerset paid the legal fees.[11] By this time, Somerset had moved on to Hanover, to inspect some horses for the Prince of Wales, and the press was referring to “noble lords” implicated in the trial.[12] Newlove and Veck pleaded guilty to indecency on 18 September and the judge, Sir Thomas Chambers, a former Liberal Member of Parliament who had a reputation for leniency, sentenced them to four and nine months’ hard labour respectively.[13] The boys were also given sentences that were considered at the time to be very lenient.[14] Hammond escaped to France, but the French authorities expelled him after pressure from the British. Hammond moved on to Belgium from where he emigrated to the United States. Newton, acting for Somerset, paid for Hammond’s passage.[15] On the advice of the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, no extradition proceedings were attempted, and the case against Hammond was quietly dropped.[16]
Somerset returned to Britain in late September to attend horse sales at Newmarket but suddenly left for Dieppe on 26 September, probably after being told by Newton that he was in danger of being arrested.[17] He returned again on 30 September. A few days later, his grandmother, Emily Somerset, Dowager Duchess of Beaufort, died and he attended her funeral.[18] The Hon. Hamilton Cuffe, Assistant Treasury Solicitor, and James Monro, Commissioner of Police, pressed for action to be taken against Somerset, but the Lord Chancellor, Lord Halsbury, blocked any prosecution.[19] Rumours of Somerset’s 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.[20] This was denied by Lord Salisbury[21] and the Attorney General, Sir Richard Webster.[22] The Prince of Wales wrote to Lord Salisbury, expressing satisfaction that Somerset had been allowed to leave the country and asking that if Somerset should “ever dare to show his face in England again”, he would remain unmolested by the authorities,[23] 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.[24] By this time, Somerset was already safely abroad, and the warrant caught little public attention.[25] After an unsuccessful search for employment in Turkey and Austria-Hungary, Somerset lived the rest of his life in self-imposed and comfortable exile in the south of France.[26]
Public revelations
Newspaper clipping
American newspapers claimed that Prince Albert Victor was “mixed up” in the scandal.
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 politically radical weekly The North London Press, Parke got wind of the affair when one of his reporters brought him the story of Newlove’s conviction. Parke began to question why the prostitutes had been given such light sentences relative to their offence (the usual penalty for “gross indecency” was two years) and how Hammond had been able to evade arrest. His curiosity aroused, Parke found out that the boys had named prominent aristocrats. He subsequently ran a story on 28 September hinting at their involvement but without detailing specific names.[27] It was only on 16 November that he published a follow up story specifically naming Henry Fitzroy, Earl of Euston, in “an indescribably loathsome scandal in Cleveland Street”.[28] 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,[29] who was not named but was believed by some to be Prince Albert Victor, the son of the Prince of Wales.[30]
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 a tout had given him a card which read “Poses plastiques. C. Hammond, 19 Cleveland Street”. Euston testified that he went to the house believing Poses plastiques meant a display of female nudes. He paid a sovereign to get in but upon entering Euston said he was appalled to discover the “improper” nature of the place and immediately left. The defence witnesses contradicted each other, and could not describe Euston accurately.[31] The final defence witness, John Saul, was a male prostitute who had earlier been involved in a homosexual scandal at Dublin Castle, and featured in a clandestinely published erotic novel The Sins of the Cities of the Plain which was cast as his autobiography.[32] Delivering his testimony in a manner described as “brazen effrontery”, Saul admitted to earning his living by leading an “immoral life” and “practising criminality”, and detailed his alleged sexual encounters with Euston at the house.[33] The defence did not call either Newlove or Veck as witnesses, and could not produce any evidence that Euston had left the country. On 16 January 1890, the jury found Parke guilty and the judge sentenced him to twelve months in prison.[34] One historian considers Euston was telling the truth and only visited Cleveland Street once because he was misled by the card.[35] However, another has alleged Euston was a well-known figure in the homosexual underworld, and was extorted so often by the notorious blackmailer Robert Clifford, that Oscar Wilde had quipped Clifford deserved the Victoria Cross for his tenacity.[36] Saul stated that he told the police his story in August, which provoked the judge to rhetorically enquire why the authorities had not taken action.[37]
The judge, Sir Henry 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 for England and Wales, and he was assisted by H. H. Asquith, who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twenty years later.[38] Henry Labouchère accused the government of conspiring to hush up the scandal.
While Parke’s conviction cleared Euston, another trial began on 16 December 1889 when Newlove’s and Somerset’s solicitor, Arthur Newton, was charged with obstruction of justice. It was alleged that he conspired to prevent Hammond and the boys from testifying by offering or giving them passage and money to go abroad. 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 Hammond to flee merely to protect his clients, who were not at that time charged with any offence or under arrest, from potential blackmail. The Attorney General accepted Newton’s pleas and did not present any evidence on the other five charges.[39] On 20 May, the judge, Sir Lewis Cave, sentenced Newton to six weeks in prison,[40] which was widely considered by members of the legal profession to be harsh. A petition signed by 250 London law firms was sent to the Home Secretary, Henry Matthews, protesting at Newton’s treatment.[41
During Newton’s trial, a motion in Parliament sought to investigate Parke’s allegations of a cover-up. Henry Labouchère, a Member of Parliament from the Radical wing of the Liberal Party, was staunchly against homosexuality and had campaigned successfully to add the “gross indecency” amendment (known as the “Labouchère Amendment”) to the Criminal Law Amendment Act 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 hampering the investigation, allowing Somerset and Hammond to escape, delaying the trials and failing to prosecute the case with vigour. Labouchère’s accusations were rebutted by the Attorney General, Sir Richard Webster, who was also the prosecutor in the Newton case. Charles Russell, who had prosecuted Parke and was defending Newton, sat on the Liberal benches with Labouchère but refused to be drawn into the debate. After an often passionate debate over seven hours, during which Labouchère was expelled from Parliament after saying “I do not believe Lord Salisbury” and refusing to withdraw his remark, the motion was defeated by a wide margin, 206–66.[42]
Aftermath
Public interest in the scandal eventually faded. Nevertheless, newspaper coverage reinforced negative attitudes about male homosexuality as an aristocratic vice, presenting the telegraph boys as corrupted and exploited 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.
Oscar Wilde alluded to the scandal in The Picture of Dorian Gray, first published in 1890.[43] Reviews of the novel were hostile; in a clear reference to the Cleveland Street scandal, one reviewer called it suitable for “none but outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph boys”.[44][45][46] Wilde’s 1891 revision of the novel omitted certain key passages, which were considered too homoerotic.[46][47] In 1895, Wilde unsuccessfully sued Lord Alfred’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, for libel. Sir Edward Carson, Lord Queensberry’s counsel, used quotes from the novel against Wilde and questioned him about his associations with young working men.[48] After the failure of his suit, Wilde was charged with gross indecency, found guilty and subsequently sentenced to two years’ hard labour. He was prosecuted by Charles Gill, who had defended Veck in the Cleveland Street case.[
Prince Albert Victor of Wales was created Duke of Clarence and Avondale the year after the scandal.
Prince Albert Victor died in 1892, but society gossip about his sex life continued. Sixty years after the scandal the official biographer of King George V, Harold Nicolson, was told by Lord Goddard, who was a twelve-year-old schoolboy at the time of the scandal, that Prince Albert Victor “had been involved in a male brothel scene, and that a solicitor had to commit perjury to clear him. The solicitor was struck off the rolls for his offence, but was thereafter reinstated.”[50] In fact, none of the lawyers involved in the case was convicted of perjury or struck off at the time, indeed most had very distinguished careers. However, Arthur Newton was struck off for 12 months for professional misconduct in 1910 after falsifying letters from another of his clients—the notorious murderer Harvey Crippen.[51] In 1913, he was struck off indefinitely and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for obtaining money by false pretences.[52] Newton may have invented and spread the rumours about Prince Albert Victor in an attempt to protect his clients from prosecution by forcing a cover-up.[53] State papers on the case in the Public Record Office, released to the public in the 1970s, provide no information on the prince’s involvement other than Newton’s threat to implicate him.[54] Hamilton Cuffe wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Augustus Stephenson, “I am told that Newton has boasted that if we go on a very distinguished person will be involved (PAV). I don’t mean to say that I for one instant credit it—but in such circumstances as this one never knows what may be said, be concocted or be true.”[55] Surviving private letters from Somerset to his friend Lord Esher, confirm that Somerset knew of the rumours but did not know if they were true. 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.”[56] In his correspondence, Sir Dighton Probyn refers to “cruel and unjust rumours with regard to PAV” and “false reports dragging PAV’s name into the sad story”.[57] When Prince Albert Victor’s name appeared in the American press, the New York Herald published an anonymous letter, almost certainly written by Charles Hall, saying “there is not, and never was, the slightest excuse for mentioning the name of Prince Albert Victor.”[58] Biographers who believe the rumours suppose that Prince Albert Victor was bisexual,[59] but this is strongly contested by others who refer to him as “ardently heterosexual” and his involvement in the rumours as “somewhat unfair”.[60]
Notes & Sources
Aronson, pp. 8–10 and Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 20–23
Aronson, pp. 11, 16–17 and Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 23–24
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, p. 23
Aronson, p. 11 and Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, p. 25
Aronson, p. 135
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 26–33
Aronson, pp. 11, 133 and Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, p. 25
Aronson, pp. 134–135 and Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 34–35
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, p. 35
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, p. 38
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 35, 45, 47
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 42, 46
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 47–53
Aronson, p. 137
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 74–77
Aronson, p. 136 and Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 27, 34
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, p. 61
Aronson, p. 140 and Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 80–81
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 82–86
Aronson, p. 142
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, p. 93
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, p. 94
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, p. 97
Aronson, p. 144 and Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 98–99
Aronson, p. 150
Aronson, p. 175
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 106–107
North London Press, 16 November 1889, quoted in Hyde, The Other Love, p. 125
Aronson, p. 150 and Hyde, The Other Love, p. 125
Hyde, The Other Love, p. 123
Aronson, pp. 151–159 and Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 113–116, 139–143
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, p. 108
Saul quoted in Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 146–147
Aronson, pp. 151–159 and Hyde, The Other Love, pp. 125–127
Hyde, The Other Love, p. 127
Aronson, p. 160
Lord Euston’s Libel Case, South Australian Register, 18 February 1890, p. 5
Aronson, p. 153 and Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, p. 135
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 162–207
Aronson, p. 173
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 208–212
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp. 215–231
In chapter 12 of the original 1890 version, one of the characters, Basil Hallward, refers to “Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave England, with a tarnished name”.
“Reviews and Magazines”. Scots Observer, 5 July 1890, p. 181
Bristow, Joseph (2006). “Introduction” In: Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Oxford World’s Classic, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280729-8. p. xxi
Ackroyd, Peter (1985). “Appendix 2: Introduction to the First Penguin Classics Edition” In: Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Penguin Classics, Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-043784-3. pp. 224–225
Mighall, Robert (2000). “Introduction” In: Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Penguin Classics, Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-043784-3. p. xvi
Kaplan, Morris B. (2004). “Literature in the Dock: The Trials of Oscar Wilde”. Journal of Law and Society 31: (No. 1) 113–130
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, p. 45
Lees-Milne, p. 231
Cook, pp. 284–285
Cook, pp. 285–286 and Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, p. 253
Prince Eddy: The King We Never Had. Channel 4. Accessed 1 May 2010.
Cook, pp. 172–173
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, p. 55
Lord Arthur Somerset to Reginald Brett, 2nd Viscount Esher, 10 December 1889, quoted in Cook, p. 197
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, p. 127
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, p. 129
Aronson, pp. 116–120, 170, 217
Bradford, p. 10
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
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. ISBN 0-491-01995-5
Lees-Milne, James (1981). Harold Nicolson: A Biography. Volume 2: 1930–1968 London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 0-7011-2602-7
Lord Henry Arthur George Somerset
Major Lord Henry Arthur George Somerset DL (17 November 1851 – 26 May 1926) was the third son of the 8th Duke of Beaufort and his wife, the former Lady Georgiana Curzon. He was head of the stables of the future King Edward VII (then Prince of Wales) and a Major in the Royal Horse Guards.
He was linked with the Cleveland Street scandal, wherein he was identified and named by several male prostitutes as a customer of their services. He was interviewed by police on 7 August 1889; although the record of the interview has not survived, it resulted in a report being made by the Attorney-General, Solicitor-General and Director of Prosecutions urging that proceedings should be taken against him under section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. A piece of paper was pasted over Somerset’s name in the report, as it was deemed so sensitive. However, the Director was told that the Home Secretary wished him to take no action for the moment.[1] The police obtained a further statement implicating Somerset, while Somerset arranged for his solicitor to act in the defence of the boys arrested over the scandal. After the police saw him for a second time on 22 August, Somerset obtained leave from his regiment and permission to go abroad.[2]
Lord Arthur went to Homburg, although he returned to England. When tipped off in September that charges were imminent, he fled to France to avoid them. From there he travelled through Constantinople, Budapest, Vienna, and then back to France, where he settled and died in 1926, aged 74.[3
References
H. Montgomery Hyde, “The Cleveland Street Scandal” (W.H. Allen Ltd, 1976), p. 32-3.
H. Montgomery Hyde, “The Cleveland Street Scandal” (W.H. Allen Ltd, 1976), p. 35.
Kaplan, Morris B. (2005), Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love, And Scandal in Wilde Times, Cornell University Press, ISBN 0-8014-3678-8
Henry James FitzRoy, Earl of Euston
Euston in Masonic attire
Henry James FitzRoy, Earl of Euston DL (28 November 1848 – 10 May 1912) was the eldest son and heir apparent of Augustus FitzRoy, 7th Duke of Grafton.
Euston married Kate Walsh, daughter of John Walsh, on 29 May 1871 at St. Michael’s Church, Worcester. His wife died in 1903, nine years before him. They had no children. Euston was appointed a deputy lieutenant of Northamptonshire in 1907.[1] He died at Wakefield Lodge, Potterspury, Northamptonshire, six years before his father, and so never inherited his father’s lands and titles. His younger brother, Alfred, became the 8th Duke of Grafton.
Euston was embroiled in the Cleveland Street scandal when he was accused of visiting a male brothel at 19 Cleveland Street in London by The North London Press, an obscure radical weekly newspaper. Euston sued 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”. Euston testified that he went along to the house, believing Poses plastiques to mean a display of female nudes. He paid a sovereign to get in. On entry, Euston said he was appalled to discover the “improper” nature of the place and immediately left. The defence witnesses contradicted each other, and could not describe Euston accurately.[2] The final defence witness, John Saul, was a male prostitute who admitted to earning his living by leading an “immoral life” and “practising criminality”.[3] The jury did not believe the defence witnesses and found in favour of Euston.[4] H. Montgomery Hyde, an eminent historian of homosexuality, later wrote that there was little doubt that Euston was telling the truth and only visited 19 Cleveland Street once because he was misled by the card.[5]
Robert Cliburn, a young man who specialized in blackmailing older homosexual men, told Oscar Wilde that Euston was one of his victims [6]
Note
The London Gazette: no. 28054. p. 5868. 27 August 1907.
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp.113–116, 139–143
Hyde, The Cleveland Street Scandal, pp.146–147
Hyde, The Other Love, p.125–127
Hyde, The Other Love, p.127
McKenna, p.182
Reference
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. ISBN 0-491-01995-5
McKenna, Neil (2005). The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde. New York: Basic Books.
HISTORICAL NOTES: In 1889, the year in which this scandal takes place, it is legal for girls aged 12 and boys aged 14 to marry (with parental consent). Most people started work at the age of 6 (or younger) to help support their families and men had a life expectancy of just 40-45 years of age. Male homosexuality was illegal and punishable, if convicted of buggery, to penal servitude for life or for any term of not less than ten years. The death penalty for buggery had only recently been abolished in 1861.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century a gentleman by the name of Charles Hammond ran a male brothel located at No 19 Cleveland Street in London, just north of Oxford Street near Tottenham Court Road.
Hammond catered for a largely aristocratic clientele and for a number of years the existence of his establishment remained unknown to the authorities.
This all changed on 4th July 1889 when a 15 year old telegraph boy called Charles Swinscow was searched as part of an ongoing investigation into money theft at his employers, the General Post Office.
It was a telegraph boys job to cycle around London delivering telegrams and urgent messages to homes and businesses. His wage would have been about eleven shillings per week, however when he was searched, eighteen shillings were found in his pockets, more than a weeks salary to such a young man. Swinscow was taken in for questioning as part of the police operation.
When asked how he came to have such a large sum of money in his possession, Swinscow panicked and confessed he’d been recruited by Charles Hammond to work at a house in Cleveland Street where, for the sum of four shillings a time, he would permit the brothel’s clients to “have a go between my legs” and “put their persons into me”.
He then identified a number of other young telegraph boys who were also renting themselves out in this manner at the Cleveland Street establishment, leading to the apprehension and questioning of Henry Newlove, Algernon Allies and Charles Thickbroom.
Who Was Involved:
Henry Horace Newlove 16 yrs Telegraph Boy – GPO ‘Recruiter’ for Hammond
Charles Thomas Swinscow 15 yrs Telegraph Boy – First boy arrested for ‘theft’
George Alma Wright 17 yrs Telegraph Boy – ‘Performed’ with Newlove for voyeurs
Charles Ernest Thickbroom 17 yrs Telegraph Boy
William Meech Perkins 16 yrs Telegraph Boy – ID’s Lord Alfred Somerset as a ‘client’
Algernon Edward Allies 19 yrs Houseboy – The Marlborough Club, used by Lord Somerset
George Barber 17 yrs George Veck’s ‘Private Secretary’ and boyfriend
John Saul 37 yrs Infamous London rent boy – Possibly aka Jack Saul
Charles Hammond 35 yrs Brothel keeper of 19 Cleveland Street, London
George Daniel Veck aka Rev George Veck aka Rev George Barber40 yrs Ex General Post Office (GPO) employee, sacked for indecency with Telegraph boys. Lives at 19 Cleveland Street. Kept a coffee house in Gravesend, Kent. Has an 18 year old ‘son’ that travels with him.
PC Luke Hanks Police officer attached to the General Post Office
Mr Phillips Snr postal official who questions Swinscow with Hanks
Mr C H Raikes The Postmaster General
Mr James Monro Metropolitan Police Commissioner
Frederick Abberline 46 yrs Police Chief Inspector, infamous for the ‘Jack the Ripper’ investigations in 1888, London’s Whitechapel district
PC Richard Sladden Police officer who carried out observations on the Cleveland Street brothel following Swinscow’s arrest
Arthur Newton Lord Arthur Somerset’s solicitor. Later to defend Oscar Wilde at his trial in 1895 and notorious murderer Dr Crippen
Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence 25 yrs Rumoured to be a ‘Brothel Client’ – Went on a seven month tour of British India in Sept 1889 to avoid the press & trials
Colonel Jervois of the 2nd Life Guards ‘Brothel Client’ – Winchester Army Barracks
Lord Arthur Somerset, aka Mr Brown 37 yrs ‘Brothel Client’ – Named in Allies letters as ‘Mr Brown’
Henry James Fitzroy, 39 yrs Accused of being a ‘Brothel Client’ – Earl of Euston
Sir Augustus Stephenson Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP)
Hon Hamilton Cuffe Assistant DPP – Six years later he would prosecute Oscar Wilde at his trial in 1895 as the Director of Public Prosecutions
Ernest Parke Journalist – North London Press
After The Arrests
The officer in charge of the case was Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline, famous for being in charge of the detectives investigating the Jack-The_Ripper murders a year earlier in 1888
Abberline procured a warrant to arrest Charles Hammond on a charge of conspiracy to “to commit the abominable crime of buggery”, but when officers went to Cleveland Street, they found that Hammond had already absconded.
The police made arrangements to observe the comings and goings at No 19 Cleveland Street in case Hammond returned. They noted that a ‘Mr Brown’ called at the address on the 9th and 13th July 1889, later identified by both Swinscow and Thickbroom on the 25th July as one of the their clients.
Police followed Mr Brown back to army barracks in Knightsbridge where he was formally identified as Lord Arthur Somerset, younger son of Henry Charles Somerset, the 8th Duke of Beaufort. Lord Arthur was a Major in the Royal Horse Guards and equerry to Edward, Prince of Wales, who later became King Edward VII.
Papers were sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions with a view to prosecuting Lord Arthur on a charge of gross indecency. The Prince of Wales was incredulous when he heard of it
“I won’t believe it, any more than I should if they accused the Archbishop of Canterbury” he said.
Despite this gesture of support, Lord Somerset placed the matter in the hands of his solicitor Arthur Newton.
Newton contacted the DPP and mentioned that if his client were to be prosecuted, he might have to name Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence, as another brothel client whilst giving his evidence in court.
Given that Prince Albert Victor was the eldest son of the Prince of Wales and second in line to the throne, it was clear that the government would not want his name associated with the homosexual brothel at Cleveland Street.
The authorities appeared to drag their heels over the matter, delaying the court case, which allowed Lord Arthur Somerset the opportunity to flee abroad. By the 18th October 1889 he was safely in Boulogne, France. He remained in exile for the remainder of his life and eventually died on the French Riviera in 1926.
But whilst Somerset escaped prosecution, the same could not be said of the unfortunate ‘rent boys’ caught up in the investigation. Swinscow together with Henry Newlove, Algernon Allies and Charles Thickbroom were brought before the Old Bailey in September 1889 and charged with gross indecency. All were convicted. Newlove received a sentence of four months with hard labour whilst the others each got nine months.
This might have been the end of the story had it not been for a journalist named Ernest Parke, who ran a story on 28th September 1889 in the ‘North London Press’, claiming that the “heir to a duke and the younger son of a duke” had frequented Cleveland Street.
Again, on the 16th November 1889 Parke went so far as to name both Arthur Somerset and Henry James Fitzroy, the Earl of Euston, as the men in question and dropped a broad hint to his readers that a member of the royal family was also involved, referring to a gentleman “more distinguished and more highly placed”.
Ernest Parke believed that it was safe to name the two young aristocrats as they had both fled the country. He was correct as far as Lord Arthur Somerset was concerned, but the Earl of Euston was not in Peru as Parke thought, but still in England. In order to defend his reputation, Henry James Fitzroy felt obliged to bring a charge for criminal libel against Edward Parke.
The trial was heard at the Old Bailey on the 19th January 1890. Whilst Henry James Fitzroy admitted that he had been to 19 Cleveland Street, he claimed that it was all a mistake. According to his own testimony, he had only gone there after being given a card touting a ‘tableaux plastique’ (nude women) at the address, and that once he realised the true nature of the establishment, had made his excuses and left.
Ernest Parke however produced a witness named John Saul (AKA Jack Saul), who went into some detail describing the kind of services that he had provided for Henry James Fitzroy at the Cleveland Street brothel. Being a self-confessed prostitute, Saul’s evidence was easily ‘discredited’ and Ernest Parke was found guilty of libel without justification and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment with hard labour.
One more trial was to arise as a result of the Cleveland Street scandal in respect of the activities of Arthur Newton, defence solicitor to the aforementioned Arthur Somerset who, it was believed, had helped Somerset evade justice. Newton was brought before the court on the 12th December 1889 and charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice for allegedly interfering with witnesses and arranging their disappearance to France.
He was convicted but received the relatively mild punishment of six weeks in prison. He was even allowed to resume his legal practice, representing the author and playwright Oscar Wilde in own trial for gross indecency with other men five years later in 1895.
This was still not quite the end of the matter as the MP Henry Labouchère, a noted campaigner against ‘homosexual vice’, who had earlier been responsible for including the offence of ‘gross indecency’ within the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, became convinced that some kind of ‘cover-up’ had been launched by the authorities.
On the 28th February 1890 he tried to persuade Parliament to establish a committee to investigate the whole affair, but his motion was defeated by a vote of 204 to 66. Henry felt so strongly on the matter that he became over animated during the debate on his motion and he was suspended from Parliament for a week.
Finally…
Thus the Cleveland Street Scandal passed into history and ceased to be a matter of contemporary significance, however, from evidence that has since become available, it now appears that the Duke of Clarence was indeed a likely client of the Cleveland Street brothel. If indeed it were true, it would be very likely that some kind of damage limitation exercise was carried out at the highest levels of the British Government to protect him.
I grateful acknowledge the following works used in my research:
The Cleveland Street Affair – Colin Simpson, Lewis Chester & David Leitch
The Cleveland Street Scandal – H Montgomery Hyde
Cleveland Street ‘The Musical’ – Glenn Chandler & Matt Devereaux
The most fascinating aspect of Polari isn’t so much what we no longer use, as how much we still use both on the scene, and in everyday slang.
From Wikipedia
Polari (or alternatively Parlare, Parlary, Palare, Palarie, Palari; from Italian parlare, “to talk”) is a form of cant slang used in Britain by actors, circus and fairground showmen, merchant navy sailors, criminals, prostitutes, and the gay subculture. There is some debate about its origins,[3] but it can be traced back to at least the nineteenth century and possibly the sixteenth century.[4] There is a long-standing connection with Punch and Judy street puppet performers who traditionally used Polari to converse.[5]
Description
Polari is a mixture of Romance (Italian[6] or Mediterranean Lingua Franca), Romani, London slang,[6] backslang, rhyming slang, sailor slang, and thieves’ cant. Later it expanded to contain words from the Yiddish language and from 1960s drug users. It was a constantly developing form of language, with a small core lexicon of about 20 words (including bona (good [7]), ajax (nearby), eek (face), cod (naff, vile), naff (bad, drab), lattie (room, house, flat), nanti (not, no), omi (man), palone (woman), riah (hair), zhoosh (tjuz) (smarten up, stylize), TBH (To Be Had, sexually accessible), trade (sex), vada (see)), and over 500 other lesser-known words.[8] According to a Channel 4 television documentary,[which?] there was once (in London) an “East End” version which stressed Cockney rhyming slang and a “West End” version which stressed theatrical and Classical influences. There was some interchange between the two.
Usage
Polari was used in London fishmarkets, the theatre, fairgrounds and circuses, hence the many borrowings from Romani. As many homosexual men worked in theatrical entertainment it was also used among the gay subculture, at a time when homosexual activity was illegal, to disguise homosexuals from hostile outsiders and undercover policemen. It was also used extensively in the British Merchant Navy, where many gay men joined ocean liners and cruise ships as waiters, stewards and entertainers.[9] On one hand, it would be used as a means of cover to allow gay subjects to be discussed aloud without being understood; on the other hand, it was also used by some, particularly the most visibly camp and effeminate, as a further way of asserting their identity.[citation needed]
The almost identical Parlyaree has been spoken in fairgrounds since at least the seventeenth century[10] and continues to be used by show travellers in England and Scotland. As theatrical booths, circus acts and menageries were once a common part of European fairs it is likely that the roots of Polari/Parlyaree lie in the period before both theatre and circus became independent of the fairgrounds. The Parlyaree spoken on fairgrounds tends to borrow much more from Romany, as well as other languages and argots spoken by travelling people, such as cant and backslang.
Henry Mayhew gave a verbatim account of Polari as part of an interview with a Punch and Judy showman in the 1850s. The discussion he recorded references the arrival of Punch in England, crediting these early shows to a performer from Italy called Porcini (see also John Payne Collier’s account of Porsini—Payne Collier calls him Porchini—in Punch and Judy).[11] Mayhew provides the following:
Punch Talk
“‘Bona Parle’ means language; name of patter. ‘Yeute munjare’ – no food. ‘Yeute lente’ – no bed. ‘Yeute bivare’ – no drink. I’ve ‘yeute munjare,’ and ‘yeute bivare,’ and, what’s worse, ‘yeute lente.’ This is better than the costers’ talk, because that ain’t no slang and all, and this is a broken Italian, and much higher than the costers’ lingo. We know what o’clock it is, besides.”[5]
There are additional accounts of particular words that relate to puppet performance: “‘Slumarys’ – figures, frame, scenes, properties. ‘Slum’ – call, or unknown tongue”[5] (“unknown” is a reference to the “swazzle”, a voice modifier used by Punch performers, the structure of which was a longstanding trade secret).
There are many sources of polari lexicons or “dictionaries” online, most of which are random collections with little or no research, rather than a descriptive list of terms in use.
Decline in use
Polari had begun to fall into disuse amongst the gay subculture by the late 1960s. The popularity of the Julian and Sandy characters played by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams ensured that some of this secret language became public property,[12] and the gay liberationists of the 1970s viewed it as rather degrading and divisive as it was often used to gossip about, or criticise, others, as well as to discuss sexual exploits. In addition, the need for a secret subculture code declined with the legalisation of adult homosexual acts in England and Wales in 1967.
In popular culture
Polari was popularised in the 1960s on the popular BBC radio show Round the Horne starring Kenneth Horne. Camp Polari-speaking characters Julian and Sandy were played by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams.[12]
In the first series of British comedians’ panel television series Jokers Wild (1969), comedian Ray Martine is asked to explain the term palone (woman), which he used while telling a joke. In response to the definition, programme presenter Barry Cryer refers to Martine as a bona omi (good man).
Jason King star Peter Wyngarde recorded a self-titled album in 1970 which contained the song “Hippie and the Skinhead” about Billy the “queer sexy hippie” “trolling the Dilly”.
In the long running BBC Programme Doctor Who, in the episode “Carnival of Monsters”, Vorg, a showman, believing The Doctor to be one himself, attempts to converse with him in Polari. The Doctor states that he doesn’t understand him.[13]
In 2015, filmmakers Brian Fairbairn and Karl Eccleston made a short film entirely in Polari, entitled “Putting on the Dish”.[14]
The lyrics to David Bowie’s 2016 song “Girl Loves Me” consist chiefly of a blend of Polari and Nadsat slang. Use today
Bona Togs clothes shop
Since the mid-1990s, with the redistribution of cassettes and CDs of Round The Horne, and with increasing academic interest, Polari has undergone something of a revival. New words are being invented and updated to refer to more recent cultural concepts.[citation needed]
In 1990, Morrissey titled an album Bona Drag – Polari for “nice outfit” – and the single “Piccadilly Palare”.
Also in 1990, comic book writer Grant Morrison created the Polari-speaking character Danny the Street (based on Danny La Rue), a sentient transvestite street, for the comic Doom Patrol.
The 1998 film Velvet Goldmine, which chronicles a fictional retelling of the rise and fall of glam rock, contains a flashback to 1970 in which a group of characters converse in Polari, while their words are subtitled.
In 2002, two books on Polari were published, Polari: The Lost Language of Gay Men, and Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang (both by Paul Baker). Also in 2002, hip hop artist Juha released an album called Polari, with the chorus of the title song written entirely in the slang.
Characters in Will Self’s story Foie Humain, the first part of Liver, use Polari.
Comedians Paul O’Grady, Julian Clary, David Walliams, and Matt Lucas incorporate Polari in their comedy routines, as did Rik Mayall.[citation needed]
In 2012, artists Jez Dolan and Joseph Richardson created an iPhone app which makes available the Polari lexicon and comprehensive list of etymologies.[15][16]
Entry into standard English
A number of words from Polari have entered mainstream slang.
The Polari word naff, meaning inferior or tacky, has an uncertain etymology. Michael Quinion states that it is probably from the sixteenth-century Italian word gnaffa, meaning “a despicable person”.[17] There are a number of folk etymologies, many based on acronyms—Not Available For Fucking, Normal As Fuck—though these are backronyms. More likely etymologies include northern UK dialect naffhead, naffin, or naffy, a simpleton or blockhead; niffy-naffy, inconsequential, stupid, or Scots nyaff, a term of contempt for any unpleasant or objectionable person. An alternative etymology may lie in the Romany naflo, itself rooted in násfalo, meaning ill. The phrase “naff off” was used euphemistically in place of “fuck off” along with the intensifier “naffing” in Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse (1959).[18] Usage of “naff” increased in the 1970s when television sitcom Porridge employed it as an alternative to expletives which were not considered broadcastable at the time.[17] Princess Anne famously told a reporter, “Why don’t you just naff off” at the Badminton horse trials in April 1982.[19]
“Zhoosh” (/ˈʒʊʃ/, /ˈʒuːʃ/ or /ˈʒʊʒ/[20]) (generally pronounced “zhuzh” with the vowel sound of “hood”) meaning to smarten up, style or improve something, became commonplace more recently, having been used in the 2003 United States TV series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and What Not to Wear.
Polari glossary
Word Definition
acdc, bibi- bisexual[21]
ajax – nearby (shortened form of “adjacent to”)[21]
alamo! – they’re attractive! (via acronym “LMO” meaning “Lick Me Out!)[22]
aunt nell listen![23]
aunt nells – ears[24]
aunt nelly fakes – earrings[25]
aunt nell danglers – earrings[citation needed]
barney – a fight[26]
basket- the bulge of male genitalia through clothes[citation needed]
bat, batts, bates – shoes[26]
bitch – effeminate or passive gay man
bijou – small/little (means “jewel” in French)[27]
blag-, pick up[28]
blue -,code word for “homosexual”[citation needed]
bod – body[citation needed]
bona – good[29]
bona nochy – goodnight (from Italian – buona notte)[23]
bonaroo – wonderful, excellent[citation needed]
bungery – pub, this comes from bung.[citation needed]
butch -,masculine; masculine lesbian[30]
buvare – a drink; something drinkable (from Italian – bere or old-fashioned Italian – bevere or Lingua Franca bevire)[30]
cackle – talk/gossip[31]
camp – effeminate (possibly from Italian campare “exaggerate, make stand out”)
capello, capella, capelli, kapella – hat (from Italian, also Greek – cappello)[31]
carsey, karsey, khazi – toilet[31]
cartes – penis (from Italian – cazzo)[32]
cats – trousers[31]
charper – to search or to look (from Italian – acchiappare – to catch)[33]
charpering omi -,policeman
charver – sexual intercourse[28]
chicken – young man
clobber – clothes[34]
cod – bad[35]
cottage – a public lavatory used for sexual encounters
cottaging – seeking or obtaining sexual encounters in public lavatories
cove – taxi[36]
crimper – hairdresser[citation needed]
dally – sweet, kind. Possibly an alternate pronunciation of dolly.[citation needed]
dilly boy – a male prostitute[citation needed]
dinari – money (Latin denarii was the ‘d’ of the pre decimal penny)[citation needed]
dona – woman (perhaps from Italian donna or Lingua Franca dona)[37]
dorcas – term of endearment, ‘one who cares’. The Dorcas Society was a ladies’ church association of the nineteenth century, which made clothes for the poor.[citation needed]
drag – clothes, esp. women’s clothes (prob from Romani — indraka — skirt; also possibly from German – tragen – v. to wear (clothes))[citation needed]
doss – bed[citation needed]
ecaf – face (backslang)[38]
eek – face (abbreviation of ecaf)[38]
ends – hair[citation needed]
esong, sedon – nose (backslang)[39]
fantabulosa – fabulous/wonderful
feele/freely/filly child- young (from the Italian figlio, for son)
fruit – queen
funt – pound
gelt – money (Yiddish)
handbag – money
hoofer – dancer
HP (homy polone) – effeminate gay man
jarry – food, also mangarie (from Italian mangiare or Lingua Franca mangiaria)
jubes -,breasts
kaffies – trousers
khazi – toilet, also spelt carsey
lacoddy – body
lallies (lylies) – legs, sometimes also knees (as in “get down on yer lallies”)
lallie tappers- feet
latty/lattie – room, house or flat
lills – hands
lilly – police (Lilly Law)
lyles – legs (prob. from “Lisle stockings”)
lucoddy – body
luppers – fingers (Yiddish — lapa — paw)
mangarie – food, also jarry (from Italian mangiare or Lingua Franca mangiaria)
martinis – hands
measures – money
meese – plain, ugly (from Yiddish “meeiskeit, in turn from Hebrew מָאוּס repulsive, loathsome, despicable, abominable)
meshigener – nutty, crazy, mental (from Yiddish ‘meshugge’, in turn from Hebrew מְשֻׁגָּע crazy)
national handbag – dole, welfare, government financial assistance
ogle -,look, admire
ogles – eyes
oglefakes – glasses
omi – man (from Romance)
omi-palone – effeminate man, or homosexual
onk – nose (cf “conk”)
orbs – eyes
oven – mouth (nanti pots in the oven = no teeth in the mouth)
palare pipe – telephone (“talk pipe”)
palliass – back
park, parker – give
plate feet – to fellate
palone – woman (Italian paglione – “straw mattress”, [cf. old Cant “hay-bag” = woman]); also spelled “polony” in Graham Greene’s 1938 novel Brighton Rock
palone-omi – lesbian
pots – teeth
remould – sex change
riah/riha – hair (backslang)
riah zhoosher – hairdresser
rough trade – a working class or blue collar sex partner or potential sex partner; a tough, thuggish or potentially violent sex partner
scarper – to run off (from Italian scappare, to escape or run away or from rhyming slang Scapa Flow, to go)
schlumph – drink
scotch – leg (scotch egg=leg)
screech – mouth, speak
sharpy – policeman (from — charpering omi)
sharpy polone – policewoman
shush – steal (from client)
shush bag – hold-all
shyker/shyckle – wig (mutation of the Yiddish sheitel)
slap – makeup
so – homosexual (e.g. “Is he ‘so’?”)
stimps – legs
stimpcovers -,stockings, hosiery
strides – trousers
strillers – piano
switch – wig
thews – thighs
tober – road (a Shelta word, Irish bóthar)
todd (Sloanne) – alone
tootsie trade – sex between two passive homosexuals (as in: ‘I don’t do tootsie trade’)
trade – sex, sex-partner, potential sex-partner
troll -,to walk about (esp. looking for trade)
vada/varder – to see (from Italian — dialect vardare = guardare – look at)
vardered — vardering
vera (lynn) – gin vogue – cigarette (from Lingua Franca — fogus – “fire, smoke”)
Omies and palones of the jury, vada well at the eek of the poor ome who stands before you, his lallies trembling.—taken from “Bona Law”, a Round The Horne sketch written by Barry Took and Marty Feldman
Translation: “Men and women of the jury, look well at the face of the poor man who stands before you, his legs trembling.”
So bona to vada…oh you! Your lovely eek and your lovely riah.—taken from “Piccadilly Palare”, a song by Morrissey
Translation: “So good to see…oh you! Your lovely face and your lovely hair.”
As feely ommes…we would zhoosh our riah, powder our eeks, climb into our bona new drag, don our batts and troll off to some bona bijou bar. In the bar we would stand around with our sisters, vada the bona cartes on the butch omme ajax who, if we fluttered our ogle riahs at him sweetly, might just troll over to offer a light for the unlit vogue clenched between our teeth.—taken from Parallel Lives, the memoirs of renowned gay journalist Peter Burton
Translation: “As young men…we would style our hair, powder our faces, climb into our great new clothes, don our shoes and wander/walk off to some great little bar. In the bar we would stand around with our gay companions, look at thegreat genitals on the butch man nearby who, if we fluttered our eyelashes at him sweetly, might just wander/walk over to offer a light for the unlit cigarette clenched between our teeth.”
In the Are You Being Served? episode “The Old Order Changes”, Captain Peacock asks Mr Humphries to get “some strides for the omi with the naff riah” (i.e. trousers for the fellow with the unstylish hair).[40]
See also
African American Vernacular English (sometimes called Ebonics)
Bahasa Binan
Boontling
Caló (Chicano)
Carny, North American fairground cant
Gayle language
Gay slang
Grypsera
IsiNgqumo
Lavender linguistics
Lunfardo and Vesre
Rotwelsch
Swardspeak
Verlan
References
Polari at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). “Polari”. Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Quinion, Michael (1996). “How bona to vada your eek!”. WorldWideWords. Retrieved February 20, 2006.
Collins English Dictionary, Third Edition
a b c Mayhew, Henry (1968). London Labour and the London Poor, 1861 3. New York: Dover Press. p. 47.
a b “British Spies: Licensed to be Gay.” Time. 19 August 2008
“The secret language of polari”. liverpoolmuseums.org.uk. Retrieved on 27 August 2015.
Baker, Paul (2002) Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang. London: Continuum ISBN 0-8264-5961-7
“Gay men in the Merchant Marine, Liverpool Maritime Museum”. Liverpoolmuseums.org.uk. Retrieved 2010-10-03.
Partridge, Eric (1937) Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English
Punch and Judy. (with Illustrations by George Cruickshank). Thomas Hailes Lacey, London, 1859
a b Stevens, Christopher (2010). Born Brilliant: The Life Of Kenneth Williams. John Murray. p. 206. ISBN 1-84854-195-3.
Paul Baker (2 September 2003). Polari – The Lost Language of Gay Men. Routledge. p. 161. ISBN 9781134506347. Retrieved 13 August 2015.
Lowder, J. Bryan (2015-07-28). “Listen to Polari, the Lost Art of Gay Conversation”. Slate.
a b Quinion, Michael. “Naff”. World Wide Words. Retrieved 10 January 2010.
Waterhouse, Keith (1959). Billy Liar. Michael Joseph. pp. 35, 46. ISBN 0-7181-1155-9. p35 “Naff off, Stamp, for Christ sake!” p46 “Well which one of them’s got the naffing engagement ring?”
The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English Dalzell and Victor (eds.) Routledge, 2006, Vol. II p. 1349
“The Old Order Changes”. Are You Being Served?. 18 March 1977.
Bibliography
Baker, Paul (2002) Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang. London: Continuum: ISBN 0-8264-5961-7 Baker, Paul (2003). Polari – The Lost Language of Gay Men. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781134506354.
Elmes, Simon & Rosen, Michael (2002) Word of Mouth. Oxford University Press: ISBN 0-19-866263-7
Back in the dim days of my youth, the BBC had a succession of hugely successful radio comedy programmes which have never been matched since. The BBC itself has a strong tendency to be nostalgic about them, calling them the Golden Age of Radio Comedy, though these days the gold mainly ends up in the till, now it has discovered how many other people have fond memories of the shows and are prepared to pay to hear them again on CD or cassette. The best known is almost certainly the Goon Show, attested by its Usenet newsgroup and its fan clubs in North America, Britain and elsewhere. Others included Take It from Here, Hancock’s Half Hour and Round The Horne. This last show was introduced by Kenneth Horne, an urbane straight man, who had previously partnered Richard Murdoch in Much Binding in the Marsh, a send-up of a small RAF station “somewhere in England”, but who in the intervening years had had an extremely successful business career. He was partnered by Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick and Betty Marsden, with scripts by Marty Feldman and Barry Took.
One element of the show, which was stereotypical in its layout, always featured a pair of screamingly camp young men: “Hello, I’m Julian and this is my friend Sandy”, overplayed by Williams and Paddick to an extent which robbed it of much of its latent homophobia (particularly as both were known to be gay), though I cannot imagine a similar duo being allowed anywhere near a BBC microphone in this supposedly more permissive but also infinitely more sensitive age. These two spoke in a slangy language which was virtually incomprehensible to anyone hearing it for the first time, though by repetition week by week a mental glossary could be constructed. “How bona to vada your eek!” was a recurring expression; there were references to “butch omis” and to “omipalones”; they always “trolled” everywhere, though their “lallies” weren’t up to much of that; things were “naph”, “bona” or sometimes “fantabulosa”.
This was not a constructed language, but a secret vocabulary, a cant or argot in the linguist’s term, which uses the grammar and syntax of English as well as most of its core vocabulary. It was in fairly common use in the theatre and in related branches of show business such as ballet and the circus, to the extent that a book on the Round the Horne series remarked that Williams and Paddick often really did speak like that in real life. It is variously called Palare, Palyaree, Palary or Polari from its own word for “talk” or “speech”.
HORNE: Would I have vada’d any of them do you think?
SANDY: Oooaaawwh! He’s got all the Palare, ain’t he?
JULIAN: [archly] I wonder where he picks it up?
Linguists still argue about where it came from. The larger part of its vocabulary is certainly Italian in origin, but nobody seems to know how the words got into Britain. Some experts say its origins lie in the lingua franca of the shores of the Mediterranean, a pidgin in use in the Middle Ages and afterwards as a medium of communication between sailors and traders from widely different language groups, the core of this language being Italian and Occitan. Quite a number of British sailors learnt the lingua franca. On returning home and retiring from the sea it is supposed that many of them became vagabonds or travellers, because they had no other means of livelihood; this threw them into contact with roving groups of entertainers and fairground people, who picked up some of the pidgin terms and incorporated them into their own canting private vocabularies. However, other linguists point to the substantial number of native Italians who came to Britain as entertainers in the early part of the nineteenth century, especially the Punch and Judy showmen, organ grinders and peddlars of the 1840s.
But Polari is a linguistic mongrel. Words from Romany (originally an Indian dialect), Shelta (the cant of the Irish tinkers), Yiddish, back slang, rhyming slang and other non-standard English are interspersed with words of Italian origin. Take this exchange from one of the Round the Horne sketches:
SANDY: Roll up yer trouser legs … we want to vada yer calves.
JULIAN: Hmmm … his scotches may be a bit naph but his plates are bona.
So it would not be surprising to find that both the Italian showman and the lingua franca theories are right, each contributing words at different stages in Polari’s development. This might indeed explain the substantial number of synonyms noted at various times. However, the vocabulary is not well recorded, and now may never be, because it was normal until quite recently for linguists to ignore such low-life forms, which rarely turned up in print (and then only in partial glossaries). But we do know that a few of Polari’s terms have made it across the language barrier into semi-standard English, much of it seeming to come to us via Cockney: karsey, a lavatory; mankey, poor, bad or tasteless; ponce, a pimp; and scarper to run away.
The rest have stayed within the theatrical and circus worlds, and have also been incorporated particularly into the private languages of some homosexual groups, as Julian and Sandy make very clear. Some writers have sought to claim Polari exclusively for the gay community, renaming it Gayspeak. In the 1990s it certainly seems to be heavily used by some city-based British gays (but only male gays, not lesbians), who have invented new terms like nante ’andbag for “no money” (handbag here being a self-mocking example of metonymy). However, it can scarcely have always been so, unless every fairground showman, circus performer, strolling player, cheapjack and Punch and Judy man in history was gay, which seems somewhat unlikely.
There are other characteristics of the language of Julian and Sandy. They tend to make diminuitives of nouns: would you like a bijou drinkette? for example. They also playfully invent words based on Italian models, such as fantabulosa. And they use a few terms which seem to be Polari and yet are unrecorded in glossaries: luffer = finger and nish = no, stop (as in “nish shouting!”; unpublished researches of the OED suggest this is either of Yiddish origin or comes from Irish Gaelic.)
A quick Polari lexicon:
batt = shoe; bevvy = drink (or possibly an abbreviation of beverage, or both); bijou = small; bimbo = dupe, sucker; bona = good; camp = excessive or showy or affecting mannerisms of the opposite sex; charper = to search (leading to charpering omi = policeman); dolly = nice or pleasant; dona = woman (hence the Australian slang word donah); drag = clothes (and so possibly via the gay world to the informal but widespread use meaning to dress in the clothes of the opposite sex); eek = face; fantabulosa = excellent; feele = child (hence feely omi = a young man, sometimes specifically an underaged young man); lally = leg; lattie = house, lodgings; leucoddy = body; naph = bad (quite possibly the origin of the current British English slang term naff); nante = none or nothing; ogle = eye (hence ogleriah = eyelash); omi = man; omipalone = homosexual; palare = talk; palone; woman; riah = hair (possibly back-slang); tosheroon = half a crown (two shillings and sixpence), possibly a much-corrupted form of the Italian mezzo caroon; troll, = walk, wander; vada = look; walloper = dancer; zhoosh = fix, tidy. And perhaps you might like to be able to count to ten in Polari: una, duey, trey, quater, chinker, sey, setter, otto, nobber, dacha.
Now you can have a go at translating this:
As feely homies, we would zhoosh our riahs, powder our eeks, climb into our bona new drag, don our batts and troll off to some bona bijou bar.
Edward De Lacy Evans (born Ellen Tremayne or Tremaye, 1830? – 25 August 1901) was a servant, blacksmith and gold miner, who immigrated from Ireland to Australia in 1856, and made international news in 1879 when it was revealed he was a woman.
Early life and name
Mystery surrounds Evans’ early life and his choice of name.[1] He told miners he worked with in Australia that he was born in France, had stolen £500 as a boy and fled to Waterford, where he acquired his Irish accent.[2] A woman living near Corop, who claimed to be a former Kilkenny neighbour, said he was the well-born ‘Ellen Lacy’ who had an illegitimate child, fled to America, but returned in the early 1850s as ‘Mrs De Lacy Evans’ to ride her horse through a gathering called by John Ponsonby, 5th Earl of Bessborough before being ‘dragged off her pony’ and forced to ‘clear out’.[3] Evans’ third wife, Julia Marquand, said the name was a family one and his uncle was the well known British General George de Lacy Evans.[4]
After his hospitalisation, Evans said little about his past, and was described as ‘not disposed to be communicative'[3] and someone who ‘observes unusual taciturnity.’.[5] Asked why he had ‘impersonated a man’, he replied ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, and the sooner they put me out of the way and get done with me the better.'[6]
Immigration to Victoria
In 1856, Evans arrived in Victoria, Australia, then in a goldrush ‘boom’ period, aboard the Ocean Monarch as part of the ‘assisted immigration scheme’ which aimed to provide the workers and residents needed in the growing colony.[1] Evans traveled under the name Ellen Tremayne and, in the information he provided, stated that he was aged 26, born in Kilkenny, was a Roman Catholic, a housemaid and could read and write.[1]
For most of the voyage to Australia, Evans wore the same outfit of ‘a green merino dress and sealskin coat reaching almost to her ankles’ with men’s shirt and trousers,[2] and was said to have a traveling trunk full of male attire, stamped with the name ‘Edward De Lacy Evans’.[7] This, and the fact he appeared to have ‘formed sexual attachments’ with some of the women he shared a cabin with, led to on-board speculation he was a man impersonating a woman.[1] One of these women was later identified as Rose Kelly who was said to have been taken ill and, as a result, departed at Rio de Janeiro en route,[8] while another was said to have been a Mary Montague.[7] Further speculation, from among his fellow passengers, was that the ‘real’ Edward De Lacy Evans had enticed ‘Ellen Tremayne’ to take passage with him on the ship by sending his trunk ahead but he then abandoned ‘her’.[2] A later theory, not publicly mentioned during the voyage or late 19th century newspaper reports, was that the clothes belonged to Evans, and he had been wearing them prior to his immigration, but decided to make the long sea voyage – either through fear of disclosure among men, or preferring the company of women – in a female guise.[2] St Francis’ Church in Melbourne where Edward De Lacy Evans married Mary Delahuntly in 1856.
As a condition of his assisted passage Evans, under the name Ellen Tremayne, had been indentured as a maidservant to McKeddie, a Melton hotelkeeper, at a wage of 25 shillings per week, but he soon left the position and found one of his fellow passengers from the Ocean Monarch, Mary Delahunty.[1] Delahunty was a 34-year-old governess from Harristown, Waterford, in a similar area of Ireland to Evans, and another of the ‘close attachments’ he had made on the voyage.[1] Mrs. Thompson, a passenger on the Ocean Monarch, later said that Evans and Delahunty were from the same village in Kilkenny and that Delahunty was in possession of £900.[9] She also recalled Evans saying he would marry Delahunty ‘as soon as the ship reached Melbourne'[9] and, with Evans wearing male clothes, and calling himself ‘Edmund De Lacy’, the Roman Catholic ceremony took place at St Francis’ Church.[2]
Little is known of Evans and Delahunty’s married life over the next few years but there were reports that they ‘did not live comfortably together’.[1] Evans moved to work as a miner at Blackwood, in the state’s north-west, not far from Melton where he’d been employed as ‘Ellen Tremayne’, and Delahunty followed him in 1858.[10] Delahunty established a school in Blackwood but in 1862 left to marry Lyman Oatman Hart, an American mining surveyor.[1] Delahunty told ‘all who objected to this blatant act of bigamy’ that her first marriage was not legal as Evans was a woman.[10] Delahunty and Hart moved to Daylesford where they lived through the 1860s and 1870s.[10]
Sandhurst
Evans also left Blackwood in 1862, moving to the central Victorian city of ‘Sandhurst’ (now known as Bendigo), and, describing himself as a widower, he married a 23-year-old Irishwoman, Sarah Moore.[10] Over the next five years he held various occupations including carter, miner, blacksmith and ploughman[1] and lived with Moore in several nearby towns.[10] He also owned shares in a number of gold mines and paid property rates in Sandhurst and the adjoining district of Eaglehawk.[1] When he was found in a servant’s bedroom at a local hotel he was jailed for trespass for seven days.[1][2]
In 1867, Moore died of pulmonary tuberculosis[1] and the following year Evans met, and married, a friend of his former wife’s sister, 25-year-old Julia Marquand.[10] Marquand was a French dressmaker’s assistant who lived with her sister and brother-in-law, the prominent Sandhurst businessman, and owner of the ‘City Family Hotel’,[1] Jean Baptiste Loridan.[10]
In the early years of their marriage Evans and Marquand often lived apart but the couple reconciled by 1872.[4] Evans progressed in his mining profession and their Sandhurst home was a cottage that he had built.[4] A formal studio portrait taken at this time may be significant in its representation of how they saw themselves and their ‘establishment of a stable and traditional family unit’.[10]
Bendigo Court House where Edward De Lacy Evans was sentenced to the ‘Lunatic Ward’ of the hospital in July 1879.
In 1877, Marquand gave birth to a daughter the couple called ‘Julia Mary’.[11] Evans later supported Marquand when she brought a child maintenance suit against her brother-in-law Jean Baptiste Loridan for the child[12] but he gave his name as father on the birth certificate.[1] Around this period Evans’ was injured at work and, while he ‘welcomed the child as his own’ he was also ‘deeply disturbed by the circumstances in which his wife became pregnant’.[11]
On 21 July 1879, Loridan took him to the Bendigo Hospital[11] as he was ‘dangerous to others’,[13] but, when told to take a bath, he refused and escaped.[13] The following day he was arrested at home and brought to the Police Court where the magistrates agreed with the medical assessment that Evans was suffering from ‘softening of the brain’ and ordered him to be involuntarily committed to ‘the lunatic wards’ of the Bendigo hospital.[14]
‘A curious incident has occurred’ Edit
For six weeks at the Bendigo Hospital Evans refused to take a bath.[6] He shared a room with a warder called Gundry to whom he said that ‘his parents were Irish, but that he had come from France when about seven or eight years of age’.[6] However, when Gundry used some French phrases, Evans claimed that he’d ‘forgotten the language’.[6] While there he had regular visits from his wife and daughter, as well as other relatives, one of whom called Evans ‘Uncle’, while Julia Mary called him ‘Dadds’.[3]
On 30 August 1879, the hospital decided to send Evans and another patient to the Kew Asylum near Melbourne, accompanied by a police constable.[6] Marquand was at the station and Evans told her to care of Julia Mary and ‘both he and his wife were weeping’ by the time they left.[6] Kew Asylum in the 19th century where Edward De Lacy Evans was sent
The events at the Kew Asylum were described in The Argus on 3 September 1879:
“A curious incident has occurred at Kew Lunatic Asylum. A lunatic was brought from Sandhurst by the police, and was admitted into one of the male wards. The patient was tolerably quiet until preparations were made for giving ‘him’ the usual bath. On the attendants attempting to carry out the programme, violent resistance was made, the reason for which proved to be that the supposed man was in reality a woman. The most singular part of the affair is that the woman had been received into Sandhurst Hospital as a male patient and sent thence to the asylum under the name of Evans. She states that she has lived at Sandhurst for many years dressed in male attire. Her age is about 35.”[15]
On 4 September 1879, the Bendigo Advertiser ran with the headline ‘Extraordinary Case Of Concealment Of Sex’ and wrote:
“One of the most unparalleled impostures has been brought to light during the past few days, which it has ever been the province of the press of these colonies to chronicle, and we might even add is unprecedented in the annals of the whole world. A woman, under the name of Edward De Lacy Evans, has for 20 years passed for a man in various parts of the colony of Victoria… As it is almost impossible to give an account of the case without making use of the masculine pronoun when referring to Evans, we propose to use that appellation… “[6]
It was soon reported by local newspapers, and then the ‘colonial and international press’, that Evans had been determined by the Kew Asylum to be a woman, and ‘promptly handed over to female nurses’ and sent back in Bendigo.[1] Evans later recalled:
“The fellers there took hold o’ me to give me a bath, an’ they stripped me to put me in the water, an’ then they saw the mistake. One feller ran off as if he was frightened; the others looked thunderstruck an’ couldn’t speak. I was handed over to the women, and they dressed me up in frocks and petticoats.”[16]
While still a patient at Bendigo, Evans said he knew who the father of his child was, made a reference to his wife not being ‘true’, and mentioned concerns about financial difficulties and possibly losing the house he had built, before adding, ‘Everything coming together was enough to drive a man mad.'[3] Marquand also spoke to the press and insisted she had never known Evans was not a man.[4]
It wasn’t only the newspapers that covered the ‘curious incident’; Stawell photographer Aaron Flegeltaub began selling copies of the formal portrait Marquand and Evans had taken in the early 1870s, while Sandhurst photographer N. White managed to gain access to the Bendigo Hospital and took a number of head-shots of Evans wearing a ‘white hospital nightshirt (or straight-jacket)’ and looking ‘wild eyed and probably affronted by the intrusion’ which were used to create an image he also sold.[1] The hospital refused requests from ‘entrepreneurs’ for Evans be ‘publicly exhibited’.[1]
‘Another intrusion’ was a gynaecological examination conducted by a Dr Penfold, which caused Evans to ‘cry and scream’ when the speculum was used, and resulted in a finding that he was ‘physiologically female’ and ‘had carried and borne a child’.[1] Evans later said the ‘examination had injured’ him.[3]
On 10 October 1879, the Bendigo Hospital declined a request by the Kew Asylum to return Evans as he ‘was improving daily, and will soon be in a fit state to be discharged’.[17] By December, Evans was declared ‘cured’ and released,[11] but, a few days later, dressed in female clothes, he was ‘still mentally distressed’ when he gave evidence in support of Marquand’s unsuccessful suit against Loridan.[1][18]
Later life and legacy
In late December 1879, Evans was part of events by ‘panorama showmen’ Augustus Baker Pierce and William Bignell in Geelong and Stawell and newspapers noted that ‘neither mind nor body possesses the vigour once so noticeable’.[1] This was followed, in 1880, by appearances in Melbourne billed as ‘The Wonderful Male Impersonator’ as part of the ‘living wonders’ at the Waxworks,[19] while Sydney shows were accompanied by pamphlets about ‘The Man-Woman Mystery’.[3]
By February 1881, Evans had applied for admittance to a Benevolent Asylum and he was sent to the Melbourne Immigrants’ Home in St Kilda Road.[1] He remained there until his death, twenty years later, on 25 August 1901.[20]
In 1897, Joseph Furphy, who, from the late 1860s, lived near Bendigo, published his first novel Such Is Life and included the comparison to Evans with the mention; ‘one of those De Lacy Evanses we often read of in novels’.[1]
In 2006, sites associated with Evans were included in the history walk presented as part of Melbourne’s Midsumma Festival.[21]
References
Colligan, Mimi (Autumn 2002). “The Mysterious Edward/Ellen De Lacy Evans: The Picaresque in Real Life”. The La Trobe Journal (69). Retrieved 2013-10-03.
Lucy Sarah Chesser (2008). Parting with My Sex: Cross-dressing, Inversion and Sexuality in Australian Cultural Life. Sydney University Press. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-920898-31-1.
Unknown (1880). The History and confession of Ellen Tremaye, alias, De Lacy Evans, the man-woman. Melbourne: Wm. Marshall. p. 27. Retrieved 2013-10-03.
“INTERVIEW WITH MRS. EVANS.”. Bendigo Advertiser (Vic.: National Library of Australia). 4 September 1879. p. 2. Retrieved 3 October 2013.
“THE SANDHURST IMPERSONATOR— EDWARD DE LACY EVANS.”. Illustrated Australian News (Melbourne: National Library of Australia). 1 October 1879. p. 155. Retrieved 4 October 2013.
“EXTRAORDINARY CASE OF CONCEALMENT OF SEX.”. Bendigo Advertiser (Vic.: National Library of Australia). 4 September 1879. p. 2. Retrieved 3 October 2013.
“FURTHER PARTICULARS.”. Bendigo Advertiser (Vic.: National Library of Australia). 5 September 1879. p. 1 Supplement: Supplement to The Bendigo Advertiser. Retrieved 4 October 2013.
“Ellen Tremaye, alias Edward De Lacy Evans, the Female Impersonator.”. Australian Town and Country Journal (NSW: National Library of Australia). 11 October 1879. p. 32. Retrieved 4 October 2013.
“Ellen Tremaye, alias Edward De Lacy Evans, the Female Impersonator.”. Australian Town and Country Journal (NSW: National Library of Australia). 11 October 1879. p. 32. Retrieved 4 October 2013.
Lucy Sarah Chesser (2008). Parting with My Sex: Cross-dressing, Inversion and Sexuality in Australian Cultural Life. Sydney University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-1-920898-31-1.
Lucy Sarah Chesser (2008). Parting with My Sex: Cross-dressing, Inversion and Sexuality in Australian Cultural Life. Sydney University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-1-920898-31-1.
Lucy Sarah Chesser (2008). Parting with My Sex: Cross-dressing, Inversion and Sexuality in Australian Cultural Life. Sydney University Press. p. 16. ISBN 978-1-920898-31-1.
“The Female Impersonator.”. The Northern Territory Times and Gazette (National Library of Australia). 15 November 1879. p. 2. Retrieved 4 October 2013.
“CROSS PURPOSES.”. Bendigo Advertiser (Vic.: National Library of Australia). 23 July 1879. p. 2. Retrieved 3 October 2013.
“Victoria.”. The Evening News (Sydney: National Library of Australia). 3 September 1879. p. 2. Retrieved 3 October 2013.
Pryor, Lisa (2012-08-04). “Born as a girl”. Daily Life (Fairfax). Retrieved 2013-10-03.
“SANDHURST.”. The Argus (Melbourne: National Library of Australia). 10 October 1879. p. 3. Retrieved 4 October 2013.
“Victoria.”. The Evening News (Sydney: National Library of Australia). 6 December 1879. p. 5. Retrieved 4 October 2013.
“DEATH OF DE LACY EVANS.”. The Argus (Melbourne: National Library of Australia). 27 August 1901. p. 5. Retrieved 4 October 2013.
“MAN IMPERSONATORS.”. Queanbeyan Age (Queanbeyan, NSW: National Library of Australia). 23 November 1906. p. 4. Retrieved 4 October 2013.
Hunter, Tim (2006-01-26). “The queer streets of Bearbrass”. The Age. Retrieved 2013-10-03.
External links
Pamphlet sold at Sydney ‘shows’: The History and confession of Ellen Tremaye, alias, De Lacy Evans, the man-woman (1880)
Daily Mail Australia – 14 August 2014
By Louise Cheer for Daily Mail Australia
Was this Irish maid Australia’s first transgender person? Ellen Tremayne was leading a double life as Edward De Lacy Evans in 19th century Victoria
For about 20 years of his life, Edward De Lacy Evans lived as a man
He was born in Ireland as Ellen Tremayne and died in 1901 in Melbourne
Mr De Lacy Evans was married three times and was ‘father’ to one daughter
He worked as a carter, miner, blacksmith and ploughman across Victoria
The story of Edward De Lacy Evans read like every other man’s in the 19th century – he was a labourer, husband and father.
But underneath the suit and tie was a body of a woman named Ellen Tremayne – also known as Ellen Tremaye – who could have been Australia’s first transgender person.
Mr De Lacy Evans arrived on Australian shores from Ireland in June 1856 as an assisted immigrant on-board the Ocean Monarch.
It is speculated he was born between 1829 to 1841 due to a discrepancy in shipping lists, and birth, marriage and death certificates.
De Lacy Evans who could be Australia’s first transgender person as a woman (left) and as a man (right) during his stint in Kew Asylum
A portrait of Edward De Lacy Evans in male and female attire. The image is probably a fake cut-and-paste produced by a photographer after it was discovered De Lacy Evans was a man
According to ship records, he was a 26-year-old Roman Catholic from Kilkenny who could read and write, and was listed as a housemaid.
When she arrived in Victoria, Mr De Lacy Evans was still known as Ellen Tremayne and caused quite a stir on the trip over.
According to the State Library of Victoria’s The La Trobe Journal, he wore a man’s shirt and trousers underneath his dress and had formed sexual attachments to some of the other female passengers on the Ocean Monarch, including his soon-to-be first wife, Mary Delahunty – a 34-year-old governess who was also from Ireland.
He travelled with a trunk labelled with the name ‘Edward De Lacy Evans’ on it who, according to De Lacy Evans’ third wife, was his uncle.
There was also speculation her husband or lover was named ‘Edward De Lacy Evans’ and he had somehow tricked the transsexual by placing his trunk on the Ocean Monarch and deserted the 26-year-old.
Mr De Lacy Evans’, who was still identified as a woman, first job in Australia was as a maidservant at a Melton public house but some time after he left his position and started dressing like a man, and ditched the name of Ellen Tremayne.
Mr De Lacy Evans continued living as a man for 25 years after he left Kew Asylum in 1879 (left) and the right picture is of him and his third wife, Julia Marquand
Now as Edmund De Lacy, he went and sought out Ms Delahunty, marrying her at St Francis’ Roman Catholic Church in Lonsdale Street, Melbourne.
But their marriage was not a happy one, with evidence suggesting they ‘did not live comfortably together’.
After Ms Delahunty opened a school in Blackwood, she left Mr De Lacy Evans and married an American mining surveyor Lyman Oatman Hart who lived in Daylesford – north-west of Melbourne.
In the next 20 years, Mr De Lacy Evans married twice – his second wife was Sarah Moore who died of pulmonary tuberculosis in 1867 and a Julia Marquand of Bendigo – north of Melbourne.
Mr De Lacy Evans worked as a carter, miner, blacksmith and ploughman in the areas of Blackwood, Bendigo and Stawell.
The breakdown of his third marriage came after March 1878 when Ms Marquand gave birth to a child fathered by her brother-in-law, Jean Baptiste Loridan.
Despite Mr De Lacy Evans knowing it was not his child, he registered himself as the child’s father but his resentment over the pregnancy started taking its toll on the marriage.
In July 1879, he started violently acting out against Ms Marquand and his 15-month-old daughter, fell into a deep depression and then was admitted to Bendigo Hospital’s lunacy ward for amentia – a mental disability.
Another portrait done of Mr De Lacy Evans done by Aaron Flegeltaub who was active between 1882-1891
For the first six weeks of his stint in the hospital, Mr De Lacy Evans refused to bathe until he was transferred to the Kew Asylum and forcibly stripped that his secret was discovered.
He was handed over to female nurses and forced to dress as a woman
In an interview, Mr De Lacy Evans’ recalled the moment he was outed as a female at Kew Asylum.
‘I was sittin’ the carriage at the railway station, an’ the wife was cryin’ and the kid was squealin’, an’ I was laughin’ at ‘em,’ he said during an interview.
‘Well, when we got to Kew, the fellers there took hold o’ me to give me a bath, an’ they stripped me to put me in the water, an’ then they saw the mistake.
‘One feller ran off as if he was frightened; the others looked thunderstruck an’ couldn’t speak.
‘I was handed over to the women, and they dressed me up in frocks and petticoats.’
Mr De Lacy Evans’ outing as a female caused a worldwide stir, with one photographer named Nicholas White sneaking into the hospital and taking photos of the transsexual dressed as a man and a woman as well as possibly a straitjacket.
As a transgender person, Mr De Lacy Evans’ faced brutal treatment inside the asylum including a report done up by The Australian Medical Journal that said he cried and screamed as he was probed during a gynaecological examination – which verified he was a physiologically a woman.
A drawing done of Mr De Lacy Evans entitled The Sandhurst impersonator working as a man at the Victorian goldfields
With the news in circulation, Mr De Lacy Evans received offers to be ‘publicly exhibited’ and after his release from Kew Asylum he took up the opportunities. He was once offered three to five pounds per week for a tour.
He appeared as ‘The Wonderful Male Impersonator’ at St Georges Hall on Bourke Street in Melbourne in January 1880 and another time alongside a trapeze artist and ‘The Electric Boy’ at Sydney’s Egyptian Hall on George Street in September 1880.
When the truth came out his wife, Ms Marquand denied knowing her husband was in fact a woman and accounted for her daughter’s existence by telling reporters: ‘Some strange man entered the house one night about the time her husband should have returned home’.
Ms Marquand also stated her husband would never let her see him stripped or washing himself.
Additionally, Mr De Lacy Evans could have fooled his wife into thinking he was a man by fashioning a homemade strap-on dildo.
There was also evidence Mr De Lacy Evans’ second wife, Sarah Moore, found out about her husband’s cross-dressing about a year into their marriage
A witness reported seeing Ms Moore punching Mr De Lacy Evans in the breast – her ‘weak place’.
Mr De Lacy Evans lived as a man for another 25 years and found no success in show business.
In February 1881, he was applying for relief at the Melbourne Police Court and wanted to be admission to the Benevolent Asylum.
Mr De Lacy Evans died in August 1901 in the Melbourne Immigrants’ Home at St Kilda Road, where he had been since February 1881.
Read more:
The Mysterious Edward/Ellen De Lacy Evans: The Picaresque in Real Life – No 69 Autumn 2002 – La Trobe Journal
When genetic counselors attend family reunions, their unofficial job becomes Namer-of-Relationships. “Keith, you and I are first cousins once-removed. Viola is my great aunt. Margo, you are my mother’s second cousin’s second wife so you would be…..well, some kind of in-law or kissing cousin, I guess.” It gets confusing, even for experts. It is even more difficult for patients or referring providers who try to relate a family history of a second cousin with a cleft palate and a heart defect but who is actually a first cousin once-removed.
Below I have created a generic pedigree that illustrates the most common familial relationships in the kinship system of the modern Western English-speaking world. The pedigree undoubtedly contains errors and omissions. So, in the spirit of crowd sourcing, I encourage my fellow pedigree wonks to scrutinize it and report mistakes, mislabelings, missing relatives, and thoughtful commentary in the Comments section below (this would also be a great discussion topic for a few hours of a genetic counseling student seminar).
The accompanying explanatory table supplies details, controversies and inconsistencies. I am cowardly avoiding the complicated relationships that stem from assisted reproductive technologies such as donor eggs, donor sperm, surrogate mothers, etc. Of course, the person you decide to call Mother, Father, Uncle, Cousin, etc. is based not on genetic relationship but on personal experience, family preferences, and social norms.
For those not familiar with pedigree arcana, each individual is identified with a numbering scheme such that relatives in the first generation (at the top of the pedigree) are identified with a Roman numeral (e.g., I) and an Arabic numeral (e.g., 2). This indicates, reading from left to right, that I-2 is the second person on the first line of the pedigree. The next generation down is numbered II, and so on. Thus, IV-7 is the seventh person in the fourth generation and who is the the proband or propositus, the reference point for the relationships. IV-7’s father is III-3, IV-7’s paternal great grandfathers are I-2 and I-4, and so on.
There seems to be no widely accepted guidelines for when to include hyphens in a relationship name (e.g., great-grandfather vs. great grandfather). Since this is my blog post, I get to decide the grammatical rules. Thus, because I tend to be a minimalist, I hyphenate only when there is more than one “great” in a title. In the pedigree, I-1 is a great-great-uncle, but I-2 is a great grandfather. I also use hyphens in “removed” relationships (e.g., first cousin once-removed) because, well, it just looks right. Stepmother seems to be more common than either step mother or step-mother. However, “stepbrother” is infrequent. For consistency, I recommend the spaced-but-not-hyphenated style for “step” and “half” descriptors” (e.g., half brother, step mother).
An alternative graphic to describe family relationships is the Canon Law Relationship Chart.
Image from Wikipedia Commons, under the GNU Free Documentation License. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Canon_law_relationship_chart.svg#section_2
The relationships illustrated in the pedigree are described as follows: Self, You, (AKA Proband, Propositus): IV-7, the person who is the reference point for all relationships in the pedigree. Parents:
Genetic Father: III-3
Genetic Mother: III-4
Step Parent: III-5, the new or former spouse of your genetic mother or father. Siblings
Full Brother: IV-8. Male siblings with whom you share both genetic parents.
Full Sister: IV-9. Female siblings with whom you share both genetic parents.
Half Sibling: IV-10. A sibling with whom you share only one genetic parent. Or, as one of my patients said to me the other day “She is my half of a sister.”
Step Sibling: IV-11. A sibling with whom you share no genetic parents, e.g., the son your stepfather had with his previous wife. Children
Son: V-2. A male child.
Daughter: V-3. A female child.
Step Child: V-1. The son or daughter that your spouse had with a previous spouse. Grandchildren
Grandson, Granddaughter: VI-1. Your child’s son and daughter, respectively.
Great Grandson, Great Granddaughter: VII-1. The son and daughter, respectively, of your grandson or your granddaughter. Grandparents
Grandfather: II-3, II-5. The father of your mother or father. But note the inconsistent use of grand and great. The brother and sister of your grandfather is your great uncle and great aunt (vide infra, Great Uncle, Grand Nephew). Presumably the word stems from the French grand-père, which itself goes back to the 12th century. Prior to the French influence, a grandfather was referred to as a grandsire, and prior to that, in Old English, the Germanic-derived ealdefæder or eldfader.
Great Grandfather: I-2, I-4, I-6, I-8. The father of your grandparent.
Grandmother: II-4, II-6. The mother of your mother or your father.
Great Grandmother: I-3, I-5, I-7, I-9. The mother of your grandparent. Uncles, Aunts
Uncle: III-2, III-8. A brother of one of your parents
Aunt: III-1, III-9. A sister of one of your parents
Great Uncle: II-2, II-7. A brother of one of your 4 grandparents. I thought about recommending the less commonly used title Grand Uncle (or Grand Aunt) because these individuals are in the same generation as your grandparents. When they are referred to as Great relatives, it seems to imply that they are in the generation prior to your grandparents’ generation. I suspect, though, that Great is so well established that it is unlikely to replaced by Grand. And you share more genetic information with your Grandparents than you do with your Great Uncles, so perhaps using Great rather than Grand is an acknowledgment of that genetic difference (vide supra, Grandfather; vide infra, Grand Nephew vs. Great Nephew).
Great Aunt: II-1, II-8. A sister of one of your 4 grandparents
Great-Great Uncle: I-1. A brother of one of your 8 great grandparents. Note the slightly confusing terminology – the siblings of your great grandparents have two “greats” in their relationship title, compared to only one “great” in their sibling, your great grandparent.
Great-Great Aunt: I-10. A sister of one of your 8 great grandparents. Nephew, Nieces
Nephew, Niece: V-4, V-6, V-5, V-7. The son and daughter, respectively, of your sibling.
Great Nephew (Grand Nephew), Great Niece (Grand Niece): VI-2, VI-3. The son and daughter, respectively, of your nephew or niece. In genealogy circles, it is more common to use Grand rather than Great, on the basis that this relative is as many generations removed from you as your grandparent is, only in the other direction. However, in my view, if the siblings of your grandparents are Great Uncles and Great Aunts, then it seems to me that there is greater symmetry in calling them Great Nephew rather than Grand Nephew. Besides, you share as much genetic information with your Great Nephew as you do with your Great Aunt, so from that standpoint it makes more sense to go with Great rather than Grand (vide supra, Great Uncle, Grandfather. Cousins
First Cousin: IV-1, IV-2, IV-3, IV-4, IV-12, IV-13, IV-14, IV-15. The children of your aunts and uncles.
Second Cousin: IV-16. The children of your parents’ first cousins.
First Cousin Once-Removed : V-8, III-10. The children of your first cousins OR the parents of your second cousin (who could also be properly called your second cousins once-removed). Once-removed refers to the fact that the relative is one generation removed from you, either one generation above or one generation below. The children of your second cousins could also be called your second cousins once-removed. This is one of the confusing areas where different relatives can have the same title and the same title could be applied to different relatives.
First Cousin Twice–Removed: VI-4. The grandchildren of your first cousins. Unnamed Relationships:
IV-5, III-6, III-7. As far as I am aware, in Western European kinship systems, there is no title for your spouse’s previous spouse IV-5), your step parent’s previous spouse (III-6), or the previous spouse of your step parent’s previous spouse (III-7).
John Church (1780 – c. 1835) was an Independent minister who was most famous for his involvement in the homosexual scandal of the Vere Street Coterie. He is often claimed as the first openly gay ordained Christian minister in England. Contemporary rumours about this are unproveable one way or the other, though circumstantial evidence may suggest that his “inordinate affections which led me into error”[1] can be equated with homosexual inclinations. LIFE
EARLY LIFE
A foundling discovered as a toddler barely able to walk on the steps of St John’s Church Clerkenwell (hence his name) or St Andrew’s Church Holborn, Church’s parents are unknown. He was sent to the Foundling Hospital and spent his first six years in the care of a woman at Hadlow, near Tonbridge in Kent, before returning to the hospital. There he remained, receiving a rudimentary education, including how to read but not how to write, until he was indentured at the age of 10 to a carver and gilder in Great Portland Street. This was broken off after only eight years due to a quarrel with the master but, though he complained of poverty during this time, he managed some self-education and acquired a small personal library.
EARLY PREACHING
Church then moved from job to job and, on 22 March 1801, married the daughter of a Mr Elliott of Hampshire at the (Swedenborgian) New Church in the Strand. He may have been introduced to Swedenborgianism by his first employer, despite claiming to have regularly attended Anglican services during his apprenticeship. Becoming more openly an evangelical dissenter, from about 1801 he attended Itinerant Society meetings, a few years later began to preach publicly and organise a Sunday school. In 1807 he was baptised at the Grafton Street congregation under the ministry of its minister, the Revd Richard Burnham. Tried and approved as a preacher there, he admired William Huntington’s high Calvinism, though it is unclear that this led, as his detractors claimed, to his practicing Huntingdon’s “practical antinomianism” or showing wanton disregard for accepted Christian morality.
Church almost immediately accepted a permanent appointment at an Independent chapel at Banbury, Oxfordshire, being ordained on 15 September 1807 before a group of Baptist and Independent ministers, but had this office curtailed the following year as a result of rumours that he was sodomising young men in the congregation. He moved back to London, to the Grub Street congregation, but despite admitting that he had acted “imprudently”[2] he refused to submit to their investigation of these allegations and moved on to many and various other short-term preaching appointments before joining the Obelisk Chapel, St George’s Fields, as its regular minister.
VERE STREET
In the course of 1813 rumours began to spread in the Weekly Dispatch and other pamphlets and broadsides connecting Church with the White Swan (a well-known homosexual brothel or ‘gay bar’ in modern parlance, in Vere Street, Clare Market), saying that Church was its chaplain and had performed mock marriage ceremonies for its male customers subsequently recognised by some modern historians as same sex marriages). Church denied this connection with Vere Street, claiming that it was propaganda by his clerical opponents and successfully taking legal action to prevent the Dispatch from publishing further reports. Attempted prosecutions against him for sodomy failed and his following did not decline – indeed, in 1814 he founded a new chapel, later known as the Obelisk Tabernacle, designed to accommodate larger numbers. His first wife died, having borne him 4 children, and he remarried not long afterwards to a wife of unknown name (though she is thought to have been the proprietor of a ladies’ seminary at Hammersmith).
IMPRISONMENT
In 1816 Church states that he dreamed of seeing a number of scorpions crawling about the floor of his chapel and being able to kill all but two of them “which fled to the very seat that was occupied by ******* and another”.[3] Soon afterwards, on 26 September, he was indicted at the Surrey assizes, Croydon, for attempted sodomy. His accuser was Adam Foreman, a 19 year old apprentice potter in his congregation who alleged that Church had entered his room one night, placed a hand upon his genitals, and feigned his mistress’s voice, upon which Foreman claimed to have fled. The trial was a cause célèbre, lasting to 17 August the following year and returning a guilty verdict and sentencing Church to two years’ imprisonment. Upon the verdict, Church was burned in effigy by a large and violent crowd outside the Obelisk Tabernacle. During the 730 days he served of his sentence at Newington and Horsemonger Lane gaols, he was often in great anguish according to his autobiography, but he received many visitors, had access to books, retained many of his followers (especially women) and had his four children cared for. He soon recommenced regular services on release, including preaching to more than 1000 people on the evening of his release.
Though his correspondence survives, he did not incur further controversy and nothing more is known of him after 1826 (the date of his last published sermon), when he disappears from the public record – his date of death is unknown.
LITERARY WORKS
A number of sermons.
Autobiography, in which he represented himself as “a child of providence”, a latter-day Moses with a life marked by divinely appointed trials and triumphs.
NOTES
SOURCES
Famous adoptees
R. Norton, Mother Clap’s molly house: the gay subculture in England, 1700–1830 (1992)
Anon, “The trial and conviction of John Church … for an assault with intent to commit an unnatural crime” (1817)
Anon, “The infamous life of John Church, the St George’s Fields preacher” (1817)
I. McCalman, Radical underworld: prophets, revolutionaries, and pornographers in London, 1795–1840 (1988)
W. Benbow, The crimes of the clergy (1823) – an ultra-radical anti-clericalist pamphlet
R. Norton, in Who’s who in Gay and Lesbian History Aldrich, Robert and Wotherspoon, Garry (Eds) (2001)
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Due to the unique circumstances of d’Éon’s life, this article avoids the use of gendered pronouns by repeating the name instead (see talk page).
Portrait of d’Éon by Thomas Stewart (1792), at the National Portrait Gallery Caricature of d’Éon dressed half in women’s clothes, half in men’s clothes D’Eon’s name listed on the south face of the Burdett Coutts memorial
Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d’Éon de Beaumont (5 October 1728 – 21 May 1810), usually known as the Chevalier d’Éon, was a French diplomat, spy, freemason[1] and soldier who fought in the Seven Years’ War. D’Éon had androgynous physical characteristics and natural abilities as a mimic, good features for a spy. D’Éon appeared publicly as a man and pursued masculine occupations for 49 years, although during that time d’Éon successfully infiltrated the court of Empress Elizabeth of Russia by presenting as a woman. For 33 years, from 1777, d’Éon dressed as a woman, claiming to have been female at birth. Doctors who examined d’Éon’s body after d’Éon’s death discovered that d’Éon would have actually been designated male at birth. Early life
D’Éon was born at the Hôtel d’Uzès in Tonnerre, Burgundy, into a poor noble family. D’Éon’s father, Louis d’Éon de Beaumont, was an attorney and director of the king’s dominions, later mayor of Tonnerre and sub-delegate of the intendant of the généralité of Paris.[2] D’Éon’s mother, Françoise de Charanton, was the daughter of a Commissioner General to the armies of the wars of Spain and Italy. Most of what is known about d’Éon’s early life comes from a partly ghost-written autobiography, The Interests of the Chevalier d’Éon de Beaumont.[3]
D’Éon excelled in school, moving from Tonnerre to Paris in 1743, graduating in civil law and canon law from the Collège Mazarin in 1749 at age 21. D’Éon became secretary to Bertier de Sauvigny, intendant of Paris, served as a secretary to the administrator of the fiscal department, and was appointed a royal censor for history and literature by Malesherbes in 1758.[3] Life as a spy
In 1756, d’Éon joined the secret network of spies called the Secret du Roi, employed by King Louis XV without the knowledge of the government. It sometimes promoted policies that contradicted official policies and treaties. According to d’Éon’s memoirs (although there is no documentary evidence to support that account) the monarch sent d’Éon with the Chevalier Douglas, Alexandre-Pierre de Mackensie-Douglas, baron de Kildin, a Scottish Jacobite in French service, on a secret mission to Russia in order to meet Empress Elizabeth and conspire with the pro-French faction against the Habsburg monarchy. At that time the English and French were at odds, and the English were attempting to deny the French access to the Empress by allowing only women and children to cross the border into Russia. D’Éon had to pass convincingly as a woman or risk being executed by the English upon discovery. In the course of this mission, d’Éon was disguised as the lady Lea de Beaumont, and served as a maid of honour to the Empress. Eventually, Chevalier Douglas became French ambassador to Russia, and d’Éon was secretary to the embassy in Saint Petersburg from 1756 to 1760, serving Douglas and his successor, the marquis de l’Hôpital.[4] D’Éon’s career in Russia is the subject of one of Valentin Pikul’s novels, Le chevalier d’Éon et la guerre de Sept ans.
D’Éon returned to France in October 1760, and was granted a pension of 2,000 livres as reward for service in Russia. In May 1761, d’Éon became a captain of dragoons under the maréchal de Broglie and fought in the later stages of the Seven Years’ War. D’Éon served at the Battle of Villinghausen in July 1761, and was wounded at Ulstrop. After Empress Elizabeth died in January 1762, d’Éon was considered for further service in Russia, but instead was appointed secretary to the duc de Nivernais, awarded 1,000 livres, and sent to London to draft the peace treaty that formally ended the Seven Years’ War. The treaty was signed in Paris on 10 February 1763, and d’Éon was awarded a further 6,000 livres, and received the Order of Saint-Louis on 30 March 1763, becoming the Chevalier d’Éon.[4] The title chevalier, French for knight, is also sometimes used for French noblemen.
Back in London, d’Éon became chargé d’affaires in April 1763, and then plenipotentiary minister – essentially interim ambassador – when the duc de Nivernais returned to Paris in July. D’Éon used this position also to spy for the king. D’Éon collected information for a potential invasion – an unfortunate and clumsy initiative of Louis XV, of which Louis’s own ministers were unaware – assisting a French agent, Louis François Carlet de la Rozière, who was surveying the British coastal defences. D’Éon formed connections with English nobility by sending them the produce of d’Éon’s vineyard in France and abundantly enjoyed the splendour of this interim embassy.[4]
Upon the arrival of the new ambassador, the comte de Guerchy in October 1763, d’Éon was demoted to the rank of secretary and humiliated by the count. D’Éon was trapped between two French factions: Guerchy was a supporter of the duc de Choiseul, duc de Praslin and Madame de Pompadour, in opposition to the comte de Broglie and his brother the maréchal de Broglie. D’Éon complained, and eventually decided to disobey orders to return to France. In a letter to the king, d’Éon claimed that the new ambassador had tried to drug d’Éon at a dinner at the ambassador’s residence in Monmouth House in Soho Square. The British government declined a French request to extradite d’Éon, and the 2,000 livres pension that had been granted in 1760 was stopped in February 1764. In an effort to save d’Éon’s station in London, d’Éon published much of the secret diplomatic correspondence about d’Éon’s recall under the title Lettres, mémoires et négociations particulières du chevalier d’Éon in March 1764, disavowing Guerchy and calling him unfit for his job.[5] This breach of diplomatic discretion was scandalous to the point of being unheard of, but d’Éon had not yet published everything (the King’s secret invasion documents and those relative to the Secret du Roi were kept back as “insurance”), and the French government became very cautious in its dealings with d’Éon, even when d’Éon sued Guerchy for attempted murder. With the invasion documents in hand, d’Éon held the king in check.[6] D’Éon did not offer any defense when Guerchy sued for libel, and d’Éon was declared an outlaw and went into hiding. However, d’Éon secured the sympathy of the British public: the mob jeered Guerchy in public, and threw stones at his residence. D’Éon then wrote a book on public administration, Les loisirs du Chevalier d’Éon, which was published in thirteen volumes in Amsterdam in 1774.[7]
Guerchy was recalled to France, and in July 1766 Louis XV granted d’Éon a pension (possibly a pay-off for d’Éon’s silence) and a 12,000-livre annuity, but refused a demand for over 100,000 livres to clear d’Éon’s extensive debts. D’Éon continued to work as a spy, but lived in political exile in London. D’Éon’s possession of the king’s secret letters provided protection against further actions, but d’Éon could not return to France.[6] The Chevalière d’Éon The Chevalier d’Éon Fencing Match between Monsieur de Saint-George et Mademoiselle La chevalière d’Éon de Beaumont at Carlton House on 9 April 1787. Engraving by Victor Marie Picot, based on the original painting by Charles Jean Robineau. Life as a woman
Despite the fact that d’Éon habitually wore a dragoon’s uniform, rumours circulated in London that d’Éon was actually a woman. A betting pool was started on the London Stock Exchange about d’Éon’s true sex. D’Éon was invited to join, but declined, saying that an examination would be dishonouring, whatever the result. After a year without progress, the wager was abandoned. Following the death of Louis XV in 1774, the secret du roi was abolished, and d’Éon tried to negotiate a return from exile. The writer Pierre de Beaumarchais represented the French government in the negotiations. The resulting twenty-page treaty permitted d’Éon to return to France and retain the ministerial pension, but required that d’Éon turn over the correspondence regarding the secret du roi.[6]
The Chevalier d’Éon claimed to have been assigned female at birth, and demanded recognition by the government as such. D’Éon claimed to have been raised as a boy because Louis d’Éon de Beaumont could only inherit from his in-laws if he had a son. King Louis XVI and his court complied with this demand, but required in turn that d’Éon dress appropriately in women’s clothing, although d’Éon was allowed to continue to wear the insignia of the Order of Saint-Louis. When the king’s offer included funds for a new wardrobe of women’s clothes, d’Éon agreed. In 1777, after fourteen months of negotiation, d’Éon returned to France and as punishment was banished to Tonnerre.[6]
When France began to help the rebels during the American War of Independence, d’Éon asked to join the French troops in America, but d’Éon’s banishment prevented it.[6] In 1779, d’Éon published a books of memoirs: La Vie Militaire, politique, et privée de Mademoiselle d’Éon. They were ghostwritten by a friend named La Fortelle and are probably embellished.[4] D’Éon was allowed to return to England in 1785.
The pension that Louis XV had granted was ended by the French Revolution, and d’Éon had to sell personal possessions, including books, jewellery and plate. The family’s properties in Tonnerre were confiscated by the revolutionary government. In 1792, d’Éon sent a letter to the French National Assembly offering to lead a division of female soldiers against the Habsburgs, but the offer was rebuffed. D’Éon participated in fencing tournaments until seriously wounded in Southampton in 1796. D’Éon’s last years were spent with a widow, Mrs. Cole.[6] In 1804, d’Éon was sent to a debtors’ prison for five months, and signed a contract for a biography to be written by Thomas William Plummer, which was never published. D’Éon became paralyzed following a fall, and spent a final four years bedridden, dying in poverty in London on 21 May 1810 at the age of 81.[6]
Doctors who examined the body after d’Éon’s death discovered that the Chevalier had “male organs in every respect perfectly formed”, while at the same time displaying feminine characteristics such as rounded limbs and “breast remarkably full”.[8] D’Éon’s body was buried in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and d’Éon’s remaining possessions were sold by Christie’s in 1813. D’Éon’s grave is listed on Baroness Burdett Coutts’s memorial there as one of the important graves lost. Legacy
Havelock Ellis coined the term eonism to describe similar cases of transgender behavior; it is rarely used now.[4]
The Chevalière d’Eon, by Charles Dupeuty and the Baron de Maldigny (1837), Théâtre du Vaudeville[9]
The Chevalier d’Eon, a comedy in 3 acts by Dumanoir and Jean-François Bayard (1837), Théâtre des Variétés[10]
The Beaumont Society, a long-standing organisation for transgender people, is named after the Chevalier d’Éon.
Le secret du Chevalier d’Éon (1959), a film loosely based on the life of the Chevalier that portrays d’Éon as a woman masquerading as a man.
Le Chevallier D’eon, a series of manga written by Tou Ubukata and illustrated by Kiriko Yumeji; it is published by Del Rey Manga
Le Chevalier d’Eon (2006), an anime series loosely based on the Chevalier d’Éon.
Eonnagata, a 2010 theatre piece by Canadian Robert Lepage, combining drama and dance, based on the life of the Chevalier d’Éon.
Some of d’Éon’s papers are at the Brotherton Library in Leeds, U.K.[4]
In 2012, a painting owned by the Philip Mould Gallery was identified as a portrait of d’Éon[11] and purchased by the National Portrait Gallery, London.[12]
Appeared as one of the summonable servants in mobile game Fate/Grand Order.
References
Initiated at London’s Immortality Lodge number 376 in 1768 and later member of Les Amis réunis lodge in Tonnerre (in Le Chevalier d’Eon, franc-maçon et espionne – Daniel Tougne – Trajectoires ed. 2012)
J. M. J. Rogister, D’Éon de Beaumont, Charles Geneviève Louis Auguste André Timothée, Chevalier D’Éon in the French nobility (1728–1810), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sept 2012 accessed 26 April 2013
a b Lever, Evelyne; Maurice Lever (19 February 2009). Le Chevalier d’Éon : Une vie sans queue ni tête. Fayard. pp. 384 pages. ISBN 978-2-213-61630-8.
a b c d e f Burrows, Simon; Russell Goulbourne; Jonathan Conlin; Valerie Mainz (23 April 2010). The Chevalier d’Éon and his worlds: gender, espionage and politics in the eighteenth century. Continuum. pp. 272 pages.
Lettres, mémoires et négociations particulières du Chevalier D’Éon, ministre plénipotentiaire auprès du roi de Grande-Bretagne; avec M.M. les Ducs de Praslin, de Nivernois, de Sainte-Foy, & Regnier de Guerchy, Ambassad. Extr. &c.&c.&c. (1765)
a b c d e f g Burrows, Simon (October 2006). Blackmail, scandal and revolution London’s French libellistes, 1758–92. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. 9780719065262.
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). “Eon de Beaumont”. Encyclopædia Britannica 9 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Laughton, John Knox (1888). “D’Éon de Beaumont, Charles Geneviève Louis Auguste André Timothée”. In Stephen, Leslie. Dictionary of National Biography 14. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
The Chevalier d’Eon and Other Short Farces from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century French Theatre, By Frank J. Morlock
Theatrical Costume, Masks, Make-up and Wigs: A Bibliography and Iconography, by Sidney Jackson Jowers, p. 314
Bryner, Jeanna (19 April 2012). “Earliest Painting of Transvestite Uncovered”. Live Science. Retrieved 20 April 2012.
Brown, Mark (6 June 2012). “Portrait mistaken for 18th-century lady is early painting of transvestite”. The Guardian (UK). Retrieved 22 September 2014.
Further reading
Decker, Michel de. Madame Le Chevalier d’Éon, Paris: Perrin, 1987, ISBN 978-2-7242-3612-5.
d’Éon De Beaumont, Charles. The Maiden of Tonnerre: The Vicissitudes of the Chevalier and the Chevalière d’Éon, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, ISBN 978-0-8018-6687-6.
d’Éon, Leonard J. The Cavalier, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1987, ISBN 0-399-13227-9.
Frank, André, with Jean Chaumely. D’Éon chevalier et chevalière: sa confession inédite, Paris: Amiot-Dumont, 1953.
Fortelle M. de la. La Vie militaire, politique et privée de Demoiselle Charles-Geneviève-Auguste-Andrée-Thimothée Éon ou d’Èon de Beaumont, [… etc.], Paris: Lambert, 1779.
Gaillardet, F. (ed.), Mémoires du chevalier d’Éon, Paris, 1836, 2 vols.
Gontier, Fernande. Homme ou femme? La confusion des sexes, Paris: Perrin, 2006, Chapter 6. ISBN 978-2262024918.
Homberg, O., and F. Jousselin, Un Aventurier au XVIIIe siècle: Le Chevalier D’Éon (1728-1810), Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1904.
Kates, Gary. Monsieur d’Éon Is a Woman: A Tale of Political Intrigue and Sexual Masquerade, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, ISBN 978-0-8018-6731-6.
Lever, Évelyne and Maurice. Le Chevalier d’Éon: Une vie sans queue ni tête, Paris: Fayard, 2009, ISBN 978-2-213-61630-8.
Luyt, Philippe. D’Éon de Tonnerre. Iconographie et histoire, 2007, OCLC 163617123
Mourousy, Paul. Le Chevalier d’Éon: un travesti malgré lui, Paris: Le Rocher, 1998, ISBN 978-2-268-02917-7.
Musée municipal de Tonnerre, Catalogue bilingue de l’exposition, Le Chevalier d’Éon: secrets et lumières, 2007.
Royer, Jean-Michel. Le Double Je, ou les Mémoires du chevalier d’Éon, Paris: Grasset & Fasquelle, 1986, ISBN 978-2-246-38001-6.
Telfer, John Buchan, The strange career of the Chevalier d’Eon de Beaumont, minister plenipotentiary from France to Great Britain in 1763, 1885, OCLC 2745013
Introduction
The theft of the Irish Crown Jewels by a person or persons unknown in 1907 is one of the most famous and puzzling mysteries of Irish history, and has been the subject of numerous books and articles. (1) The Jewels were worn during functions of the Order of St Patrick and were entrusted to the care of Ulster King of Arms, Ireland’s chief herald and genealogist. Many and various are the theories which have been advanced over the years to explain what happened to the Jewels, with allegations that they were stolen by insiders, or by Unionist conspirators eager to derail Home Rule, or by Republican plotters seeking to embarrass the British government. On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the issue of the report of an official commission of investigation into the loss of the Jewels, (2) it might be worthwhile to revisit the affair.
As an historian, genealogist and heraldist the present writer has taken upon himself the task of compiling this centenary report, and the following were set as the terms of reference:
(1) To examine as much as possible of the surviving documentary evidence relating to the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels in 1907.
(2) To review the proceedings of the Viceregal Commission of investigation into the circumstances of the theft of the Jewels which was published in 1908.
(3) To evaluate various theories advanced over the years as to who might have been responsible for the theft, and in the light of the available evidence to try and identify the most likely culprit or culprits.
The Theft of the Jewels
It should be pointed out firstly that the ‘Irish Crown Jewels’ were not the equivalent of the English Crown Jewels in the Tower of London, but were in fact the regalia or insignia of the Order of St Patrick. This was a chivalric order founded by the government in 1783, designed to be the Irish counterpart of the British Order of the Garter, and equally a source of honour and patronage. The first Grand Master was the Third Earl Temple, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and the prime mover in founding the Order. The Jewels or regalia were presented to the Order by King William IV in 1831, and are believed to have been made up from diamonds belonging to Queen Charlotte. The Jewels were crafted by Rundell, Bridge and Company of London, and consisted of a Star and a Badge composed of rubies, emeralds and Brazilian diamonds, mounted in silver, which were to be worn by the Lord Lieutenant as Grand Master on formal occasions. The membership of the Order was composed of leading peers titled Knights Companions. The Ulster King of Arms, the state heraldic and genealogical officer in charge of the Office of Arms, was made responsible for registering the Order’s membership and caring for its insignia. (3)
The statutes or rules of the Order of St Patrick were revised in 1905, and it was ordered that the jewelled insignia of the Grand Master and the collars and badges of the members should be deposited in a steel safe in the strongroom of the Office of Arms. The Office of Arms was located in Dublin Castle, and in 1903 moved from the Bermingham Tower to the Bedford Tower. The serving Ulster King of Arms was Sir Arthur Vicars, who had been appointed in 1893. Other, largely honorary office-holders under Vicars were Pierce Gun Mahony, Cork Herald, Francis (Frank) Shackleton, Dublin Herald, and Francis Bennett Goldney, Athlone Pursuivant. Mahony was a nephew of Vicars, while Shackleton, the brother of the famous explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, was a housemate of Vicars. After fitting out of the new premises in the Bedford Tower had been completed, it was found that the Ratner safe in which the Order’s insignia were to be kept was too large to fit through the door of the strongroom. By agreement with the Board of Works it was therefore decided to leave the safe in the Library until a more suitably-sized safe could be obtained, but this was never done. While seven latch keys to the door of the Office of Arms were held by Vicars and his staff, there were only two keys to the safe containing the insignia, both held by Vicars. (4)
The last occasion on which the Jewels were seen in the safe was on 11 June 1907, when Vicars showed them to John Crawford Hodgson, the librarian of the Duke of Northumberland. On the morning of Wednesday 3 July there was a strange occurrence, when Mrs Farrell the office cleaner found the entrance door unlocked, told William Stivey the messenger, who on informing Vicars received the rather offhand reply, ‘Is that so?’, or ‘Did she?’. On the morning of Saturday 6 July there was an even more alarming occurrence, when Mrs Farrell found the door of the strongroom ajar, and on being informed by Stivey, Vicars again replied casually, taking no further action.
At about 2.15pm on the same day, 6 July, Vicars gave Stivey the key of the safe and a box containing the collar of a deceased knight, asking him to deposit it in the safe. This was most unusual, as Stivey had never before held the safe key in his hand. Stivey found the safe door unlocked and immediately informed Vicars, who came and opened the safe to find that the Jewels, five Knights’ collars and some diamonds belonging to Vicars’s mother were all gone. The police were called, and in the subsequent investigation lock experts established that the safe lock had not been tampered with, but had been opened with a key. While Mahony was not in the Office of Arms from April until 4 July, except one day in May, Shackleton and Goldney appeared not to have visited the premises or indeed been in Ireland between 11 June and 6 July. (5)
The discovery of the theft of the Jewels caused great concern to government, and indeed King Edward VII was particularly angered, as he was within days of visiting Ireland and intended to invest a knight of the Order of St Patrick. Apparently largely on the King’s insistence, it was decided to reconstitute the Office of Arms and replace Vicars. Vicars, however, refused to resign, being supported by his half-brother, Pierce O’Mahony, father of Pierce Gun Mahony and a self-styled Gaelic Chief titled The O’Mahony. (6) O’Mahony senior became the most prominent figure in a campaign for a public enquiry which it was hoped would vindicate Vicars.
The Viceregal Commission of Investigation
Lord Aberdeen, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, decided to appoint a Viceregal Commission of inquiry in January 1908, whose terms of reference were ‘to investigate the circumstances of the loss of the regalia of the Order of St Patrick’, and ‘to inquire whether Sir Arthur Vicars exercised due vigilance and proper care as the custodian thereof’. (7)
The examination of witnesses was led by the Solicitor General, Redmond Barry. The members of the Commission were Judge James J Shaw, Robert F Starkie and Chester Jones. The Commission commenced its sittings on 10 January 1908 in the Library of Ulster’s Office, the very room from which the Jewels had been removed, and would complete its hearings fairly quickly on 16 January. A problem arose immediately, in that it was found that the Commission was to sit in private and would not have power to compel the attendance of witnesses or take evidence on oath. Vicars wanted a sworn public enquiry, and therefore withdrew from the proceedings with his counsel, so that the Commission had to continue without its most important witness. However, the Commission was able to use written statements made by Vicars to the police, as well as oral statements made by him to the police and various witnesses. (8)
Some twenty-two individuals agreed to give evidence when called. These included firstly members of the staff of Ulster’s office, including George D Burtchaell, Vicars’s secretary, the trio of unpaid assistant heralds, Pierce Gun Mahony, Cork Herald, Francis Shackleton, Dublin Herald, and Francis Bennett Goldney, Athlone Pursuivant. Then there were various policemen and officials, including M V Harrel, Assistant Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, Superintendent John Lowe of the same force, Chief Inspector John Kane of Scotland Yard, and Sir George C V Holmes, Chairman of the Board of Works. Joining Vicars in refusing to give evidence were Sydney Horlock, his clerk, and Mary Gibbon, the office typist. (9)
Burtchaell was examined on three occasions and his evidence elucidated the workings of Ulster’s Office, as well as giving the impression that Vicars perhaps was not as careful as he should have been in his custody of office keys, and that he was in habit of proudly showing off the Jewels to a wide range of people. Burtchaell also confirmed that of the three heralds, Goldney had not been in the office since May, Shackleton since early June, but that Mahony had been present in the period immediately before the discovery of the loss of the Jewels in July 1908. The testimony of Peirce Mahony junior was taken at two sittings and was largely taken up with establishing his role in Ulster’s Office, his access to keys and his attendance at Ulster’s Office, but was not otherwise very informative.
Goldney was examined at two sessions, and his evidence in contrast was very lively. The drift of his testimony became evident when Goldney stated that on one occasion when Vicars was displaying the Jewels to callers there were ‘some strange gentlemen in the room’. While claiming to have no idea as to who might have taken the Jewels, Goldney coyly referred to ‘another matter’, which after some hesitation the Commission decided to enter on the record. This other matter turned out relate to complicated and strange financial relationships between Vicars, Shackleton and Goldney. Vicars had guaranteed two bills for Shackleton, which it was beyond his means to support, and accordingly he persuaded Goldney to take responsibility, a task which involved dealings with a money lender associated with Shackleton. This aspect of Goldney’s evidence certainly did not have the effect of presenting Vicars in a good light.
Of the policemen who gave evidence, Chief Inspector Kane was the most interesting. Kane stated that he believed that the theft of the Jewels had been carried out by an insider, and that it had occurred before 5 July. Kane explained the doors found open in Ulster’s Office as a deliberate device ‘to precipitate an investigation’. Kane also testified that Vicars and Goldney had stated to him that they believed Shackleton to have been responsible for the theft, a charge he rejected emphatically:
I have repeated to Sir Arthur Vicars and his friends over and over again, and I desire to say that now, when they pestered me with not only suggestions, but direct accusations of Mr Shackleton, that they might as well accuse me, so far as the evidence they produced went to justify them. (10)
Unfortunately, Kane’s report on the loss of the Jewels is among the official documentation now missing, and this might have thrown further light on just why he was so certain that the man who remains the prime suspect was innocent.
Shackleton was among the final witnesses to give evidence, travelling back to Dublin from San Remo in Italy for the purpose. Shackleton gave the impression of being a helpful and composed witness, which of course might not have been the case had Vicars’s counsel been there to cross-examine him. He candidly outlined his connection with Vicars, stating that he had made his acquaintance through his heraldic and genealogical work, that he was a co-tenant with him of a house in Clonskeagh, that indeed Sir Arthur had guaranteed bills for him when he was in some temporary financial difficulties. He admitted that he had in the past spoken of the Jewels as being likely to be stolen, but took every opportunity to claim that the suspicions against him were groundless. Read into the record was a letter from Vicars to Shackleton, sent on 25 August 1907 from Goldney’s residence Abbots Barton in Canterbury, in which Vicars commented:
Now that you evidently know the whereabouts of the Jewels, from what you have said to both Frank [Goldney] and me, I hope that you have told Mr Kane everything calculated to facilitate matters. (11)
Shackleton indicated that this exchange was based on nothing more than his reference to a newspaper report that the Jewels had been recovered, which turned out to be incorrect. In answer to direct questions as to whether he or a confederate had taken the Jewels, Shackleton replied:
I did not take them; I know nothing of their disappearance; I have no suspicion of anybody. . . . . . I had no hand in it, nor do I know anybody that took them, nor have I the least suspicion. (12)
Taking advantage of his social contacts, Shackleton dropped many prominent names, and referred several times to his poor health and the distance he had travelled from San Remo to give evidence. At one point Shackleton stated that he had even been accused of aiding Lord Haddo, Lord Aberdeen’s son, in taking the Jewels, whereupon the Solicitor General intervened quickly to indicate that he ‘need not mention that’. (13)
The Viceregal Commission issued its report on 25 January 1908, and the key finding was as follows:
Having fully investigated all the circumstances connected with the loss of the Regalia of the Order of St Patrick, and having examined and considered carefully the arrangements of the Office of Arms in which the Regalia were deposited, and the provisions made by Sir Arthur Vicars, or under his direction, for their safe keeping, and having regard especially to the inactivity of Sir Arthur Vicars on the occasions immediately preceding the disappearance of the Jewels, when he knew that the Office and the Strong Room had been opened at night by unauthorised persons, we feel bound to report to Your Excellency that, in our opinion, Sir Arthur Vicars did not exercise due vigilance or proper care as the custodian of the Regalia. (14)
While admitting it was not part of their terms of reference, the Commissioners also stated that as Francis Richard Shackleton had been more than once named as the ‘probable or possible author of this great crime’, they though it only due to that gentleman to say that
. . . he appeared to us to be a perfectly truthful and candid witness, and that there was no evidence whatever before us which would support the suggestion that he was the person who stole the Jewels. (15)
The Viceregal Commission hearings had in effect been converted into a trial in absentia of Sir Arthur Vicars, and his own withdrawal together with his counsel had left the field clear for his accusers. Although the Viceregal Commission’s terms of reference specified both the circumstances of the loss of the Jewels and the conduct of Vicars, it would seem that highlighting the latter’s failings took precedence over trying to establish just who had purloined the Jewels. The Commission’s findings were couched in terms of allocating most blame for the loss of the Jewels to Vicars, indeed on making him a scapegoat, and in this the Commissioners could not really be accused of failing to do what was expected of them. There can be a level of cynicism attached to official reports, in which while no palpable untruths are told, certain facts can be manipulated and others ignored in order to arrive at a predetermined result. While the Commission’s finding that Vicars was careless in his custody of the Jewels was essentially accurate, the exculpation of Shackleton seems remarkable when not accompanied by closer analysis of the alleged exploit of Lord Haddo, or the security failings of other Castle staff, for example. Another factor explaining the kid gloves with which Frank Shackleton was treated may have been the status of his brother Sir Ernest as a national hero and favourite of King Edward VII. Although it would appear that Ernest’s own finances were in a parlous state due to the expenses of his polar expeditions, he felt obliged to borrow £1,000 in order to help his brother Frank repay the above mentioned debts. (16) It would not be unjust to conclude that the Viceregal Commission report was in essence a whitewash designed to draw a veil over an intensely embarrassing episode for the establishment and to allocate most of the blame to Vicars.
On 30 January 1908 Vicars was informed that his appointment as Ulster King of Arms had been terminated, and Captain Nevile Rodwell Wilkinson was appointed in his place. As the disgruntled Vicars refused to hand over the keys to the Office of Arms strongroom, Wilkinson found himself obliged to stage another break-in in order to gain entry! Shackleton too and Goldney were removed, but Pierce Gun Mahony perhaps unexpectedly was left in place. Pierce Mahony senior responded to the Commission’s report with an even more robust and public defence of his half-brother Vicars. In early February 1908 he released to the press copies of his copious correspondence with members of the Irish administration, in which he alleged that while officially Vicars was charged only with negligence, graver charges relating to his character were being circulated in secret. In particular, Mahony alleged that he had been informed by Lord Aberdeen and the Chief Secretary Augustine Birrell that Vicars stood accused of introducing into his office ‘a man of very bad character’, and while the name of the individual was deleted in the press report, it is considered that this must have been a reference to Frank Shackleton. Mahony and Vicars continued to press for a full public and judicial enquiry so that the dismissed Ulster could clear his name. A letter sent to the press by Vicars on 1 February 1908 provided his initial response to the charges of the Viceregal Commission: he declared that the Board of Works were responsible for not providing a safe which would fit in the strong room of his office, and explained his failure to react to the reports of open doors by reference to his being overwhelmed with work in advance of the royal visit. Government was unmoved, considering that the matter had been resolved by the report of the Viceregal Commission and the replacement of Vicars as Ulster. (17)
Shackleton, Goldney and Other Suspects
The Viceregal Commission clearly provided the official view of the Jewels theft, but a much murkier account of the whole affair found its way into the public domain in July 1908 via an article in an Irish-American nationalist newspaper the Gaelic American. Based apparently on information provided by Vicars’s half-brother Pierce O’Mahony, this article asserted that drunken parties had been held in the Office of Arms, with an implication of homosexual activity (‘nightly orgies’, ‘unnatural vice’). It was claimed that Shackleton and a disreputable associate named Captain Richard Gorges (for some reason disguised as ‘Captain Gaudeons’ in the article), were responsible for stealing the Jewels, and the two had escaped punishment by threatening to expose the scandalous conduct in the Castle. The article also alleged that there had been a secret Dublin Metropolitan Police enquiry operating in parallel with that of the Commission, which had subjected Shackleton to a less benign interrogation when he had completed his evidence before the commissioners. Although the authorities allegedly knew the identities of those who had stolen the Jewels, they could not secure hard evidence against them or persuade them to reveal the whereabouts of their booty. In consequence of this, and out of a desire to avoid further scandal and revelations, it was said that the police contented themselves merely with ordering Shackleton and Gorges to leave the country. (18)
The author of the Gaelic American article, the Irish Republican Brotherhood member Bulmer Hobson, had a chance encounter some years later with Gorges, who essentially verified the main points in the story. Gorges reportedly added some further details, stating that the Jewels had once been taken as a joke during a drinking party by Lord Haddo, and returned the next day. This is said to have inspired Shackleton and Gorges to repeat the theft, but this time there was to be no return of the Jewels. According to Hobson, Shackleton disposed of the Jewels in Amsterdam, stipulating that they were not to be broken up for three years, perhaps indicating that some sort of ransom back of the stolen goods was intended. (19)
This whole account has the merit of plausibility, even though of course it comes from a biased source and is uncorroborated in its details. It would not be unreasonable to suggest that Shackleton’s reference to Haddo in his evidence to the Viceregal Commission was clearly calculated, a scarcely veiled threat that he was in a position to reveal embarrassing details about prominent individuals if pressed too hard by his interrogators. The public exculpation of Shackleton by the Viceregal Commission is at odds with the exploitation of his association with Vicars in order to blacken the latter’s name, and points to a remarkable degree of cynicism on the part of the Government.
It is generally agreed that the doors and safe in Ulster’s Office were left open deliberately in order to force discovery of the robbery. It is possible that it was Vicars himself who orchestrated these events when he realised that the Jewels were not going to be returned, and was thus desperately trying to arrange that someone other than himself should be on record as discovering the theft, as it happened, the unfortunate Stivey, who was also to lose his job in the Castle.
Of course it should be noted that Shackleton was not in Ireland in the period leading up to the theft, and it is suggested that Gorges may have been the one who actually removed the Jewels, acting on a plan conceived by Shackleton, with both men sharing in the proceeds of the crime. If this is what happened, it is likely that Shackleton exploited his intimacy with Vicars to borrow temporarily one of the keys to the safe, and either the original or a copy may have been used by Gorges to remove the Jewels. Vicars kept one key on his person and the other concealed in his house in Clonskeagh, which as already noted he shared with Shackleton. It is only fair to record that members of the Shackleton family today are not convinced of Frank’s guilt, pointing to his absence from the country at the time of the theft of the Jewels and to Chief Inspector Kane’s declaration that no evidence could be found to show that he was involved. (20) If Shackleton and Gorges were guilty, then they got clean away with the theft, although both men were later to end up in prison for unconnected cases involving fraud and manslaughter respectively. Following his release from prison Shackleton changed his surname to Mellor and died in 1941 in Chichester, while Gorges appears to have boasted about his role in the Jewels theft in prison but was not believed, and after his release survived until 1944, when he lost his life after being struck by a train in London. (21)
Understandably embittered and believing that he had been made a scapegoat for the theft of the Jewels, Vicars retired to County Kerry, and spent the remainder of his life in Kilmorna House, which had been made available to him by his sister, Mrs Edith de Janasz. Vicars married Gertrude Wright in 1917, and on 14 April 1921 he was shot dead by a local IRA unit after it had set fire to Kilmorna. (22) It is not known whether Vicars was just an incidental victim of the Troubles, or whether he had actually been providing intelligence on the IRA in an effort to win back official favour, but it is believed that the killing was a local initiative rather than an act sanctioned by Republican headquarters. While Shackleton and Gorges were relatively long-lived, others involved in the Jewels affair came to premature ends: Pierce Gun Mahony was found shot through the heart in 1914 what appears to have been a hunting accident, although suspicions of murder were voiced, while Francis Bennett Goldney died in France in 1918 as a result of a motoring accident. (23)
The full text of Vicars’s last will and testament was not released for public examination until 1976, as the following rather sensational passage was obviously considered too incendiary:
I might have had more to dispose of had it not been for the outrageous way in which I was treated by the Irish Government over the loss of the Irish Crown Jewels in 1907, backed up by the late King Edward VII whom I had always loyally and faithfully served, when I was made a scapegoat to save other departments responsible and when they shielded the real culprit and thief Francis R Shackleton (brother of the explorer who didn’t reach the South Pole). My whole life and work was ruined by this cruel misfortune and by the wicked and blackguardly acts of the Irish Government. (24)
It is not usual to employ a will to make such serious accusations effectively from beyond the grave, and this rather sad and bitter document has certainly helped to fix the idea of Shackleton’s guilt in the minds of many, without of course providing any conclusive evidence that he was the culprit.
It should be noted that Francis Bennett Goldney has also come under suspicion in relation to the Jewels theft, in that after his death in 1918 he was discovered to have been something of a thieving magpie, and among his possessions were found ancient charters and documents belonging to the City of Canterbury, as well as a painting by Romanelli which was the property of the Duke of Bedford. (25) Goldney’s opportunities and inside knowledge were much less than Shackleton’s, but we are now aware of his track record, and the theft of the Jewels occurred just five months after his appointment as Athlone Pursuivant in February 1907. Goldney’s testimony to the Commission is certainly a masterpiece of deflection and obfuscation, although it is not possible to say whether this proceeded from elements of his character or a desire to hide something sinister. It must be pointed out as well that like Shackleton, Goldney was not in Ireland for some months before the discovery of the loss of the Jewels, but again this does not rule out a possible organisational involvement in the crime.
Something of Goldney’s style can be seen in an episode when he borrowed two silver communion cups from Canterbury Cathedral supposedly for exhibition in America, and on being asked about their return after some months, he claimed coolly that he been given them to sell, and they are now to be found in the possession of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. (26) Audrey Bateman, the principle chronicler of Goldney’s misdeeds, has located Canterbury lore which shows that there was local suspicion that the mayor had been involved in the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels. J A Jennings, proprietor of the Kent Herald, recalled that he had been told by the chauffeur of an American millionaire staying with Goldney in the Autumn of 1907 that a bigger petrol tank had been fitted to his car before he and his employer travelled via Dover to Amsterdam, and he was convinced that this provided the means for the Irish Crown Jewels to be smuggled away. While Jennings declined to reveal the name of the American, Bateman noted that the famous and fabulously wealthy art collector John Pierpont Morgan attended Cricket Week in Canterbury with Goldney in early August 1907. (27) Again it must be stressed that while there are good grounds for suspicion, there is no conclusive evidence that Goldney was responsible for stealing the Jewels. Neither should we hastily convict Morgan, even though there is an indication that he may have been involved with the export of looted antiquities in the early 1900s, as it has recently been alleged that he purchased and shipped to New York an Etruscan chariot, which interestingly is now also in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and whose return to Italy has been demanded. (28)
The fate of the stolen Crown Jewels remains a subject of speculation and controversy to the present day. In 1976 an intriguing Irish Government memorandum dated 1927 was released, indicating that ‘the Castle Jewels are for sale and that they could be got for £2,000 or £3,000′. (29) Gregory Allen has interpreted these words to mean that the stolen Jewels were still intact in 1927 and that the thieves or their agents were effectively endeavouring to ransom them to the Irish Government. Allen then proceeded to put forward a rather implausible theory that the Jewels may have been stolen by patriots intent on furthering Arthur Griffith’s plan to secure Irish independence through the device of a ‘dual monarchy’. (30) Some commentators have followed Allen in believing that the 1927 memorandum was referring to the stolen Jewels, (31) but the present writer is not so sure. Might not the reference have been to the elements of the regalia of the Order of St Patrick not stolen in 1907, the last remnants of which were returned to England as late as the 1940s? (32) If this interpretation is correct, the belief that the stolen Jewels survived intact for many years after 1907 appears to be unsupported. As against this, Myles Dungan has written that a Dublin jeweller, James Weldon, was contacted in 1927 by Shackleton offering to provide information on the location of the Jewels in return for money, but this story is based only on Weldon family recollections and is not documented. (33)
Of course facts or the absence of same should not be allowed to get in the way of a good yarn, and rumours and legends have abounded over the years, with claims that the Jewels may still be hidden in Ireland, or somewhere in England, or alternatively are in the possession of a wealthy collector in America or elsewhere abroad. The theft of the Irish Crown Jewels has been made the subject of a sexually graphic novel, which concludes with a mischievous hint that diamonds from the Jewels may have been incorporated in a magnificent brooch worn by Queen Elizabeth II. (34) A field in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains was dug up in 1983 by the Gardaí, acting on information received from the granddaughter of an old republican who had claimed to have been involved in stealing the Jewels, but nothing was found. On a visit to Listowel some years back the present writer was shown a clearly forged letter referring cryptically to the Jewels and allegedly written by Vicars, and an account of strange nocturnal activities among the ruins of Kilmorna appeared in a newspaper in 1998. (35) The latter shenanigans appear to have been organised by local jokers for the benefit of two researchers working on the case, whose account of the Crown Jewels affair has since been published. The authors claim that the 1907 theft was organised by a Unionist conspiracy in order to undermine attempts to introduce Home Rule, and that the Jewels were eventually secretly returned to King Edward. While the authors have uncovered some hitherto unknown or little used documentation, the present writer does not find the evidence presented in support of this interpretation of events to be convincing. (36)
Sir Arthur Vicars’s brother, Harry Vicars, featured very little in the story of the Irish Crown Jewels, and then only in the context of supporting his brother in trying times. It has recently been suggested to the present writer that Harry Vicars also should be a suspect in the case, in that there is family lore that he was basically a crook who cheated his wife Edith Long of her possessions, including having stones in her jewellery replaced by paste copies. (37) This is interesting information which deserves further investigation, but again nothing has been proven.
Missing Documents
Reconstructing the story of the Irish Crown Jewels is rendered more difficult by the fact that a good part of the relevant documentation is wanting or difficult to access. Thus it is recorded that eight British Home Office files relating to the theft were officially destroyed, and there is a gap in Ulster’s Office official correspondence between 1902 and 1908. (38) As noted above, the key report of Chief Inspector Kane cannot be located. Ulster’s Office actually survived the achievement of Irish independence in 1922 by some decades, until it was transferred to the College of Arms in London in 1943 and replaced in the twenty-six counties by the Genealogical Office/Office of the Chief Herald of Ireland. The surviving records of Ulster’s Office and the Office of the Chief Herald are combined in a series titled Genealogical Office Manuscripts in the National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin. (39) Although permitted to other researchers, access to the unsorted elements of Ulster’s Office records was refused to the present writer until the intervention of the Ombudsman resulted in the opening of a proportion only of the material in 2006. Bamford and Bankes wrote in 1965 of the ‘cloak of secrecy and evasion’ then still surrounding the Irish Crown Jewels case, (40) and while most officials approached were glad to assist the present writer’s research, it seems that old attitudes have not entirely died out in certain quarters. (41)
From my necessarily constrained research in Ulster’s Office records, I can confirm that there may well have been contemporary official weeding of material relating to the theft of the Jewels, which tends to support the view that this was no ordinary crime, but a wider scandal drawing in members of the establishment and their connections. One is also struck by the disorder in which the surviving Ulster’s Office correspondence of the period remains, which problem is complicated by the chaos into which some of the records of the Office of the Chief Herald collapsed in the course of the Mac Carthy Mór scandal, a more recent event which bears not a few passing similarities to the Irish Crown Jewels affair. (42) Thus the volumes of copies of Ulster’s outward correspondence are not all clearly dated and numbered, while files of inward correspondence are very disordered (the writer was intrigued to find inserted among correspondence of the early 1900s a 1983 letter to Chief Herald Donal Begley from the bogus Irish chief Terence MacCarthy!). (43) All of this puts National Library staff to considerable trouble to produce specific material, as well as multiplying the number of visits which a researcher must make. The writer has recommended to the Library Board that it should remedy without further delay the long-standing problem of the inadequately catalogued and sometimes disordered state of Genealogical Office manuscripts. These are important records historically as well as in relation to heraldry and genealogy, and until they are properly arranged and catalogued one cannot be certain that they do not contain any additional information relating to the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels in particular.
It is a commonplace observation that the relentless development of Dublin in recent decades, and particularly during the Celtic Tiger boom, has seen the destruction of much of the old fabric of the city. Yet remnants and relics of the past sometimes surprisingly survive, and this is certainly true in the case of the Irish Crown Jewels. For a start, despite the internal reconstruction of the Bedford Tower in Dublin Castle as a conference centre, still effectively intact is the old Ulster’s Office Library in which stood the safe from which the Jewels were stolen in 1907. The Ratner safe itself was transferred to Kevin Street police station in 1908, remaining there until returned in December 2007 to Dublin Castle, where it may be viewed in the Garda Museum now occupying the Bermingham Tower (ironically this was where the safe was first located before Ulster’s Office moved to the Bedford Tower in 1903). The house shared by Vicars and Shackleton still stands in St James’s Terrace, Clonskeagh. There was formerly a display case containing a police reward poster and other items relating to the Irish Crown Jewels in the State Heraldic Museum in the National Library in Kildare Street, but the Museum was removed during the very centenary of the theft in 2007 to make way for a new National Library exhibition on the Irish in Europe, and it has not been possible to clarify the fate of the display case. Of the Irish Crown Jewels themselves no trace of course can be found, and the writer inclines to the view that whoever stole them, they would have been broken up and sold on at some point subsequent to the theft.
Conclusions
In the light of the foregoing analysis of documentary evidence relating to the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels in 1907 and study of various accounts of the crime, the conclusions of this report are as follows:
(1) While considerable documentation relating to the loss of the Irish Crown Jewels survives, certain key official records appear to have been deliberately destroyed, making it difficult if not impossible to establish exactly what happened.
(2) The Viceregal Commission of investigation into the loss of the Irish Crown Jewels was more concerned with scapegoating Sir Arthur Vicars than uncovering the full facts relating to the affair, and was in essence a whitewash.
(3) Those accounts of the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels which postulate that it was probably an inside job are most likely correct, and while the identity of the mastermind behind the crime has not and may never be proven conclusively, the prime suspect remains Francis Shackleton, with Francis Bennett Goldney a strong suspect number two.
Sean J Murphy
25 January 2008, last updated 29 April
References
(1) The present report is a development of the author’s Irish Historical Mysteries series article, ‘The Theft of the Irish Crown Jewels’, which it now replaces. Thanks are due to the staffs of the National Library of Ireland, the National Archives of Ireland, Dublin Castle, the Garda Museum, the National Archives (Kew) and other individuals mentioned in the notes below. The best general chronicle of the affair remains Francis Bamford and Viola Bankes, Vicious Circle: The Case of the Missing Irish Crown Jewels, London 1965, and the author has also made use of other accounts as cited below.
(2) Report of the Viceregal Commission Appointed to Investigate the Circumstances of the Loss of the Regalia of the Order of St Patrick, London 1908, hereafter cited as Crown Jewels Commission (Ireland). The National Archives of Ireland has placed online copies of the Commission’s report (excluding the appendices) and a range of official records relating to the Irish Crown Jewels affair at http://www.nationalarchives.ie/topics/crown_jewels/gallery.html. The most important National Archives file is CSORP/1913/18119, portions of which are included in the online reproductions.
(3) Peter Galloway, The Most Illustrious Order of St Patrick 1783-1983, Chichester, Sussex, 1983, page 96.
(4) Crown Jewels Commission (Ireland), Report, page iv.
(5) Same, pages vi-viii.
(6) Séamus Shortall and Maria Spassova, Pierce O’Mahony: An Irishman in Bulgaria, [2002].
(7) Crown Jewels Commission (Ireland), Report, page ii.
(8) Same, page iii.
(9) Same, Appendix, Minutes of Evidence.
(10) Same, page 79.
(11) Same, page 70.
(12) Same, page 76.
(13) Same, page 77.
(14) Same, Report, page xi.
(15) Same.
(16) Roland Huntford, Shackleton, London 1996 edition, page 184.
(20) Communications from two members of the Shackleton family, January 2008. It was not long before the reputations of Shackleton and Gorges came to the attention of the authorities, for example, the Earl of Kilmorey sent Lord Aberdeen a letter (undated, pre-December 1907?) in which he described the two as ‘unspeakable scoundrels’ of ‘filthy character’, accusing them of responsibility for the theft (Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, D2638/D/46/4, copy courtesy of Kevin Hannafin).
(21) David Murphy, Letter to History Ireland, 10, Number 1, 2002, page 11; death certificate of Richard Gorges 1944 (copy courtesy of Kevin Hannafin).
(22) Bamford and Bankes, Vicious Circle, pages 189, 197-201.
(24) Will and Probate of Sir Arthur Vicars, 1922, National Archives of Ireland.
(25) Bateman, Magpie Tendency, pages 82-83, 85 and generally.
(26) Same, page 85.
(27) Bateman, An account by J A Jennings, proprietor of the Kent Herald at the time the Irish Crown Jewels were stolen, unpublished, 2004 (copy courtesy of Arthur Evans).
(28) ‘Umbrian Umbrage: Send Back That Etruscan Chariot’, New York Times, 5 April 2007, http://www.nytimes.com, visited 24 January 2008; it has since been claimed that the chariot is in fact a fake.
(29) Portion of Memorandum 1 June 1927, National Archives of Ireland, S 3926 A.
(30) Gregory Allen, ‘The Great Jewel Mystery’, Garda Review, August 1876, pages 16-22.
(31) Tomás O’Riordan, ‘The Theft of the Irish Crown Jewels, 1907′, History Ireland, 9, Number 4, 2001, page 27.
(32) Galloway, Illustrious Order of St Patrick, page 72.
(33) Myles Dungan, The Stealing of the Irish Crown Jewels: An Unsolved Crime, Dublin 2003, pages 250-51.
(34) Robert Perrin, Jewels, London and Henley 1977, page 269.
(35) The Kerryman, 21 August 1998.
(36) John Cafferky and Kevin Hannafin, Scandal and Betrayal: Shackleton and the Irish Crown Jewels, Cork 2002, pages 216-234 and passim.
(37) Information of Ian Macalpine-Leny, November 2007.
(38) Susan Hood, Royal Roots, Republican Inheritance: The Survival of the Office of Arms, Dublin 2002, pages 62-63. The surviving documentation on the Irish Crown Jewels in the English National Archives is substantial but clearly weeded , for example, HO 144/1648/156610, marked ‘Closed until 2022′, yet inspection now permitted (copy of file ordered online at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk).
(39) Of particular interest is Ulster’s Office Correspondence, bound volumes (outward) and files (inward), Genealogical Office Manuscripts, National Library of Ireland, not fully sorted or referenced. GO MS 507, a useful scrapbook of newspaper cuttings and correspondence relating to the loss of the Irish Crown Jewels, compiled by J C Hodgson and presented to Ulster’s Office in 1942, compensates in some measure for removed or misplaced official documentation. See also Fuller Papers 1904-15, NLI microfilm POS 4944, which contains correspondence of Vicars, some of it relating to the Irish Crown Jewels.
(40) Bamford and Bankes, Vicious Circle, page 202.
(41) While National Library desk staff have been consistently helpful in relation to the writer’s Irish Crown Jewels research, e-mail queries sent on 17 December 2007 to the Office of the Chief Herald and on 14 January 2008 to the Director of the National Library and the Chairman of the Library Board, have not been dealt with (as of April 2008).
(43) The writer’s initial examination of the newly released Ulster’s Office material among the Genealogical Office manuscripts has uncovered evidence that the removal of records may have been unauthorised as well as official, in that one volume of correspondence dated 1901-02 has a note attached to the flyleaf which reads, ‘Bought from Townley Searle, 30 Gerrard Street W I for 10s, 10.10.1941′. Searle appears to have been a London author and bookseller, and his possession of this volume and perhaps other records simply adds another layer of mystery (one might point to the coincidence that 1941 was also the year of Frank Shackleton’s death).
A CENTURY has passed since the Irish Crown Jewels were stolen from Dublin Castle in what is still considered one of the most bizarre and baffling mysteries in Irish criminal history, but a new review of the evidence suggests that Francis Shackleton, the disreputable brother of polar explorer Ernest, should be considered the prime suspect.
Historical researcher and author Sean J Murphy will later this month publish his findings, which will finger Shackleton as the probable thief. The theft of the jewels, worth €1m in today’s money, was discovered on July 6, 1907.
The jewels, encrusted with rubies, emeralds and Brazilian diamonds, were the regalia, or insignia, of the Order of St Patrick. The safe had been opened with a key and the theft was clearly an inside job.
Last month, after 101 years, the empty safe was returned to Dublin Castle, having been kept in Kevin Street Garda Station since the theft.
The jewels were discovered to be missing four days before the state visit of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra and angered the monarch, though the visit went ahead.
In 1903, the jewels had been transferred to a safe, which was to be placed in a newly constructed strongroom, but the new safe was too large for the doorway to the room.
Instead Arthur Vicars, the Officer of Arms of Dublin Castle, stored the jewels in his office. Seven people had keys to the office, but the two safe keys were in the sole possession of Vicars.
Vicars came under intense pressure following the theft, but refused to resign or appear at a Viceregal Commission into the incident. He argued for a public royal inquiry and accused his second in command, Francis Shackleton, who had been staying at his house. The Commission concluded Vicars “did not exercise due vigilance or proper care as the custodian of the regalia”, but Vicars believed he had been made a scapegoat.
Mr Murphy, whose new research coincides with the centenary of the publication of the Viceregal Commission of Enquiry, points out the Commission’s report also contained an unusual paragraph specifically stating that there was no evidence that Shackleton, who had severe money worries at the time, had stolen the jewels.
However, “having reviewed the evidence, my view is that Francis Shackleton is the prime suspect”, he says.
Mr Murphy said there is another possible suspect, Francis Bennett Goldney, who had access to the castle and the room where the safe was stored. After his death Goldney was found to be, as Mr Murphy puts it, “a thieving magpie”, stealing artefacts and documents from various institutions.
The case against Shackleton is stronger, however. Mr Murphy points out that Shackleton’s criminal leanings were confirmed when he was convicted of fraud in 1913. Following his release from prison, Shackleton assumed the surname Mellor and died in 1941 in Chichester.
The unfortunate Vicars retired to Kerry and was shot be the IRA in 1921. They also burned down his home, Kilmorna House, near Listowel.
In his will, Vicars condemned the authorities and King Edward for shielding “the real culprit and thief”, who he named as Francis Shackleton.
Vicars’ bitterness is clear, though the full contents of his will were not made available for public inspection until 1976.
The censored excerpt follows his various bequests and states: “I might have had more to dispose of had it not been for the outrageous way in which I was treated by the Irish Government over the loss of the Irish Crown Jewels in 1907, backed up by the late King Edward VII, when I was made a scapegoat to save other departments responsible and when they shielded the real culprit and thief, Francis R. Shackleton (brother of the explorer who didn’t reach the South Pole).
“My whole life & work was ruined by this cruel misfortune and by the wicked and blackguardly acts of the Irish Government.
“I had hoped to leave a legacy to my dear little dog Ronnie, had he not been taken from me this year — well we shall meet in the next world.”
Compiled by Tim Alderman 2016
Sodom And Begorrah
Case Of The Crown Jewels, The Courtiers And A Gay Cover-Up
By David McKittrick, Ireland Correspondent, The Independent – UK
11-12-3
Now it can be told: a huge scandal involving the disappearance of valuable royal goods, coteries of gay courtiers, drunken parties, inquiries that lead nowhere and a cover-up at the very highest level.
And all this is on a scale big enough to rock the monarchy and appal the citizenry, with an amazing cast of characters, some of whom end up disgraced, in prison or meeting sudden mysterious ends.
It all happened in the Ireland of 1907, when Edward VII went ballistic after somebody stole the Irish Crown Jewels from Dublin Castle. The extraordinary details of the theft, and the facts that the jewels have never been recovered and the culprits never found, have given rise to a rich crop of theories about what really happened.
Last night, RTE, the Irish state television station, aired a documentary on the topic, which suggested investigations into the theft had been pursued with less than maximum vigour. One theory is that the King hastily ended inquiries after being informed of a homosexual network based at the castle, which included Frank Shackleton, the disreputable brother of the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton, and the Duke of Argyll, the King’s brother-in-law, who had a known fondness for Guardsmen.
The King, though himself no model of marital rectitude, had seen the German monarchy damaged by a homosexual scandal and certainly would have wanted things hushed up. He reportedly declared: “I will not have a scandal. I will not have mud stirred up and thrown about – the matter must be dropped.”
The historian Owen Dudley Edwards commented in last night’s programme, The Strange Case of the Irish Crown Jewels: “The very same people who may condemn homosexuality – maybe if not necking themselves with attractive footmen in the conservatory – may certainly be on the very best of terms with people whom they know are.”
The Irish Crown Jewels consisted of a star and a badge encrusted with diamonds, emeralds and rubies. They had great symbolic value, as well as being worth millions at today’s prices.
They went missing on the eve of a visit to Dublin by the King in 1907. No doors or locks were forced during the burglary, indicating an inside job.
A Scotland Yard detective was brought in to investigate, but his reports have gone missing. Another inquiry laid the blame on the hapless Sir Arthur Vicars, Ulster King of Arms. He was blamed not because he had taken the gems but because he was responsible for their safety. He was dismissed, and years later killed by the IRA for entertaining British officers at his home in Co Kerry.
He always maintained his innocence, complaining in his will that he had been treated in an “outrageous way by the Government backed up by the late King Edward VII when they shielded the real culprit and thief, Francis Shackleton.”
Shackleton, Vicars’ assistant, remains the prime suspect. He was one of a number of homosexual residents and employees at the castle, some of whom had colourful pasts. There were said to be drunken parties on the premises, with decades of rumours of “unnatural vice” going on behind its well-guarded walls. One nationalist politician intent on emphasising British corruption, referred to it as “Sodom and Begorrah”. The fact that Shackleton was a friend of the Duke of Argyll is one reason George VII may have been his protector. Certainly someone up there liked Shackleton: one official report was generally inconclusive but made a point of declaring his innocence.
Any protection ended after the King’s death, with Shackleton sentenced to 15 months’ hard labour for fraud. Some say the jewel theft was Frank’s way of helping Ernest, who was short of money to finance his polar expedition.
Frank’s friend Richard Gorges, also homosexual, is suspected of being the man who took the jewels. He was later jailed for the manslaughter of a policeman in London. Another suspect died when he accidentally shot himself in the chest with his shotgun while climbing over a fence.
Today, the Crown Jewels remain unrecovered. Some say they were offered for sale to the Irish government in 1927; some say they are buried somewhere in Ireland; others say they were discreetly returned and that some of them are worn today by Queen Elizabeth. The official assumption, outlined recently by Jeremy Bagwell Purefoy of the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood, is that they were broken up and sold in the Netherlands.
But every decade or so, an anonymous phone call or letter arrives, and Irish police dig up a piece of land in search of them. Whatever the true fate of the jewels, the episode continues to provide a rich vein of royal and Irish folklore.
Only a month or so ago, a 15-year-old Muslim boy left his home, paid a fleeting visit to his local Mosque, chaned his clothes from everyday wear to a robe, then walked to the Parramatta Police Centre, and shot a non-police pencil pusher as he left the building to go home, all the time yelling religious quotes. Police officers shot him dead. Good tiddance, I say! Appears that he had been indoctrinated online by ISOS.
The real horror of this is…RELIGION! That a 15-year-old…caught at the most confused and influential time of his life…can be turned into a religious fanatic through technology is frightening! As usual, we are told it’s a solitary event, and to get on with our daily lives without letting it frighten us…but even liberal-minded lefties like myself are getting concerned. I’m not frightened in the literal sense of the word…it’s more like a nagging, unsettled feeling. That I am now expecting all attacks like this to beMuslim-centric speaks heaps about the worrying changes in my thinking – from tolerance and acceptance, to actually siding withthose fighting the building of Mosques in their communities. And I hate myself for even beginning to think that way. Why is it that the examples of this type of terror are becoming the predominant face of the Islam religion! Yet, now we have the Paris attacks! Even more innocent bystanders! People out for a meal in a cafe, or attending a concert are now dead, and the sheer barbarity of the attacks harks back to the dark days of the Crusades.
And therein, once again, lies the crux of the problem…RELIGION! What is it about religion that promulgates so much hate, intolerance, discrimination and death – the EXACT opposite of everything it is supposed to stand for…according to those who lead and preach it, anyway!
I’m an Athiest, as is just about everyone I know. I’m an intelligent, thinking, analytical man. After many years of blindly following theologies, tenets, doctrines, philosophies and faith that I was always sort of suspicious about, I sat down and had a good, long think about it. After getting up from this self-imposed think tank, I tossed it all overboard! What intelligent, thinking person could actually fall for that crap! A man wandering around a desert with 12 other men; dying, coming back to life (after creating a mysterifying shroud), moving a stone wighing many tons and just toddling off; flying up to heaven on a cloud; popping back down occasionally for a visit; likewise for his mother..a virgin impregnated by a spirit (a hortor movie in the making there); she seems to keep her dead self busy by appearing at the most unlikely places, usually to neurotic women or fanatical men; a Jew and Jewess who are depicted as anything but; a fierce, sadistic, demanding, megalomaniacal God who evidently has a very long beard, and sits around all day listening to a lot of griping, and judging people – whilst seated up amongst the clouds on a throne, reached through some pearly gates and along a gold road. He’s surrounded by all these winged people playing harps and blowing trumpets – who are also busy popping down to earth and creating a bit of havoc – and whose arch-enemy lives in this fiery place under the eath, where he is busy torturing people, wearing red outfits topped off with forked tail, horns and a pitchfork. If you believe the bible – which all true creationists do – then the earth was made in 7 days, Adam and Eve played with snakes under apple trees, and had two SONS from whom we all came…and to think – the people who follow these fairy tales obstruct marriage equality…mmmm! Then we have huge floods with two of EVERY animal, bird and insect cramned onto a boat…with no deaths, or fights…or preying. We have wine being created from water, 5,000 people being fed from one loaf of bread and a fish, some walking on water, healing some lepers and blind people by touching them…and these are just the biblical foundations of belief! No wonder I’m Athiest!
Mind you, the Muslim religion – which I confess to knowing bugger-all about – is not the first religion to try to claim world domination. The Catholic religion had dibs on that long before they came along. If you didn’t follow all the tenets of the One Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church..then….well, lets have a look at that! As soon as anyone started to think outside the square – take the Cathars as an example – then the church got antsy and sent out a group of very umpleasant men called the Inquisition (or Spanish Inquisition, depending on where you lived) who, as a way of helping you back to the one true faith, would judge, torture and burn you at the stake…unless you recanted your heretical ways! Henry VIII got a bit jack of not being able to divorce his wife – who was his brothers wife originally, and who he married to keep the peace – and told the same One Holy Catholic etc etc to go to buggery, as he was starting his own church, which was going to be way better than theirs, and he’d divorce and marry anyone he liked, even if he had to lop their heads off to do it. The Catholic church got a bit miffed. And as a way of getting his revenge Henry tore down all the monasteries – who, by the way, provided most of the assistance to the poor and dispossessed, so he just added to any social problems they already had – and stripped the churches, cashed in all the art, artifacts and building materials, and killed or burnt anyone who defied him. For the next couple of hundred years, including the rise and fall of the religiously fanatical (Protestant) Thomas Cromwell, England swung between Catholicism and extremist Protestantism, with thousands of people being killed as they tried to keep up with the latest religious trend. What a fuck-up…all in the name of God!
But that wasn’t even the worst of it! The Holy Roman etc etc Church was intent on displaying just how Holy and Apostolic it really was…not! One hardly knows where to start here. Well, on top of forcing itself on the poor folk of Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Holland etc etc, it decided it needed to be totally inclusive, and force any other infidels to come into the fold. Jerusalem looks good, as does Byzantium. Those pesky Muhammad-pushers are also interested..so, let’s have a war, but we’ll call it a Crusade. That way, everyone can get involved, and have a jolly good time raping and pillaging their way across Europe, and take Jerusalem away from both the Jews AND the Turks. This went on for about 200 years (1095-1291), with no clear outcome, though once again many thousands died in the name of The One Holy etc etc. Naturally, both Popes and Kings had nothing better to do with their time, and got involved. Holy indeed!
This broughts heaps of money, art and treasure into the hands of the One Holy Roman etc etc, so it got richer and richer, greedier and greedier. The richer and greedier it got, the more demanding and controlling it got. It created prelates and princes. Popes married, or were just licencious, fucked around, had kids…but…don’t do what I do, do what I say. All these Popes, and prelates and princes covered themselves in gold bling, ran around in silk damask robes lined with ermine furs…drag taken to its most devout degree! To make even more money, they promised that if you parted with some cash and bought some of their recently released indulgences…hey presto! You get to skip purgatory! Feeling a bit bored? Hey..,go for a pilgrimage to some far flung corner of the earth to pray in front of some fake blood, or fake “saints” bones, or a rigged statue that bleeds. Don’t forget to buy some souvenirs! Part with that hard-earned cash, and buy your way into heaven. Let’s create an institution….no, we’ll make it a sacrament…called “marriage”. It has no legality as it is just a ritual, but we’ll hijack it anyway, and use it as another way to control people! We’ll bedazzle you with rites and splendour, intone ceremonies in ancient language, convince you that sin is bad, gulit is good! Make women a sub-class, and deny our priests a fulfilling life by enforcing celibacy. Want to molest some children as an outlet for repeessed sexuality and control? That’s fine, as long as no one finds out. After all, you are a Cardinal, or a Bishop, or a Monsignor, or a monk, or a nun. You are way beyond reproach! Let’s totally confuse you with rhetoric and theology…words like “transubstantiation” sound so much better than “cannabilism”, don’t you reckon! Want to become a saint by becoming a martyr in defence of all this “faith”? Then get yourself spit-roasted, or pack-raped, or see visions, or get frenetic enough about it all to develop stigmata, or get burnt at the stake, or whatever…then off you go! In 200 years, after appearing on a fence post and curing someone of something you’ll be sainted!
Books? Don’t try and educate yourself, or read anything alternative or progressive! We’re burning all those, and if we catch you reading it…we’ll burn you too!
And with all our Catholic humanity and compassion, we realise that there are primitives and cannibals around. Look at all those tiny islands, South America and Africa…full of them! We need to make them all Catholic or Protestant so they have something genuine to believe in! Destroy their culture? Don’t be silly…they never had a culture, fucking little pagans! Some nice missionaries will knock dome sense into them! They must be saved from themselves!
Even in more enlightened times we remain in the past, locked in a time when we could influence the gullible, instil fear, create guilt. Want to take the pill, or use a condom? Of course you can’t! Nothing quire like a religion that promotes STDs, and unwanred children! Sex for PLEASURE! Who are you to even think that! Missionary position, everyone…and NO pleasurable sounds, please! This is your duty!
And that was just the Catholics! The Protestants – who broke away from Catholicism for all these reasons – were no better! Subjugate everyone with excessive guilt! Rob them of every single pleasure and joy life has! Convince them that deprivation, hardship, blandness and fanatical devotion and zeal were the sure paths to heaven! Thousands died so that these beliefs could be upheld.
There is not one single, solitary off-shoot of Chritianity that is redemptive, or lives up to the so-called precepts of said religion. We have Opus Dei; evangelicals; glossolalia; snake charming; Jim Jones and Jonestown; Hillsong (sing alleluia and pass the plate); Mormons…who are themselves divided; Scientologists…yeah, lets base a cult (it is NOT a religion) on science fiction; Baptists; Methodists; Uniting Church; Church of Christ; Unitarians; Westboro Baptist Church…where hate and intolerance is openly preached; Right to Life movements…who ignore the most basic of human rights…choice; Jehovah’s Witnesses; Bahai..the list just goes on…and on…and on! A whole raft of idealogical theologies that do NOTHING but promote hate, intolerance, injustice, prejudice, stigma, discrimination…and yet blame everyone else for their own shortfallings. It disgusts me!
The most blatant lies of all…that the bible has the answers for starters! This heavily quoted tome is a collection of stories passed down through word of mouth, and eventually put into writing by civilisations and lifestyles long dead. And should remain so! Every single Christian religion has added and subtracred from this book…depending on what met their needs, or what was surplus to requirements. It is so corrupted, distorted and misquoted for all the wrong reasons that I just laugh when I read it being quoted…usually by half-witted fundamentalists. The other lies belie and degrade the true nature of our humanity, of how we would be if we were just left to sort out right and wrong for ourselves. After all, Christianity is only 2000 years old, and does not have the history to define the most basic of human precepts. Civilisations were doing just that LONG before the Christians came along. You see, we do not need Christianity, or any other religion, to prescribe morals and ethics. We can do that…and indeed have, in times past..as a society. We all intrinsically know what is right, and what is wrong! What we need to do to live in harmony and peace, to respect each other, to not judge, to not pontificate. Religion seems to think that without them, there would be no charity, no humanity, no help for the dispossessed or those in need. It would appear to the unthinking that we need obscure Jews wandering the deserts of the Middle East, bearded men in the sky, and fanatical prophets to achieve these things. Wrong!
If we cannot achieve morals and ethics through our own humanity, through our own sense of self worth,through a sense of justice that is all encompassing, through our collective belief in the good that is inherent in all of us (and acknowledge that aberrations exist, for better or worse), that I cannot help and support my friends and family as part of a living, thriving society that does not need to resort to fallacy, misconceptions and gobbledygook for its existence…then perhaps we don’t deserve to exist at all!
I am not sure why we fail to acknowledge that almost every single genocide, mass instances of torture, sadistic, unnecessary deaths, indeed most wars are religion-based. Millions have died in the name of religion! Millions! And still are! Isn’t it time we grew up, and admitted that as an institution, religion has failed! The current Royal Commission into institutionalised child abuse is one of the most horrifying instances of religious and secular abuse imaginable. All the disgraceful hush-ups, turning a blind eye, shuffling the problems around, and disbelieving everything that was being said by the victims is staggering! Many committed suicide, many others live every day with the aftermath of this abuse. It hasn’t been going on for decades, it has been happening for hundreds of years! Every single religion, every single religious order, every single charity is involved! To be on the commission panel must be heartbreaking! To sit through every day listening to that horror!
It is time to say…enough is enough! Begone religion! Leave us in peace!
timalderman 
