The Cleveland Street scandal occurred in 1889, when a homosexual male brothel and house of assignation on Cleveland Street, London, was discovered by a Postal Constable of the Confidential Enquiry Branch. The government was accused of covering up the scandal to protect the names of aristocratic and other prominent patrons.
At the time, sexual acts between men were illegal in Britain, and the brothel's clients faced possible prosecution and absolute social rejection if discovered. It was rumoured that Prince Albert Victor, the eldest son of the Prince of Wales and second-in-line to the British throne, had visited the brothel, though this has never been substantiated. Unlike overseas newspapers, the British press never named Albert Victor, but the allegation influenced the handling of the case by the authorities and has coloured biographers' perceptions of him since.
The police acquired testimonies that Lord Arthur Somerset, an equerry to the Prince of Wales, was a patron. 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 General 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 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 posing as a sodomite.
Male brothel
In July 1889, Postal 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.
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. 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.
Notable clients
On the way to the police station, Newlove named Lord Arthur Somerset and Henry FitzRoy, Earl of Euston, as well as a British Army colonel by the name of Jervois, as visitors to Cleveland Street. 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. A watch was placed on the now-empty house and details of the case shuffled between government departments.
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. 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. On 22 August, police interviewed Somerset for a second time, after which Somerset left for Bad Homburg, where the Prince of Wales was taking his summer holiday.
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. 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. 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. The boys were also given sentences that were considered at the time to be very lenient. 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. On the advice of the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, no extradition proceedings were attempted, and the case against Hammond was quietly dropped.
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. He returned again on 30 September. A few days later, his grandmother, Emily Somerset, Dowager Duchess of Beaufort, died and he attended her funeral. 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. 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. This was denied by Lord Salisbury and the Attorney General, Sir Richard Webster. Probyn's informant may have been the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Richard Pearson. 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, 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. By this time, Somerset was already safely abroad, and the warrant caught little public attention.
After an unsuccessful search for employment in Turkey and Austria-Hungary, Somerset settled down to live anonymously in France, at first in Paris then in Hyères on the French Riviera. Other names mentioned by the press were Lord Ronald Gower and Lord Errol. Also implicated was the prominent social figure Alexander Meyrick Broadley, who fled abroad for four years. The Paris Figaro even alleged that Broadley took General Georges Boulanger and Henri Rochefort to the house. The allegation against Boulanger was later challenged by his supporters. In December 1889 it was reported that both the Prince and Princess of Wales were being "daily assailed with anonymous letters of the most outrageous character" bearing upon the scandal. By January 1890 sixty suspects had been identified, twenty-two of whom had fled the country.
Public revelations
Because the press initially 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.
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". 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, who was not named but was believed by some to be Prince Albert Victor, the son of the Prince of Wales.
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. 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. 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. 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. One historian considers Euston was telling the truth and only visited Cleveland Street once because he was misled by the card. However, another has alleged Euston was a well-known figure in the homosexual underworld, and was extorted so often by the notorious blackmailer Robert Cliburn, that Oscar Wilde had quipped Cliburn deserved the Victoria Cross for his tenacity. Saul stated that he told the police his story in August, which provoked the judge to enquire rhetorically why the authorities had not taken action.
The judge, Sir Henry Hawkins, had a distinguished career, although after his death a former Solicitor General for England and Wales, Sir Edward Clarke, wrote: "Sir Henry Hawkins was the worst judge I ever knew or heard of. He had no notion whatever of what justice meant, or of the obligations of truth or fairness." 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, and he was assisted by H. H. Asquith, who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twenty years later.
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. On 20 May, the judge, Sir Lewis Cave, sentenced Newton to six weeks in prison, 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.