story in depth, 1889: Scandal on Cleveland Street


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Scandal on Cleveland Street

England, 1889. London was rocked by scandal in September when the North London Press first reported that a Lord of the Realm was a regular customer at a male brothel that had been shut down by Scotland Yard in July. A follow-up story in November even hinted that the scandal could reach all the way to His Royal Highness Prince Eddy, son of the Prince of Wales. Allegations of aristocratic and royal involvement were scandalous enough, but when the story accused officials of a cover-up to protect Prince Eddy, it created a sensation. The scandal confirmed a growing perception of sex between men as an aristocratic vice that corrupted working class youth and set the stage for an even more sensational scandal, the trials of Oscar Wilde in 1895.

The Story

On July 6, 1889, Inspector Frederick Abberline arrived at a house at 19 Cleveland Street in London's West End planning to arrest 35 year old Charles Hammond. The arrest warrant he carried spelled out the charge: that Hammond and 18 year old accomplice Henry Newlove "did unlawfully, wickedly, and corruptly conspire, combine, confederate and agree to ..." procure teenage prostitutes "to commit the abominable crime of buggery." When the detective knocked on the door, he discovered that the house was locked up tight and Hammond had fled, but he had better luck apprehending Newlove. At 1:30 p.m., Abberline found Newlove at his mother's house and escorted him to the police station.

The police had first learned of Hammond's operation during an unrelated investigation of a theft of some cash at the Central Telegraph Office. During the investigation a telegraph delivery boy named Thomas Swinscow had 18 shillings in his pocket, a sum that amounted to several weeks' wages. "Where did you get it?" the investigator asked. He had earned it working for a man named Hammond, the boy answered. When asked what work he did for the man, Swinscow hesitated, then blurted out the truth: "I got the money from going to bed with gentlemen at his house." According to the boy's story, Henry Newlove, who worked in the same building as Swinscow, had introduced him to Hammond. At Hammond's house, he had sex with one man, and in exchange received four shillings. He only admitted to serving two clients, but he named two other boys who he claimed worked for Hammond more often.

When police interrogated Newlove, Swinscow, and the other boys, they named names. Newlove himself implicated Lord Arthur Somerset, head of the Prince of Wales' stables, and two other prominent men, the Earl of Euston and an Army Colonel. As the investigation continued, the telegraph boys confirmed that Lord Somerset was a regular client, and police discovered dark hints that Prince Eddy, son of the Prince of Wales, was involved, too. Newlove's cooperation paid off for him; In September when he and another accomplice were sentenced for gross indecency and procuring, Newlove was sentenced to 4 months at hard labor, while his less informative colleague served 9 months. The government was much slower to respond to the telegraph boys' allegations about Lord Somerset, so he had time to flee to a comfortable exile in Homburg, a town then famous for its casinos and spas.

Uncovering the Cover-up

The press barely covered the story at first - closing brothels was, after all, routine police business - but that changed when Ernest Parke picked up the story. Parke, the editor of a radical weekly named The North London Press, first learned about the scandal when one of his reporters handed him a story about Newlove's conviction in September, and he wondered why Newlove and his associate had escaped with such light sentences. And how did Hammond know the police were after him in time to make his escape? The whole affair sounded like a conspiracy to Parke. Using his contacts in the police department, he discovered that the telegraph boys had fingered prominent aristocrats. Parke ran a story on September 28th that "the heir to a duke and the younger son of a duke" were mixed up in the affair. On November 16, he ran a follow up story and named both the Earl of Euston and Lord Somerset, and said they had been allowed to leave the country to cover up the involvement of a personage "more distinguished and more highly placed." Many of his readers knew of the rumor that the protected personage was Prince Eddy.

Somerset had already fled to the continent, but Parke was mistaken when he wrote that the Earl of Euston had left the country. The Earl was still in England and did not intend to leave. Instead, he hired lawyers to fight Parke's charges with a libel suit. Since Parke was unwilling to reveal his confidential sources, he couldn't call the witnesses he needed to prove that Euston was guilty of the allegations. The jury convicted him and the judge, furious at Parke for protecting his informants, sentenced him to twelve months in prison.

Parke's conviction exonerated Euston, but another trial began on December 12 that proved Parke's conspiracy theory. The prosecutor charged Arthur Newton, Newlove's defense lawyer, with obstructing justice by warning Hammond to flee the country. When the case went to trial, Newton was easily convicted. After the verdict was reached, the presiding judge addressed the court and concluded that Newton had helped Hammond escape to prevent him from testifying against his aristocratic clientele. Then, he sentenced Newton to six weeks in prison.

Henry Labouchere, the radical member of Parliament who drafted the law against Gross Indecency in 1885, watched the Newton trial closely and he suspected that the cover-up went beyond a lawyer's efforts to protect his clients. He believed that the Prime Minister had arranged for Lord Arthur Somerset to be warned of his impending arrest to give him time to beat an escape. Labouchere voiced his suspicions in Parliament on February 28, 1890 and moved that a committee be formed to investigate the government. The ensuing debate was so fractious, and Labouchere was so provocative that he was suspended for a week, but his efforts to expose the government failed. By a vote of 204 to 66, Parliament rejected his motion. At the highest levels, the cover-up had succeeded.

The Fallout

Like all scandals, the Cleveland Street affair gradually faded away as the English press and public turned their attention to more routine news stories, but the uproar had lasting effects on the public perception of buggers. The social purity feminists and religionists who supported the sex reform bill of 1885 represented sex between men as one variant of male lust run amok, and Hammond and his coterie served as perfect examples. The prostitutes were "innocent" telegraph boys who had been "corrupted" by Hammond in service of the unrestrained lusts of a wealthy aristocratic clientele. The press reports highlighted this myth of buggery, and inspired a period of national detestation for buggers that climaxed with the still more sensational trials of Oscar Wilde in 1895.

Notes and Further Reading

The arrest warrant for Hammond and Newlove is quoted in Hyde, 1976, p. 24. The interrogation of Thomas Swinscow is recounted in Hyde, 1976, pp. 20-21.

The Cover-up

Parke's November 16 article in the North London Press is reprinted in Hyde, 1976, p. 106.