Andrea Sanna
A scandal in old London involving the Victorian aristocracy
The Cleveland Street case was one of the most famous homosexual sex scandals that shocked the London Victorian aristocracy, even reaching inside the rooms of Buckingham Palace.
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Charles Hammond, an English gentleman, had been running a men’s brothel at 19 Cleveland Street in London (north of Oxford Street and near Tottenham Court Road) for several years, without the authorities or his neighbors suspecting what was going on within those walls. And most of the patrons of Charles Hammond’s business were aristocrats.
The end date is July 4, 1889, and bears the name of Charles Swinscow, a 15-year-old boy who worked at the General Post Office as a messenger. That day, while he was in the streets of London delivering telegrams and urgent messages for private citizens and companies, some police officers stopped him and, after a search, found about 18 shillings in his pockets. A sum that made the police suspicious, since the weekly pay as a messenger for the General Post Office was only 11 shillings.
Under questioning, the young Charles Swinscow confessed that Charles Hammond had recruited him to work in his men’s brothel for 4 shillings per appointment. Eventually, he also gave the names of other guys (his co-workers) who worked with him on Cleveland Street. His charges which led to the arrest and interrogation of Henry Newlove, Algernon Allies, and Charles Thickbroom.
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Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline, who in 1888 was in charge of detectives hunting down the most famous serial killer in history, Jack The Ripper got a warrant for Charles Hammond’s arrest on male prostitution charges but the accused had already left the house on Cleveland Street, losing track of them.
Authorities monitored the comings and goings of the house in case Hammond returned. And instead of Hammond they found a ‘Mr Brown’, who was identified by Swinscow and Thickbroom as a regular customer of the Cleveland Street house. Some agents followed him up to the army barracks in Knighsbridge, then discovering that behind ‘Mr Brown’ was hiding the major of the Royal Horse Guards and squire of the future King Edward VII, Lord Arthur Somerset (younger son of Henry Charles Somerset, eighth Duke of Beaufort).
At that point, Lord Arthur Somerset entrusted his defense to the lawyer Arthur Newton who threatened to name Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and eldest son of the Prince of Wales Edward and second in line to the English throne as another client of the Cleveland Street brothel. At that point, the British government delayed the indictment of Lord Arthur Somerset to avoid the scandal of associating the name of Prince Albert Victor with the homosexual brothel on Cleveland Street.
Lord Arthur Somerset fled to France on 18 October 1889, where he remained in exile until his death in 1926.
The only ones to be sentenced were the smallest and unprotected pawns such as Charles Swinscow, Algernon Allies, and Charles Thickbroom to 9 months, while Henry Newlove to 4 months with hard labor.
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The Cleveland Street scandal could have ended with those convictions and instead, the journalist Ernest Parke published an article in the “North London Press” on 28 September 1889 in which he stated that “the heir of a duke and the younger son of a duke” they had been patrons of Cleveland Street and on 16 November he named Lord Arthur Somerset and Henry James Fitzory (Earl of Euston), also naming (without naming) a member of the royal family as a frequenter of the brothel.
The trials that followed resulted in nothing but the condemnation of journalist Ernest Parke to 1 year’s imprisonment with hard labor. Barrister Arthur Newton (who defended and helped Lord Arthur Somerset escape to France) was also sentenced to just six weeks in prison for allegedly interfering with witnesses and arranging their escape abroad. In 1895, Arthur Newtow defended Oscar Wilde in his own trial for the crime of ‘sodomy’.
A Breeze In The Darkness: A collection of seven short stories. An unexpected call for help from a youthful friend will plunge you into a haunted house. A woman desperate to find her true life will take you to the dark side of madness. Small warning: never anger the ladies in black. Not every book was written to be read. One, in particular, was meant to remain hidden in the flames of Hell. The mirror symbol of vanity, love, and revenge. A road. A community. An avenger returned to purify the place of his youth. Seven short stories to be read like a breeze from the darkness.
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