Bruce Robinson - They All Love Jack - Busting the Ripper

Meaning precisely what?

‘Why,’ replied Newlove, ‘Lord Arthur Somerset goes regularly to the house at Cleveland Street, so does the Earl of Euston and Colonel Jervois.’55

A cell door slammed on Newlove, but it didn’t shut the mouths. A disturbing rumour was beginning to do the rounds, and it wasn’t long before Hamilton Cuff, the Assistant Public Prosecutor, was writing to his boss.

‘I am told,’ wrote Cuff, ‘that if we go on a very distinguished person will be involved,’ a man then identified only by the glittering initials of ‘P.A.V.’.56

Prince Albert Victor’s father, the Prince of Wales, was in Berlin at the time, hobnobbing with relatives. On receipt of the news he roared back into London – first stop, the offices of Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary. The matter was reported coast to coast in the United States, although somehow the British press overlooked it. The Washington Evening Star wrote: ‘The Prince of Wales is as much concerned about the matter as anybody else, for he went personally to the Home Office this week to see Secretary Matthews … the police can show him the name of Albert Victor, among those the telegraph boys mention as having visited the house.’57

Matthews’ legal machine, already haemorrhaging under pressure from the man who was now asking even more of it, was nevertheless at the ready. Two things had to be done, and quick. 1) Dangerous mouths had to be silenced, and 2) Somebody had to be found to blame. The law simply couldn’t tolerate postmen backing their anuses onto whoever they felt like. Whatever happened, however it was managed, and whoever was to suffer, Prince Albert Victor was not at that house, on any night, or ever.

The Government will go to all lengths to secure convictions of the men it wishes to punish just as it will go to all lengths to shield the men that it desires shall escape punishment.

If the reader can believe this is a statement born of partisan bigotry, I can only refer him to the exposures which are now rending ‘respectable’ London in twain, where all the great resources of the ‘greatest empire of the modern world’ are being used to save the heir to the crown, and his worthy associates, Lord Ronald Gower, and the rest of the Marlborough House set, from exposure, their crime being, as all the world knows, the same as that for which Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, if Holy Writ is to be believed.

If the real information can be got, Scotland Yard is willing to pay for it at the market rates; under any circumstances there is always a supply to meet the demand; and if the real article cannot be had the bogus is always forthcoming.58

As the scandal ran for cover, the public were largely kept at a distance. Newspapers murmured, but Fleet Street didn’t need any instructions in deference. As with the crisis of Bro Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson some fifty years later, British newspapers declined to print what the whole chattering world was talking about. In the 1880s, as in the 1930s, it was the American press that forced their hand. A London special to the New York World elaborated:

The English newspapers are at length beginning to do something more than throw out dark hints as to the existence of a great scandal. Labouchère, without mentioning the names of the criminals, charges with complete accuracy, that the Home Office has fettered [Warren’s successor] Police Commissioner Monro’s hands, and he threatens to make things warm for Secretary of State Matthews when Parliament reassembles … The names known and generally talked about thus far in connection with the case are those of Lord Arthur Somerset, Lord Beaumont, Lord Euston, Lord Ronald Gower, and one official of high rank, now in India [i.e. Prince Albert Victor].59

As soon as the danger hit, Clarence was put on a boat heading for Hyderabad, so he could waste some tigers and any elephants he didn’t happen to be sitting on. This regal AWOL wasn’t his decision. Like everything else in this wretched creature’s life, it was the System that decided: they knew what colour the incoming was, but they didn’t yet know the size of the fan. The Washington Evening Star continued: ‘Mr Labouchère talked about the scandals at a crowded meeting in Lincoln Saturday night, remarking that the hideousness was so much the subject of general comment that London conversation was becoming almost as horrible as London vice.’60

It was indeed a circumstance inviting not only public revulsion at the unquenchable lawlessness of the royal mob, but potentially also a dozen years in jail.

For a few breathtakingly terrible weeks the scandal seemed to be spiralling out of government control, the duration of Clarence’s sojourn overseas increasing in direct proportion to the crisis. At its inception it was announced: ‘With respect to the proposed visit to India of Prince Albert Victor, it has been arranged that his Royal Highness shall arrive in Bombay early in November.’ To which The Freemason added on 5 October 1889: ‘It has been decided that Prince Albert Victor shall extend his visit to Burmah, the newly acquired territory of the Empress Queen. This will so considerably prolong the trip, that His Royal Highness will not be able to return to England for at least six months.’

And it might require longer than that. On 19 November the Washington Evening Star reported: ‘Ten days ago, it looked as though official pressure was going to succeed in hushing up the tremendous aristocratic scandal … there was a general feeling it would never get into the courts. Now the prospect is different.’

The public were becoming truly disgusted with this charade, particularly in light of an announcement that ‘costly apartments being fitted up for Prince Albert Victor in St. James Palace’ were to be funded at the pleasure of the taxpayer. ‘It has become obvious,’ summarised the Washington Evening Star ,

that there has come to be in the past few days, a general conviction that this long-necked, narrow-headed young dullard was mixed up in the scandal, and out of this had sprung a half whimsical, half serious notion, which one hears now proposed about Club Land, that matters will be so arranged that he will never return from India. The most popular idea is that he will be killed in a tiger hunt, but runaway horses or a fractious elephant might serve as well. What this really mirrors is a public awakening to the fact that this stupid, perverse boy has become a man, and has only two lives between him and the English Throne.61

And the seat of kings was what it was all about. Nobody gave a toss for this effete little useless pederast – that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t Albert Victor caught with his trousers down in Cleveland Street, it was an entire ruling ethic, the thing you waved your flag at – a class of the few enjoying unspeakable privilege at the expense of the many they despised. The Establishment didn’t give a monkey’s who P.A.V. buggered, they’d known about Cleveland Street for years. It was the fact that it had leaked out that freaked them, and they were stupefied with anxiety at the damage this could do to the world’s greatest conjuring trick.

If anything happened to Edward, his son was what they got. His tutor, John Neale Dalton, had described ‘an abnormally dormant condition of mind’. At Cambridge University, to which the dope was sent, one of his instructors doubted whether he could ‘possibly derive much benefit from attending lectures’, as he ‘hardly knows the meaning of the word, to read’.62

However, at all costs, the absurdity of reverence for this twerp had to be maintained. A sudden coronary for his father, Fat Ed, was very much on the cards. Gluttony was his pleasure, and his pleasure was out of control. When he sat down to eat it was a virtual suicide attempt. ‘He is a very dangerous guest,’ complained a Permanent Secretary. ‘He once got into Lord Cairns’ dining-room, and ate up the Judge’s luncheon.’63 Trained handlers in Marienbad and Baden Baden had failed to solve his gut. Plus, there was the fornicatory urge in the groin whose onslaught he could not negotiate – men got swindled of their wives in the bedrooms of their own country houses. But it was in Paris that Edward got into full adulterous stride. Fluent in several languages, he spoke German better than English (he had a thick German accent64), adored all things Parisian, and had a keen interest in French furniture.