Cleveland Street scandal
The Cleveland Street scandal occurred in 1889, when a homosexual male brothel on Cleveland Street, 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. The government was accused of covering up the scandal to protect the names of aristocratic and other prominent patrons. The scandal fuelled the attitude that male homosexuality was an aristocratic vice that corrupted lower-class youths.
About Cleveland Street scandal in brief
The Cleveland Street scandal occurred in 1889, when a homosexual male brothel on Cleveland Street, London, was discovered by police. 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 certain social ostracism 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, though this has never been substantiated. Unlike overseas newspapers, the British press never named the Prince, but the allegation influenced the handling of the case by the authorities and has coloured biographers’ perceptions of him since. The scandal fuelled the attitude that male homosexuality was an aristocratic vice that corrupted lower-class youths. 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. A seventeen-year-old youth had revealed to the police that Veck hadimproper conduct with the messenger boys. The police arrested Veck at London Waterloo railway station. In his pockets they discovered letters from Algernon Algarnon to his parents at his parents’ home in Sudbury, Suffolk. On 11 September, Veck and Newlove were committed for trial for receiving money from Hammond for having a sexual relationship with him and working at Cleveland Street for Hammond.
On 22 August, police interviewed Somerset for a second time for a time after which he was taken to Bad Homburg, where the Prince was taking his summer holiday. The case was adjourned for two weeks until September 11, when Veck was found guilty of receiving money for sex from Hammond and sentenced to six months in prison. The trial was later adjourned until September 15, when the prosecution of Veck, Newlove and Hammond was completed. The men were sentenced to a total of eight months in jail, with the sentence suspended for a year and a half if they paid a fine of £1,000. In the end, the men were all acquitted of all charges and the case was settled out of court by a jury of three men. The boys were all released on bail and Veck went on to work as a messenger boy at the London Central Telegraph Office for the rest of his life. He was later found dead in his sleep at his London lodgings, but his body was never found. He had been found in possession of 14 shillings, equivalent to several weeks of his wages. In July 1889, a Police Constable Luke Hanks was investigating a theft from the LondonCentral Telegraph Office. He found a boy named Charles Thomas Swinscow, who worked as a prostitute for a man named Charles Hammond, who operated a brothel at 19 Cleveland Street. The boy told him that he was introduced to Hammond by a General Post Office clerk, Henry Newlove. Newlove named Lord Arthur Somerset, an equerry to thePrince of Wales, as well as an army colonel by the name of Jervois.
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This page is based on the article Cleveland Street scandal published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
