January 18, 1898 --- "Sir Tom Tea"

More than a few eyebrows are raised by the knighthood awarded to Thomas Lipton; even the Queen thought him a "mere grocer."

Since opening his first shop in Glasgow in 1871, Lipton had become one of Britain's wealthiest men and, thanks to unabashed self-promotion, he possessed of one of the best-known names in the realm. In the 1880's, he began the annual stunt of importing "the world's largest cheese" from America. Each year, the cheese wheel got bigger. In 1887, for the Queen's Jubilee, he privately offered to donate the cheddar to feed London's poor. When the Palace demurred, Lipton went public with his disappointment, displeasing Her Majesty greatly.  In 1897, for the Diamond Jubilee, he quietly donated 25,000 pounds to a "feed the hungry" campaign headed by the Princess of Wales. When that gift was accepted, Lipton soon allowed his identity as "mysterious benefactor" to be unmasked. 

When the knighthood was announced, The Spectator thought it was an "error in judgement" on the Queen's part: "If Mr Lipton had received a baronetcy at any other time we should have raised no objection, but his knighthood follows so closely upon his gift of 25,000 pounds for the Princess of Wales' ill-advised dinner to the slums that it looks as if the dignity had been bought."  The clubland wits dubbed the new Knight "Sir Tom Tea" to distinguish him from "Sir Tom Whisky," Sir Thomas Dewar. 

"Tom Tea" paid no mind to the carping. As a friend and biographer wrote, he had long ago moved beyond "the high-hatted swells of London."  Lipton was now moving in the circle of wealthy entrepreneurs surrounding the Prince of Wales.  Lipton and the Prince shared an interest (and a wager or two) in the sport of yachting. Sir Thomas' Shamrock unsuccessfully challenged for the America's Cup in 1899. He tried again - losing each time - in 1901, 1909 and 1913. Eventually, his pal, the Prince (later King Edward VII) was able to convince the snobbish gatekeepers of the Royal Yacht Club to admit the "little tradesman" to their select number.

January 17, 1879 --- Charley Peace

Charley Peace, the so-called "Gentleman Burglar," stands in the dock at Sheffield on a murder charge.  In a dramatic courtroom confrontation, the dead man's widow, brought back from America, identified Peace as the man who killed her husband three years before. Peace is already facing life in prison for wounding a London constable who'd found him burgling a home. 

A master of the thieving trade, Peace had posed as Mr. Thompson, a violin-playing suburban gentleman of refined tastes.  "Mrs. Thompson" was any of a series of mistresses.  Short of stature, and deformed from a childhood accident, Peace was nonetheless a man of extraordinary strength, agility and daring, almost always making his burglarious entrance through an upper story window. Once he was in custody, his reputation seemed to grow.  The illustrated papers were fascinated with the "gargoyle-faced little villain." 

The attention proved his ruin when he was recognized as a man wanted for murder in the Midlands. While living in Sheffield in 1876, Peace had briefly won the affection of a married woman named Katherine Dyson.  She sought to end the affair and moved with her husband to Bannercross.  Peace turned up with a gun, sneering, "You see, I'm here to annoy you wherever you go."  Hearing his wife's screams, Arthur Dyson came out of the house and Peace shot him through the head.  During the woman's testimony, Peace began shouting, "Justice, I must have justice." 

Whilst being transferred by rail for one of his many court appearances, Peace made a break by leaping from a speeding mailtrain.  He was badly injured but survived to see his trial which ended with a guilty verdict and a death sentence.  After a last meal of "bloody rotten bacon," Charley Peace was hanged at Leeds prison.

The Times concluded, "The energy, the daring, the ingenuity of the man are neither to be denied nor despised," but any interest or sympathy in this bad man was totally unreasonable.  Let him now be treated to "wholesome neglect."

January 16, 1890 --- An Editor Jailed

Ernest Parke, the editor of The North London Press, is found guilty of libel; his radical weekly with its small circulation was the first to name names in the Cleveland Street scandal. A male brothel had been discovered in that street serving a posh clientele. The courts had quietly dealt with the scandal, dealing out heavy sentences for the young men who were employed - many of them were "telegraph boys" from the General Post Office. 

Under the headline: "Distinguished Criminals who have Escaped," Parke published the listed the names of the Earl of Euston and Lord Arthur Somerset.  The latter was personal equerry to the Prince of Wales.  His Vanity Fair caricature appears at the right.  Even Parke did not have the nerve to publish any claim that the Prince's son, the Duke of Clarence, had been seen at the establishment.  As it is, Lord Arthur - known as "Podge" to his mates, was given the head's up to get out of the country (q.v. March 3). 

The Earl of Euston remained in London to fight the charge.  The Earl, eldest son of the Duke of Grafton, and married (unhappily) to a showgirl, was better known for his heterosexual amours.  He admitted to having been to Cleveland Street on only one occasion.  He went out of "prurient curiosity."  However, once he determined the nature of the goings on at that address, he left immediately in disgust. The defense for editor Parke relied on the testimony of a male prostitute by the name of John Saul.  His testimony was "unfit for publication."  Saul identified Lord Euston in court and claimed that he had picked him up "as I have picked up other gentlemen."  However, Saul had earlier told police that Euston was a man of ordinary height; the Earl stood 6-foot-4.  Further, Saul's demeanor in court and the nature of his evidence, did not make him a very creditable witness.  Justice Hawkins, indeed, called him a "loathsome object."  The jury found editor Parke guilty of libel and he received a one year sentence without hard labor. 

Fellow newspaper man Frank Harris thought Parke was victim of the "toadying" nature of the English bench. "Had Lord Euston been Mr. Euston of Clerkenwell, his libeller would have been given a very small fine." The respectable press, however, is gleeful.  The Saturday Review, for instance, labeled Parke a "polecat" whose readers "lust, first, for personal news; secondly, for dirty personal news; thirdly, for dirty personal news about persons with titles.  He gives it to them; and the law has given him twelve months imprisonment.  This is excellent."

January 15, 1867 --- The Regent's Park Tragedy

An appalling tragedy occurs in Regent's Park when the ice on the Ornamental Pond, near Sussex Terrace, suddenly breaks, spilling hundreds of skaters into the deep, chilly waters.  It will be several days before all the bodies can be recovered; the final death toll will exceed 40. 

Eyewitnesses report that the ice fairly exploded, the rapidly spreading crack "shooting with sharp reports in every conceivable direction." With understatement, one account noted: "The consternation and alarm of the skaters on the ice may well be imagined." The fortunate are close enough to shore or able to hold on to one of the larger pieces of ice.  The unlucky vanish quickly.

The British Medical Journal suspects that death came quickly as the faces of those retrieved from the depths are "placid ... expressing neither horror nor convulsive struggling."" The bodies are taken to a nearby workhouse which will serve as a morgue. The dead are mostly common London folk out to enjoy a bright winter's day: a publican's son, a costermonger, even a butler from nearby Hanover Terrace. A huge crowd gathers as searchers drag the water with hooks looking for the dead. The Illustrated London News comments that the onlookers were largely "roughs ... the air seems to carry to this class the scent of blood." A large black dog maintained a hopeless vigil for his lost master for days, refusing food, his "piteous cries" were heard through the night. 

There will be an inquest but the basic cause is obvious to all: too many people on too thin ice. The pond had been closed to skaters the day previous and in the morning papers of the 15th, there are several warnings about the ice, calling it "very unsafe."  However, the park workers are simply unable to control the crowds, most of whom probably never saw a newspaper.  The Illustrated concluded: "The true offender is the public ... who have no self-restraint. and who, if they have common sense, invariably allow it to be silenced by their love of amusement or excitement." Adds The Daily News: "If only we could give up just enough of our native bounce to enable us to perceive that recklessness is not courage or prudence cowardice."
[Sketch from the Penny Illustrated Paper]

January 14, 1892 --- Death of the Duke of Clarence

"Eddy," Duke of Clarence, eldest son of the Prince of Wales, second in line to the throne, succumbs suddenly to influenza at 28. He had caught a chill while hunting which quickly led to pneumonia, delirium and death. His parents are devastated. The Prince told the young man's grandmother, Queen Victoria, "Gladly would I have given my life for his." 

While the family's grief is undeniably genuine, Eddy had been a major disappointment.  He was a sickly youth and a poor student - his tutor said he had an "abnormally dormant" mind!  As a soldier, all he cared about were the uniforms. A stiff prig, he had well earned the nickname "Collars & Cuffs"  His dissipated private life was a closely guarded secret.  Certainly no British newspaper dared mention Eddy's involvement in the Cleveland Street Scandal (q.v. January 16) but the London correspondent of the New York Times wrote: "This stupid perverse boy has become a man ... and is an utter blackguard. It is not too early to predict that such a fellow will never be allowed to ascend the British throne; that is as clear as anything can well be." Add to that the sensational claim (convincingly dismissed) that the Duke may have been somehow involved in the Jack the Ripper murders and one can understand the basis of the conspiracy theories that Eddy might have been "put out of the way." 

At the time of his death, Eddy's life seemed to be improving.   The courts of Europe had been frantically canvassed for a suitable bride.  More than one German princess, not a notably selective group, turned down a chance to be a future Queen of England.  There was great relief the previous December, when news was announced that Eddy was engaged to Princess May of the tiny principality of Teck.  Six weeks later, he was dead.  After a suitable period of mourning, the patient May - 24 and quite plain - took the hand of Eddy's younger brother, the future King George V.  In public, Eddy is widely mourned.  The poet laureate, Alfred Austin's tribute ode concluded: 

Youngest of England's ancient line, Hope of a people's heart, your promised King and mine.

While the stricken Queen thought Eddy's death an "awful blow to the country," the royal biographer Sir Philip Magnus would later call it a "merciful act of Providence."

January 13, 1857 --- The Great Train Robbers Brought to Justice

Some eighteen months after the baffling "Great Train Robbery," the daring thieves stand trial in London.
In 1855, gold worth 12,000 pounds, on its way to the troops in the Crimea, vanished somewhere between London and Paris. No trace had been found while the mysterious perpetrators of this spectacular crime won grudging, almost romantic, respect.  Suddenly, in late 1856, from behind bars, for passing a bad check, the mastermind confessed.  Edward Agar, a veteran schemer, although facing transportation for life, is motivated by revenge as there had been the inevitable falling out among thieves.

Before a hushed courtroom, Agar details how he planned the robbery with William Pierce, an ex-employee of the South-East Railway.  For a year, they traveled the London-Folkestone line, studying the operation.  They recruited a railway guard, Burgess, who let Agar into the very gold van itself.  When the SERR suddenly changed its keys, a clerk named Tester provided one key and for the essential second, Pierce stole into the office at Folkestone to make a late night impression.  The theft was flawless; gold exchanged for bags of shot of equal weight. The bandits, with their unusually heavy "luggage" returned to London where the gold was melted down in a cauldron in Agar's flat.  Then came Agar's unrelated arrest.  He had left Pierce with 3000 pounds in trust for Fanny Kay, a former SERR clerk and mother of his child.  When Pierce squandered the money, Agar sang. 

Burgess and Tester - for breaking their employer's trust - were transported for 14 years apiece.  Pierce, only an ex-employee, received a lighter two year term.  He also received the hisses of the packed Old Bailey courtroom when the judge declared, "A greater villain than you are does not exist."  As for Agar, the "criminal genius" he is told that had he dedicated even a tenth of his energy to honest pursuits, by now he would have been raised to a respectable situation.  Instead, he was transported for life. 

The Spectator worried about the shocking disloyalty of the railway staff and the oft-expressed admiration for the audacity of the criminal classes: "The worst sign is a general indifference to the distinction between Right and Wrong.  It might be the premonitory symptom of national decay."

[Movie poster for the 1979 film based on Michael Crichton's novel.]

January 12, 1898 --- Sir Tatton and Lady Sykes

The eccentric "Lord of the Yorkshire Wolds," Sir Tatton Sykes is sued by a London moneylender to whom the Baronet's wife owes 16,000 pounds.  Daniel Jay, who lends at the usurious rate of 60% interest, holds promissory notes allegedly signed by Sir Tatton.  The latter disclaims them as forgeries.

Sir Tatton and Lady Jessica have been married for 24 years, he is thirty years her senior. He prefers to remain at Sledmere, his estate in the East Riding, where he raises horses and restores churches. She prefers London where it is whispered "Lady Satin Tights" has squandered a million pounds on drink, gambling and the stock exchange.

In the words of Sir Tatton's counsel, "A case more painful to an English gentleman could not be imagined." The baronet testifies that for years his wife has forged his name to notes and he finally took the step of announcing in The Times that he would no longer be responsible for her debts. Lady Sykes insists that the signatures are genuine, suggesting Sir Tatton is addled enough not to remember what he has signed.  She complains of his parsimony and tiresome arguments over pin money.  Most memorable, however, is her description of Sir Tatton's peculiarities, e.g. rather than pay to heat Sledmere, Sir Tatton began each day wearing two pairs of pants and six coats, shedding them as the temperatures rose and vice versa.  Even his defenders must acknowledge that Sir Tatton is "extremely whimsical."

Despite hours of testimony from handwriting experts, the trial comes down to Sir Tatton the man, not his signature. In the words of his lawyer, after years of feeding his wife's extravagances, the time had come at last when "this had to be stopped."  For the other side, the jury is told that Sir Tatton would rather dishonor his wife than honor her debts.  In less than an hour, the jury (all men, of course) ruled the notes to be forgeries.  The Spectator, although declaring a "more sordidly discreditable suit was never heard," nonetheless refused to subscribe to the "irrational astonishment created by the fact that while the world has been so advancing in intelligence, individuals within it have remained as bad as ever."

The Sykes lived out their unhappy marriage until both died shortly before World War 1.

[Caricature from Vanity Fair]