February 21, 1868 --- A Missing Clergyman

The Rev. Benjamin Speke, whose disappearance from the heart of London had given rise to great fears (and/or ribald speculation) is found alive in distant Cornwall.  The brother of the famed Nile explorer, John Speke, the clergyman is the rector of a small parish in Devon. On 8 January, he came to London to officiate at a wedding but vanished within hours of his arrival. The only trace was his crumpled hat found in Birdcage Walk, St. James Park. A £500 reward brought in no helpful information.

Londoners wondered fearfully how a vigorous 35-year old man could be abducted from the shadows of Westminster without anyone so much as seeing or hearing a thing. The police take the usual criticism for failing to solve the case or find a body. The less reverent suggested that the cleric had lost himself in the sinful pleasures of the great city. Even his friends suggested he suffered from a mania of some sort which led to "his unwillingness to marry."

All becomes clear in Padstow, when police stop a suspicious bullock driver. In his case, they find numerous disguises and religious writings and the man confesses to being the missing parson. Rev. Speke - described as being calm, composed but dejected - explains that he had hoped to go somewhere where he would not be known, to preach the Gospel to the laboring classes. For weeks, he wandered the Channel coast, reading his Bible on the rocky beaches. A policeman told the Press that Speke "seems to entertain peculiar religious views."

While the Rev. Mr. Speke is apologetic, The Times is quite vexed; the paper chastises the cleric for causing "poignant distress" among his friends while having "terrified the more timid part of the public." Placed in the custody of his family, Rev. Speke was back at his church outside Ilminster by mid-April, "with the permission of his medical advisers."

He conquered that unwillingness to marry.  In 1881, his wife died and he drowned himself the following day. The local paper noted that the Reverend suffered from "hypochondriasis in a very depressing form."

February 20, 1876 --- The Aylesford Affair

A "Dear Joe" letter from home launches the scandalous imbroglio dubbed the "Aylesford affair."

While traveling with the Prince of Wales in India, "Sporting Joe," the 7th Earl of Aylesford, receives a letter from his wife signalling her wish to elope with Lord Blandford, eldest son of the Duke of Marlborough. The Duke had separated from his wife and had been all but living with Lady Edith in her husband's absence. "Sporting Joe" wires his mother: "Send for the children and keep them until my return. A great misfortune has happened." It was only the beginning.

Aylesford returned to London, bent on divorce and spreading word of the Prince's condemnation of Blandford as "the greatest blackguard alive." Lord Randolph Churchill, with typical haste, lurched to the defense of his elder brother brandishing compromising letters the Prince himself had written to Lady Aylesford. Going to the Princess of Wales, Randolph suggests that the release of the letters will insure that "the Prince will never sit on the throne of England."

The Queen, shielded perhaps from the more sordid details, nonetheless called it a "dreadful, disgraceful business." The infuriated Prince, by now on his way home, sent word of his willingness to meet Lord Randolph on the duelling grounds of northern France; a challenge Lord Randolph dismissed as absurd.

Obviously, this could not go on. Prime Minister Disraeli was called in. The Prince's letters were retrieved and burned. The Aylesfords and Blandfords were commanded to reconcile, which both couples did, albeit, in each case, briefly. Disraeli arranged for the Duke of Marlborough to get the post of Irish Viceroy, with the proviso that he take Randolph along as Private Secretary, removing the offending son from society.

The Prince had put out the word that he would not meet Lord Randolph socially - an estrangement that did not end until 1886. By then, "Sporting Joe" had died of drink in, of all places, Big Spring, Texas, where he owned a ranch. Lady Aylesford's son was not allowed to succeed to the title when it was proven that Lord Blandford was the boy's most likely father.

(Illustration of Lady Edith Aylesford)

February 19, 1882 --- Dining with the Prince

The Prince of Wales is host at Marlborough House to a large party honoring favored representatives of the West End theatre community. The guest list includes the great actor-manager, Squire Bancroft, who had earned the Prince's everlasting thanks by casting his former paramour, Lily Langtry, in her first professional role.

Lily had opened in a play called Ours at the Haymarket Theatre on 19 January and the Prince had already been to see the it twice. Written by Tom Robertson, the play is a rather dated effort about the Crimean War; in her memoirs, Lily recalled the play as " silly & old-fashioned." Reviews are kind; the critic from The Illustrated London News is typical, gushing: "most charming ... I unfeignedly believe she will succeed."

Separated from her recently bankrupt husband, Lily's search for a suitable career is motivated by her need for an income. Her first impressions of the theatre life are unfavorable and she soon began "deploring the urgent need of money that had obliged me to abandon my previous mode of life." As one of London's reigning "Professional Beauties," the 26 year old Lily is no ordinary ingenue. Prime Minister Gladstone frequently joined Lily for pre-performance suppers, imparting advice on dealing with critics, "Bear them, never reply." Oscar Wilde wrote the play Lady Windermere's Fan for her although she thought she was too young for the title role.

Despite the reputation of the acting set, the Prince's good friend Lord Carrington thought the dinner was rather a "dullish evening" enlivened only briefly by the well sozzled actor William Kendal "who distinguished himself by singing a very vulgar song which was not favorably received in high quarters."

Squire Bancroft was to be knighted by the ever grateful King Edward VII.  He never regretted bringing Mrs. Langtry before the footlights, recognizing that she had "achieved success far beyond that derived from mere curiosity."

February 18, 1876 --- An Assisted Suicide Thwarted

A curious ad appears in The Daily Telegraph: "To Medical men in need of money, or students well up in chemistry and anatomy. A gentleman engaged in an interesting experiment is willing to give liberal remuneration for professional assistance." 

The advert was signed only W.Q.  A medical student named William Vance replied.  He received a letter back from William Quaril offering £100 if Vance could provide him with sufficient deadly poison to discreetly kill himself.  "It is not absolutely essential that the supposed means should be painless, or even very quick in their results."  In a lengthy exchange of letters, Vance finally agreed to supply chloral.  He helpfully suggested that the man mention to friends that he had a sleeping problem.  The death, when it came, could then be marked off to an unfortunate overdose rather than felo de se.  Alas for the correspondents, a letter was misdirected and opened by the postal authorities who notified the police. 

William Vance was arrested, as was "Mr. Quaril," who was, in fact, Mrs. Helen Snee, a young and  beautiful mother of two who lived in North London with her husband, a traveling beer salesman.  She was a woman of fragile physical and mental health with a "presentiment of an early death."  With her husband often away, she became involved with a local literary set.  She was the personal muse for John Payne, an attorney and hopeful poet.  The latter's biographer writes "out of this frail looking, poetical, ethereal woman, Payne fabricated a goddess." He dedicated a volume of poems to her; the book did not sell well. 

Payne now came forward to defend his "poor little friend" at the Old Bailey.   Mrs. Snee was portrayed as an overwrought, depressive woman who really had no intention of ending her life.  As for Vance, he made the case that he merely intended to take the money and run.  He received an 18-month sentence.  Mrs. Snee got six months.  Justice Mellor spoke sharply that Mr. Snee needs to spend more time with his family.

After her release from jail, she returned to her husband but her presentiment was right.  In the spring of 1879, she died at the age of 34.  The cause of death: phthisis and exhaustion.

February 17, 1856 --- Suicide of a Banker

A body is found on frozen Hampstead Heath, near a bog behind the pub Jack Straw's Castle.  From papers, the dead man is identified as John Sadlier, a respected Irish banker and MP for Sligo. The body is cold and stiff and at its side lay a bottle of "Essential Oil of Almonds" clearly labeled POISON.  He was 42.

At first, the news is greeted with shock. Described as "ambitious to an extraordinary degree," Sadlier had amassed a fortune through investments in railroads and banking, yet he lived simply and shunned the fashionable world. Friends attribute his suicide to overwork; "the unfortunate man's brain had become overexcited by the multiplicity and extent of his speculations." The Sadlier myth is shattered at the inquest with the reading of a letter he'd had left behind at his London home in Gloucester Square. In part, he wrote: "I cannot live. I have ruined too many. I could not live and see their agony." He had just learned that his largest creditor had discovered that many of the securities he held for Sadlier's debts were forgeries.

Within days of Sadlier's death, his Tipperary Bank collapsed, taking to ruin thousands of depositors, most of them poor folk from Ireland's West Country. Angry mobs besieged the local banks but to no purpose but the venting of their anger and tears.  Sadlier had lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in the collapse of the railway mania, especially abroad. The Ulster Banner reported: "The feeling of sympathy produced by the first announcement of his fate has been succeeded by a universal burst of indignation." Citing a line from Sadlier's note, "Oh! that I had resisted the first attempts to launch me into speculation," The Times adds, "There are many of the English public who would do well to lay seriously to heart the dying words of John Sadlier."  When Dickens created Merdle, the unscrupulous financier in Little Dorrit, the member for Sligo served as his model.

Curiously, although Sadlier's body was identified at the inquest, many of his victims suspected he'd faked his death somehow and fled to foreign parts to live and enjoy his tainted fortune. As late as 1868, The Times reported that "half Ireland" still believed the legend.

(From the biography, written by James O'Shea - Geography Publications 1999.)

February 16, 1841 --- A Trial in the House of Lords

For the only time in Victoria's long reign, a peer of the realm is placed on trial before the House of Lords. Amid medieval ceremony, James Brudenell, the 7th Earl of Cardigan, more than a decade before his heroics at Balaclava (see 25 October), pleads not guilty to a charge of attempted murder.

The commanding officer of the aristocratic 11th Hussars, Cardigan had shot and grievously wounded a junior officer in a duel on Wimbledon Common the previous September. The duel stemmed from a bitter feud within the officer's ranks of the Hussars, also known as the "Cherry Bums," owing to their tight red trousers. "The Black Bottle Affair" is in full swing; Cardigan had court-martialed a young Captain for placing wine on the regimental table in a bottle he thought "more suited for a pot-house." When The Morning Post published a series of letters from "An Old Soldier," attacking Cardigan, the Earl discovered and challenged the author, Lt. Harvey Tuckett "to afford him satisfaction." Tuckett was shot in the chest while Cardigan was unhurt.

So reviled is Cardigan, that police and the Scots Guards were called out this day to keep order in the streets of Westminster.  Inside, the trial is a farce. The indictment accuses Cardigan of having wounded Harvey Garnett Phipps Tuckett. But Cardigan's attorney, Sir William Follett produces the card which the wounded man gave police, it reads "Capt. Harvey Tuckett." Follett declares: "There is no evidence whatever to prove that the person at whom the noble Earl is charged to have shot upon the 12th of September was Mr. Harvey Garnett Phipps Tuckett." On that ludicrous basis, the Lords unanimously acquit their fellow Peer. The Times denounced the proceedings, suggesting they would only support "the opinion, most dangerous to the aristocracy, that in England there is one law for the rich and another for the poor."

In the evening, the insouciant Cardigan takes his wife to a concert at Drury Lane. After thirty minutes of hissing from the pit, he returns to his home in Portman Square.

February 15, 1894 --- An Anarchist Strikes in London

Less than fifty yards from the Royal Observatory at Greenwich Park, a bomb explodes prematurely killing a young French anarchist.

Some passing schoolboys are first on the scene; they find the man kneeling and bleeding. A park ranger arrives to hear the horribly mutilated man mutter, "Take me home." Taken instead to a nearby hospital, he dies within the hour. The man was soon identifed as 26-year old Martial Bourdin, born in Tours, now living in London and described as "an ignorant sad little fanatic of a tailor." His brother said Bourdin would only occasionally talk politics and seemed to hold no anarchist views. Yet Scotland Yard quickly traced the dead man to the Autonomie Club, in the Tottenham Court Road, the headquarters in exile for anarchists and terrorists from across Europe.

The Club had recently issued a manifesto which proclaimed, in part, "In a struggle like this we hold that all means - however desperate - are justifiable." The incident stuns Britons who had felt themselves safe from the wave of anarchist violence that was sweeping the continent. The Times hopes that police will be much more vigilant in tracking such "cosmopolitan desperadoes," adding, "It is possible to carry the theory of 'liberty for everybody on British soil' a little too far." In Paris, where an anarchist had recently thrown a grenade into a crowded cafe - a grenade traced to the Autonomie Club - the French press sneers at the "tardy awakening of conscience" across the Channel, now that the bombers have struck closer to home.

Scotland Yard undercover agents raided the Autonomie two days after the Greenwich Park explosion questioning the inhabitants but confiscating nothing more dangerous than copious quantities of anarchist pamphlets. Bourdin's funeral in Finchley was a "silent and melancholy" affair. A large crowd actually hooted and stoned the modest funeral procession. No graveside speeches were allowed.

Joseph Conrad used the Greenwich incident, loosely, in his novel, The Secret Agent.

(Sketch from The Graphic)