August 10, 1888 --- Western Justice

In Missouri, a young Englishman hangs for murder.

Two Englishmen, Hugh Brooks (right) and Lawrence Preller, met aboard a ship headed for the States. Brooks is 24 and a family disappointment; he was on his way to New Zealand.  He had studied a little law and some medicine and was traveling under the name of Dr. Walter Maxwell.  Preller was in his 30's and a carpet salesman, bound for Australia. A shipboard friendship and - apparently - a homosexual one, blossomed.  They decided to cross America together; arriving in St. Louis they took a room at the Southern Hotel in St. Louis in early 1885. One day, "Dr. Maxwell," drank heavily at the bar and then left the hotel, rather in a hurry.

Two weeks later, hotel maids found Preller's decomposed body in a steamer trunk. Since Brooks/Maxwell's' travel plans were well-known, he was arrested in Auckland upon his arrival and returned to the USA for trial. Brooks made the claim that Preller had died from an accidental overdose of chloroform prior to a hotel room operation for a "private disease." He had then fled in panic: "Put yourself in my place ... a stranger alone in a vast land ... and tell me what you would have done! Probably just what I did." A post mortem determined that Preller had been strangled and they found no evidence of disease,

The damning witness against Brooks was a cellmate who testified that Brooks had admitted to killing Preller, quoting him: "I thought I'd just fix him for his meanness and get his money too." The jailhouse snitch was actually a railway detective who was planted in the same cell with Brooks. The New York Times condemned the "breezy unconventionality" of Western justice which was "not defensible upon any theory of morals accepted outside of Missouri." In London, The Saturday Review agreed: "No honorable man would for any sum ... perform such service as was expected from this detective." The issue went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court: "This court is unable to find that [Brooks] has been deprived of any right, privilege or immunity guaranteed to him by the Constitution of the United States." Appeals for mercy, through the British Embassy, are unavailing.

With sickly pallor, Brooks walks to the noose, leaving a "Letter to the People of England." Sneering at the "great boasts" of American justice, he complained of "the unlawful, unjust and unfair way in which I have been treated."

The photograph of Brooks appears at murderbygaslight.blogspot.com

August 9, 1870 --- To Have and To Hold

The Married Women's Property Act receives the Royal Assent, a halting first step toward ensuring a woman's right to control her own finances.

English law and, to many, God's as well, had ever held that upon marriage, a husband might tell his wife, "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine, too." In 1869, in his book "The Subjection of Women," the reformer John Stuart Mill had written: "The wife is the actual bondservant of her husband ... She can acquire no property but for him; the instant it becomes hers, even if by inheritance, it becomes ipso facto his."

Previous reform efforts - despite petitions bearing as many as 25,000 signatures - had failed. The new law allows a woman to retain as hers any earnings acquired after her wedding day, including earnings through literary efforts, real estate, and inheritances up to £200. The House of Lords had a jolly time gutting the bill. Lord Westbury drew cheers suggesting a wife with her own income would only squander it on "any number of bracelets." Even a supporter of the legislation predicted it would be no hardship as the husband could still maintain control of his wife's money through "kicks or kisses." Lord Penzance, Chief Justice of the Divorce Court, warned that a wife with her own means might enter business with a partner "who need not be a woman."

Ironically, it wasn't the average Lord who had anything to fret about; his estate and likely that of his wife too, being strictly entailed and jealously guarded by the family solicitor. Lord Cairns, who sponsored the bill in the Lords, conceded it was for the benefit of the "humbler classes," women who needed protection from the designs of "intemperate, idle or dissolute husbands."

The Times hailed the new act as benefiting "one half the human race." Still, many were disappointed in the law's limited application, among them Wilkie Collins, whose novel "The Woman in White" sensationalized the plight of the wife of an unscrupulous husband: "Being an act mainly intended for the benefit of the poor, it was, of course, opposed by the House of Commons at the first reading, and largely altered by the House of Lords—it is, so far, better than no law at all."

In 1882, the law was amended to add a woman's right to any property she brought to the marriage at the time of her wedding.

A cartoon by the artist Martin Anderson, from spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk

August 8, 1868 --- The Moonstone

The final installment of Wilkie Collins' Classic mystery, The Moonstone, appears in All the Year Round, a weekly edited by the author's great friend, Charles Dickens.

Large crowds had gathered each week at the magazine's offices for the latest installment in the tale of the disappearance of the fabulous yellow diamond and the sinister forces conspiring to recover it. More than a few bets were taken on the solution to the mystery.

Modern critics have actually been kinder to Collins than his contemporaries. Dorothy Sayers, creator of the aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, calls Moonstone, which introduces the plodding rose-loving Sergeant Cuff, "probably the very finest detective story ever written." T.S. Eliot proclaimed it "the first, the longest, and the best of modern detective stories." Yet, in 1868, the critic in The Pall Mall Gazette, who had wearied of "sensation" novels with more puzzle than plot, groaned, "Is this, then, what fiction has come to?" The public. however, was less jaded.  Sales of the weekly soared and the hardbound edition quickly went into a second printing.

Collins' achievement is the more remarkable when considering his private life. While he was writing the novel, his lost his mother and collapsed himself with the gout. Only by treating himself with massive doses of opium, did he never miss a deadline. Interestingly, the denouement of the story involves an experiment in which a character doses himself with opium. Guilty of "writing-under-the-influence," Collins told a friend, "When it was finished, I was not only pleased and astonished at the finale, but did not recognize it as my own!"

The Moonstone was the apogee of Collins career. As his popularity waned, he increasingly relied on his drugs, drinking laudanum by the wineglass. He died in 1889; a recluse, haunted by phantoms, he rarely left home, taking exercise dragging himself up and down stairs.

A sketch that appeared in the Penny Illustrated Paper in 1868.

August 7, 1851 --- The Hyde Park Squatter

A last pathetic appeal on behalf of Mrs. Ann Hicks, the so-called "Hyde Park Squatter," is heard and dismissed in the House of Commons. Arrested in the Park in July for selling refreshments outside the Crystal Palace, home to the Great Exhibition, she was released on her word to go and sell no more.

She would not go easily. Instead, she wrote to The Times to appeal for public aid, as "I have many foes." For years, Mrs. Hicks had lived in the Park, making a few pence selling fruits and drinks. At first, she had refused to make way for the Exhibition. The Duke of Wellington himself, Her Majesty's Ranger of the Parks, had ridden over to her "home" near the Serpentine and promised her the grand sum of five shillings a week for a year in compensation. When the money proved inadequate, Mrs. Hicks re-appeared in the Park, purveying ginger-beer to the parched.

Mrs. Hicks had become a celebrity. "A Stroller in the Park" wrote The Times to insist "Anne Hicks is part of Hyde Park." Col. Charles Sibthorp MP, the gadfly critic of the Exhibition, took up her case in the House. He calls the treatment of Mrs. Hicks a "gross act of cruelty." Mrs. Hicks made the claim - albeit just recently - that her grandfather had actually rescued the future King George II from the Serpentine back in 1733. As a result, a grateful monarch had granted her family life tenancy in the Park.

Lord Seymour answers for the Government, laughing off the Royal anecdote and arguing that her cottage was an impermissible encroachment, "however virtuous or excellent." The Commons quickly moves on to other business and Mrs. Hicks is soon forgotten. A public fund, however, brought in enough contributions to afford Mrs. Hicks transit to Australia to join her son.

For one of only a few moments in his long life, the great Wellington found himself in bad odor. His role in the eviction of the poor woman - while his great mansion, Apsley House, stood undisturbed in the very same park - was not without its irony. The hitherto unknown North London Anti-Enclosure Society wrote him demanding an explanation. The Duke's secretary sent a haughty reply. "The Duke purchased from the Crown his property in Piccadilly; Mrs. Hicks is neither more nor-less than a squatter." The Society was also informed that His Grace declined to continue "any epistolary correspondence."

PUNCH summed up the matter in pithy doggerel:

Moral of the story:
To titled Rangers large amends
Impartial Justice makes,
But little to the dame that vends
Poor ginger-pop and cakes.

August 6, 1849 --- Lola & the Lieutenant

On the arm of her young husband of but three weeks, the infamous Lola Montez surrenders at Marylebone Police Court to answer a charge of bigamy.

In July, Lola had married Lt. George Heald, of the 2nd Life Guards (At Prince Albert's urging, he was promptly expelled from the regiment). Born Eliza Gilbert in Limerick in 1818, Lola's lovers had included an array of noblemen and artists, including Franz Lizst. Most recently, she had been mistress to old King Ludwig of Bavaria, who rewarded her with a peerage, the Countess Landsfelt. His extravagance on her behalf soon prompted a rebellion (students chanted "Perish the whore!") and Ludwig's abdication.

Once in London, she soon latched on to the 20-year old Heald and his considerable expectations of £7000 a year. Clubland wits riddled: Why is a certain young officer like a shoe? Because he is "Heald" and "sold." The bigamy charge is pressed by the lieutenant's spinster aunt and guardian, Susanna Heald.  Auntie's goal is to "remove this deluded young man from the fangs of this woman." She charges that Lola is still legally married to an officer in the Indian Army, with whom she eloped in 1837. Lola calls the charge "rubbish" and tells the magistrate, "I don't know whether Capt. James is alive or not and I don't care." While the lawyers argued, Heald stood by Lola's side, "with the Countess's hand clasped in his, occasionally giving it a fervent squeeze." The newlyweds are freed on bail.

Within days however, The Times published evidence confirming the previous marriage. The Healds failed to appear at their next hearing, their discomfited counsel explaining "a precipitate journey to France was necessary for the benefit of her health." Alas, the romance waned. By November, they had separated. In Barcelona, Lola went after her husband with a knife and Heald, "objecting to such a display of conjugal affection, promptly quitted the town."

The besotted young fool, Lt. Heald died young, at 27 of consumption, although Gentleman's Magazine suggested a broken heart may have been the real cause of death. As for Lola, she left for America; first New York and then settling in California.  She continued to "entertain." On a tour of Australia, her spider-dance in Melbourne was so erotic it was denounced as "utterly subversive to all ideas of public morality."  She returned to New York where she died of a stroke in 1861.

A rather demure portrait of Lola painted pre-bigamy by Joseph Karl (1847).

August 5, 1885 --- The Member for Chelsea

Sir Charles Dilke - a leading Liberal MP and on the shortlist to succeed the aging Gladstone as party leader - is served with papers naming him a co-respondent in a sensational divorce.   A Tory MP, Donald Crawford received anonymous letters about his wife's alleged philandering.  One letter read: “Beware the Member for Chelsea,” Dilke’s London constituency. 
 
Crawford would tell the Divorce Court that when he confronted his wife, Virginia, she admitted: “The man who ruined me was Charles Dilke.”  But, beyond her word, there was no actual proof of Dilke’s involvement and taking legal advice, Dilke opted not to testify.  Mrs. Crawford had been unfaithful with others and her husband got his divorce.  The judge declared, “I cannot see any case against Sir Charles Dilke.”   It proved a disastrous “victory.”  The unfriendly segments of the press wondered why Sir Charles had not demanded the opportunity to clear his name.  The Pall Mall Gazette said Dilke's career could not remain under such a “black and hideous suspicion.”  Dilke finally asked that the divorce be reviewed by the office of the Queen’s Proctor.  It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. 

Victorian divorces were granted conditionally, a decree nisi.  During the time period before a decree absolute was issued, any member of the public could ask the Queen’s Proctor to determine if the divorce should be prevented for any reason, usually fraud, connivance or condonation.  Dilke’s appeal came on before the Queen’s Proctor in July, 1886.  The Crawfords, desperate not to be re-linked, were vigorously represented.  When Dilke did finally take the stand, he funked it.  He rambled, evaded and “forgot.”  His appointment diaries, with key portions “cut out,” were certainly not helpful.  Then, the blushing ex-Mrs Crawford took the stand, asking “My Lord, is it necessary that I should give all the details?”  And, with what was described as “marvelously little embarrassment,” she did.  She gave dates, locations, and floor plans.  She accused Dilke of introducing her to “every French vice” including a threesome with a maid named Fanny.  The latter had conveniently “disappeared.” And, to gasps in the courtroom, she testified, “Sir Charles told her he had been her mother’s lover, and that she was very like her mother, that being why he had taken a fancy to her.”  The jury took a quarter-hour to put a final stake in Sir Charles Dilke’s career.  It is no wonder that a friendly newspaper deadpanned:  “It would have been far better if the case had not been reopened.” 

The keeper of the Dilke papers says the Crawford divorce was the most notorious politico-social drama of the 19th Century.  Was Dilke framed?  No brief survey can even turn the first wheel within the wheels of the sinister conspiracy Dilke partisans insist was set in motion to crush him.  The villain, to many, was his rival for Mr Gladstone’s chair, Joe Chamberlain.  Chamberlain stood best man at Dilke’s wedding and Dilke himself thought Joe C was “incapable of such treachery.”  But why was Mrs Crawford seen skulking from Chamberlain’s home only days before confessing her adultery to her husband?  In later years, Mrs Crawford converted to Catholicism and unburdened her sins and secrets upon her confessor.  He’s not talking.

Dilke was soon no longer the member for Chelsea.  He did return to the House in 1892 but was never again a figure of any influence in politics.  So, who was Sir Charles Dilke?  Was he, in the words of the Crawford’s counsel, “a coarse brutal adulterer more befitting a beast than a man?"  Or, was he, as he told his rapidly dwindling band of supporters, “A sick and sleepless man supported by a sick and sleepless wife … crushed by a monstrous slander.”

August 4, 1866 --- An Upsetting Review

One of the most famous of all bad reviews sends its victim into a fit of madness on the streets of Mayfair. Whilst strolling down Dover Street with his publisher, Algernon Swinburne stops into a bookshop to purchase that day's Saturday Review.  The influential weekly is to review his new collection, Poems and Ballads.

Reading the magazine at first silently, Swinburne suddenly is literally dancing in anger and shrieking profanity. His companion drags him into a restaurant, all the while urging him to swear in French so as confuse his audience. Nothing can calm Swinburne and he's soon asked to leave the establishment. The critic has dismissed Swinburne's effort as something "a professional vendor of filthy prints might blush to sell if he only knew what they meant."

The 29-year old Swinburne's collection celebrates everything from lesbian cannibalism to medieval necrophilia, amid heavy doses of sado-masochism, or as the reviewer calls them, "nameless shameless abominations." A sample:

Ah that my lips were tuneless lips, but pressed
to the bruised blossom of thy scourged white breast

The review is unsigned but it is certainly the work of the editor John Morley, who had known the poet at Oxford. The critic [Morley] labels Swinburne "the libidinous laureate of a pack of satyrs ... [who] has revealed to the world a mind all aflame with the feverish carnality of a schoolboy." Nor was Saturday Review alone; The Athenaeum declared that Swinburne was "unclean for the sake of uncleaness." Punch even took a playful jab at the man they dubbed "Swine-born." The Times was prepared to call for both the poet and the publisher to be prosecuted under the obscenity laws. Swinburne's publisher withdrew the work the very next day.

Swinburne found a new publisher, the infamous John Hotten, whose speciality was "erotica" of all types, including works of the "flagellation" school, a special interest of his newest author. Only a few literary men stood by Swinburne; Ruskin, among them, wrote. "All I can say ... is that God made you, and that you are very wonderful and beautiful."

When Swinburne heard rumors that Carlyle had made unfavorable remarks about the work, he was outraged.  He wrote the aging Scot, "Could the private parts even of a prostitute rotted with disease ever be fouler than your tongue?"

It was five years before Swinburne's next major collection was published.

A painting of the poet by William Bell Scott