In the original dustsheet. Black cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feel and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

In November 1970 an article in an obscure British journal made the startling claim that the notorious mass-murderer, Jack the Ripper, had been none other than Queen Victoria’s grandson, Prince Albert Victor, Heir Presumptive to the British throne. Although this bizarre theory was subsequently dismissed, rumours about the long-forgotten figure of Prince Albert Victor – always known as Eddy – began to gather force. With each telling, they became wilder. Out of this welter of conjecture, claim and counterclaim, there emerged one accusation that cannot be dismissed. This is the story of Prince Eddy’s alleged involvement in another Victorian cause celebre – the Cleveland Street brothel case. For the uncovering of this homosexual brothel in 1889 led to an extraordinary cover-up by the British government; a cover-up which is explicable only in the light of Prince Eddy’s involvement.

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 police acquired testimonies that Lord Arthur Somerset, an equerry to the Prince of Wales, was a patron.  Both he and the brothel keeper, Charles Hammond, managed to flee abroad before a prosecution could be brought. 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.

The scandal fuelled the attitude that male homosexuality was an aristocratic vice that corrupted lower-class youths. Such perceptions were still prevalent in 1895 when the Marquess of Queensberry accused Oscar Wilde of being an active homosexual.