Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00I'm Susanna Lipscomb. I'm a historian and I'm fascinated by the history of the royal family.
00:09I'm not just interested in the pomp and circumstance, but in the less respectable
00:14side of the story. I mean, this is just shocking. This is shocking. From medieval to modern times,
00:23our monarchs have been at the centre of scandals throughout history. I want to understand what
00:30makes a scandal. The public would be absolutely astonished at the level of involvement that the
00:37royal family have. And what role the press, parliament and the public played in generating
00:44outrage and rumour. Who do you think did it? I'll be investigating some stories you might know
00:51and some you might never have heard of. He feels like the key suspect. Absolutely. But
00:58at the time, they were the talk of the town. There's very few people that could survive in
01:03a 19th century asylum. Sorry, it's awful. From marriages to infidelity, opulence to suspicious
01:12deaths, I want to discover how bad judgment, bad behaviour or even bad luck led to some of
01:20history's biggest royal scandals.
01:22We've always been fascinated by tales of royal sex and infidelity. Centuries ago, such stories
01:48filled the pages of chronicles or was spread in news pamphlets. Today, of course, we just
01:53need to look on the internet. It's interesting to think about how acceptable behaviour has
01:58changed over the centuries. Traditionally, it was thought fine for a king to have mistresses,
02:02but of course, never a queen. Thirty years ago, tales of royal love affairs were spread over
02:06the newspapers. And today, we perhaps like to think we're a little more high-minded. But truth
02:12be told, we're as preoccupied by royal love lives as we always have been.
02:20I think we expect more from people in positions of great privilege and authority than perhaps
02:29we do from ourselves. When somebody has wealth and privilege and power like that, it is further
02:34compounded by, could you not at least keep it in your pants for a bit?
02:41When it comes to newspapers, editors have always known that sex sells. Veteran journalist
02:48Stephen Bates has covered some of the biggest royal sex scandals over his long career.
02:55Stephen, being here on Fleet Street is the appropriate location to talk about how the papers have covered
03:02some of the biggest royal sex scandals in recent decades. Why do you think the public are so
03:09fascinated by what the royal family gets up to? They're the most famous family in the land.
03:15You've followed their progress from babyhood right through adolescence, first marriage,
03:21oh, first marriage, and then second marriage. Do you think there's a sense of schadenfreude,
03:28a sense of joy at these people facing a bit of a comeuppance because they're so famous and wealthy?
03:35Of course there is, and that's precisely why newspapers are fascinated.
03:42Whether it's rumours of affairs from hacked phone calls, long lens photos of a holiday liaison,
03:48or allegations of far worse. Sometimes the royal family seems to be filling the front pages
03:57for all the wrong reasons. But that doesn't mean they're without a way of fighting their corner.
04:05When a scandal breaks, what the royal family have in their arsenal is they have other stories.
04:11So there's a constant trade-off that's going between the courtiers, the people that work
04:17for the royal family and the newspaper editors like, if you don't print this, we'll give you this.
04:22But that is absolutely going on all the time. I just think the public would be absolutely astonished
04:28at the level of involvement that the royal family have indirectly with the press and their complete
04:35frenzied need and desire to control the press narrative at all times.
04:41Over the centuries, many monarchs tried to keep their private lives away from the scrutiny
04:48of the public, often with very limited success. But there was one king who didn't seem to care
04:55at all if news of his exploits reached his subjects. In fact, they rather set the tone for his entire reign.
05:03King Charles II was nicknamed the Merry Monarch with good reason. He oversaw a royal court
05:16obsessed with overindulgence and the pursuit of pleasure. But it was the behaviour of his numerous
05:24lovers that was the real scandal. Charles II had lived an eventful life by the time
05:33he became king in 1660 and was 30 years old. The first decade of his life had been spent at the
05:39court of his father, Charles I, and his mother, Henrietta Maria. But following defeat in the Civil War
05:46and the execution of his father when he was just 15, young Charles was forced to spend nearly 10 years
05:53as a penniless, homeless exile in Europe. So when he was finally proclaimed king in 1660,
06:00he was determined to have a good time.
06:06Historian Dr Linda Porter is going to help me discover exactly how Charles and his court earned
06:12its scandalous reputation. Isn't it lovely, Linda? It's an amazing sight. It disappears into the distance
06:21as far as the eye can see. In 1662, Charles brought his new queen, Catherine of Braganza,
06:29to Hampton Court for their honeymoon. But Catherine would soon discover that her married life would not
06:35be an easy one. This seems like a rather lovely place to come for a honeymoon.
06:42It seems very romantic, doesn't it? Catherine and her husband came here to spend the summer and the
06:50court moved with them. So there would have been a lot of people here during those summer months.
06:57And unknown to her, there was going to be something else. There was a royal mistress here.
07:02Perhaps to misquote someone more recently, that there was someone else in this marriage.
07:07And that someone else was Barbara Palmer. Barbara Palmer was King Charles's first royal mistress.
07:16Although she was nobly born, her family had lost their lands and wealth during the Civil War.
07:21But Barbara was not someone to let her unfortunate circumstances hold her back.
07:30Even though she was recently married, she soon caught the eye of the King.
07:34She met Charles perhaps very soon after his return to London and became his mistress within
07:42certainly a matter of a month or so, if not weeks or so. I don't think one can ever accuse Barbara
07:47Palmer of having been self-effacing. It just wasn't in her nature.
07:53Although many male monarchs had taken mistresses, these relationships had usually been discreet.
07:59But Charles didn't care who knew he was having an affair and Barbara herself had never shied away
08:07from doing exactly what she wanted.
08:12You find her in the late 1650s with her friend, another royalist lady of rather ill repute,
08:23writing to the Earl of Chesterfield suggesting a threesome.
08:26It's a very important part of the King Charles.
08:29Which I think is probably one of the earliest recorded in British history.
08:34She says, you know, my friend and I are waiting for you at this place above a coffee shop,
08:37and we were, you know, essentially giggling to each other about what we do when you got here.
08:44And when she became the King's mistress, Barbara refused to keep a respectively low profile.
08:50Instead, she publicly flaunted both her growing wealth and her huge influence over Charles.
08:58Enemies were driven into exile, the royal treasury used like a personal bank,
09:03while the obsessed King seemed unwilling to do anything that might upset her.
09:08The public, however, was less than impressed.
09:11How was she perceived? How did people see her?
09:17But people didn't like her, and she never troubled about this in the slightest.
09:21It wasn't her aim to be popular, particularly with other women.
09:25Being such a controversial figure, and so in people's faces, if you like,
09:32she was written about and criticised in ways which, to me, I think,
09:38make modern Twitter trolling seem positively amateurish.
09:41Barbara's position as the King's mistress was roundly criticised and viciously mocked.
09:52Diarist John Evelyn called her the curse of our nation,
09:56while a misogynistic popular ballad compared her to a dog that needed to be spayed.
10:02In print, in rhymes, in poetry, she was discussed and people thought of her as the original sort of loose woman.
10:18When her husband was made Earl of Castlemaine for services to the Crown,
10:23everyone knew that it was really Barbara who was being rewarded for her royal service to the King.
10:28But Charles's extramarital antics were not confined only to Barbara.
10:35In fact, she had dozens of rivals, all vying for his affections.
10:43Next, public disapproval grows and one of Charles's royal mistresses plays dirty.
10:50She had a minor rival whose sweetmeat she laced with laxative.
10:58She had a major role in the King Charles II.
11:07While King Charles II had been living in exile in Europe,
11:10he had spent time at the French court,
11:12where the role of chief royal mistress was almost regarded as an official position.
11:19It was this public acceptance that Charles tried to replicate once back in Britain.
11:23As well as Barbara Palmer, Charles had around ten other official mistresses during his reign,
11:31though some of them at the same time.
11:35What was the general culture towards mistresses, having a mistress at this time?
11:40Was it disapproved of, or was it accepted as something a king would do?
11:45I don't think it's the fact that he has a mistress, or even a string of them perhaps,
11:50that's quite so scandalous, but who these women were and how they behaved in public.
11:55Just like Barbara, Charles' later mistresses also used their position as his lover to gain power,
12:04wealth, and influence.
12:07The King happily indulged them, even if the gossip they generated was sometimes quite shocking.
12:14Louise de Queral hosted political
12:16soirees, despite rumours that she was a spy.
12:22Hortense Mancini fought a mock duel in a royal park,
12:27wearing nothing but her nightgown.
12:31And not all of the King's lovers were nobly born.
12:36Tell me about Nell Gwynne, then.
12:37She seems to have been of a different class to the other mistresses.
12:41It was claimed subsequently, and I don't think she ever denied this,
12:46that she was brought up in a brothel.
12:48It was a completely different childhood from any of Charles' other mistresses.
12:55And what brought them together was the theatre.
12:59Nell was a successful actress who had caught Charles' eye when he'd seen her on stage.
13:04She was apparently a brilliant comedian.
13:07I think it's a force of personality and this sort of cheerful vulgarity
13:12that attracted Charles to her.
13:14He would never have met her had it not been through the theatre.
13:20Although Nell was more popular with the public than most of Charles' lovers,
13:25critics believed that the King allowed his numerous love affairs
13:28to distract him from the important affairs of state.
13:32To many of his subjects, Charles seemed obsessed with sex and the pursuit of pleasure.
13:39One commentator noted,
13:42The King and the court were never in the world so bad as they are now
13:45for gaming, swearing, whoring and drinking,
13:48and the most abominable vices that ever were in the world.
13:56But that wasn't the only problem Charles had to contend with.
13:59What I want to know is how did these mistresses get on with each other?
14:05There seems to have been so many of them overlapping.
14:07Overlapping, yeah. Mostly they couldn't stand each other.
14:10Louise de Carroëlle detested Nell Gwynne.
14:14Nell Gwynne had a minor rival in another actress,
14:18Moll Davis, whose sweetmeat she laced with laxatives shortly before
14:23an encounter with Charles II, which apparently rather ended the liaison,
14:29at least at that particular point in time.
14:32Barbara Palmer couldn't stand Nell, whom she called a pathetic strolling player.
14:39None of these women really liked each other.
14:41But despite overseeing a court awash with scandal, Charles himself remained popular.
14:50When Charles died, Barbara Palmer, Louise de Carroëlle, and Hortense Mancini were all nearby.
14:59As a commoner, only Nell Gwynne was absent.
15:02But Charles had not forgotten her.
15:07One of his dying wishes was, let not poor Nellie starve.
15:19Charles II was hardly the last monarch to have several mistresses.
15:24But a couple of centuries later, one royal would push
15:27what was considered acceptable behaviour to its limits.
15:31His scandalous sexual exploits were such that they would alienate his empress mother
15:37and would land him in a court case that would shock Victorian society.
15:53Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, known to the world as Bertie,
16:02and later as King Edward VII, was Queen Victoria's long-standing heir.
16:08On paper, Bertie embodied everything that tight-laced Victorian society despised.
16:15He loved gambling, he took lovers, he spoke French and sounded German,
16:20and he had little interest in the British Empire.
16:24But despite these very un-Victorian character traits, Bertie was popular with the public.
16:30But even a prince could only push the accepted social norms so far.
16:36And ultimately, it was this clash between Victorian values and Bertie's lifestyle that produced not only
16:43a scandal but a crisis. As Prince of Wales, he became the only royal in history to end up in court.
16:52So what forced him to take the stand?
16:56Although Bertie performed his royal duties with dignity, he also had a reputation as a playboy.
17:02A trendsetter when it came to men's fashions, Bertie was well known for his love of fine food and a good drink.
17:13He also had an eye for the ladies.
17:17Although he was honourably married to the beautiful Princess Alexandra in 1863,
17:22and they quickly conceived six children in succession, Bertie continued to stray again and again.
17:30And knowing that a woman was married didn't stop his advances.
17:35It's rumoured that he had something like 55 affairs with different women,
17:40including the socialite Alice Keppel and the actress Lily Langtree.
17:45Both Alice and Lily's husbands knew about their affairs with Edward,
17:51and reportedly made themselves scarce whenever the prince called.
17:58Bertie was even a regular visitor at the Paris brothels,
18:02where he is alleged to have his own purpose-built sex chair.
18:07When we think of the Victorians, we like to think of them as being really sexually repressed and prudish.
18:12And there was certainly that aspect to their culture.
18:16And despite the fact that there were people who were, you know,
18:19offended by the word trousers and freaked out by the merest flash of ankle,
18:24these are also the people that invented photographic pornography.
18:29It was expected that a royal would have sex,
18:33but it was much more that, just be discreet about it.
18:37I mean, they called him Dirty Bertie, for God's sake.
18:39They knew he was romping his way across Europe with pretty much impunity, really.
18:46And it was kind of the subject of body drinking songs and jokes, so people knew.
18:53But it was Bertie's recklessness that was almost his comeuppance.
18:57And when the details of one sordid affair involving Sir Charles and Lady Harriet Mordaunt
19:03hit the front pages, Bertie even ended up in court and people took notice.
19:13Historian Dr Jennifer Astin is helping me unravel how Bertie ended up in the dock.
19:18Sir Jen, who were Sir Charles and Lady Harriet Mordaunt?
19:25So, Sir Charles Mordaunt is a landowner in Warwickshire and he's also been an MP for the county twice.
19:31And Harriet Mordaunt was born Harriet Moncliffe and she was one of eight children,
19:34so she's one of seven sisters, who are all famed society beauties.
19:38But the couple were not well matched. While Charles loved to ride and hunt,
19:45Harriet adored the exciting London social scene.
19:49Part of her worry about marrying Charles was that she wouldn't be bored and she wouldn't be
19:54stopped from seeing her friends. Charles doesn't like London, doesn't like high society,
19:58and deliberately takes himself away from that.
20:02Charles and Harriet married in 1866 and the couple moved into Charles' home,
20:08Walton Hall in Warwickshire. But the marriage of two such different people was never going to be
20:15straightforward. So, let's talk about Charles and Harriet's marriage. What was it like?
20:25I think they had different expectations of what their marriage was going to be.
20:30Harriet had one idea of what her marriage was going to look like and, to all intents and purposes,
20:35that was going to be a continuation of her London life. She might spend more of her time in Warwickshire,
20:39but she would be bringing her London friends to Walton Hall.
20:42So, how was she spending her time?
20:44She had a number of close friendships with men and she was socialising with them in a way that wasn't
20:52considered appropriate by the standards of the day.
20:57In upper class Victorian society, a woman was expected to be chaperoned whenever in the company
21:02of a man who was not her husband or a member of her family.
21:08So, she was visiting them and they were visiting her in rooms alone. They were coming and they were
21:13telling the servants not to disturb them and they would stay there for kind of up to an hour, you know,
21:17an hour and a half, two hours. So, for sustained periods of time and that just wasn't done. If a
21:22man wasn't your husband, you shouldn't be left alone with him.
21:28By spending time alone with male friends, Harriet was playing a very dangerous game.
21:34And one of these men was Bertie, Prince of Wales.
21:41He began visiting her in London and he would come deliberately, kind of incognito, in a handsome
21:46cab rather than arriving as the Prince of Wales. He was arriving in quite a secretive manner.
21:52So, that kind of surreptitious behaviour looks immediately suspicious.
21:56Yeah, it immediately raises suspicions. I mean, even now looking back.
22:00And he would also visit her at Walton Hall when Charles was away.
22:06So, one of Charles' Warwickshire neighbours, Lord Dudley, had said to him,
22:10do you know that the Prince of Wales is visiting Harriet on her own when you're away?
22:15And also, you really need to be aware of what kind of man he is,
22:19and essentially someone that you wouldn't want your wife to be alone with.
22:24Although Bertie had known Harriet and her family socially for many years,
22:28he was also aware of the risk he was taking with her reputation.
22:33And this all came to a head, didn't it? What happened?
22:36So, the Prince of Wales has arrived once again when he expects Charles to be away,
22:40and he had gifted Harriet two white ponies to drive in a carriage, and Harriet loved these ponies.
22:49Harriet was demonstrating her equestrian skills while Bertie watched.
22:53But what happened was, Charles returns home, he sees Bertie stood in the doorway, realises that he shouldn't have been there.
23:03Charles was furious, seeing the Prince alone and unchaperoned with his wife, and ejected him from the grounds.
23:11Then he turned his anger on Bertie's gift.
23:13And he takes the ponies in front of Harriet and he shoots them both dead.
23:20Well, Charles may have been provoked, but that is a pretty awful reaction.
23:26You can't get away with shooting two ponies and, you know, the scandal that must have been around that without people talking, surely.
23:36No, and there's also, there's different levels of talking that's going on as well.
23:40So, obviously we have the kind of aristocratic players in this, but we also have staff.
23:45And so there's levels of sort of gossip within the aristocracy itself.
23:49But there would also have been sort of a network of rumours starting to spread.
23:57Next, a Prince does his best to make a scandal go away.
24:01I find that utterly horrifying. This woman's life is totally destroyed.
24:18Whatever the age, gossip concerning the sexual activities of a member of the royal family has always spread quickly.
24:25From formal Victorian drawing rooms to the servants' quarters, news of the shocking events at Wharton Hall rapidly began to spread.
24:39We have rumours going around. We have suspicions. How does it get to court?
24:45Well, the other rumours that are going around at the same time is that Charles is unable to father a child.
24:50Harriet does fall pregnant and when the baby's born, it's born prematurely.
24:55We have a daughter named Violet and she's very small and she quite quickly develops some disease of the eyes.
25:04Now, Harriet seems to panic and immediately starts to say that the baby is not Charles's,
25:12that the baby is actually one of the other men that she's had a close friendship with.
25:19Harriet feared her baby was suffering the effects of a sexually transmitted disease
25:24that she had passed on to her during pregnancy.
25:28And she knew that one of her secret male visitors, Sir Frederick Johnson, was rumoured to be infected.
25:35So, Harriet panics and, out of guilt it feels like, makes this association between her daughter's ill health and her past.
25:47There's also a slight problem when she counts back the days to when the baby was conceived.
25:53This is when Charles is actually in Norway on a fishing trip.
25:55When Harriet is panicking and naming people who might be the father of Violet, who does she mention?
26:04So, she mentions several people, Lord Cole, and we have Sir Johnson and the Prince of Wales.
26:14And that's, I think, then ties into what Charles already knows about the people who have been visiting her.
26:19So, at this point, Charles thinks, I'm going to divorce her.
26:23Yes, absolutely.
26:26It seemed that Bertie's philandering ways had finally caught up with him.
26:32On the 16th of February, 1870, the divorce case went to trial, amid huge public interest.
26:42Ah, what have we got here?
26:43So, we've got some documents here that will tell us more about the case, the divorce case itself, and also how it was reported in the press.
26:51So, if we look first at the illustrated police news here, you'll see a pictorial depiction of literally every stage in the case.
26:59So, the very first image you can see is the royal visitor, so the Prince of Wales, visiting Harriet in her home.
27:06And you can see by the proximity that it's an intimate scene.
27:10They're not being so bold as to say that there was a physical relationship, but you can see that it was a close relationship.
27:17And then we see Harriet literally in her childbed, confessing everything.
27:24By telling Charles that another man was the father of their child, Harriet had admitted to adultery, providing grounds for divorce.
27:33To avoid this, her family claimed she was suffering from a mental illness, brought on by childbirth.
27:39If they could prove she was insane, nothing she had said could be used as evidence, and the divorce claim would be rejected.
27:47But as the two sides prepared their cases, one key witness was missing from the court.
27:52What we don't see is Harriet in that situation.
27:58Instead, her head is, her portrait is painted above, is pictured above those men.
28:03And the reason for that is that she is never in court.
28:06So, she doesn't have a voice at all in these proceedings.
28:10That's fascinating and horrifying at the same time, isn't it?
28:14Because here's her life being decided, but she doesn't get a chance to say anything about it.
28:18No, and the reason for that is because Harriet's father, Thomas, comes and takes guardianship, along with one of her uncles.
28:25And so they represent her in court.
28:27So, her voice isn't heard either in the courtroom, it's not heard in the divorce petition itself.
28:34She never has a chance to answer to say what's happened.
28:37And it clearly is a scandal if it's appearing in the press like this, and this is literally front page news.
28:42Oh, absolutely.
28:43You can see here the key players.
28:45So, we have Lord Cole and we have Johnson.
28:48So, they are the two men who are cited in the divorce petition as co-respondents.
28:53So, that means the people who Charles is accusing of having extramarital affairs with his wife.
29:01But there was one name missing from the list of co-respondents.
29:06Berties.
29:07And crucially, we've got HRH, Prince of Wales, in the witness box.
29:14And that is crucial that he's in the witness box.
29:16He's not named, despite being one of the people who Harriet names as being, you know, her adulterous partners.
29:24He does not appear in that same context as Lord Cole and Sir Johnson.
29:30He appears only as a witness.
29:31And why is that?
29:32Long story short, it's incredible efforts of Buckingham Palace and the government.
29:38So, Prime Minister Gladstone and the royal family exert huge pressure on Sir Charles Mordaunt to drop him as a named co-respondent.
29:48Despite Bertie's well-known reputation for having affairs with married women, the establishment did not want that accusation made on record in court.
29:57His testimony would now be used to shed light on whether Harriet was delusional when she named him as one of her lovers.
30:07But even being associated with the case was deeply embarrassing for the prince.
30:12Even the fact that he is in the witness box is scandalous enough.
30:16And it's the first time a member of the royal family has appeared as such.
30:22A huge crowd gathered to hear Bertie's evidence.
30:27When, finally, he was asked if there had ever been improper familiarity with Harriet, Bertie answered, there had not.
30:36He left the court to a round of applause.
30:40Jen, what is the outcome of the case?
30:42So, the outcome of the initial divorce case is that it's rejected because the reason being that the jury that was convened to decide whether Harriet was insane or sane finds that she was insane and the judge decides that as she was insane she therefore hasn't confessed to adultery at all.
31:00She has voiced delusions and so the divorce can't go ahead.
31:03But the Mordaunt divorce case had still cast unwanted light on Bertie's adulterous behaviour.
31:12This is a huge scandal, isn't it?
31:15Oh, absolutely.
31:16The press reported widely and this was picked up by, you know, newspapers literally all around the world so it was a global news story.
31:24Four years later, Lord Lowry Cole admitted to committing adultery with Harriet and Charles Mordaunt successfully divorced her on the grounds of infidelity.
31:35Is Lord Cole bought off by Mordaunt do you think?
31:39I suspect it's not so much that he's bought off by Mordaunt but I think that he's probably bought off by the Prince of Wales and potentially Charles Mordaunt as well.
31:47There's enormous pressure for Lord Cole to fall in line and to take the hit.
31:55Harriet pays the price but I guess the question is, do you think that she and Bertie ever did have an affair?
32:05I don't know is the honest answer.
32:07I change my mind quite regularly on whether I think she did.
32:11I suspect she did and I suspect that she did with the other men that she named as well.
32:17But I also don't think that she had any intention of ending her marriage.
32:22I think she was from a social set where infidelity, providing it was done discreetly,
32:28was almost an expected part of marriage and Harriet just didn't realise perhaps the full implications of what might happen.
32:39No aristocratic family would risk their estate being passed to anyone who might not be of their blood.
32:45A man might have an affair but ruin would face any young wife to whom rumours of infidelity stuck.
32:55What happens to poor Harriet?
32:58Harriet's life is horribly tragic and I want to point out that she was only 21 when all this happens in 1869.
33:07So she was married at 18 and the divorce proceedings against her start when she's 21.
33:13She's incarcerated in an asylum, judged to be insane, and that continues.
33:21Serious postnatal mental health issues were not understood by the Victorian medical profession.
33:27Even if Harriet were suffering from a condition such as postpartum psychosis,
33:33which can bring about anxiety and delusions, her chances of sympathetic or effective treatment were extremely limited.
33:44There are some records from her daughter's household as she grows up that show her visiting.
33:50So we know that she comes out for small periods of time,
33:53but by and large the rest of her life is spent in an institution until her death in 1906.
34:01I find that utterly horrifying. This woman's life is totally destroyed.
34:06Yes, yeah. Her reputation, her freedom, her mental health, because if she wasn't
34:13ill before she went into that situation, I think there's very few people that could survive decades
34:18in a 19th century asylum and not be significantly affected in some way.
34:24Sorry, it's making me emotional.
34:38For the first time, Bertie's extramarital affairs and apparent disregard for the accepted
34:44Victorian social standards affected his popularity with the public.
34:48When he appeared at Ascot that year, he was booed.
34:56But new stories would soon sweep away his temporary unpopularity.
34:59In the same year as the Mordant case, Bertie's baby son, Prince John, died a few hours after birth.
35:07And then Bertie himself became desperately ill with typhoid. The image of his beautiful wife,
35:13Princess Alex, praying for his recovery, stirred, as one historian has put it, the nation's heart.
35:19Now he could be perceived as an atoning sinner who had experienced a miracle, saved and now holy.
35:28But in fact, Bertie continued his philandering ways.
35:31When he was crowned King Edward VII in 1901, his long-term mistress, Alice Keppel, continued to play a prominent role at court.
35:42But throughout his life, Queen Alexandra remained by his side.
35:49If anyone in this story embodied the lauded Victorian values of sexual fidelity,
35:54and a stiff upper lip, it was probably her.
36:04Next, a royal prince is dragged into a sex scandal so shocking, it leads to a huge cover-up.
36:11What better way than to mention a member of the royal family being involved in this scandal,
36:17to cross it in the newspapers?
36:24However hard the palace tried to keep their names out of the papers,
36:31historically, just being a member of the royal family is sometimes enough to land you on the front pages.
36:41The thing about scandal is that it doesn't have to be based on truth.
36:46One of the best examples of this is the story of Prince Albert Victor, known to all as Prince Eddie,
36:52Queen Victoria's grandson and second in line to the British throne.
36:58In 1889, a huge sex scandal broke. Not only was a member of the royal household implicated,
37:05but Prince Eddie found his name also dragged into the story.
37:11At the center of the scandal was a homosexual brothel.
37:15So to Victorian society, the revelations were truly shocking.
37:18The official party line was not great when it came to Victorian attitudes to homosexuality,
37:27but that doesn't mean that there weren't loads...
37:30Of course there were gay people, of course there were gay people, lesbians, trans people,
37:34and everything that exists today existed then.
37:37But the penalties could be very, very harsh.
37:40A new law, passed in 1885, had made any act of gross indecency between men punishable by two years in jail.
37:51This covered any and all sexual activities between men.
37:55Even the accusation of such a liaison could potentially land somebody in prison.
38:01Until that point, you'd have to be charged and convicted of sodomy, which was very difficult to prove.
38:08And it was a horrible, horrible, horrible piece of legislation, and this act was in force until 1967.
38:17Lord Arthur Somerset was head of the royal stables and a friend of Edward, Prince of Wales.
38:24And in 1889, a newspaper named him as one of many aristocrats whom police believed had been visiting an exclusive male brothel.
38:33So, Glenn, why have you brought me to Cleveland Street?
38:35Author Glenn Chandler is going to help me unpick the story
38:39and discover how Prince Eddie was dragged into the mix.
38:46So, Glenn, why have you brought me to Cleveland Street?
38:49Cleveland Street was where the infamous brothel was situated.
38:53If you could go back in time now, you would see carriages pulling up with gentlemen in top hats and overcoats
39:02who would step out, they'd look around them furtively to make sure nobody was observing them,
39:07and they'd sneak quietly into the brothel.
39:11Discreet and exclusive, the Cleveland Street brothel only catered to the very wealthiest men in Victorian society.
39:18So, if it was being so well kept as a secret, how did it come out? How did they get found out?
39:27Well, the scandal broke when a telegraph messenger boy was found with 14 shillings in his pocket.
39:36Telegraph messengers were boys and young men who worked for the post office, delivering telegrams across the capital.
39:42When inspectors discovered Charles Swift had the equivalent of several weeks' wages in his pocket,
39:49they instantly suspected theft.
39:54There was a branch of the post office called the missing letter branch.
39:58It had nothing to do with missing letters, but it had to do with theft and had to do with criminality.
40:02Luke Hanks, who was a post office investigator, said to the lad,
40:06you know, where did you get this money from?
40:08So he said, I got it for doing more work away from the post office.
40:13And naturally, he was asked what kind of work he did.
40:16And he said, well, I got it for sleeping with gentlemen at the home of Mr Hammond at 19 Cleveland Street.
40:22This boy wasn't a common thief at all.
40:26The police identified 60 suspects connected to Cleveland Street.
40:31They included peers of the House of Lords, military officers and members of high society.
40:36But what name was missing from their initial investigations?
40:43Now, you've mentioned Lord Arthur Somerset being in royal employment.
40:47But that feels like quite a small connection for this to have gone down in history as a huge royal scandal.
40:51Well, it really became a royal scandal when the name of Prince Albert Victor Edward was mentioned, was dragged into it.
41:01It's reputed that his name was dragged in by a solicitor named Newton, Arthur Newton.
41:18Now, Newton was handling the case for Lord Arthur Somerset, tried to get him out of the country, tried to get him, you know, not prosecuted.
41:28At the start of the investigation, Somerset had been identified by the police as a key suspect.
41:33If convicted for gross indecency, he could face two years in prison.
41:41How could he escape prosecution?
41:43What if the case were too hot to handle?
41:47So scandalous that it couldn't be made public and couldn't be tried.
41:53At this point, somehow, Prince Eddie's name entered the fray.
41:57What better way than to mention a member of the royal family being involved in this scandal to crush it in the newspapers?
42:05His was a desperate attempt to say, look, you know, don't go, don't go anywhere, don't go any nearer to this story.
42:13How interesting. So today, you mention a member of the royal family, and it will mean it's certain to be covered.
42:19But back then, it meant it was untouchable.
42:21It was untouchable.
42:22One of the prosecution team got wind of Eddie's possible involvement and realised they mustn't go near it.
42:31He writes a memo, which is now in the National Archives at Kew.
42:36And he mentions PAV, Prince Albert Victor, might be involved in this case, and suggests that they tread very, very carefully.
42:46And if you look at this document now in the archives, it's got big double red lines everywhere saying, warning, warning, warning.
42:56So the initial investigation went almost unreported in the press.
43:01But one newspaper, the North London Press, did eventually print the names of those involved.
43:07It still didn't dare name Prince Eddie outright.
43:10But when they mentioned a highly placed person, people could join the dots.
43:15The fallout was one of the biggest scandals of the Victorian era.
43:20Royalty was involved, aristocrats were involved, members of parliament were involved, members of the House of Lords were involved.
43:29The rumours about Prince Eddie visiting a male brothel, that was what was so scandalous about it.
43:35The North London Press editor who printed the names of those involved, Ernest Park, was sued for libel and sentenced to one year in prison.
43:47None of the men who visited the brothel were ever prosecuted.
43:50But perhaps what's most shocking about the Cleveland Street scandal today is that, despite the Victorians being horrified by the stories of homosexual activity among the upper classes,
44:03it was far less concerned by the young age of many of the boys involved.
44:09Many were in their early teens.
44:12Was there any evidence that Prince Albert Victor, Prince Eddie as he was called, was involved beyond the word of this solicitor?
44:24There is no actual evidence. Everything is very circumstantial.
44:28All the players escaped.
44:30Lord Arthur Somerset was allowed to settle down in the south of France, never to show his face back in England.
44:37And it was, it was, it was the men's cover-up.
44:42It's interesting, isn't it? Because you go back to the late 18th century, you go forward to the late 20th century,
44:47and you've got instances which are being publicised across the papers.
44:52But at the end of the 19th century, if it involves men in homosexual relationships, if it involves aristocracy,
45:00and especially if it involves royalty, then it's not really going to get mentioned.
45:05In the British newspapers, at least.
45:09For even though Prince Eddie probably never visited the brothel on Cleveland Street,
45:14his proximity to the case, the possibility of his involvement, made front pages around the world.
45:24Today, news output is even faster, consumption by the public even greater,
45:29and the royal family are still doing what they can to keep on top of the story.
45:34I think there's a difference, a generational difference in the royal family.
45:39I think that the older members of the royal family, for instance, the king and queen consort,
45:43both of whom have gone through periods of really excoriating press at various times of scandal,
45:49have just let it be.
45:51Whereas I think there's now this trend for younger members of the royal family,
45:56the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex,
45:58to meddle more, to get lawyers involved, to act actually much more like entitled celebrities.
46:07Whether it's the sexual escapades of a king,
46:11or the scandalous behaviour of a member of their family,
46:15no sex scandal ever paints the royals in a terribly good light.
46:19Monarchs can't be ordinary.
46:22Their crowns, their palaces and pageantry are supposed to set them apart.
46:27So it's always fun, when it comes to love and lust,
46:30to discover that they can be just as mucky as the rest of us.
46:34It's always fun for us.
46:46The entire world of the royal family has been very successful.
46:48It's always fun for us.
46:48It's always fun for us.
46:51We've got no excuses for that at all.
46:53We hope to understand.
46:55We'll see you soon in a moment,
46:56you can see it.
46:58Yeah, probably.
47:00Jill,
47:01and I've lost hopelessness.