keeping it in the family
Unlike his father, Herman Talmadge – who also served as governor for Georgia – received notoriety as part of the Senate committee that investigated the Watergate scandal. However, his own problems were contributary to his own downfall in 1980, when he was defeated for re-election. One of his main problems was an alcohol addiction, which spiralled out of control following the death of his son, Bobby, who drowned in 1975. Added to this, and far more destructive to his career, were the allegations of financial misconduct. Herman was charged with accepting more than $43,000 for fabricated expenses. At the time the Talmadges were going through a bitter divorce and his wife, Betty, took pleasure in testifying against her husband before the Senate Ethics Committee.
His reputation was tarnished enough to lose him the general election against Republican Mack Mattingly, after which he more or less retired from the public eye. His health declined in the late 1990s and he died at his home in Hampton, Georgia, on 21 March 2002 at the age of 88.
PART EIGHT: Aristocratic Scandals
Rasputin and The Romanovs
The story regarding the Romanovs really begins in the year 1868, the year that the heir to the Russian throne was born – Nicholas II. For many years Russia had been in a state of upheaval and in the year 1881, Nicholas had the traumatic experience of seeing his beloved grandfather, Alexander II, assassinated right before his very eyes. His carriage was bombed by a group of revolutionaries called the People’s Will, and Alexander II was carried unconscious to the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, where family members, including 13-year-old Nicholas, could do nothing except watch him die.
Alexander III had been a liberal tsar, but frightened by his father’s death, he became a stern ruler believing in autocracy. Despite seeing his father’s oppression of the minorities, especially the Jews, Nicholas grew up to be a shy, gentle and kind young man.
Nicholas met the love of his life when he was 16 years old – Princess Alix of Hesse-Dharmdst. They were first acquainted in 1884 at the wedding of Alix’s older sister Ella, who was marrying Nicholas’s uncle Sergei. Although Alix was only 12 years old, it was love at first sight when she saw the handsome 16-year-old Nicholas, and it was a meeting neither of them would forget.
Alix, unlike Nicholas, had not had a very happy childhood. Her older brother Freddie died when Alix was just a baby. He was only two years old himself and suffering from haemophilia, so when he fell from a two-storey window he literally bled to death. Alix’s mother was Princess Alice, the daughter of Queen Victoria of England. She became very depressed after the death of her son and died herself prematurely at the age of 35 of diptheria, along with Alix’s younger sister. After her mother’s death, Alix went to live with her adoring grandmother.
Neither Victoria nor the tsar were keen on the relationship between Alix and Nicholas, but when his son continually turned down all other potential wives, Alexander eventually gave in and the couple became engaged in 1894.
Nicholas was not expected to take over the throne for many years, but his father died unexpectedly when Nicholas was only 23. Nicholas was not ready for the position and claimed, ‘I am not prepared to be a tsar. I never wanted to become one’ and turned to Alix for support. The very next day, Alix converted to Russian Orthodox, and Nicholas made his first decree, proclaiming her new name – Alexandra Feodorovna. One week after his father’s funeral, Alexandra and Nicholas were married.
Nicholas and Alexandra enjoyed many happy years of marriage and had four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia. Despite their happiness, the couple still longed for a son, an heir to the Russian throne, and their prayers were finally answered in 1904 with the birth of Alexsei. They were elated, but this joy was to be short-lived, as tragedy struck. Alexsei started bleeding profusely from the naval and Nicholas and Alexandra had to face the truth – he had picked up the haemophilia gene. With her son’s life hanging by a thread, Alexandra became fanatical about her religion and turned to a peasant by the name of Gregormo Efimovich Rasputin for help.
rasputin – the ‘mad monk’
Rasputin was born in 1869 in Prokovskoe, Siberia, to a peasant family. Despite attending school he was illiterate and chose to join a monastery as soon as he became of age. However, his life in the cloisters was soon blighted when he found the pleasures of the opposite sex and was forced to leave the monastery in disgrace. Rasputin started travelling as a so-called ‘faith healer’, claiming that he had special powers which enabled him to cure the sick. He lived off the funds given to him by his satisfied customers.
Despite his rather scruffy appearance, Rasputin had a sort of magnetic charm, and it wasn’t long before he caught the attention of certain members of the Russian aristocracy. To the tsar and his family, Rasputin was a hero, a holy man and hopefully their son’s saviour. They believed he was the only person who could stop Alexsei’s bleeding. However, the remainder of Russia saw Rasputin’s darker, more sinister side. Out of sight of the royal family Rasputin’s behaviour was wild, but in front of Nicholas and his wife his actions were beyond reproach.
Miraculously, the first time the tsar called on Rasputin for help, he was able to stem the bleeding and, as a result, became their hero. He was permitted to socialise in royal circles and was soon showing a powerful influence over Alexandra. Nicholas was not happy with the power Rasputin held over his wife, but scared that his son’s health would suffer if he sent the man away, he decided to try and ignore the situation.
As the first storm clouds of World War I loomed over Russia, Nicholas went to the front to take command of his troops against the Germans. Nicholas left his wife in charge of the government, but this was an unwise move as, being German, her subjects felt they were unable to trust her. Rasputin became Alexandra’s adviser, which further alienated her with the Russians, and it wasn’t long before rumours were spreading that the couple were having an affair. Alexandra truly believed that her son would only remain healthy if Rasputin was around, so she kept him closely by her side, which had a devastating effect. With the government starting to crumble in 1916, a band of conspirators, including several members of the imperial family, decided that something had to be done.
the death of rasputin
Using Rasputin’s love of women as a lure, the band of conspirators lured him to the Youssoupov palace on the night of 16 December 1916. A splendid banquet had been laid on for Rasputin and the other guests, and the monk was offered some pastries, which he was told had been specially prepared for his benefit. Indeed, they were special – they were laced with lethal amounts of cyanide. Rasputin was delighted and tucked into the pastries with relish. However, the poison, which was supposed to work immediately, didn’t seem to be having any effect on the monk. As he laughed and flirted with the women, his assassins became impatient and one of them took a pistol out of his robes and shot him in the back. Rasputin slumped to the floor and, under the impression that he was dead, the conspirators went off to celebrate.
After about an hour, one of the royal party, Prince Felix, went back to make sure that Rasputin was well and truly dead. As he touched the body he noticed that it was still warm, although it showed no other signs of life. As he turned to walk away, however, Rasputin rose to his feet and attempted to strangle the prince. Felix managed to escape the monk’s grip and ran off to tell his friends that Rasputin was very much alive.
Rasputin ran across the courtyard after him yelling, ‘Felix, Felix, I’ll tell everything to the tsarina’. However, before he could finish his sentence he was shot in the back and again in the head. His assailant then struck him with a blow to the head just to make sure that this time Rasputin was dead. When they found that Rasputin was still breathing, the assassins bound his body and threw him into the Neva River, where he died from drowning.
Although Rasputin was dead, the damage that had been done to the image of the imperial family was irreparable. When Nicholas returned from war he was furious that Felix and his conspirators had kil
led Rasputin and forced them to become exiles. As the Bolsheviks became more and more powerful, Nicholas’s position as tsar became increasingly tenuous and on 17 March 1917, he was forced to abdicate in favour of his brother, Michael Romanov.
captivity and execution
After a short period of house arrest in Tsarskoe Selo, the imperial family were moved to Tobolsk in Siberia. Their treatment by the guards was appalling; they were rude and threatening and never allowed the young sisters to lock their bedroom doors. It was hoped that the Romanovs would soon be able to escape to England, but their hopes were quelled when King George V, Nicholas’s own first cousin, refused to give the family refuge.
The family were later transferred to Ipatiev House in the Russian city of Ekaterinburg. They stayed there for 78 days, but their last day was 16 July 1918. Late in the night the family were woken and told to get dressed. They were led down to the cellar, where they were made to stand in two rows – Nicholas, Alexandra, their four daughters and their faithful servants Dr Botkine, lady-in-waiting Anna Demidova, their cook Kharitonof and footman Troup. Then the men opened fire and the cellar became a scene of chaos and bloodshed.
The assassins did their utmost to destroy the last remains of the royal family and their servants. They threw their bodies down a mine shaft and dropped grenades on top of them. They later removed the bodies from the shaft and either burnt them or doused them with acid. What was left of the corpses were thrown into a pit and buried. For many years the location of the grave was kept a well-guarded secret, for fear of recrimination from the Soviet government. Rumours quickly spread that perhaps one, if not more, of the children had actually survived.
One day after taking power in 1991, the Russian president Boris Yeltsin retrieved the remains and the long identification process began. DNA experts from Russia, Britain and the United States worked for ten years and came to the conclusion that the bones belonged to Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, Olga, Tatiana, Anastasia and their four servants. Only nine of the 11 bodies were ever found and those missing are believed to be Alexsei and either Marie or Anastasia.
anna anderson
In the years following the murders of the Romanovs, several people came out of the woodwork claiming to be the missing daughter, Anastasia. The most documented case was that of Anna Anderson. In February 1920 a woman jumped off a bridge in Berlin. She survived and was taken to a local mental institution, where she refused to give any details of her identity. It wasn’t until 18 months later that she claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia. She explained that she had survived the execution because the bayonet the assassin had used on her was blunt. She said one of the soldiers had seen that she was still alive and had rescued her, taking her with him to Romania.
Many people believed that Anderson was an imposter, but Prince Sigismund, a childhood friend of Anastasia, was convinced by many of the answers she gave him. When she was finally released from the hospital in 1922, Anderson lived off the charity of many of her supporters. This annoyed Anastasia’s uncle, Grand Duke Ernst of Hesse, who was determined to prove that she was a fraud. Using his own money he backed an investigation to try and prove that Anderson was a Polish factory worker, Franziska Schanzkowska, who had disappeared just before Anderson herself surfaced. His claim was never proved.
In 1938 Anderson decided to take her case to the German court to try and prove her identity and therefore claim her rightful inheritance. The case dragged on until 1970, at which time the court finally ruled that she had not positively proved that she was Anastasia. The matter was finally put to rest when Anderson died of pneumonia in 1984 and was cremated at her own request.
The Montagu Affair
During the 1940s and 1950s life was made very difficult for gay men and women on both sides of the Atlantic. In America, McCarthy’s domestic witch-hunts set out to expose any opposition to the cold war. Anyone who did not fit his straight-laced all-American ideal was therefore seen as dangerous
and subversive. Gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered persons came under this category. They were publicly outed and consequently fired from jobs, redlisted and alienated by their communities in a widespread attack which became known as the ‘Lavender Scare’.
Institutionalised Bigotry
Life was no easier for gay men in the UK. The British establishment was virulently anti-homosexual and the government openly pursued and upheld anti-gay legislation. The British Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, even promised the public ‘a new drive against male vice. . . that would rid England of this plague’.
If a high-ranking politician made such a bigoted statement today, they’d find themselves under caution for inciting hate-crimes! In those days, however, it was completely illegal for men to engage in sexual relations with one another, and a conviction meant a criminal record as well as a prison sentence. Each year up to 1,000 men were locked up in Britain’s prisons and policemen routinely roamed the streets as agent provocateurs, posing as gay men in order to lure unsuspecting individuals into soliciting sex from them. They also tapped telephone lines and made searches without the appropriate warrants.
The dashing Lord Montagu
Edward Douglas Scott Montagu, the third Baron Montagu of Beaulieu was born on 20 October 1926. He inherited his title at the tender age of two when his father was tragically killed in an accident. As a fully-fledged member of the English aristocracy and a direct descendant of King James I, his early life
was one of old-fashioned privilege, wealth and respectability. He brushed shoulders with royalty and attended the best public schools that England and it’s colonies had to offer, including Broadstairs in Canada, Eton and New College Oxford. But Edward Montagu was a little different from a lot of other boys. He knew from an early age that he was bisexual and he had privately come to terms with the fact. However, it was not until he arrived at Oxford University that he met other gay and bisexual young men.
Living the high-life
As an Oxford graduate and the youngest member of the House of Lords, it did not take long for the elegant and eligible bachelor to become the toast of London town. At 28 years old Montagu was young, attractive, wealthy and titled with an exciting career in public relations and a ‘natural affinity for the life of a bon vivant’. He had also fallen in love and become engaged to an American actress and socialite Ann Gage. Things were going swimmingly, but then controversy struck.
A very british scandal
Baron Montagu had lent a portion of his land to a scout troop, when he had his camera stolen. A minor episode in anyone’s life. That is unless you happen to be a well known public figure and your camera contains photographs of nubile and partially clothed young men frolicking in the surf! The police were called to investigate the theft, but Montagu was transformed from victim to criminal when a 14-year-old member of the scout troop made an accusation of assault against him. He was tried and eventually cleared – but the authorities were determined to bring him down.
Edward, his cousin; Michael Pitt-Rivers and his friend Peter Wildeblood were soon charged with ‘inciting certain male persons to commit serious offences with male persons’, the same offence that Oscar Wilde was famously charged with in 1895.
Wild by Name, Wild by nature
Peter Wildeblood, a diplomatic correspondent for the Daily Mail, met Edward Montagu whilst he was working for a London Personal Relations firm. Montagu later described him as ‘a very amusing person, with a good sense of humour, a worthwhile person to spend time with’. However, Wildeblood was also a dangerous person to know because he was openly gay.
In the summer of 1953, Wildeblood borrowed Montagu’s beach hut for a holiday. He threw a party on his first night there and invited Montagu and some of his house guests from Beaulieu. The prosecution claimed that Lord Montagu, Pitt-Rivers and Wildeblood encouraged the party to develop into a male orgy. The trial would become a cause célèbre which so horrified the British establishment that it changed the course of British history, not to
mention the lives of millions of gay men and women, forever.
The sensational Trial
The chief witnesses at the trial were RAF servicemen Edward McNally and John Reynolds, who had been present at the beach hut party. The director of public prosecutions had promised them that they would not face prosecution so long as they testified against Pitt-Rivers, Wildeblood and Montagu. The RAF boys admitted in court to dancing together and engaging in ‘abandoned behaviour’ at the beach hut that evening. McNally also produced love letters that were written to him by Peter Wildeblood, and the letters were read aloud in court. In response, Wildeblood caused a sensation by publicly admitting his homosexuality, but claimed that the evening in question was actually extremely dull and that no such activity took place.
The trial began on 15 March 1954 in the Great Hall of Winchester Castle. It lasted for eight days and although Montagu denied the charges, all three men were convicted and sent to prison. Pitt-Rivers and Wildeblood each got 18 months and Montagu received a 12-month prison sentence.
Infamous Scandals Page 24