by Neil McKenna
It mattered a great deal. If Dr Paul’s first answer was true – if indeed he had acquired his copy of Tardieu in February 1870, a full two months before the arrest of Fanny and Stella – then it meant that something was amiss. It meant that there was more to the arrest of Fanny and Stella than met the eye. It meant that Dr Paul had, in short, been priming himself and preparing himself for the day when he would examine Fanny and Stella for signs of sodomy.
There was more.
Mr Sergeant Parry, defending Fanny Park, dragged from a very reluctant Dr Paul the curious admission that he had met with Inspector Thompson on the Sunday before the arrest of Fanny and Stella.
‘Just attend to me,’ Mr Sergeant Parry instructed Dr Paul, whose attention appeared to be wandering. ‘You say Inspector Thompson called on you on the Sunday before. This is before these young men were apprehended?’
‘Exactly,’ Dr Paul replied with a certainty he clearly did not feel.
‘Did he tell you he was on the watch for them?’
‘Certainly not.’ Dr Paul’s reply was just a little too emphatic, a little too shrill, to be convincing.
‘He did not communicate with you on that subject?’ Mr Sergeant Parry enquired with a note of evident surprise.
‘Not in the least.’
‘Then he called to pay you a friendly visit?’ Mr Sergeant Parry’s sarcasm was undisguised.
‘No, it was something about the attendance on some man,’ Dr Paul replied falteringly, conveniently forgetting that he had just said he saw Inspector Thompson every day – or almost every day – at Bow Street and that it was as unlikely as it was inconvenient that Inspector Thompson would journey halfway across London on a Sunday to discuss Dr Paul’s attendance on ‘some man’.
‘It was not in reference to this case at all?’ persisted Mr Sergeant Parry.
‘Not in the least,’ Dr Paul answered with as much certainty as he could muster.
It was again clear to everyone present that Dr Paul was lying, and that Inspector Thompson’s highly unusual house call was in some unfathomable way connected with the arrest four days later of the Young Men in Women’s Clothes.
And was it really a coincidence, Mr Sergeant Parry wanted to know, a mere accident, as Dr Paul tried to suggest, that he just happened to be passing, just happened to be loitering without intent, outside the entrance to Bow Street Magistrates’ Court at exactly one o’clock in the afternoon on Friday, 29th April, the day after Fanny and Stella’s arrest, at precisely the same time as Fanny and Stella were leaving Mr Flowers’s courtroom? And again, was it really a coincidence that, at that very moment, he was spotted by an unnamed and lowly police constable who just happened to have been sent by Inspector Thompson to see if he could find Dr Paul to ask him to come and examine the Funny He-She Ladies?
And what of the examination itself? On this thorny subject the wretched Dr Paul was subjected to a devastating catechism and chastisement at the hands of Mr Digby Seymour, who questioned the legitimacy, and indeed the legality, of such an examination.
‘Had you received any Magistrate’s order or any authority to make this examination?’ Mr Digby Seymour enquired.
‘I was in the street and the policeman came and told me that Inspector Thompson wanted me,’ Dr Paul answered shakily. ‘When I got there Inspector Thompson said, “Sir Thomas Henry has ordered that you are to examine these men.”’ Sir Thomas Henry was the senior Stipendiary Magistrate at Bow Street.
‘Have you ever stated before that there was any order from Sir Thomas Henry?’ asked Mr Digby Seymour. ‘Have you not always said that you acted upon your own responsibility?’
Dr Paul mumbled a confused reply to the effect that he had never been allowed to explain himself properly.
‘Did it occur to you’, Mr Digby Seymour concluded, ‘that it would be a matter of simple fairness to have a medical man representing Boulton present when this examination was going on?’
There was another long and unfortunate pause.
‘No,’ Dr Paul replied in a stricken voice.
It was left to the Lord Chief Justice to destroy what little credibility remained to Dr Paul. ‘You should be more careful in future or you may find yourself involved in very unpleasant consequences,’ he warned Dr Paul sternly. ‘I am not aware that the mere fact of your being Surgeon to the Police Force entitles you to send a man behind a screen and examine him for any purpose you may think necessary. You had no more authority to call upon these young men to undergo this revolting examination,’ he continued, ‘than if you had sought a man in the street and asked him to unbutton his breeches.’
S omething very curious was happening. As one conspiracy seemed to melt away like the morning mist, a new and very different conspiracy was emerging from the shadows. The steady stream of damaging revelations and admissions from other prosecution witnesses, taken together with Dr Paul’s transparent lies, strongly suggested that the police, the politicians and the powers that be in the Treasury had conspired together in preparing the arrest and prosecution of Fanny and Stella.
Mr George Smith, the ex-Beadle of the Burlington Arcade, had boastfully claimed that he had been ‘getting up evidence for the police in this little affair’, a most unfortunate choice of words. And he had admitted to meeting with Inspector Thompson fully four days before the arrest of Fanny and Stella, which to a suspicious mind might suggest that the arrest was planned and premeditated.
More damaging still was Smith’s claim that Inspector Thompson had promised to ‘pay him for his trouble’. That and the fact that he received the sum of fourteen shillings from Mr William Pollard, the Assistant Treasury Solicitor, who had so energetically and assiduously interviewed all the witnesses in this case before they appeared in court (which was in itself a highly unusual proceeding). To make matters worse (if they could be made any worse), the loquacious Mr Smith had hinted that some sort of promise had been held out to him of ‘a situation at the Treasury’, a prospect which Smith declared he would most certainly ‘not object to’.
Then there were the admissions from certain police officers of ‘E’ Division that Fanny and Stella had been under continuous and extensive police surveillance. ‘I have watched them for a year past,’ Detective Officer Chamberlain had asserted. ‘I have seen them at the Casino in Holborn, and I have seen them in Brunswick Square, and in Southampton Row.’ Stella’s return from Edinburgh, three weeks before the arrest, had triggered day-and-night surveillance of Martha Stacey’s house of accommodation in Wakefield Street by Police Constable Charles Walker, who said he had watched the house for a marathon twenty days and twenty nights.
Surveillance by plain-clothes officers was a new weapon in the armoury of the police. Sir Richard Mayne, the zealous and authoritarian Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, had established an unofficial special branch in the 1860s to engage in spying and surveillance. Plain-clothes detective officers were sent all over London to report back to the Commissioner on those considered a threat to the nation’s security, threats which ranged from the serious to the faintly ridiculous.
Anything or anyone that had the potential to threaten the state was relentlessly surveilled. The Trade Unions were regularly spied upon, as were ‘meetings of the unemployed’, both seen as potential hotbeds of revolutionary change. One detective had filed a report on a meeting he attended in Soho Square on the subject of ‘Maladministration of the Law’. Another reported on ‘a speech made by Mr Bradlaugh at the New Hall of Science, Old Street, on Percy Bysshe Shelley’. Charles Bradlaugh was a declared atheist and was thus seen as a threat to the status quo.
Day-and-night surveillance was expensive and was usually restricted to master criminals, anarchists, Fenian conspirators and foreign spies. It seemed decidedly odd to place the activities of two feather-pated young men like Fanny and Stella, barely out of their teens, on a par with the Fenian bombers. Their frivolous chitter-chatter and their endless forays in drag might be immoral (most would say disgusting, unmanly and un-Chr
istian to boot), but it was not – as yet – a crime to dress up as a woman.
Mr Digby Seymour and the entire defence counsel were at very considerable pains to stress the youthfulness and the boyishness of Fanny and Stella. They were ‘young Mr Boulton’ and ‘young Mr Park’; they were ‘boys’ or ‘little more than boys’; they were ‘youths’ and ‘young men’; they were ‘dainty lads’ and ‘pleasing boys’: unformed and unfinished, prone to larks and high spirits, as all boys are. And certainly, they were sometimes foolish, sometimes thoughtless, and sometimes heedless of the consequences of their actions – as all boys are. But foolishness should not be confused with wickedness, nor folly conflated with vice.
And even if there had been goings-on, sodomitical shilly-shallyings, between these two foolish young men and others in their circle, what of it? Did their sordid sexual misadventures really merit such lavish attention from the Metropolitan Police? Hardly a week went by without one or more prurient reports of trials for ‘abominable’ and ‘unnatural’ offences between men committed throughout the length and breadth of the land. So, what, if anything, was special about Fanny and Stella?
There were more uncomfortable disclosures. Mr William Pollard confirmed that the Treasury Solicitor, Mr John Greenwood, had from the very beginning taken personal charge of the prosecution until his untimely death two months earlier. Surely this very eminent and very important gentleman had bigger fish to fry? Surely he had better things to do than busy himself with the doings of two young men who liked to dress as women?
And how was it that the conspiracy charges against Fanny and Stella were ready and waiting for them on the morning after their arrest? In the normal course of events, such an indictment would have taken weeks, if not months, to prepare. Reports of surveillance would have had to be written and submitted, summaries of evidence prepared and considered, and senior police officers like Inspector Thompson – and perhaps even the Commissioner himself – quizzed before the final indictment could be drafted.
Such a serious prosecution would certainly require the knowledge and approval not only of Mr John Greenwood himself, but quite probably of the other senior Government law officers, the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General, and perhaps even beyond. Sir Robert Collier had already let slip that the Home Secretary had taken a strong personal interest in this case and was driving the relentless prosecution of these two young men.
Then there were the secret and not-so-secret payments to witnesses for the prosecution. George Smith freely admitted that he had received fourteen shillings, even though there was no record of this payment in the Treasury Register. But the Treasury Register did record payments to Francis Kegan Cox and to Maria George, née Duffin, via Inspector Thompson: ‘679 – Dec 1870 – R. v Boulton and Park – Direct payment to Inspector Thompson of amounts paid to Maria Duffin – I authorise further advances as may be necessary.’
It was all very worrying. Why should Mr Cox receive payment for doing his public duty and testifying to criminal acts? And why was Inspector Thompson making payments, payments plural, to Maria George, née Duffin? There was indisputable evidence that three witnesses were being paid. How many more witnesses were being paid? And for what? Something was wrong.
More worrying still was the entry in the Treasury Register detailing payments to the three policemen most closely connected with this case: ‘492 – Dec 1870 – R. v Boulton and Park – To pay £5 – £3 – £2 to Inspector Thompson, Sergeant Kerley, and Detective Officer Chamberlain.’
It was almost unheard of for officers of the Metropolitan Police to receive a gratuity in the ordinary course of their duty. Gratuities were only ever given upon retirement from the force. There might be exceptional circumstances when the Commissioner might advance a small sum to relieve hardship, but such payments were rare. Why, then, was the Treasury doling out these ‘rewards’, as Mr Digby Seymour contemptuously termed them, to salaried officers of the Metropolitan Police? It was all very irregular.
Spying, surveillance, bribery, collusion, corruption and political interference at the highest levels. What on earth was going on? Could it be that this prosecution was in some way political? Had it something to do with the late Lord Arthur Clinton? Or was it an ill-conceived and badly executed attempt to extirpate the scourge of sodomy from the land by holding a solemn state trial which would serve as a terrible example and warning to any and all young men tempted to indulge in this criminal folly?
Whatever the motives, the prosecution was in utter disarray. It was a rout, there was no other word for it. All that remained was the ugly stench of conspiracy and corruption and the abhorrent spectacle of justice being seen to be undone.
29
‘This Terrible Drama of Vice’
She watches, if his cheek grows pale,
She watches, if his glad smile fail,
She watches, if a sigh he breathes,
And if he sorrows, then she grieves;
She watches for his safe return,
Through life, the mother watches on.
Fanny Fales, ‘A Mother’s Love’, 1853
M rs Mary Ann Boulton was the object of the greatest curiosity and the greatest compassion as she stepped into the witness box to speak in defence of her beloved and beleagured son.
Mrs Mary Ann Boulton looked frail and she looked old, though she could not have been much more than fifty, if that. That there had been trials in her life – quite apart from this latest great and grand trial – was evident from the lines etched upon her face. She looked worn out by cares and worries. Nevertheless, she was sombrely and respectfully dressed in deference to the solemnity of the occasion, though she had taken care to follow Mr George Lewis’s sage advice not to wear black in case it looked as if she were already in mourning for Ernest. Her eyes were red and swollen as if from recent tears, and her voice was a little hoarse as though she were labouring under great emotion.
But here she stood, proud and unafraid. She was not here to apologise or to explain. She was not here to beg or to plead. She was here to speak truth to power, to tell the highest judge in the land in the highest court in the land that Ernest was innocent of the terrible crimes and dark conspiracies imputed to him. She was here to tell the world about her son, about her ‘own beloved Child’. The thought of him made her eyes prick again with hot tears and her chest swell with a mother’s love.
It was obvious that Mrs Mary Ann Boulton was not a well woman, that she was some sort of invalid, though the nature of her affliction was not known. Her doctor had, of course, warned her not to appear. She badly ‘wanted strength’, he had said. The ordeal would be too much for her. It could set her back. But she had dismissed his concerns and ignored the butterfly flutterings of her heart and steeled herself to fight for her child, like a tigress defending her young. And so when Mr Digby Seymour asked, ‘Are you the mother of Mr Ernest Boulton?’ she had answered in a clear voice replete with strength and pride and love.
‘I am,’ she declared.
It was a powerful beginning.
But where was Mr Thomas Boulton? That was the unspoken question on everyone’s lips. Surely as a husband and a father he should have been in court in the stead of his wife in this hour of need. Why must Mrs Mary Ann Boulton endure such a terrible ordeal alone and unprotected? But if there was a ripple of indignation it was quickly followed by a wave of sympathy for the bravery and courage of this frail woman so ready and so willing to fight in hand-to-hand combat for her beloved son.
Which was exactly what Mr George Lewis had had in his mind when he persuaded Mrs Mary Ann Boulton that she, and she alone – unencumbered by her husband – was Ernest’s best hope of acquittal. A mother’s love, a mother’s loyalty was more powerful and more potent in the eyes and in the hearts of a jury of twelve Englishmen good and true than all the legal arguments in the world.
So Mr Boulton had been despatched to the Cape of Good Hope on some ship-broking errand which would brook no delay. He was, in consequence, safely out
of the way, leaving the stage clear for what promised to be the greatest performance of Mrs Mary Ann Boulton’s entire life.
Mrs Mary Ann Boulton still clung to the sweetly pretty fashions of her youth and wore her hair in the same girlish bunched ringlets which had so captivated Thomas Boulton during their courtship. In those distant, happier days, her ringlets softly shook like the May blossom on the trees when she laughed or when she sang. And even though, today, these same ringlets trembled with suppressed pain, passion and emotion, Mrs Mary Ann Boulton still recalled to the minds of those present a happier and more certain age, a less cynical and less sordid age of bluer skies and brighter promise.
Who could not but be impressed by the admirable Mrs Mary Ann Boulton? She was all courtesy and all attention. She had a very particular and refreshingly pleasing way of inclining her head in mute respect and deference to her gentlemanly interlocutors, as if bowing to their superior knowledge. When questions were put to her, she listened hard (and was seen to listen hard), and when she replied to those selfsame questions she did not so much answer as wholeheartedly agree. ‘Exactly so’, she would answer. ‘Entirely so’, ‘Quite so’, and ‘Certainly’, she would say with a reassuring nod and an eager smile.
And sometimes when it fell to her to recall the happy days and the sad days, a tear would glint like a diamond in her eye, and there would be a fresh rush of sympathy and love for this frail but strong Mother among Mothers. Counsel for the prosecution and the defence alike, even the Lord Chief Justice himself, treated her with kid gloves. Consequently, she got away with murder, or as good as. Difficult questions that really demanded a clear and direct answer were brushed aside or answered instead with a fondly recalled family anecdote.
If all else failed, Mrs Mary Ann Boulton could rely on her memory, or rather, her lack of a memory. ‘I have not at all a retentive memory,’ she would say. ‘I cannot remember’, ‘I do not remember at all’, ‘I may have forgotten’, ‘I should be afraid to say exactly’ and ‘I could not say positively’ were endlessly combined and confederated and given out with such charming conviction that it would have been hard – not to say heartless – to insist on pursuing the fox to the kill.