Victorian Sex Work Scandal: The Prince And The Telegraph Boys

In the summer of 1889, a London police officer stopped and searched a telegraph boy, suspecting him of stealing from the Post Office he worked for. What he uncovered was not theft, but instead a network of male sex workers being frequented by some of the most respectable gentlemen in the country. Kate is joined by John Scott to discuss the scandal that ensued. John is Head of School in the School of Justice at Queensland University of Technology. This episode was edited by Tomos Delargy. It was produced by Sophie Gee and Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/voting, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you! Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:35Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are listening to Betwixt the Sheets. But before I can let you do any more listening, I do have to let you know that this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults, about other adults, about adulty things and adulty way of coming around to adult subjects. You should be an adult too. Oh, phew, I feel safer. Actually, I am going to dollop a second helping of fair do's warning onto this fair do's warning, because we are talking about sexual exploitation today. And you might not want to listen to that, in which case, just give this one a swerve and we'll catch you next time. Right, on with the show.

• 1:15Kate Lister?

  Oh, I watched it there. I nearly got taken out by that bike. Honestly, these lads can't be trusted. I will be talking to their employer. Grey trousers, a dark tunic, a pillbox hat, armband and a leather pouch. It's easy enough to recognise a telegraph boy when you see one. Round and round the streets of London they go, zipping through passageways and hurtling down gobbled residential streets. They deliver urgent messages all across the city. And by doing so, they gain access to spaces usually reserved for the most privileged. The telegraph boys are far more used to delivering gossip than being the subject of it.

• 1:55Kate Lister?

  But all that changed in 1889, when a huge scandal erupted involving numerous telegraph boys, as well as dukes, earls and maybe even a prince.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  What do you look for in a man?

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Oh, money, of course.

• 2:18Speaker 03

  You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  I make perfect compliments of whatever my boss needs by just turning the knob and pushing the button.

• 2:33Speaker 03

  Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

• 2:35Speaker 04

  Goodness, what beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derek.

• 2:43Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex Scandal in Society with me, Kate Lister. London in 1889. Victoria was queen, the iconic Tower Bridge was under construction, the Savoy Hotel had opened, and newspapers were clambering for more sensation and scandal in the wake of the Whitechapel Murders. And they got it in early July, when police discovered a brothel at 19 Cleveland Street, one where aristocratic men would visit teenage telegraph boys. Hmm. What followed was a power struggle between the press, the police, and public interest to try and find out more and stamp out such horrid exploitation of children.

• 3:26Kate Lister?

  I am joined in this episode by Professor John Scott from Queensland University of the Technology School of Justice. If anyone can tell us about this, it's him. Let's do it.

• 3:41Kate Lister?

  Well, hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Professor John Scott. How are you doing?

• 3:48Speaker 05

  Brilliant. Greetings from Australia.

• 3:50Kate Lister?

  Hello, Australia. You are something of an academic heavyweight when it comes to male sex work. You are the author of The History of Male Sex Work, and you have written extensively about the cultural history of male sex work. So you are the ideal person for us to be talking to about this particular scandal in the 19th century, the Cleveland Street scandal. But before we get to that... Could you tell me a bit about your academic origin story? How did you end up in this particular area of research?

• 4:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, look, I was studying sociology and this is going back to the late 90s. I was interested in the health sociology and I was messing around with epidemiology. And I thought, well, epidemiology, this is going to go nowhere, get me nowhere. You know, who needs epidemiologists anymore? And my supervisor suggested.

• 4:43Kate Lister?

  Whoops.

• 4:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, why don't you combine a few interests here and, you know, and then, you know, look more at sort of around policy around sex industry and so on. And definitely wanted to look at both male and female sex workers at the time. But I did find the male side of things more interesting because there was a lot less written about it. That was my sort of starting point. I've been sort of dropping in and out of that sort of focus, I guess, around the sex industry now for, you know, ever since then, so 25 years longer. So, and there's always new stuff happening. We still, we've managed to sort of decriminalize a lot of stuff here in this neck of the woods in the antipodes. There's still a few states to go in Australia, but yeah, the rest of the world's still waiting for some reform in that area.

• 5:24Kate Lister?

  Yeah, absolutely, it is. It is interesting that male sex work, not that it flies under the radar entirely, but when people talk about it, they immediately think of a woman selling sex to a man. And male sex work, especially the history of it, it has been somewhat neglected. Why do you think that is?

• 5:43Speaker 05

  Needless to say, male sex work is old as the profession itself. As long as, you know, sex work's been around, male sex workers have been around. And, you know, historically, you can verify that, you know, this is an activity, whatever it might be called at the time. And this is an issue because I think we've named it different things at different times. And so it's got conflated with, you know, other, other types of things, other types of issues, other types of social problems. And the typical one, of course, is to conflate it with homosexuality or with sodomy or as we'll say today. And yeah, with, with, with various other activities which, which seem to take precedence. And so, so the highlights really, that's all becomes the problem, the stigma associated with it is about two men having sex rather than.

• 6:26Speaker 05

  About somebody selling sex per se. And there's even a number of terms, you know, and there's many terms for male sex workers historically and, you know, and currently, I guess, as there have been for female sex workers over the years. But, you know, certainly some of those terms do have a strong sort of gendered element, you know, more so than, you know, than the issue there again around the sort of selling of sex per se. I, I think the other issue here too is that I think especially in the modern period, women's bodies in public space creates all sorts of anxieties, especially working class women in public spaces. There's less anxieties if you're a bloke and you're going out, you know, selling sex in, in, in public spaces. And it's less of a problem and, and always with the sex industry, typically when it's behind closed doors,

• 7:12Speaker 05

  men, you know, the regulators, the, the, the powers that be tend to be less worried about it.

• 7:17Kate Lister?

  Yeah, they do, don't they? It's, it's a really strange phenomenon and it's all tangled up with lots of other kind of discussions. But let's talk about the scandal that happened in Britain in the late 19th century, 1889. And it's known as the Cleveland Street scandal. So can you paint me a picture of what happened? Just give us a, a quick overview and then we'll dive into the details.

• 7:44Speaker 05

  Yes, well, look, there had been other scandals prior to the Cleveland Street scandal. So there's, there's occasionally these things, you know, sort of bump up historically. In fact, you know, at the moment, we've got the Diddy one happening over in the States involving male sex workers and so on. And getting lots of publicity. Yeah. And, and, and so, and, and that's a nice lead in here because again, there's sort of like power and celebrity involved in, in, in this as well. And in this incident. And so I think what makes this scandal, what makes it so interesting is that the people that get involved in it. So we've, we've got a number of different people who for their age in that period were incredibly powerful.

• 8:26Speaker 05

  So we've got newspaper proprietors, we've got the police, you know, senior police, yeah, in, involved in this. And it goes all the way up to the royal family. In this one and the prime minister, you know, so in some ways it's a little bit like a

• 8:42Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 8:42Speaker 05

  A bit like a Watergate of its day in some ways too. And that may be teased out a little bit more when we look at the actual incident in a little bit more detail. But it's one of those things that sort of starts off as a bit of a slow boil and then sort of builds, builds, builds and becomes more publicly visible. And yeah, it becomes a full blown scandal. But of course, yeah, at the core of all this is this idea that there are young males involved who are being exploited by older, very wealthy, powerful men. And I think that's what gives us the whole scandal. I guess that's what gives it some legs and has endured actually right into the contemporary period. I think when you look at other scandals involving male sex workers as well.

• 9:26Kate Lister?

  The gulf between the people that were purchasing sex and the people that were it's very difficult because as you say, they weren't just young, some of them were children. So we'd be very careful about how we're saying that people being exploited for it. It was huge because was it Telegraph Boys? Who like, how did even this come out? How did the scandal even break?

• 9:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. So it involved Telegraph Boys and that whole notion of Telegraph Boys. We don't have Telegraph Boys today. So that's something that's very historical in itself.

• 9:57Kate Lister?

  What was a Telegraph Boy? Just before we carry on, what did they do?

• 10:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, they were linked to the post office and then, you know, and this was an age of the Telegraph, Telegrams, messaging, I guess the internet of its day. And it had this physical component and Telegraph Boys with that physical component. And so they would be typically, but were always male. They were fairly young, so teenage. We're talking about sort of early teens to later teens. They would wear uniforms, so they'd be very well presented. And the interesting thing about them is they would be this cohort of young males that would work very closely together. And they had access to, I guess, spaces in Victorian life that working class, young males wouldn't typically be able to access.

• 10:41Kate Lister?

  I suppose they did.

• 10:42Speaker 05

  So by going around delivering these messages and that, you know. Gain them access to elite society, you know, so places that they would otherwise be turned back from, you know, barred from entering. So I think they're quite interesting in that they kind of navigate those spaces in an interesting way that sort of allows them to transcend just a little bit, some of the class taboos or junctures of their day.

• 11:07Kate Lister?

  So the telegraph boys are all around London delivering messages effectively. How do we go from that to the royal family have been purchasing sacks? What happens?

• 11:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, what happens in between and it gets very complex in between. But yeah, I'll try, I'll try to take you through a little bit of what goes on. And as I mentioned earlier, there's this sort of like, it's a bit like Watergate in that it is a bit of a slow build. And so the whole thing affair starts in a little bit of an accident, I guess, in some ways. So in the middle of eighteen eighty nine, a constable, a guy called Luke Hanks, was investigating a theft from the London Central Telegraph Office. Okay, so that's pretty typical. So during the investigation, a fifteen year old telegraph boy by the name of Swins Cow was discovered to be in the possession of fourteen shillings, which at that time was equivalent to

• 12:00Speaker 05

  several weeks wages, so considerable amount of money. So something's going on at the post office, money's going missing. Here's this Swins Cow, he's got several weeks of wages. And at the time, messenger boys were not permitted to carry personal cash around with them because they could get it mixed up with the customers, you know, there were all sorts of issues there. So this was unusual. So, you know, you could almost assume that this constable Hanks thinks, well, I've got my person, you know, this is a pretty straight cut sort of thing. This should be straightforward. But then there's the next part. So suspecting the, the, the boys involved in the theft, he takes him in for questioning. And after a little bit of questioning, the boy says that he was working for money as a sex worker.

• 12:45Speaker 05

  And he also names another person called Charles Hemmond. And he says this Hemmond bloke, he actually operates a male brothel at nineteen Cleveland Street.

• 12:54Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 12:55Speaker 05

  And so suddenly it's. Like boom.

• 12:57Kate Lister?

  Plot twist.

• 12:59Speaker 05

  A plot twist. So we've got a male brothel. So suddenly you're not just investigating the theft of money, but you know, you're looking at something completely different here. And so he says that he was introduced, this is Swinscow, he was introduced to this Hammond by another post office clerk, a guy called a young bloke, I think, you know, late teens called Henry Newlove. And he named another boy as well, actually two other boys. A guy called Wright and a guy called Vickbrun. And basically, so suddenly we've got these names, we've got this whole sort of thing blowing up in a big way. So there's something going on at the post office, these young males at the post office, seemingly being recruited to go and participate in these activities at this male brothel at mine in Cleveland Street.

• 13:44Kate Lister?

  Run by this guy Hammond, he's like the central guy.

• 13:47Speaker 05

  Run by this guy Hammond, yes, yes. So that's right. And then Hammond's an older male, so he's clearly, well, supposedly the brothel keeper. Now Constable Hanks, he goes and reports it to the case to his superiors. And his superior happens to be a guy called Detective Inspector Frederick Abeline. Have you come across that name before?

• 14:08Kate Lister?

  It was something to do with Jack the Ripper?

• 14:10Speaker 05

  It's something to do with Jack the Ripper. So a few years earlier, Abeline had been, you know, he'd been the main person on the case of Jack the Ripper. So he's a bit of a, you know, he's quite well known, you know, he's appeared in the London tabloids many times. He's the guy that investigated the Ripper case. And of course, you know, if you're investigating sex workers, you're better.

• 14:32Kate Lister?

  You're better, right? They must be thinking, what the hell is going on here? They've got this kid, they just basically expected to go, yeah, all right, I've been stealing money. And then he just suddenly starts going, yeah, I've been recruited to work at this establishment. They must have just been like, what on earth is happening?

• 14:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, that's right. So it's suddenly it's expanding into something else. And as I said, this Abeline, he was a bit of a sort of a policing celebrity of the time, you know, so to bring him into it, you know, I think that's where it's all starting to get, you know, it's moving out of the shadows and into something that's a little bit more public here, which is interesting.

• 15:09Kate Lister?

  Just the fact that Abeline gets attached to this case would have raised its profile anyway. I mean, if I still know his name, like hundreds of years later on, he was a celebrity. So.

• 15:21Kate Lister?

  At the moment, you've got accusations being made. Now what happens? Do they start interviewing other Telegraph buyers? Do they go to Cleveland Street? What happens next?

• 15:31Speaker 05

  So Abilene issues a warrant to arrest Hemant and Newlove for violation of section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. And so this is basically, this is something that's prosecuting men for engaging in homosexual activities during that period.

• 15:50Kate Lister?

  Which was quite a recent law that was brought in, wasn't it? Tell me a little bit about what that law did and why it was significant.

• 15:58Speaker 05

  Absolutely. So, look, the law replaces an earlier law. So there'd been prohibitions against what was known as sodomy, you know, as in sodomy and gomorrah, sodomy. They'd been around since 1533. So Henry VIII, as I understand, had brought in laws against sodomy.

• 16:18Kate Lister?

  Ah, that bastion of moral sexuality.

• 16:21Speaker 05

  Yeah. So I think it was known as the Buggery Act even. And but, look, it was always difficult to prosecute this activity because and then often what happened, you'd have people that were prosecuted for attempted sodomy. So.

• 16:34Kate Lister?

  Which is weird because it's the act itself, isn't it? That's what they have to try and prove, that penal penetration has taken place, basically.

• 16:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right. And of course, one of the reasons why they had something like the Cleveland Street House was to try to keep things as private as possible, you know. So there had been a, an incident that had occurred, I think it was in about 1810, and it was called the Veer Street Coterie. And with that, they busted what was called a mollyhouse, which is, again, like a male brothel, the Bow Street Police busted it. And 18 men were eventually convicted, two of them were hanged, and six were actually pilloried for the offence. Only two men, only two men were hanged out of all that because they couldn't prove that they'd actually been participants in that act of sodomy, when that law was current at that time. So that didn't

• 17:26Speaker 05

  happen. But I guess what's interesting too, if you go back to that 1810 period. And View Street, they did pillory the guys back then and it was really vicious, you know. So they, these people had, uh, robbing fish, dead cats, cannonballs, vegetables thrown at them. And, and that was, it got so fierce that they had a, an armed guard of 200 constables to try to keep the crowd under control. So I think what's interesting there is that, you know, you, you, you had this earlier Molly House and it had been a very public thing, you know, this sort of, you know, the punishment of them. But what you'll find with this, uh, with Cleveland Street, the Cleveland Street scandal, and then we call it scandal for a reason, is that the authorities are trying to, you know, suddenly they're trying to keep everything hush, hush.

• 18:09Speaker 05

  And it's, um, you know, we, we, we don't want this to, to get out. And there's a reason why they don't want it to get out because, um, they do start interviewing the male sex workers. And so they start talking to these guys and they start to say, well, look, you know, our clientele, you know, they, they involve some, you know, pretty well-known, pretty powerful people. But in the meantime, if we go back to what's, what's going on there at Cleveland Street, they try to arrest the proprietor Hammond and they find out that, that he's fled somewhere. In the meantime, one of the young guys does name a Lord Arthur Somerset as somebody who frequented the house.

• 18:47Kate Lister?

  Oh, hello.

• 18:48Speaker 05

  So this is a big development. So Lord Arthur Somerset wasn't just, um, any old lord, I guess you could say, but he had connections to the royal family.

• 18:57Kate Lister?

  Oh, it's getting a bit hot under the collar, isn't it?

• 18:59Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 19:00Kate Lister?

  Right, okay.

• 19:01Speaker 05

  So Somerset's got connections to the royal family. So he's an equerry to the Prince of Wales, none other than the Prince of Wales. And, and, and he had a bit of a reputation, but mostly at the, at this stage, it was mostly sort of, uh, you know, for his heterosexual, if you like, activities.

• 19:17Kate Lister?

  Yeah, I was just thinking, I can't think of him being with the boys. I might have been wrong on that one, but he, I mean, he had a gargantuan sexual appetite. If anything stayed still long enough, he'd have a go at it. But was there any accusations that he liked boys as well? It wouldn't surprise me.

• 19:31Speaker 05

  Certainly, you know, and, and, and this is why this Cleveland Street scandal is significant because historians, when, when the documents were eventually released in this, in the seventies and historians got to look at everything that was actually happening, they did start to sort of speculate around his sexuality. Let's come back to that maybe because

• 19:48Kate Lister?

  Okay, yeah.

• 19:48Speaker 05

  Rather than, it could be a spoiler, but. At this stage, he's been, the Lord Arthur Somerset's been named.

• 19:56Kate Lister?

  It's not good at all. Like if your mate is accused of something like that, even if you had nothing to do with it whatsoever, we'd still have guilt by association. Like if you know, like you see that happen with celebrities all the time when they get accused of terrible things. The people who were even in their circle are suddenly on the back foot, even if they had nothing to do with it. So it's a big deal.

• 20:15Speaker 05

  It is a big deal. And I guess, you know, in Victorian England, you know, this, we're talking about activities that people normally don't want to know about, don't want to speak about, you know, that everybody's pushing aside. So this is a guy that's running the Prince of Wales stables. He's a, he was a military officer and also part of the aristocracy. And the other person that gets named is the Earl of Euston. And there's also a number of other people, British Army colonels and so on. So, so this is all, you know, this, this suddenly has really blown up, you know, so we've got some, some, some big names here. And, and look, you know, it may have been that when they were being interviewed, these, these young fellows, they were, they were smart enough to know that, you know, if I

• 20:57Speaker 05

  throw away a few, a few of these names and that, this might, you know, sort of, you know, get us out of a bit of trouble, um, which, which it seems to actually eventually do. So Somerset, he was interviewed by the police, but no immediate action was taken against him. So, you know, this is typical. And, and in the meantime, he sort of goes abroad and keeps conducting his, you know, everyday activities and so on. The house at Cleveland Street was, was empty. So Hammond had, had fled. And eventually he, he actually makes it all the way to the US. And, um, although a warrant was issued for his arrest, he was never arrested. And, and eventually that warrant is dropped. So he manages to escape everything here.

• 21:43Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with John after the short break.

• 22:00Speaker 06

  Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed: Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week.

• 22:57Kate Lister?

  Do we know anything about him? Like, do we have any background details on who he was?

• 23:02Speaker 05

  No, look, I haven't been able to dig out a lot about him at all. But he does manage to escape as such. And what you find interesting about this is that the, most of the senior figures and that do evade punishment and do tend to get away here. And it's the male sex workers, just as this is the case with female sex workers, it tend to sort of, you know, become the focus of punishment around this. So, so arrest warrants were produced for various people that were involved, including a guy called George Vek, who was an acquaintance of Hammond's. And Vek, it seems, had worked at the Telegraph office. And he actually got sacked for improper conduct with the messenger boys. So I think he's the kind of guy

• 23:45Speaker 05

  that's here recruiting, bringing the messenger boys in. He's quite an influential player in some of this. So they go and look for Vek, the police, and they eventually catch up with him at Waterloo Station, search his pockets, and they come across the name, or letters at least, from- A guy called Alden and Ali's. So we've got somebody else that suddenly all caught up in this. And he actually admitted when the police interviewed him to actually receiving money from Somerset and having a sexual relationship with him and working at Cleveland Street for him. And so Ali's eventually becomes a real linchpin, you know, in this whole sort of prosecution

• 24:26Speaker 05

  case. So about a month later, we have the trials occurring of the, if you like, Rent Boys, I guess they were probably known in the day and.

• 24:36Kate Lister?

  They would have been prosecuted under the Le Bouchet Amendment Act, which it changed, that was what changed it. So it wasn't just that he had to be prosecuted for sodomy, it was gross indecency. That's what it brought in, right?

• 24:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, that's right. So what the Le Bouchet Amendment Act brought in, and Le Bouchet sort of crops up in some of this narrative as well. But he was someone who was, he was actually, interestingly enough, he was a liberal and he was a radical liberal, you know, at the time. And so he was, if you go by his own words, to protect children, you know, so and that was his seemingly major concern. And so it did introduce an amendment, a new misdemeanor for gross indecency between men. So this is what's being prosecuted here, which was known as Clause 11. And that clause was introduced in 1885. And it says, any male person who in private or public commits the commission of any other male person a gross indecency would be guilty

• 25:30Speaker 05

  of a misdemeanor. And therefore they'd be subject to two years of hard labour.

• 25:34Kate Lister?

  Wow. Just being gay then?

• 25:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right. Just being gay. So we know that's what happens to Oscar Wilde, you know. So, you know, a few years later, he's prosecuted under the same act and he does cop two years of hard labour, which, you know, for somebody who's probably hasn't done a lot of hard labour, but, you know, effectively destroyed him.

• 25:54Kate Lister?

  It broke him, didn't it? It really did. It was what happened to him.

• 25:58Speaker 05

  Absolutely. So now, so if we return to the trial of the Rent Boys, so they're being prosecuted in similar circumstances as Wilde was. But what actually happens to them is that there tends to be a lot of clemency shown towards them. So the media is setting them up as kind of innocents. So.

• 26:17Kate Lister?

  Okay, it's an interesting shift.

• 26:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, so representations of the Rent Boys in the media tend to sort of portray them as looking relatively young, you know, clean cut, angelic, if you like. And so there's a lot of sympathy out there for them. And the narrative that starts to get, you know, sort of build up around this, the public narrative, you know, the stuff that's coming out in the media and what's going on. It's like, well, there's all these rich clients, they're not getting prosecuted, they're getting away with stuff. There might be a bit of a cover up, there might be a bit of a conspiracy here.

• 26:52Kate Lister?

  I mean, it does, doesn't it? If the only people they've got for trial are basically poor teenage boys and everyone else that's been named has legged it. How big was this in the press? Like, if you're talking scandal, how big was this? Was it reported everywhere?

• 27:08Speaker 05

  So pretty much after the trial of the boys, so there was a little bit of reportage. Some of the press started to pick it up in a big way. And so, so there becomes a bit of a press campaign around this. And that's why it does get the name scandal. So there's two people that pick it up and one of them is a very famous, well-known newspaper proprietor of the day called W T Sted, and he's often said to be probably the most famous journalist in the British Empire at the time, arguably the world, really. He was known for investigative journalism, so probably invented both tabloid and investigative journalism, right, for the Paul Moore Gazette. And I guess one of his big claim to fame and what he's been remembered

• 27:48Speaker 05

  for was that a few years earlier, he'd campaigned around female prostitution and he pushed to sort of change laws to up the age of consent. So this, this sort of stuff, it all starts to get sort of blended together. So, you know, so when you look at the changes, you know, around those laws that we were talking about before the amendments, those, those changes partly result from some press campaigning to raise the age of consent. And what Sted had done, interestingly enough, he'd actually basically taken a young woman from her parents and shown how easy it was to sort of say, well, look, you know, I can take a young girl off the streets.

• 28:23Kate Lister?

  It's great that the age of consent was raised, it definitely needed that, but his methods were questionable. They've been questioned ever since. How old was the girl? She was like 11 or 12 or something. And then there was this whole thing about like, that the mother didn't actually mean for that to happen and he'd engineered it and it all got a bit. It was a strange story.

• 28:45Speaker 05

  Absolutely. And it was huge in the day. I think they were, you know, like the afternoon edition of the Paul Moore, cause it, you know, might have been selling 10,000 copies on the back of this whole series. And it'd be a series of stories that was being presented. So it was really big stuff in it, in its day. Instead, he remained very prominent, you know, and famous for quite some time. And he was known particularly for his influence, you know, so he changed criminal law, he changed social legislating, lobbied around a number of things. But as I said, the one that he was really well known for was raising the age of consent back in 1885. But it also happened to be, you know, where those amendments did have an impact on, you know, men having sexual relations with men as, as well.

• 29:28Kate Lister?

  And he's reporting on the Cleveland Street scandal.

• 29:31Speaker 05

  Absolutely. He is reporting on the Cleveland Street scandal. So, but he's probably not the most prominent reporter on the scandal. So what happens at the trials of the Rent Boys? So you've got two of them now, New Love and Vek, and they're sentenced to four and nine months hard labour respectively.

• 29:48Kate Lister?

  Not as harsh as it could have been, I suppose, but it's still very harsh.

• 29:51Speaker 05

  It is harsh. It's terribly harsh. But again, you know, it's not as harsh, you know, a few years later is what Wild copped. So that was regarded, really enough, and I'm not making light of hard labour at the time, but that was regarded as pretty much lenient. And so, and the judge that had been appointment, appointed was named for his leniency.

• 30:10Kate Lister?

  That's nuts, isn't it? Of just only two months hard labour for a 15 year old boy? You absolute bunch of assholes. There's another character in this that we should mention before I forget him, Jack Soul, who rocks up.

• 30:25Speaker 05

  Jack Soul does rock up. And he's a bit of a interesting character. He's a bit of a rock star. He comes along and he comes along in interesting circumstances. And actually, and this is a good sort of juncture between our newspaper guys and Jack Soul and what happens next. So this is the scandal that keeps giving, you know, so it's got a little bit of a ways to play out. So the press started to get a whiff of what was going on. They understood that, you know, these poor young blokes are getting these harsh sentences. What's happening with the aristocrats? What's happening with the military guys, the powerful people?

• 30:56Kate Lister?

  Yeah, they bugger off.

• 30:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, so they start the campaign and a guy, another press guy called Park, he starts to really campaign hard on some of this. So Park, he runs a North London newspaper. It's pretty obscure. It's not that well known. It's a very radical newspaper. So, you know, so he thinks, you know, these, you know, aristocrats, they're getting away with it. So he actually goes and names Euston, who was the lord that had been mentioned earlier, he'd been named by the sex workers when they were first interviewed. He points out Euston publicly. He actually suggests that Euston ran off to Peru. So one of the others has run off to the US. Lord Somerset actually ran off to France and he never returns. So

• 31:41Speaker 05

  it's a bit tragic, actually, what happens to Lord Somerset because he really can never get work again, you know, because if you're, you know, an equerry to the Prince of Wales and you've got that, you know, muddy mark.

• 31:53Kate Lister?

  Yeah, yeah, that's, that would be difficult to be recruited after that, although my sympathies are slightly limited if he's been exploiting teenage boys, but still, yes. So he kind of dies in, well, obscurity, I suppose, in France, but he never faces justice for this.

• 32:10Speaker 05

  No, he doesn't. So, so he never, he never comes back to, never returns to England. And the word was that he was tipped off, you know. So again, you know, you've got these powerful people that are, yeah, yeah.

• 32:21Kate Lister?

  Like what, they all just suddenly decided to go on holiday all at the same time, just as this scandal dropped. Somebody said something to somebody.

• 32:28Speaker 05

  Absolutely. So, and the suggestion is, and you know, and the rumor is that this is really, you know, it's either coming from the Prince of Wales himself, or it could be none other than the Prime Minister. So Lord Salisbury, you know, who, who again is acting on behalf of the Prince of Wales, you know, trying to cover up this aristocratic debauchery.

• 32:50Kate Lister?

  Wow. Why would they want them to get out of the country? Why wouldn't they be like, you've done a terrible thing, you must face justice. Why would the Prince of Wales want his mate who looks after his horses to be out of the country?

• 33:02Speaker 05

  It's it's interesting because he's quoted in some reports as saying, you know, look, he's done terrible things and, you know, and so on, you know, but then at the same time, well, if he should go and never show up here again, you know, don't come back kind of good riddance.

• 33:16Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 33:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, so it's really trying to play it, you know, sort of both ways that the Prince of Wales starts to come under increasing pressure. So at the time, he was just constantly subjected to letters coming to him, you know, sort of implicating him in these matters, speculation rumors. He's really feeling the pressure at this time too, around the case. So it's pretty much the Tories that are in power. And I think, you know, in some ways they're seen to be the friends of the wealthy and the aristocrats and so on. And then they probably associate a scandal like this, you know, this could, you know, create all sorts of ramifications. It can have social ramifications and so on. So we've really got to keep the

• 33:58Speaker 05

  social order, you know, sort of all together here. So what happens with Euston, he ends up filing against this reporter, Park, for libel. He says, I wasn't in Peru. I didn't flee, you know?

• 34:12Kate Lister?

  That was, that was the bit he objected to. I wasn't in Peru.

• 34:16Speaker 05

  No, that's right. Well, he does, he does admit to going to Cleveland Street. So he says something like, well, you know, well, actually I did go to Cleveland Street and I happened to be walking along Piccadilly and I was given a card and invited me to Cleveland Street and I wanted to go in and look at the display of female nude sculptures here. And that's what I thought I was going to see.

• 34:36Kate Lister?

  No, you didn't. That's just the, that is, that's just the, I only read Playboy for the Articles nonsense. Come on. All right. Okay. So he's, he's admitted to that.

• 34:49Speaker 05

  He's admitted to that. Then he said, you know, and of course I went in there, you know, and I was appalled, you know, and all this improper.

• 34:56Kate Lister?

  Horrified.

• 34:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, horrified, you know, and then he probably read out of the place, you know, in sheer horror. So this is where Saul comes up. So they bring Saul in, you know, and Saul's another person who's worked on Saul. He's, he's an interesting character, this Saul, because he's the one person. He's not like in the same group as the Telegraph boys, so he's quite different. In fact, he describes himself, and I love this description, as a professional sodomite.

• 35:23Kate Lister?

  But he's saying this in court under questioning. He's, is he Irish? At least he comes from, over from Ireland, doesn't he? And he's not very old. How old is he when they've called him over for this? Eighteen, nineteen, kind of?

• 35:36Speaker 05

  Nineteen, possibly, yeah, yeah, eighteen.

• 35:38Kate Lister?

  And he's sat there in court saying, I'm a professional sodomite.

• 35:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. Look, and he was, he was said to have addressed the court with brazen effrontery. As I said, very interesting character. He'd been caught up, he'd been caught up with a, an earlier scandal back in Ireland. So yes, you're right, Kate, he did come from Ireland. He'd been involved in the Dublin Castle scandal or affair. And again, you know, we're talking about sort of military figures visiting, you know, a place where they're clearly sort of, well, they were said to be engaging in orgies with other men. And, you know, so you could say something similar to Cleveland Street, and you know, and I think that's what Saul's kind of saying when he says, I'm a professional sodomite. He's grappling for a way, like, he would probably wouldn't think of himself as a sex worker.

• 36:23Speaker 05

  And I guess it's interesting at this time too, because homosexuality is sort of still something that's kind of coming into being. I don't think these people think of themselves, you know, see themselves as gay. They don't see themselves as homosexual. They don't see themselves as sex workers. So we're in that kind of in-between period where, you know, we've got that sort of morality from the earlier periods. It talks about sodomy and buggery and so on, as this kind of aberration as a practice. And then, you know, what's starting to develop just in this period is this sort of notion, this medical or scientific notion of the homosexuals as a species is a distinct sort of, you know, group or an identity even, you know, which of course,

• 37:07Speaker 05

  homosexual man labelled such started to embrace.

• 37:10Kate Lister?

  Yeah, but that wasn't there at the time. So you've got. Jack Saul announcing that he's a professional sodomite to the court. And what else did he have to say for himself? Why was he even there? Who was he testifying about? The guy in Peru slash not Peru?

• 37:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, not Peru. So he was a defendant in the libel case. So he was brought forward as a defence witness. He basically, he said that, you know, Euston is lying, you know, so he was there and he says something to the effect. In fact, you know, Euston isn't a sodomite either. And this sort of takes us back to the point I was making about, you know, this idea of sodomites. He said, he's not a sodomite because he used to like playing with me and spending on my belly.

• 37:48Kate Lister?

  Oh, so it's all in the details then. It's all in the small print.

• 37:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, we couldn't be a sodomite because he's not engaging in anal sex. But he did, he did these other activities and he certainly was there. I think when you're getting that level of detail, it makes me feel that, you know, John Saul was not necessarily lying and I, and I don't see any reason why he would be.

• 38:08Kate Lister?

  Why would he? Yeah, yeah. What did the court make of that? This Irish teenager turning up with these kind of details. They must have been really shocked.

• 38:18Speaker 05

  With brazen effrontery, yeah, they were really shocked.

• 38:21Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 38:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, look, and you know, and this is a guy that I guess he'd become so notorious. He was sort of, it was well known in his lifetime. He actually featured in a novel called The Sins of the City's Plane. Could be fictitious, you know, semi-autobiographical, I mean Victorian pornography, basically. And so, so he was a bit notorious in his day, a very colourful character and descriptions of him having as being very good looking. So I think he was described as having a massive male appendage. So, so yes, he would have been someone, I guess, in the, in the role of sex worker that, you know, might have.

• 38:55Kate Lister?

  It's a hell of a reputation, isn't it? Wow.

• 38:58Speaker 05

  Well, he did. He established a reputation for himself. And I think that's important because, you know, another distinction to make here is that the young fellas in the post office, they're sort of involved in a clandestine activity. That, you know, they wouldn't see themselves as professional sodomites. So they wouldn't see themselves, you know, really as anything other than postal workers who were doing just something, you know, that having a little bit of fun on the side. They're earning some good money for it.

• 39:24Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 39:25Speaker 05

  I think less they'd have a sense of themselves as being, you know, sodomites, let alone homosexuals, but clearly souls entirely different.

• 39:33Kate Lister?

  Isn't it. So what happens then? Do the boys get sent to hard labour? Some people have buggered off abroad and stay there. What about the guy who was in Prue, not in Prue? Did he win his case?

• 39:46Speaker 05

  He did. So he won his case and was cleared. And the journalist, Park, from memory, he got a year imprisonment, which was considered to be very harsh at the time.

• 40:07Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with John after the short break.

• 40:22Kate Lister?

  Hello, betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right. It took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there and the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 41:06Kate Lister?

  And so what's kind of strange about this case is it's like, like, none of the big players face justice. Hammond, somewhere in America, who knows where? The rest of them are kind of scattered to the wind. Houston's been cleared. There's a really harsh penalty for the guy who wrote about him, harsher even than the boys who've been accused of this. What I've noticed when I've looked into this is it seems like in the UK at least, there was a press silence. It starts to build. It starts to build. You've got people like Steed and Park who are like trying to do something with it. And then all of a sudden it's just, shh. It's almost like it's just gone. Was it reported anywhere else around the world? I really get the sense that like it was either too hot to talk about because the guy had been

• 41:46Kate Lister?

  sent to jail, or this was still in a point of like, these are powerful people, like we'll just shut up. It's not worth the risk.

• 41:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, look, my understanding is it was reported upon elsewhere. And yeah, look, I mean, there was a period, so for, you know, about 12 months where there was feverish, you know, sort of press accounts of what's going on, you know, and then up to 60 people were, you know, implied to have been involved in this as clients, you know, and there's a lot of stuff happening. The Prince of Wales is feeling the heat around all this, certainly. And there is evidence certainly to show that, you know, the Prince of Wales did play a part in turning down a little bit of the heat here through the Prime Minister.

• 42:28Kate Lister?

  Oh, did he? Right.

• 42:29Speaker 05

  Yes, yes. So there was, there does seem to be evidence, you know, so historians, you know, looking back have said there was certainly some efforts to try to get this all covered up, put under the carpet. So this is one conspiracy case, I guess, that you could say has got some legs.

• 42:45Kate Lister?

  Do we know anything about what happens to any of the players in, in, in all of this? Do they just sort of, would we even know what happened to these boys that they, what happened to them afterwards?

• 42:54Speaker 05

  Not really. So I think they disappear into history, you know, in many ways, and they're probably happy. They're working class young men, and I guess they're not really meant to be in the spotlight. They wouldn't have other than this kind of, this accident, you know, that, that occurred, you know. And again, it started with this small investigation, and then it blew into something bigger and involved some of the most influential, you know, biggest names in that period, you know, whether they be from the press or, and so on. I mean, we know what happened to all the main players. Prince Victor Albert later dies, very young he dies, and, you know, doesn't inherit the throne. And he's actually, he's interestingly, he was always sort of getting implicated in the Ripper.

• 43:36Kate Lister?

  Yes, he is, isn't he? Definitely wasn't him. I feel quite confident saying that, but he was a slightly effeminate prince. And so he obviously got implicated with this as well.

• 43:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, look, he did. And, you know, and he did have a liking for sex, but but to sort of come back to that point you were making earlier. I think historically, historians looking back tend to sort of be on the side that he did not visit the brothels. And it was unlikely that he was gay, possibly bisexual, but maybe not as well. There was some speculation at some point that Somerset, that lord, who was his equerry, had somehow lured him down to Cleveland Street when he knew that it was being investigated and that, to try to then implicate him. And then he knew that the prince would probably try to save him or pressure him. It's probably idle speculation, but, you know, nonetheless, you know, these rumours kept sort of bobbing up that the prince had been there.

• 44:29Kate Lister?

  As a historian of sex work, then as a final question, what impact did this case have on the history of male sex work? Did it change things? Did it make it more visible? Did it have any lasting impact? Or was it just a scandal that came and went?

• 44:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, look, great, great question, Kate. I think personally that it set up a bit of a trope or a template around male sex work that was going to persist for another century. So pretty much up until pretty much the nineteen eighties. And and that that is this idea that male sex workers were typically what we'd call hustlers or rent boys, which means in the terminology that they're young men, working class. They often work the streets, if not brothels, and they're victims of older predatory, well-off men. So predatory homosexuals is the way that the clients would often be described.

• 45:30Speaker 05

  Now, this, of course, is in great contrast to female sex work, where the clients are invisible, nobody really scrutinises them, they don't get prosecuted. The sex worker's a subject to all the scrutiny, they're going to jail. The male sex work world was very different. So the young male sex workers, you know, in the 50s, 60s, 70s, they'd get sent social welfare type options and it'd be those sort of public young blokes. That was probably a good thing to do, but they weren't the only male sex workers around. The other ones were sort of like invisible. So they weren't out working the streets. The clients would be being these predatory homosexual

• 46:10Speaker 05

  older men. That's the way they were tipified. They would cop the full flak of the law. So they'd be prosecuted. So very big contrast to female sex work. So what happens though in the 1980s is that with the appearance of HIV AIDS, the epidemic, people start to research male sex work again because male sex workers are seen to be vectors. They're called vectors for HIV AIDS. They're seen to be somebody who can transmit HIV to a heterosexual male and then who transmits it to the family. So diseases, you know, sort of threaten, you know, the familial hold. And but what happens, a lot of gay scholars

• 46:52Speaker 05

  at that time also start to do interviews with male sex workers and they find, interestingly enough, that male sex workers are typically identified as gay or bisexual. Their clients are typically, they're heterosexual, but not exclusively, you know. So it's a complex thing where the stereotypes don't always fit. But certainly a lot of people working in the industry are gay or bisexual, or as John Soul would say, you know, professional sodomites. I think these are nice, yeah, sort of touchstone there, you know, for the reality of the profession. And so anyway, our thinking around male sex work kind of changed in that period. And I think we sort of acknowledged a bit of the complexity and we moved away from all this Victorian mythology that that has sort of sprung up in the late

• 47:37Speaker 05

  19th century.

• 47:38Kate Lister?

  John, you have been fascinating to talk to. Thank you so much. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Are you online?

• 47:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. Look, I'm based at the Queensland University of Technology here in Brisbane. I'm still putting out some materials around male sex work, both contemporary and historical. And I guess I'll keep dabbling in that space because it's so fascinating, Kate.

• 48:01Kate Lister?

  It is so fascinating. Thank you so much for joining me. You've been marvelous.

• 48:06Speaker 05

  Thank you, Kate.

• 48:12Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to John for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along, whatever it is that you get your podcasts. If you've got any suggestions for an episode, or perhaps you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt and Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.