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The Cleveland Street scandal of 1889 involved the discovery of a male brothel in London, where telegraph boys moonlighted as prostitutes for aristocratic clients.
In the ensuing cover-up and legal battles, Lord Arthur Somerset fled the country, a newspaper editor was imprisoned for libel, and rumors circulated that Prince Albert Victor (second in line to the British throne) had visited the brothel.
The Cleveland Street scandal began in July 1889 when Police Constable Luke Hanks was investigating a theft from the London Central Telegraph Office.
During this investigation, he discovered that a 15-year-old telegraph boy named Charles Thomas Swinscow had an unusually large amount of money in his possession.
Upon questioning, Swinscow admitted that he had earned the money working as a prostitute for Charles Hammond. The man who operated a male brothel at 19 Cleveland Street.
The Cleveland Street brothel became notorious as a hotspot for the famous and powerful in late 19th century London.
Its clientele reportedly included aristocrats and prominent public figures. All of whom risked severe legal consequences and social ostracism if discovered.
Lord Arthur Somerset, an heir to the Prince of Wales, was definitively identified as a patron.
Perhaps most scandalously, rumors circulated that Prince Albert Victor, son of the Prince of Wales and second-in-line to the British throne, had frequented the establishment. Though these allegations were never conclusively proven.
The Cleveland Street scandal produced several high-profile fugitives.
Charles Hammond, the brothel keeper, successfully fled abroad to evade prosecution.
Solicitor Arthur Newton faced charges of obstruction of justice for aiding the escape of individuals implicated in the scandal.
Lord Arthur Somerset chose a life of self-imposed exile for over three decades rather than face the consequences of his involvement. He lived incognito in France until his death in 1926.
The scandal took a dramatic turn when journalist Ernest Parke published an article in The North London Press naming Henry Fitzroy, Earl of Euston, as a client of the male brothel.
His reporting backfired spectacularly, as Euston successfully sued Parke for libel.
The journalist was sentenced to 12 months in prison.
The Cleveland Street scandal cast a long shadow over late Victorian society, potentially influencing Oscar Wilde's controversial novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray," published in 1890, which contained veiled references to homosexuality and aristocratic vice.
The affair's impact on public perception of same-sex relationships among the upper classes may have contributed to the hostile climate that led to Wilde's own prosecution for gross indecency just a few years later in 1895.
The scandal sent shockwaves through Victorian society, dramatically reinforcing existing negative attitudes towards male homosexuality.
It fueled a widespread perception that homosexuality was not only a moral failing, but specifically an aristocratic vice that posed a threat to lower-class youths.
The infamous brothel at 19 Cleveland Street met a swift end.
It was demolished in the 1890s to make way for an extension of the Middlesex Hospital.
Despite this attempt to remove its traces, the Cleveland Street affair has endured in cultural memory, becoming a significant subject of academic study in the exploration of London's historical LGBTQ+ communities and the complex social dynamics of Victorian sexuality.
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