Revealed: The actual scandalous purpose Prince Eddy, Duke of Clarence was generally known as ‘Collar and Cuffs’
He was the eldest son of King Edward VII and was always poised to take the crown.
But Prince Eddy, Duke of Clarence, didn’t survive long enough to have a chance at the throne.
And if he had lived longer, perhaps he would have been in prison instead.
Handsome, elegant, and whip-thin, Eddy, born Prince Albert Victor in 1864, was known mockingly as ‘Collars and Cuffs’ after his flamboyant dress sense. He was bisexual; loving women but attracted to men.
He was raised with succession in mind but spent his childhood under a bullying grandmother – Queen Victoria – and an overbearing father who could not forgive him for his sensitive nature.
In 1899 Eddy became entangled in the Cleveland Street Affair, a colossal scandal centred on a male brothel near London‘s Euston Station which was frequented by members of the aristocracy. The clientele were predominantly blue-blooded, while the rent boys were teenagers employed by the Post Office to drop off their telegrams.
Constables had discovered the brothel by chance, when a routine police investigation into thefts led to the discovery of a ‘den of infamy’. A detective was sent to interrogate a 15-year-old telegraph boy, Charles Swinscow, who’d been found with 18 shillings in his pockets – the equivalent of two months’ wages in those days.
The Prince and Princess of Wales with infant Prince Albert ‘Eddy’ Victor, 1864
King Edward VII’s children (standing from left) Princess Royal and the Duke of Clarence (seated from left) Queen Maud of Norway, King George V and the Princess Victoria in 1873
The Duke of Clarence (left) at Marlborough House in 1890 with the Queen of Norway, Queen Alexandra, the Princess Royal, King Edward, Prince of Wales, Prince George and Princess Victoria
To clear himself of the theft, he confessed he had been ‘going to bed with gentlemen’ for four shillings a time. And as Charles talked, the names came out
Charles first mentioned Lord Arthur Somerset, an equerry of the Prince of Wales, and the Earl of Euston, a Sandringham neighbour of the royals, later naming Lord Ronald Gower and the Earl of Errol.
The sex scandal broke a few months later after a journalist stumbled upon the prostitutes’ uncommonly light convictions. Newspapers in Britain and America jumped on evidence which appeared to show the government was covering up the scandal to protect the names of aristocratic and other prominent men.
At the time, sexual acts between males were illegal in Britain, and the brothel’s clients would face prosecution and social disgrace if discovered. The age of the boys involved – in some cases as young as 15 – added fuel to the flames.
All too soon it was rumoured Prince Eddy was also on the list.
But Eddy’s father the Prince of Wales stepped in and contacted the then prime minister, Lord Salisbury. A great whitewash campaign soon got under way.
Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence taken on his 21st birthday
Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence and Princess Victoria Mary, December 1891
Duke of Clarence and Avondale. Suspected by some to be the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper
Despite a mountain of evidence showing widespread abuse of youths by men of social distinction, the police merely prosecuted two telegraph boys – and they were let off with light sentences. The brothel-keeper was allowed to escape the country.
So too was Lord Arthur Somerset – who not only escaped Britain, but came back for his mother’s funeral before fleeing abroad again. The evidence against Lord Euston was badly presented and he, too, escaped prosecution.
Victorian society would be shaken to its very foundations if senior members of the aristocracy – and even higher up – were discovered to be serial sex abusers. The case had to be shut down. And it was.
But what of Prince Eddy?
At the same time the court case was due to take place, the king-in-waiting, now 25, was packed off on a lengthy tour of India and ordered to stay away until the dust had settled, which American newspapers called a ‘cover-up’.
It was reported his parents were being ‘daily assailed with anonymous letters of the most outrageous character’. By January 1890, 60 suspects had been identified by journalists and police, 22 of whom promptly fled the country.
A few years later the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard, told a biographer of Prince Eddy’s younger brother George, later to become King George V, that the prince ‘had been involved in a male brothel scene, and that a solicitor had to commit perjury to clear him. The solicitor was struck off the rolls for his offence.’
Could the future king have gone to jail? If his father could silence the police and judiciary – which he did – the answer is certainly no.
Eddy silenced them all by dying unexpectedly at the age of 28. Weakened by gonorrehea, he succumbed to pneumonia
Lord Arthur Somerset, son of the 8th Duke of Beautfort, Nicknamed ‘Podge’ by his brothers fled the country following his involvement in the Cleveland Street rentboy scandal
Eddy’s father, the Prince of Wales, stepped into the scandal. He contacted the prime minister of the day, Lord Salisbury (above) – and all of a sudden a great whitewash campaign got under way
But the foreign press were like a dog with a bone, and cared less about royal dignity than they did about getting a hot story.
Before anything conrete could be found by American publications, Eddy died at the age of 28. Weakened by gonorrhoea, he succumbed to pneumonia.
He was betrothed to Princess Mary of Teck, who went on to marry his brother. George and Mary brought up their children at Sandringham, where Eddy’s room was preserved just as he had left it.
