(2 of 3)
The diary makes clear that Gladstone suffered extreme sexual frustration. He writes of "dangerous curiosity and filthiness of spirit... the extraordinary tenacity of the evil in me." Before taking to the streets, Gladstone tried sublimation through reading pornography (in Latin and French), but he admitted to his diary that he deliberately preferred to "court evil." Why? As he wrote in the diary: "Has it been sufficiently considered how far pain may become a ground of enjoyment?"
Less strange to modern eyes is the inside story that emerges from the spidery script that records the attempts to play down the notorious "Cleveland Street case." On July 4, 1889, a young telegraph messenger named Swinscow told police that he and other boys earned extra money at a well-known male brothel at 19 Cleveland Street, in London's Tottenham Court Road district.
Police staked out the brothel and gathered evidence against various social nabobs for prosecution under a law that prohibited acts of "gross indecency" between male homosexuals (women were exempt under the law because Victoria found it inconceivable that they could commit similar acts). But only two people were ever prosecuted in the case: George Veck, an unlucky and obscure 40-year-old Anglican clergyman, and another young messenger named Henry Newlove. They were hustled into Old Bailey, pleaded guilty to violating the homosexual statute and got light sentences. The press was cowed into near silence; one editor was sentenced to twelve months for libel for naming a high-born participant who was never brought to trial. But gossip spread. The Pall Mall Gazette complained of unnamed lords who "swagger at large and are even welcomed as valuable allies of the administration of the day."
Black Sheep. The biggest fish eventually caught in the police net was Lord Arthur ("Podge") Somerset, 38, son of the Duke of Beaufort, major in the elite Royal Horse Guards and manager of the Prince of Wales' racing stables. The director of public prosecutions wanted to try Somerset, but Home Secretary Henry Matthews warned against any "fishing enquiries about other charges and other persons." The Lord Chancellor wrote a secret opinion opposing prosecution, and Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister, backed him up.
They were also clearly concerned about stories that implicated an even more eminent Victorian: Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward, 25, the black sheep grandson of Queen Victoria and son of the Prince of Wales. A known bisexual libertine, young Prince Eddy has also been named by some authorities as the real Jack the Ripper, but the police apparently had no more solid evidence against him in this case than in the Ripper murders. Pressure also came from the Prince of Wales, who sent titled emissaries to the police with the message that he was "very anxious" and wanted Somerset cleared quickly.