Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale
Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, was the eldest child of the Prince and Princess of Wales. From the time of his birth, he was second in the line of succession to the British throne, but did not become king or Prince of Wales because he died before both his father and paternal grandmother Queen Victoria.
Albert Victor was known to his family, and many later biographers, as "Eddy". When he was young, he travelled the world extensively as a Royal Navy cadet, and as an adult, he joined the British Army, but did not undertake any active military duties. After two unsuccessful courtships, he became engaged to be married to his second cousin once removed Princess Victoria Mary of Teck in late 1891. A few weeks later, he died during a major pandemic. Mary later married his younger brother, the future King George V.
Albert Victor's intellect, sexual orientation, and mental health have been the subject of speculation. Rumours in his time linked him with the Cleveland Street scandal, which involved a homosexual brothel. However, there is no conclusive evidence that he ever went there, or that he was homosexual. Some authors have argued that he was the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, or that he was otherwise involved in the murders, but contemporaneous documents show that Albert Victor could not have been in London at the time of the murders, and the claim is widely dismissed.
Early life
Albert Victor was born at 8:58 pm two months prematurely on 8 January 1864 at Frogmore House, Windsor, Berkshire. He was the first child of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, and his wife Alexandra of Denmark. Following his grandmother Queen Victoria's wishes, he was named Albert Victor after the Queen and her late husband, Prince Albert. As a grandchild of the reigning British monarch in the male line and a son of the Prince of Wales, he was formally styled His Royal Highness Prince Albert Victor of Wales from birth. He was christened Albert Victor Christian Edward in the private chapel at Buckingham Palace on 10 March by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Longley, and was known informally as "Eddy".Education
When Albert Victor was just short of seventeen months old, his brother, Prince George, later King George V, was born in June 1865. Given their closeness in age, they were educated together. In 1871, the Queen appointed John Neale Dalton as their tutor. The two princes were given a strict programme of study, which included games and military drills as well as academic subjects. Dalton complained that Albert Victor's mind was "abnormally dormant".Though Albert Victor learnt to speak his mother's native Danish, progress in other languages and subjects was slow. Sir Henry Ponsonby thought that Albert Victor might have inherited his mother's deafness. The prince never excelled intellectually. Possible physical explanations for his inattention or indolence in class include absence seizures or his premature birth, which can be associated with learning difficulties, but blamed Albert Victor's poor education on Dalton, whom she considered uninspiring.
Separating the brothers for the remainder of their education was considered, but Dalton advised the Prince of Wales against splitting them up as "Prince Albert Victor requires the stimulus of Prince George's company to induce him to work at all." In 1877, the two boys were sent to the Royal Navy's training ship, HMS Britannia. They began their studies there two months behind the other cadets as Albert Victor contracted typhoid fever, for which he was treated by Sir William Gull. Dalton accompanied them as chaplain to the ship.
In 1879, after a great deal of discussion between the Queen, the Prince of Wales, their households and the Government, the royal brothers were sent as naval cadets on a three-year world tour aboard HMS Bacchante. Albert Victor was rated midshipman on his sixteenth birthday. They toured the British Empire, accompanied by Dalton, visiting the Americas, the Falkland Islands, South Africa, Australia, Fiji, the Far East, Singapore, Ceylon, Aden, Egypt, the Holy Land and Greece. They acquired tattoos in Japan. By the time they returned to Britain, Albert Victor was eighteen.
The brothers were parted in 1883; George continued in the navy and Albert Victor attended Trinity College, Cambridge. At Bachelor's Cottage, Sandringham, Albert Victor was expected to cram before arriving at university in the company of Dalton, a French instructor Monsieur Hua, and a newly chosen tutor/companion, James Kenneth Stephen. Some biographers have said that Stephen was a misogynist, although this has recently been questioned, and he may have felt emotionally attached to Albert Victor, but whether or not his feelings were overtly homosexual is open to question. Stephen was initially optimistic about tutoring the prince, but by the time the party were to move to Cambridge had concluded, "I do not think he can possibly derive much benefit from attending lectures at Cambridge ... He hardly knows the meaning of the words to read".
At the start of the new term in October, Albert Victor, Dalton, and Lieutenant Henderson from Bacchante moved to Nevile's Court at Trinity College, which was generally reserved for accommodating dons rather than students. The prince showed little interest in the intellectual atmosphere, and he was excused from examinations, though he did become involved in undergraduate life. He was introduced to Oscar Browning, a noted don who gave parties and "made pets of those undergraduates who were handsome and attractive", and became friendly with Dalton's godson, Alfred Fripp, who later became his doctor and royal surgeon. It is not known whether he had any sexual experiences at Cambridge, but partners of either sex would have been available. In August 1884, he spent some time at Heidelberg University studying German, before returning to Cambridge. Leaving Cambridge in 1885, where he had already served as a cadet in the 2nd Cambridge University Battalion, he was gazetted as an officer in the 10th Hussars. In 1888, he was awarded an honorary degree by the university.
One of Albert Victor's instructors said he learnt by listening rather than reading or writing and had no difficulty remembering information, but Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, had a less favourable opinion of him, calling him "an inveterate and incurable dawdler". Princess Augusta of Cambridge, Prince George's sister, was also dismissive, calling Albert Victor: "si peu de chose" .
Much of Albert Victor's time at his post in Aldershot was spent drilling, which he disliked, though he did like to play polo. He passed his examinations, and in March 1887, he was posted to Hounslow where he was promoted to captain. He was given more public engagements, visited Ireland and Gibraltar, and opened the Hammersmith suspension bridge. Of his private life, a childhood friend of Albert Victor later recalled that it was uneventful: "his brother officers had said that they would like to make a man of the world of him. Into that world he refused to be initiated."
Cleveland Street scandal
In July 1889, the Metropolitan Police uncovered a male brothel operated by Charles Hammond in Cleveland Street, London. Under police interrogation, the male prostitutes and pimps revealed the names of their clients, who included Lord Arthur Somerset, an Extra Equerry to the Prince of Wales. At the time, all homosexual acts between men were illegal, and the clients faced social ostracism, prosecution and, at worst, two years' imprisonment with hard labour.The resultant Cleveland Street scandal implicated other high-ranking figures in British society, and rumours swept upper-class London of the involvement of a member of the royal family, namely Prince Albert Victor. The prostitutes had not named Albert Victor, and it is suggested that Somerset's solicitor, Arthur Newton, fabricated and spread the rumours to take the heat off his client. Letters exchanged between the Treasury Solicitor, Sir Augustus Stephenson, and his assistant, Hamilton Cuffe, make coded reference to Newton's threats to implicate Albert Victor.
In December 1889, it was reported that the Prince and Princess of Wales were "daily assailed with anonymous letters of the most outrageous character" bearing upon the scandal. The Prince of Wales intervened in the investigation; no clients were ever prosecuted and nothing against Albert Victor was proven. Sir Charles Russell was retained to watch the proceedings in the case on behalf of Albert Victor. Although there is no conclusive evidence for or against his involvement, or that he ever visited a homosexual club or brothel, the rumours and cover-up have led some biographers to speculate that he did visit Cleveland Street, and that he was "possibly bisexual, probably homosexual". This is contested by other commentators, one of whom refers to him as "ardently heterosexual" and his involvement in the rumours as "somewhat unfair". Historian H. Montgomery Hyde wrote: "There is no evidence that he was homosexual, or even bisexual."
While English newspapers suppressed mention of Albert Victor's name in association with the case, Welsh-language, colonial, and American newspapers were less inhibited. The New York Times ridiculed him as a "dullard" and "stupid perverse boy", who would "never be allowed to ascend the British throne". According to one American press report, when departing the Gare du Nord in Paris in May 1890, Albert Victor was cheered by a waiting crowd of English, but hissed and catcalled by some of the French; one journalist present asked him if he would comment "as to the cause of his sudden departure from England". According to the report, "The Prince's sallow face turned scarlet and his eyes seemed to start from their orbits," and he had one of his companions upbraid the fellow for impertinence.
Somerset's sister, Lady Waterford, denied that her brother knew anything about Albert Victor. She wrote, "I am sure the boy is as straight as a line ... Arthur does not the least know how or where the boy spends his time ... he believes the boy to be perfectly innocent." Lady Waterford also believed Somerset's protestations of his own innocence. In surviving private letters to his friend Lord Esher, Somerset denies knowing anything directly about Albert Victor, but confirms that he has heard the rumours, and hopes that they will help quash any prosecution. He wrote,
I can quite understand the Prince of Wales being much annoyed at his son's name being coupled with the thing but that was the case before I left it ... we were both accused of going to this place but not together ... they will end by having out in open court exactly what they are all trying to keep quiet. I wonder if it is really a fact or only an invention of that arch ruffian H.
He continued,
I have never mentioned the boy's name except to Probyn, Montagu and Knollys when they were acting for me and I thought they ought to know. Had they been wise, hearing what I knew and therefore what others knew, they ought to have hushed the matter up, instead of stirring it up as they did, with all the authorities.
The rumours persisted; sixty years later the official biographer of George V, Harold Nicolson, was told by Lord Goddard, who was a twelve-year-old schoolboy at the time of the scandal, that Albert Victor "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, but was thereafter reinstated." In fact, none of the lawyers in the case was convicted of perjury or struck off during the scandal, but Somerset's solicitor, Arthur Newton, was convicted of obstruction of justice for helping his clients escape abroad, and was sentenced to six weeks in prison. Over twenty years later in 1910, Newton was struck off for twelve months for professional misconduct after falsifying letters from another of his clients, the notorious murderer Dr Crippen. In 1913, Newton was struck off indefinitely and sentenced to three years' imprisonment for obtaining money by false pretences.