Fanny and Stella (39 page)

Anything or anyone that had the potential to threaten the state was relentlessly surveilled. The Trade Unions were regularly spied upon, as were ‘meetings of the unemployed’, both seen as potential hotbeds of revolutionary change. One detective had filed a report on a meeting he attended in Soho Square on the subject of ‘Maladministration of the Law’. Another reported on ‘a speech made by Mr Bradlaugh at the New Hall of Science, Old Street, on Percy Bysshe Shelley’. Charles Bradlaugh was a declared atheist and was thus seen as a threat to the status quo.

Day-and-night surveillance was expensive and was usually restricted to master criminals, anarchists, Fenian conspirators and foreign spies. It seemed decidedly odd to place the activities of two feather-pated young men like Fanny and Stella, barely out of their teens, on a par with the Fenian bombers. Their frivolous chitter-chatter and their endless forays in drag might be immoral (most would say disgusting, unmanly and un-Christian to boot), but it was not – as yet – a crime to dress up as a woman.

Mr Digby Seymour and the entire defence counsel were at very considerable pains to stress the youthfulness and the boyishness of Fanny and Stella. They were ‘young Mr Boulton’ and ‘young Mr Park’; they were ‘boys’ or ‘little more than boys’; they were ‘youths’ and ‘young men’; they were ‘dainty lads’ and ‘pleasing boys’: unformed and unfinished, prone to larks and high spirits, as all boys are. And certainly, they were sometimes foolish, sometimes thoughtless, and sometimes heedless of the consequences of their actions – as all boys are. But foolishness should not be confused with wickedness, nor folly conflated with vice.

And even if there had been goings-on, sodomitical shilly-shallyings, between these two foolish young men and others in their circle, what of it? Did their sordid sexual misadventures really merit such lavish attention from the Metropolitan Police? Hardly a week went by without one or more prurient reports of trials for ‘abominable’ and ‘unnatural’ offences between men committed throughout the length and breadth of the land. So, what, if anything, was special about Fanny and Stella?

There were more uncomfortable disclosures. Mr William Pollard confirmed that the Treasury Solicitor, Mr John Greenwood, had from the very beginning taken personal charge of the prosecution until his untimely death two months earlier. Surely this very eminent and very important gentleman had bigger fish to fry? Surely he had better things to do than busy himself with the doings of two young men who liked to dress as women?

And how was it that the conspiracy charges against Fanny and Stella were ready and waiting for them on the morning after their arrest? In the normal course of events, such an indictment would have taken weeks, if not months, to prepare. Reports of surveillance would have had to be written and submitted, summaries of evidence prepared and considered, and senior police officers like Inspector Thompson – and perhaps even the Commissioner himself – quizzed before the final indictment could be drafted.

Such a serious prosecution would certainly require the knowledge and approval not only of Mr John Greenwood himself, but quite probably of the other senior Government law officers, the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General, and perhaps even beyond. Sir Robert Collier had already let slip that the Home Secretary had taken a strong personal interest in this case and was driving the relentless prosecution of these two young men.

Then there were the secret and not-so-secret payments to witnesses for the prosecution. George Smith freely admitted that he had received fourteen shillings, even though there was no record of this payment in the Treasury Register. But the Treasury Register
did
record payments to Francis Kegan Cox and to Maria George,
née
Duffin, via Inspector Thompson: ‘679 – Dec 1870 – R. v Boulton and Park – Direct payment to Inspector Thompson of amounts paid to Maria Duffin – I authorise further advances as may be necessary.’

It was all very worrying. Why should Mr Cox receive payment for doing his public duty and testifying to criminal acts? And why was Inspector Thompson making payments, payments
plural
, to Maria George,
née
Duffin? There was indisputable evidence that three witnesses were being paid. How many more witnesses were being paid? And for what? Something was wrong.

More worrying still was the entry in the Treasury Register detailing payments to the three policemen most closely connected with this case: ‘492 – Dec 1870 – R. v Boulton and Park – To pay £5 – £3 – £2 to Inspector Thompson, Sergeant Kerley, and Detective Officer Chamberlain.’

It was almost unheard of for officers of the Metropolitan Police to receive a gratuity in the ordinary course of their duty. Gratuities were only ever given upon retirement from the force. There might be exceptional circumstances when the Commissioner might advance a small sum to relieve hardship, but such payments were rare. Why, then, was the Treasury doling out these ‘rewards’, as Mr Digby Seymour contemptuously termed them, to salaried officers of the Metropolitan Police? It was all very irregular.

Spying, surveillance, bribery, collusion, corruption and political interference at the highest levels. What on earth was going on? Could it be that this prosecution was in some way political? Had it something to do with the late Lord Arthur Clinton? Or was it an ill-conceived and badly executed attempt to extirpate the scourge of sodomy from the land by holding a solemn state trial which would serve as a terrible example and warning to any and all young men tempted to indulge in this criminal folly?

Whatever the motives, the prosecution was in utter disarray. It was a rout, there was no other word for it. All that remained was the ugly stench of conspiracy and corruption and the abhorrent spectacle of justice being seen to be
un
done.

29

‘This Terrible Drama of Vice’

She watches, if his cheek grows pale,

She watches, if his glad smile fail,

She watches, if a sigh he breathes,

And if he sorrows, then she grieves;

She watches for his safe return,

Through life, the mother watches on.

Fanny Fales, ‘A Mother’s Love’, 1853

M 
rs Mary Ann Boulton was the object of the greatest curiosity and the greatest compassion as she stepped into the witness box to speak in defence of her beloved and beleagured son.

Mrs Mary Ann Boulton looked frail and she looked old, though she could not have been much more than fifty, if that. That there had been trials in her life – quite apart from this latest great and grand trial – was evident from the lines etched upon her face. She looked worn out by cares and worries. Nevertheless, she was sombrely and respectfully dressed in deference to the solemnity of the occasion, though she had taken care to follow Mr George Lewis’s sage advice not to wear black in case it looked as if she were already in mourning for Ernest. Her eyes were red and swollen as if from recent tears, and her voice was a little hoarse as though she were labouring under great emotion.

But here she stood, proud and unafraid. She was not here to apologise or to explain. She was not here to beg or to plead. She was here to speak truth to power, to tell the highest judge in the land in the highest court in the land that Ernest was innocent of the terrible crimes and dark conspiracies imputed to him. She was here to tell the world about her son, about her ‘own beloved Child’. The thought of him made her eyes prick again with hot tears and her chest swell with a mother’s love.

It was obvious that Mrs Mary Ann Boulton was not a well woman, that she was some sort of invalid, though the nature of her affliction was not known. Her doctor had, of course, warned her not to appear. She badly ‘wanted strength’, he had said. The ordeal would be too much for her. It could set her back. But she had dismissed his concerns and ignored the butterfly flutterings of her heart and steeled herself to fight for her child, like a tigress defending her young. And so when Mr Digby Seymour asked, ‘Are you the mother of Mr Ernest Boulton?’ she had answered in a clear voice replete with strength and pride and love.

‘I am,’ she declared.

It was a powerful beginning.

But where was Mr Thomas Boulton? That was the unspoken question on everyone’s lips. Surely as a husband and a father he should have been in court in the stead of his wife in this hour of need. Why must Mrs Mary Ann Boulton endure such a terrible ordeal alone and unprotected? But if there was a ripple of indignation it was quickly followed by a wave of sympathy for the bravery and courage of this frail woman so ready and so willing to fight in hand-to-hand combat for her beloved son.

Which was exactly what Mr George Lewis had had in his mind when he persuaded Mrs Mary Ann Boulton that she, and she alone – unencumbered by her husband – was Ernest’s best hope of acquittal. A mother’s love, a mother’s loyalty was more powerful and more potent in the eyes and in the hearts of a jury of twelve Englishmen good and true than all the legal arguments in the world.

So Mr Boulton had been despatched to the Cape of Good Hope on some ship-broking errand which would brook no delay. He was, in consequence, safely out of the way, leaving the stage clear for what promised to be the greatest performance of Mrs Mary Ann Boulton’s entire life.

Mrs Mary Ann Boulton still clung to the sweetly pretty fashions of her youth and wore her hair in the same girlish bunched ringlets which had so captivated Thomas Boulton during their courtship. In those distant, happier days, her ringlets softly shook like the May blossom on the trees when she laughed or when she sang. And even though, today, these same ringlets trembled with suppressed pain, passion and emotion, Mrs Mary Ann Boulton still recalled to the minds of those present a happier and more certain age, a less cynical and less sordid age of bluer skies and brighter promise.

Who could not but be impressed by the admirable Mrs Mary Ann Boulton? She was all courtesy and all attention. She had a very particular and refreshingly pleasing way of inclining her head in mute respect and deference to her gentlemanly interlocutors, as if bowing to their superior knowledge. When questions were put to her, she listened hard (and was seen to listen hard), and when she replied to those selfsame questions she did not so much answer as wholeheartedly agree. ‘Exactly so’, she would answer. ‘Entirely so’, ‘Quite so’, and ‘Certainly’, she would say with a reassuring nod and an eager smile.

And sometimes when it fell to her to recall the happy days and the sad days, a tear would glint like a diamond in her eye, and there would be a fresh rush of sympathy and love for this frail but strong Mother among Mothers. Counsel for the prosecution and the defence alike, even the Lord Chief Justice himself, treated her with kid gloves. Consequently, she got away with murder, or as good as. Difficult questions that really demanded a clear and direct answer were brushed aside or answered instead with a fondly recalled family anecdote.

If all else failed, Mrs Mary Ann Boulton could rely on her memory, or rather, her lack of a memory. ‘I have not at all a retentive memory,’ she would say. ‘I cannot remember’, ‘I do not remember at all’, ‘I may have forgotten’, ‘I should be afraid to say exactly’ and ‘I could not say positively’ were endlessly combined and confederated and given out with such charming conviction that it would have been hard – not to say heartless – to insist on pursuing the fox to the kill.

Mrs Mary Ann Boulton had a very confiding and a very including manner of expressing herself, a manner that drew people in, and once she had begun to speak she could not stop. She told Ernest’s life story (and much of her own) in a series of sweetly charming vignettes which she acted out before the court. She would recall and repeat entire conversations and then pause and look about her to see the effect of her words. She conjured up the past so naturally, so guilelessly, that the entire court was transfixed and transported. When she swelled with pride or shuddered with dread, the court swelled and shuddered with her. When she smiled or she laughed, or was indignant or angry, the court smiled and laughed, and was equally indignant, equally angry.

Ernest: A Story of Sweetness and Light. It might have been the title of a sentimental tract upon the sanctity of a mother’s love for a son. And a son’s devotion to his mother. A tract upon courage and fortitude in the face of suffering. A tract upon hope, faith and perseverance. Most of all it was a tract upon innocence – innocence of heart, innocence of deed and innocence of thought.

Ernest. A much-wanted and much-loved child, weak and sickly from birth. So weak and so sickly that Mrs Mary Ann Boulton had had to fret and fuss over her boy. A delicate, fragile boy who delighted in dressing up and in acting. And yes, they had rather encouraged it, as it seemed to make him happy. (And who could deny a sickly child those few precious moments of happiness?)

Ernest. Such a clever, funny child. A little boy who had dressed up as the maidservant and waited at table, even fooling his Grandmamma. Ernest, with the voice of an angel, who would make grown men weep when he sang.

Life had not been easy. Mr Boulton’s business affairs, never on the firmest of footings, had gone from bad to worse, and they had experienced great reverses. Not that she had ever allowed any shadow to fall on her two boys.
She
would go without – indeed she had gone without – rather than let her sons suffer in any way.