The Petticoat Men (20 page)

The activity among the pressmen was now frantic, and rushing for the door, all this stuff I suppose being what they were waiting for. This Maria Duffin observed this further and puffed up her hair under her hat and actually almost bowed to the court as if she was taking a curtain call as she was dismissed.

‘Why is Lord Arthur Clinton not here to speak for himself?’ asked Mr Flowers rather testily, and you should’ve heard how quick the noisy court went completely quiet. A policeman spoke at once.

‘He has been asked for, sir, all about, but he is not to be found.’

‘Well I hope further efforts are being made to find him.’

By the time the court came back from the lunch adjournment Ma had done her mission and brought the real landlady of that Southampton-street address who was wearing a very respectable bonnet and her white curls shook in indignation. She insisted on being heard, took the oath, her eyes sparkling with rage.

‘My name is Mrs Louisa Peck. I am married to the Managing Clerk of the Sacred Harmonic Society.’ (And I wished Billy was here so we could roll our eyes at how Ma knew everyone, as usual.) ‘I have already given a deposition at the Treasury and you people had no right to call my maid instead of me! That woman, Maria Duffin, who purported to be the landlady at 36 Southampton-street instead of myself
,
is a wicked liar. How dare she make my very respectable establishment sound so unrespectable! This is not only a slur on me and my business but on the Sacred Harmonic Society. Maria Duffin was only a kitchen maid and she stayed with me no more than a month, and she mostly worked in the kitchen and she did not make the beds. If she heard Lord Arthur Clinton call Mr Boulton
darling
and
dear
and
Stella
then I must be deaf and if she saw Mr Boulton lounging about all day in a negligee handing out cards saying LADY CLINTON then I must be blind. And Maria Duffin did all this because she is
desperate
to get a husband!’

‘By speaking in court?’

‘By coming here and making herself all important with her lies, and hoping to catch the eye of some male person who may pass by out of interest!’

And then, in her respectable bonnet, she looked almost pityingly at Mr Flowers and the lawyers.

‘I believe there have also been comments about – if I may be allowed to use the word – about the
gender
of Mr Ernest Boulton. I think there is a possibility that there are some things that gentlemen dont understand. Which women do of course. Mr Boulton’s parents came to visit one day, and I
distinctly
heard his mother address him as Ernest. Now, excuse me, gentlemen! A mother would know if anybody does – so
of course
he must be a man, if his mother called him Ernest!’

The audience laughed and applauded and Mr Flowers banged his bench. Ma was now standing at the back but I turned round and gave her a wave and in the general moving about between witnesses being called Ma got back in to a space beside me.

‘Good for you, Ma!’ I said and we laughed in a whispering sort of way. ‘They’ll get bail now!’ I said.

But.

It came next.

The next thing.

Well – well I’m just going to write about it as quickly as I can, I’d rather leave this bit out but I suppose I have to write all that happened, and this is when – when everything changed.

It was the police surgeon in the Metropolitan Police, called Dr Paul. He had black greasy hair and he talked as if he was talking about nothing important.

‘When the prisoners first appeared in this court the morning after they were arrested at the theatre I was asked to examine them afterwards for the purpose of ascertaining their sex. They were still dressed in their women’s clothes that they were arrested in.’

‘There was no authority from the court for you to do that,’ said Mr Flowers very severely.

‘I dont need authority, sir. I am a police surgeon. I have constantly to examine prisoners as directed by the police, Mr Superintendent Thomson gave me orders. “Take off your clothes,” I said and I took a desk stool and said, “Bend over,” and in turn they did, Mr Park first. Both had on as well as a dress and petticoats, etc, etc, tights or drawers, over white stockings. I examined them not only to assess if they were men but I had another idea – I did this on my own accord, it was my own idea – I wanted to ascertain something more, which came from a belief that men so attired might commit unnatural offences. First I looked at the anus of Mr Park. The muscles round the anus were easily opened and I could see right down into the rectum, and the appearance I saw could be accounted for by the insertion of a foreign body – that is the thrust of a foreign body many times.’

Ma looked at me then, my face felt as red as a tomato, I suppose I looked funny, I felt funny, how could such words be allowed to be said like that in front of everybody?

‘Do you want to go?’ whispered Ma, but I held my hands together very, very tightly and shook my head.

‘I looked also at the anus of Mr Boulton. Both anuses were much dilated, and the muscles readily opened. I attributed this to the fact of them having frequent unnatural connections – one insertion would not cause them. I do not in my practice ever remember to have seen such an appearance of the anus as those of the two prisoners presented.’

And he said all this loudly and calmly as if it was nothing, talking of Freddie and Ernest in that way.

And then Mr Poland called another doctor from Charing Cross Hospital, who was a Fellow of the College of Surgeons and not greasy-haired like Dr Paul. But he pointed straight at Freddie.

‘He came to Charing Cross Hospital, perhaps three months ago, and I treated him for a syphilitic sore on the anus with mercury and iodine of potash over several weeks.’

Not a single sound in the courtroom.

‘Do you have a record of his visits?’ asked Mr Flowers.

‘We do keep records but there is no mention of the name Park. He probably used a false name.’

‘Are you sure he is the man?’

‘When I went to an identity parade I had some doubt, but then I was sure, and I see him here today. Park is the man I saw at Charing Cross Hospital.’

‘Adjourned for another week,’ said Mr Flowers grimly.

That was the evening we got home and found FILTHY PIGS and SODOMITE LOVERS writ on our house in paint. Ma and Billy and I all went out with buckets and soap and scrubbed and scrubbed, even as it got darker, and when we finished there might have been marks but you couldn’t see what it was saying. That was the evening I finally understood that it wouldn’t, ever again, be like it was.

Indoors I couldn’t stop crying, not for the words on our house so much, though that was bad enough, but for thinking of the shame Freddie must feel, Ma and Billy tried to tell me that Ernest and Freddie had influential families – especially Freddie – and they would not let this happen, they
could
not, they would find a way to stop them going to trial.

‘They are in a trial
now
!’ I yelled at Billy. ‘You didn’t hear what was said about them, it’s all changed and horrible now! And they only have the blooming hearings once a week and they’re stuck in gaol in between, that’s not fair!’

‘Well I expect they have to hear other cases at that court all the time, burglars and murders, as well as this one,’ said Ma.

‘This is only the Magistrates’ Court, Mattie,’ said Billy, patient and kind like he is, ‘to see if there is enough evidence for them to appear at the Old Bailey for a proper trial.’

‘Well you can keep on saying that, William Stacey! but it already seems like a proper trial to me, all the disgusting things they are saying in public to go in the papers for the world to read! Their lives will never be the same, you know that, they’ll go to prison for years and years and years, or for ever, you know they will!’

‘I dont think that medical bit will go in the papers,’ said Ma. ‘How could they write the words?’

Billy said calmly again: ‘Freddie comes from an important legal family, Mattie. They will find a way to stop it from happening.’

‘I keep telling
you,
it has happened already
!’ I yelled at him, ‘and I’m going to bed rather than listen to you!’ but in my room I didn’t make a proper Plan, like I often do, that I think about carefully, I was so upset I just sat at my table with Hortense and wrote a letter to Freddie.

I addressed it to him at the House of Detention, Clerkenwell, and I didn’t care if my letter was read out in any court in the land. I tried not to think of the horrible medical things that we had heard, I tried not to imagine that they would be sent to another trial to have more terrible things in the newspapers for everybody to read, instead I asked Freddie if he would like to marry me and then nobody could say these things about him and I would look after him and care for him and we could have a baby and I sent my love, signed Martha Stacey, 13 Wakefield-street.

Then when the house had gone quiet I got out the front door, my sharp stone was in my cloak pocket with the letter and I walked to the House of Detention, I knew where it was. It wasn’t all that far but not very easy streets, a bit of screaming and dark shadows on corners and a wind had got up and made that moaning noise round the houses but I didn’t care, I’d have killed anyone with my stone if they tried to stop me, I think I must have gone a bit insane, like how did I think I was going to find Freddie at one o’clock in the morning? The House of Detention was a grim old place, all locked up, a few lamps but mostly darkness and iron railings with spikes, I went round and round, big metal gate, no place to sneak in, that wind whipping at me, I started crying with frustration that I must be so near to Freddie but no way of giving my letter. I could’ve hung it on the inside of a railing spike I suppose but it would likely blow away.

‘Oh look! Look at that drunk tart stumbling everywhere! Let’s give ’er one!’

Some drunk men weaved and rolled further down the street. That must’ve brought me to my senses, I cant run like the wind maybe but I can hurry and hide and take side streets and they were too drunk and falling over to get close to me and I got away, clutching my letter and my sharp stone. And I tore up my letter into tiny pieces as I came towards Wakefield-street, course I did, Freddie was a gentleman, he had a family and they were very important people, and they would find a way and of course someone like Freddie wouldn’t be marrying someone like me in a boarding house and little bits of white paper blew about me and upwards and back to Gray’s Inn Road and far away in the horrible windy night.

And then on Sunday every single word of that medical evidence by that horrible Dr Paul, and the doctor from Charing Cross Hospital, was
actually published
, the things about anuses and syphilis, not in every newspaper but right there in the
Reynolds News
, under the heading HORRIBLE AND REVOLTING DISCLOSURES – so that not just the people in the court at the time heard that medical evidence but everybody in the whole world!

And then we saw the advertisements. There was a pamphlet pictured, with Ernest and Freddie drawn on the front in women’s clothes. It was called ‘THE LIVES OF BOULTON AND PARK: EXTRAORDINARY REVELATIONS’.

The price was one penny.

18

Next morning Billy was ordered to the Head Clerk’s office.

He was, of course, expecting it.

The Houses of Parliament had always been the greatest hive of gossip in the country. Everyone (whether in the clerks’ office or the cabinet office) had been following the ‘Gentlemen in Female Attire’ case since it began, talking about the details; there were huddles and whispers and laughter (some of it very nervous laughter) all over the venerable building: in clerks’ offices and cabinet rooms and in the servants’ quarters. People remembered the rather silly and ineffectual Lord Arthur Clinton and his brief career as Member of Parliament for Newark, the seat he had lost at the last election. Most of the present cabinet had known and admired his father, the fifth Duke of Newcastle.

A number of clerks had gone down to the Magistrates’ Court before starting work to see Ernest Boulton and Frederick Park being brought in a police van from the House of Detention, very disappointed to perceive that they were not still wearing their gowns. When it was so quickly realised all over the building that they had kept their female attire in the house of the clerk Billy Stacey, there was further great excitement and enormous surprise. He had not seemed to be that sort of person, people murmured. His young colleagues wanted to discuss the case in great detail.

‘Did they wear stays? Did they wear stockings? Did you go with them?’

There had already been a fight that was quickly concluded by the Head Doorkeeper, Elijah Fortune, when Billy had finally punched someone.

So the day after the medical evidence was published in the
Reynolds Newspaper
Billy was simply waiting to be called into the Head Clerk’s office.

In a dark, poky little room Mr John Jenkins sat at his paper-crowded desk. Mr John Jenkins was a self-important man, and very particular. But he was an honest man and he and Billy were used to each other. Mr Jenkins was about twenty years older than Billy and used spiced pomade on his hair. They addressed each other formally: Mr Jenkins. Mr Stacey. There was a very strong smell of spiced pomade in the room now, as if Mr Jenkins had applied some extra portion, to prepare himself for this difficult meeting.