20th June, 2025 in History, Society & Culture, True Crime

Ask the author: Neil Root on The Cleveland Street Scandal

By Neil Root

Seasoned journalist, acclaimed author, and true crime historian, Neil Root, delves into one of Victorian society’s most explosive scandals – The Cleveland Street Scandal. A precursor to the prosecution of Oscar Wilde, this book exposes deep-rooted corruption within the Victorian establishment and the injustices faced by the LGBTQ community.

How would you describe The Cleveland Street Scandal in 3 words?

Sex, power, cover-up / abuse of power.

What inspired you to cover this particular story?

It was a scandal that I was vaguely aware of, but I didn’t know much about it – we never covered this in history lessons at school in the 1980’s! It was the fact that Inspector Abberline, whom I knew was a key figure in the Jack the Ripper investigation in London’s East End in 1888 – the year before the Cleveland Street scandal – was put in charge of the inquiry which first intrigued me. The connection with Abberline didn’t seem to be widely known outside of Jack the Ripper researchers, known as ‘Ripperologists’. Then I discovered that no book had been written about the scandal for almost fifty years, so I was sure that I could find out more and add detail and cover the Abberline angle in more depth. But as research continued, I realised how much it was a story about the terrible mistreatment of gay men, the way that the Establishment closes ranks and abuses power to protect itself, and a massive cover-up which included the involvement of the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII.

As someone outside the LGBTQ community, how did you approach writing this book?

When I realised that it was in many ways an LGBTQ story, I did pause for a moment and wondered if I could take it on as a book project. Not being gay myself – although I have several gay friends – could I do it justice? But then I realised that the story itself was so powerful that I just had to accurately try to bring that story to life and tell it honestly, so that those unaware of this incredible incident in British history – and I suspect that there are many people who have never heard about it before – could become aware of it. The Cleveland Street scandal also set the template for Oscar Wilde’s prosecution for gross indecency six years later in 1895 (which I cover at the end of the book and show the links to the Cleveland Street prosecutions), and most people know about that. I wanted to raise awareness of how badly gay men were treated legally in the Victorian period and beyond: right up to 1967 in England and Wales, Scotland in 1981 and Northern Ireland in 1982. And at least 50,000 gay men who were demonised and prosecuted because of their natural sexual inclination – including Wilde – weren’t pardoned until 2020! So, I felt a strong sense of responsibility in presenting this story to a wider public, including of course those in the LBGTQ community who had little knowledge of it, and I hope that I did a reasonable job.

You refer to the late-Victorian gay scene in London as ‘a thriving subculture’. What can you tell us about it?

It was going on, in London anyway, and more openly than you might think, given that it was socially taboo as well as illegal. Since at least mid-Georgian times in the late eighteenth century, gay men had met in what were called ‘Molly houses’, but which really referred to places where they met – not always privately, and sometimes in pubs and coffee-houses. There was some male prostitution of course, but many of these meetings would have just been between gay men who mixed together, although passwords and codes were often used to communicate. Assignations and pick-ups would also take place in London’s large parks, but from the mid-eighteenth century the very centre of London began to really develop. The term ‘West End’ came into usage in the very early nineteenth century, and this offered new methods of meeting ‘Mollys’ or rent boys. As I detail in the book, the modern West End as we know it today – Charing Cross Road, Shaftesbury Avenue, Piccadilly Circus – was largely built from the 1850s onwards, and so by the time of the scandal in 1889 was largely in place. Lit by streetlamps, these thoroughfares were much safer than parks for well-heeled men to meet rent boys (and there were hundreds if not several thousands of them operating in London by that time). Pick-ups often took place as rent boys hovered in front of shop windows hoping to the catch the eye of a potential client. From there, it was off to private rooms or organised brothels such as at No.19 Cleveland Street. The gay subculture was thriving, and early gay slang known as Polari was already in use by the late 1880s.

The treatment of gay men and the deep prejudice you describe can feel very shocking today. Did anything especially shock you about it?

Gay men were persecuted, and made to feel inhuman, in a psychiatric, social and legal sense. And public opinion was very largely homophobic in late Victorian Britain (in rural areas unsurprisingly more so than in the cities) outside of the gay subculture which operated under the surface. As the saying goes, it takes a long time for minds to change. It is shocking through our much more liberated prism of over 135 years later. What shocked me most though was how the law was applied differently to those of low social standing – the rent boys or ordinary gay men, and those of social standing. The Cleveland Street scandal is a clear and documented example of how aristocrats were allowed to escape prosecution, while those of low station had to face the law. It’s the tale of discriminatory and simply unfair legislation coupled with massive class inequality, where those at the top of the hierarchy – in this case close to Queen Victoria’s Royal family – were protected as the Establishment closed ranks to protect itself.

There are many colourful characters on both sides of the law, and from across the class divide. Did anyone especially stand out for you?

This true story does have a ready-made cast of colourful and quirky characters. Ones that particularly stood out for me, for a variety of different reasons, were the crooked lawyer, Arthur Newton; the irascible Earl of Euston; the slippery pimp Charles Hammond and his sidekick, George Veck, who posed as a priest; the politician, journalist and theatre-owner Henry Labouchère; and the veteran and brazen rent boy Jack Saul.

This was the final case for Detective Inspector Abberline, the man who mishandled the Jack the Ripper case. How significant was his role in the Cleveland Street Scandal?

Abberline was very significant to the scandal, as he led the investigation into it. He was a methodical and earnest policeman, with many commendations, and did his utmost to uphold the law. But he was hampered in his investigation by higher authorities, and became very frustrated by this, as did his overall boss, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner James Munro. And it must be said that the police in this case wanted the law to be applied fairly. As I relay in the book from files in the archives and other sources, these officers (along with some members of the justice system) wanted everybody to face justice if they had broken the law, regardless of social standing. But pressure from the Prince of Wales’s fixers and a government compliant to that pressure made this very difficult.

Has researching this scandal changed your view of authority?

I’ve been researching history and crime for some time now, so to be honest I already had a jaded, sceptical (hopefully not totally cynical!) view of authority. The old saying, ‘Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’, which was incidentally coined by the historian and politician Lord Acton just two years before the Cleveland Street scandal, holds a great deal of truth. The levers of power in society control how we all live, and we are at the mercy of them. All that we can do is be vigilant and try to keep checks on that power. In a Western democracy we are very lucky to largely have free speech, but we still have to be aware that machinations are going on and levers are constantly being pulled behind closed doors. There’s nothing wrong with authority in itself, it’s just how it’s administered.

What conclusions, if any, do you think might be drawn between the cover-up at Cleveland Street and similar scandals today?

My conclusion is that when those with a lot or the most to lose have power, they will do anything to protect themselves and their position. In the Cleveland Street scandal, the very structure of society and those at the very top of the hierarchy, which held it together top-down, was for a few months in real jeopardy – namely the Royal family and the aristocracy. This could happen again, in a different way, and we must be watchful for those closing of ranks, which leads to injustice, abuse of power, and the suffering of those with little or no power. Whether it’s on a nationally governmental or local political level, within a corporation or company, or within a community, scandals will always happen, and cover-ups may also occur or be attempted.

What thoughts would you like readers to take away from the book?

The old adage is that we can learn from history. Details change as societies progress and structures are altered, but the same general patterns emerge repeatedly. I hope that this book puts a spotlight on the mistreatment of gay men and the abuse of power and privilege by the Establishment in the late Victorian period. We really can learn from what went before, and I certainly did while researching and writing this book. But there is a comical and farcical side to the book alongside the serious one, and I hope that readers are also entertained by it!