The MP caught out by a tangled love life — and bad legal advice

Times

2 days ago

Many a political career has foundered on allegations over sex. Yet many politicians have managed to regroup, even if they never reached their former heights.
Destined for high political honours in the late Victorian era was the handsome Sir Charles Dilke, the MP for Chelsea, a cabinet minister, who was possibly headed for the premiership. Where he came a cropper was in part the result of his own bad behaviour — but also bad legal advice.
The Dilke family love life was tangled to say the least. He was a widower said to have the choice of society women in London. His great friend in parliament was Donald Crawford, who was married to 19-year-old Virginia Smith, whose sister was the widow of Dilke's dead brother, Ashton, and with whose mother Dilke had an affair.
Crawford received a letter in 1885 saying that 'Virginia has been mixing with bad company'. But worse, it ended with: 'Beware of the member for Chelsea.' When he showed the letter to his wife she dismissed it saying it was probably her mother causing trouble.
The next letter was rather more specific. She confessed and Crawford began divorce proceedings citing Dilke. There was only her confession, which was inadmissible, against Dilke and he was dismissed from the suit and awarded costs.
Many thought Dilke should have given evidence and a campaign against him was started by WT Stead, the controversial journalist who campaigned against child prostitution and who went down with the Titanic.
As a result of his campaign, Dilke's lawyers pressed the Queen's Proctor — a now-obsolete official who could intervene in divorce cases — to say that Crawford's divorce should not stand. It was a wholly ill-conceived action and on July 16, 1886, the hearing began which, far from redeeming Dilke's reputation, would ruin his political career.
His aim was to show that Virginia was protecting her real lover, a Captain Henry Forster. There were also suggestions she had been bribed by Lady Rosebery, wife of the Earl and a political rival, to frame Dilke. In the witness box Virginia admitted she had only committed adultery with Dilke to get divorced from Crawford.
Dilke admitted he was a serial adulterer, including with two of his servants, but not with Crawford's mother. Virginia, portrayed in the press as an innocent young girl who had been debauched by the evil Dilke, was far from it. While she denied two other affairs, she had been taken to a brothel by Forster and words which she should not even have known — such as ménage à trois, syphilis and sodomy — were bandied about.
Smiling, chatting with her sisters and yawning in court, Virginia stood up to cross-examination, during which she gave details of a house in Warren Street in London that was owned by Dilke, where she said she met him. Fanny, one of the servants expected to give evidence to say Virginia had never been there, then disappeared. In contrast Dilke prevaricated.
Nor was it the finest case of Sir Walter Phillimore, the barrister — and later an appeal court judge — who appeared for the Queen's Proctor. Dilke apparently had a complete alibi for a day when he was meant to have been at Warren Street. Lady Dilke was called in support but not the respectable Mr and Mrs Earle who had lunched with them.
Where were they? asked the judge rhetorically in summing up. Apparently in court and willing to give evidence. But Phillimore had thought that since Lady Dilke had not been cross-examined, that was sufficient.
A graphologist who examined the letter written to Donald Crawford and some written by Virginia to Forster concluded that they were written by the same person — and far from being from her mother, Virginia herself had written them.
The judge summed up wholly in favour of granting the decree absolute. Whatever the truth, there was nothing to upset the nisi and the jury agreed with him after only 17 minutes' retirement.
Dilke went abroad saying he would live in France until his name was cleared. There was talk of prosecutions for perjury but they came to nothing. In 1892 he was asked to stand as Liberal candidate for the Forest of Dean, a seat that he won and held until his death in 1911.
Virginia became a writer, converted to Catholicism and took up women's suffrage. She never remarried and died in London in 1948.James Morton is an author and a former criminal law solicitor