Harriet Mordaunt
[9] The couple lived at Walton Hall, Warwickshire, which, to mark his coming-of-age, Sir Charles had commissioned in the fashionable Gothic Revival style from the architect George Gilbert Scott,[10] who later designed St Pancras railway station in London.
[1] However, it became clear subsequently that Lady Mordaunt was in the habit of entertaining male guests alone while her husband was absent on Parliamentary business or engaged in his various sporting pursuits.
One of her maids later testified that, during Sir Charles's absence, Lady Mordaunt had been visited in London by Viscount Cole (later 4th Earl of Enniskillen), who, after dinner, had "remained alone with her until a very late hour"; on another occasion, he had travelled with her by train from Paddington station to Reading, where he alighted from a carriage of which they had been the only occupants.
[13] Doctors initially feared that the child might be blind, causing Lady Mordaunt to become hysterical, imagining that this had been brought about by a hereditary sexually transmitted disease.
[16] (At the time, gossip surrounding Freddy Johnstone, a close friend of the Prince of Wales, whom Lady Mordaunt shortly afterwards claimed to have been one of her lovers, was that he suffered from such a disease.
[21][16] When published later in provincial newspapers and The Times, they were judged to be "simple, gossipy, everyday letters";[18] a biographer of the actress Lily Langtry, another of the Prince's mistresses, observed that "typical lines to Harriet might have come from a benevolent uncle".
[22] However, although Sir Charles acted very bitterly towards the Prince,[5] he did not cite him in any legal action and so formal contemporaneous accounts of Lady Mordaunt’s activities tend to skirt around such episodes.
[1] In view of her nervous and erratic behaviour after Violet’s birth, of which full details were given by her servants,[13] Lady Mordaunt’s family claimed that she was insane and unfit to plead.
[16] On 30 July 1869, Sir Thomas Moncreiffe, acting as his daughter’s guardian ad litem, formally alleged that, at the time the summons was served on her, she was "not of sound mind".
[26] After a trial lasting seven days, and including evidence from the psychiatrist Dr Thomas Harrington Tuke, the jury determined that Lady Mordaunt was suffering from "puerperal mania"[13] at the time the summons was served on her and that she was unable to instruct a lawyer in her defence.
"[28] There is some evidence that the Establishment closed ranks at a time when republican sympathies in Britain and Ireland had been aroused by Queen Victoria’s virtual withdrawal from public life.
[32] However, Victoria seems to have been convinced of her son's innocence regarding Lady Mordaunt[33] and remained staunch in his defence, as did Alexandra, who described him to her sister-in-law Princess Louise as "my naughty little man",[34][13] but was nonetheless deeply hurt by the affair.
[5][g] For his part, Gladstone observed rather despairingly to his Colonial Secretary, Lord Granville, that "in rude and general terms, the Queen is invisible and the Prince of Wales is not respected".
Diana Souhami (1996) reflected on Cockburn’s pre-trial observations that neither her "fragile virtue" nor "honour" were protected; that her "punishment" was to be declared insane; and that "it proved expedient to call her mad and bad".
[39] Reviewing Lady Hamilton's book for The Sunday Telegraph, Nicola Shulman, Marchioness of Normanby, observed that "the sly unhindered crimes committed against Harriet Mordaunt make plain what rights a woman was owed in 1869".
[40] Records of the census of 1871 reveal that Lady Mordaunt was living on the western outskirts of London, at the Manor House asylum in Chiswick[41] whose clinical director was Thomas Harrington Tuke.
[44] In evidence to the court, Tuke had been clear in his assertion that Lady Mordaunt was suffering from puerperal insanity, regarding her confessions of serial adultery with several men up to a few weeks before the birth of her daughter as typical delusions associated with that condition.
However, the Census of 1891 has her at a private residence known as "Hampton Lea", Langley Park Road, Sutton, Surrey,[i] her name now abbreviated to the initials HSM (as was accepted practice for those afflicted by lunacy).
Sir Charles appears to have taken no direct interest in her, although he did make provision for her maintenance as part of a wider settlement after his divorce that included also a sum towards Lady Mordaunt's care.
Her son Henry, the 6th Marquess,[k] described by Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire as "the handsomest man you ever saw",[47] was one of the "bright young people" of the 1920s[48] and became famous in the 1960s for developing a safari park on the family's estate at Longleat.
