Considered "notorious in Dublin and London" and "made infamous by the sensational testimony he gave in the Cleveland Street scandal",[1] which was published in newspapers around the world, he has recently[when?]
[6] Giving testimony in the later Cleveland Street scandal, Saul called himself "a professional Mary-ann" – a period euphemism for rentboy, and stated: "I have lost my character and cannot get on otherwise.
In October that year Saul and a friend, William Clarke, were arrested for burglary and the theft of a coat, walking stick, gloves and a salt-cellar from Cranny's home.
[3] In 1884, Irish nationalists alleged homosexual orgies among the staff at Dublin Castle, the seat of the British government's administration in Ireland until 1922.
[12][13][14] Amongst those charged with conspiracy to commit gross indecency was Martin Oranmore Kirwan (1847–1904), a captain in the Royal Irish Fusiliers who was the son of a County Galway Anglo-Irish landlord.
[15] In 1884, Saul was interviewed by the police, and together with a John Daly who had also been frequently mentioned in the case, was brought from London to Ireland to be a Crown witness.
However, it was during the time Alexander Meyrick Broadley, aka 'Broadley Pasha', who was implicated in the Cleveland Street Scandal, was acting as a financial and business adviser to the manager of the theatre Augustus Harris.
In 1889, when one of the boys was questioned at the General Post Office regarding how he obtained a sum of money in his possession, the Cleveland Street scandal broke, creating news stories around the globe.
The first trial that resulted was a libel action by Lord Euston, heir to the Duke of Grafton, against Ernest Parke, editor of the North London Press.
Given Saul's revelations and manner as a mere witness – which had been considered shocking enough, and the unproven rumour then circulating in high society and police circles that Prince Albert Victor had visited the brothel, it may be that the authorities were concerned over what he would have said, or whom he may have implicated, had he been placed in the position of having to defend himself.
[30] In the Euston trial he confessed to having been in hospital several times,[11] and in 1904 he was admitted by his younger brother James to Our Lady's Hospice, Harold's Cross, where he died of tuberculosis aged 46.
Saul's character is described as possessing "a fresh looking beardless face, with almost feminine features, auburn hair and sparkling blue eyes…and endowed by a very extraordinary development of the male appendage".
Saul's cross-dressing persona 'Evelina' appears in the 1883 sequel Letters from Laura and Eveline, Giving an Account of Their Mock-Marriage, Wedding Trip, etc.
However, in 2020 Glenn Chandler was contacted by a reader of his biography who owned a paper-mache head of a smiling young male which had been purchased in a Paris flea market years before.
Saul has also featured prominently in a large number of academic studies, and histories, including Morris Kaplan's Who's Afraid of John Saul?, Neil McKenna's The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde and Fanny and Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked England, and three books on the Cleveland Street Scandal, including Theo Aronson's Prince Eddy and the Homosexual Underworld.
[44] He appears as an embittered older prostitute and narrator in the 2011 stage show Cleveland Street: The Musical by Glenn Chandler and Matt Devereaux.