Arthur John Maundy Gregory,[1][2][3] who later used the name Arthur John Peter Michael Maundy Gregory[4][5] (1 July 1877 – 28 September 1941) was a British theatre producer and political fixer who is best remembered for selling honours for Prime Minister David Lloyd George.
[6] He may also have been involved with the Zinoviev Letter, the disappearance of Victor Grayson, and the suspicious death of his platonic companion, Edith Rosse.
He made around £3 million a year, which he used to buy the Whitechapel Gazette newspaper and considerable real estate, including the Ambassador Club in Soho and the Deepdene Hotel, Dorking, Surrey.
The Dorking hotel gained the reputation of being "the biggest brothel in southeast England",[6] and it was also rumoured that people at the Ambassador Club sold stolen jewellery.
[citation needed] Gregory made many friends who were prominent members of British society, including the Duke of York, later King George VI, and the Earl of Birkenhead.
He clashed, however, with the radical left-wing politician, and supporter of Lenin, Victor Grayson,[11] who had reportedly discovered that Gregory was selling honours, but who waited to denounce him until he had gathered further proof.
[citation needed] There are also claims that Gregory was involved in the Zinoviev letter affair that influenced the defeat of the Labour Party in the 1924 General Election.
[citation needed] Among his victims was the Catholic father of actress Mia Farrow, to whom he had promised a marriage annulment.
[6] Gregory himself was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Holy Sepulchre[6] and in 1930 a Commander of the Venerable Order of St John.
Those who paid him had no legal recourse; they could neither report him to the authorities nor sue in civil court without themselves being prosecuted under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925.
He leased a house called Vanity Fair located on Thames Ditton Island to Rosse and her husband in 1920, and moved in with them the following year.
After Gregory's fall in the "Honours" Scandal trial, Scotland Yard exhumed Rosse's body to look for postmortem evidence of poison.
However, Gregory had seen to it that Rosse's grave was located in very wet ground and was unusually shallow with an unsealed coffin lid.
[11] It was later alleged that Gregory had delayed Rosse's burial until he found a location that frequently flooded because he believed that this would prevent later recovery of evidence.
[17] In the 1993 novel Closed Circle by Robert Goddard, the main character, Guy Horton, meets Gregory, who employs him to encourage wealthy businessmen to use his services to obtain peerages.