Royal baccarat scandal
The family members asked the advice of the royal courtiers who, with the agreement of the prince, confronted Gordon-Cumming and pressured him into signing a document that declared he would never play cards again in exchange for the silence of the guests.
Gordon-Cumming's senior counsel, the Solicitor General Sir Edward Clarke, did not persuade any of the defendants to change their stories, but he highlighted several inaccuracies and serious discrepancies in their evidence.
Despite a strong and well-regarded closing speech by Clarke on Gordon-Cumming's behalf, the judge's summing up was described as biased by some and the jury found against the lieutenant colonel.
At the time of the events at the country home Tranby Croft, Yorkshire, Sir William Gordon-Cumming was a 42-year-old lieutenant colonel in the Scots Guards, having seen service in South Africa (1879), Egypt (1882) and Sudan (1884–85).
[2][8] Gordon-Cumming was a womaniser,[9] and stated that his aim was to "perforate" members of "the sex";[3] his liaisons included Lillie Langtry, Sarah Bernhardt and Lady Randolph Churchill.
[9][10] In 1866 he had incurred the censure of his mother, Queen Victoria, when he became involved with "the fast racing set",[11] and his betting had "harm[ed] his reputation and contribute[d] to the widespread unpopularity of the monarchy in this period", according to his biographer, Sidney Lee.
[28] The former Shadow Home Secretary and historian Roy Hattersley comments that although baccarat was illegal, "worse still in the eyes of many Englishmen, [it was] thought to be popular in France".
[31] Among those originally invited were Lord Brooke and his wife Daisy; her step-father died two days before the party was due to leave London, and she and her husband withdrew from the trip.
[13] On 6 September Edward returned early from travelling in Europe; he visited Harriet Street where he found Daisy Brooke "in Gordon-Cumming's arms", which soured the relationship between the two men.
[4] After dinner on 8 September, the guests at Tranby Croft listened to music from Ethel Lycett Green until about 11 pm, when the prince suggested a game of baccarat.
[35][36] After half an hour the game was completed and the prince congratulated Gordon-Cumming on his play; the future king also asked Mrs Wilson for a more suitable table for the following day.
After dinner the prince once again wanted to play baccarat and asked for a chalk line to be drawn on the baize, six inches from the edge, behind which players were to keep their counters when not placing their stake.
Signed by the prince, Coventry and Williams, the note advised him that "you must clearly understand that in the face of the overwhelming evidence against you, it is useless to attempt to deny the accusations".
Buller explained his decision in a letter to the queen's secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby, writing that "I absolutely declined to take action against ... [Gordon-Cumming] upon street rumours".
"[77] Journalists drew their own conclusions from the manoeuvrings by the prince and his entourage, with the radical press quick to attack the attempts to avoid the scrutiny of a civil court.
It is, no doubt, a very comfortable arrangement for all parties concerned", while even The New York Times, normally sympathetic to Edward, foresaw political problems if the trial was prejudiced by such actions.
[3][n] The Pall Mall Gazette stated that "the court presented an appearance which, save for the dignity of its own fittings and its rows of learned-looking law books, might have been taken for a theatre at a fashionable matinée", with society ladies watching proceedings with opera glasses or lorgnettes.
[81][o] The correspondent of The Manchester Guardian described the opening of the case as being "in the presence of a carefully selected and fashionable assembly",[85] while Clarke later wrote that "the court had a strange appearance.
[88] Clarke also outlined Gordon-Cumming's coup de trois system of placing bets which, he explained, could have been mistaken by the inexperienced players as cheating, rather than a correct method of gambling.
[51] In comparison with Gordon-Cumming's performance in the witness box, Edward did not make a strong impression; the reporter for The New York Times noticed "that the heir apparent was decidedly fidgety, that he kept changing his position, and that he did not seem able to keep his hands still ...
Under questioning she confirmed that she had seldom played baccarat before; although she had seen nothing untoward on the first night, she accepted her husband's second-hand version of events as the truth, but did not agree that as a result she had been watching Gordon-Cumming.
Although she "gave the most important part of her evidence with clarity and conviction",[104] and had impressed the public and press, according to Havers, Grayson and Shankland, she provided a different series of events to those outlined by other witnesses, although she stated that she thought she had seen Gordon-Cumming illicitly add to his stake.
[113] From the muddled and conflicting statements given in evidence, and in the documentary record of the shameful, and we hold criminal, compact which they made with Sir William Gordon-Cumming, we confess our inability to construct a clear coherent story.
[118] Once Russell had completed his speech for the defendants, Clarke gave his reply, which the Daily Chronicle considered to be "a very brilliant, powerful, wily and courageous effort".
[121] Clarke lampooned some of the involved parties, referring to Lycett Green as "a Master of Hounds who hunts four days a week", while Stanley Wilson was a spoiled wastrel from a rich family who lacked initiative and drive.
"[124][p] Coleridge exercised all his ingenuity to sway the jury against ... [Gordon-Cumming], answering and belittling Clarke's case point by point, and echoing Russell's words in a milder but more deadly form exactly as if he too were working from Mr George Lewis's brief ... it is the duty of the judge not to incline to either side: he must remain upright, hold the balance even, and put the case for both sides fairly to the jury.
[134] Gordon-Cumming was dismissed from the British Army on 10 June 1891,[136] the day after the case closed, and he resigned his membership of his four London clubs: the Carlton, Guards', Marlborough and Turf.
[84] Following the trial the prince changed his behaviour to some extent, and although he continued to gamble, he did so in a more discreet manner; he stopped playing baccarat altogether, taking up whist instead.
[141] Matthew observes that it was only when one of the prince's own circle of confidantes brought him to court that the newspapers would "seriously harr[y] him ... the British in the 1890s had no general wish to see their future monarch fail".
[146] The Anglicist Andrew Glazzard has suggested that the affair may have been alluded to in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Empty House.
