Prince Harry is to become the first senior royal in more than 130 years to be cross-examined in a courtroom, as his claim that journalists at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People used illegal methods including phone hacking to obtain stories about him progresses at the high court in London.
The last time it happened, it involved sex, intrigue, and baccarat.
Many people have learned the hard way that illegal gambling in suburban Hull is best avoided. In 1890, the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, made this discovery while on a trip to east Yorkshire.
Queen Victoria’s son, who had a reputation for womanising and gambling, arrived with a group including his friend Sir William Gordon-Cumming, an army officer who lent his home to the prince for meetings with his mistresses.
That evening, Gordon-Cumming sat down at Tranby Croft for a game of baccarat. The game was technically illegal, but highly popular – especially with the Prince of Wales. A member of the group became convinced Gordon-Cumming was cheating at the game by surreptitiously removing and adding to his stake.
Gordon-Cumming denied the allegations and it was agreed all present would stay quiet to avoid dragging the Prince of Wales into scandal. But, when word leaked, the army officer started proceedings for slander against members of the Wilson family, whom he blamed for blabbing – and in 1891 the case went to trial at the same court where Prince Harry is suing the Mirror Group Newspapers.
In a sign of how little has changed, newspapers trailed the trial by promising it would reveal “salacious tit-bits of murky goings-on in high places with thinly veiled suggestions of sex skulduggery”.
The real draw was the Prince of Wales. As one contemporary report put it: “Though it only lasted 20 minutes, the examination of the prince evidently wearied him exceedingly, and made him extremely nervous. He kept changing his position and did not seem able to keep his hands still. When a question more pressing, more to the point than usual, was put to him, the prince’s face was observed to flush considerably, and then pale again, showing the state of nervousness in which he found himself.”
Gordon-Cumming eventually lost the case and his career, aided by a judge who guided the jury towards siding with the Prince of Wales. But the sight of the heir to the throne being cross-examined caused substantial damage to the future king’s reputation – and royal courtiers with long memories have since done their best to keep royals out of the courtroom.
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