THE INDOMITABLE BEATIE

THE VICTORIAN SCANDAL

Scandals are made more richly so when the details are exposed in a court of law. When it comes with a cast of titled people, rich, powerful and royally connected, it guarantees full newspaper coverage.

It was in March 1885 that the case against Charles and Beatie was heard in the Court of Chancery. The witnesses ranged over the entire social scale, from aristocrats to servants. One was a cab driver whose delivery raised laughter in court, but whose revelations were chilling to the people in the dock. The fear among those who connived at the breach of the court order was palpable since they were aware that, in the event of a guilty verdict, punishments, whether of fines or imprisonment, could be applied to them also. The details of Beatie’s last years as a minor and the stratagems she and her lover employed to frustrate all efforts to keep them apart were spelt out, by turns devious and outrageous, and of appalling fascination to those who had to listen to them. The birth of a child nine months after Beatie came of age compounded the whole to the extent that a guilty verdict was inevitable. The punishment was light, but the pain to all concerned would echo far into the 20 th century.

Read more in:
The Indomitable Beatie by Ronald Morris
(Sutton Publishing 2004, ISBN 0750937106)

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