Tag Archives: blackmail

Seventeen and silly … and the servants talked for a year and a day


“He was barely seventeen the first time it had happened, with that foolish Italian boy. He had naively fallen into the trap. It was all too good to be true and he was surprised when the boy demanded money, and kept demanding money. When he had no money left to give, the boy, true to his word, had gone to the police. Much to his shame and chagrin, he had been very publicly arrested in his father’s house in Wimpole Street, and every servant in the street had talked about it for a year and a day.”

The story of Charles Ferguson in ‘Fanny & Stella – The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England’ by Neil McKenna – 2013