Crawford scandal  

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The Crawford scandal refers to the extramarital affair of Virginia Crawford and Sir Charles Dilke, 2nd Baronet.

Dilke's younger brother, Ashton Wentworth Dilke, married Margaret "Maye" Eustace Smith, the eldest daughter of Liberal politician and shipowner Thomas Eustace Smith and his wife, Ellen, in 1876.

Charles Dilke was said to have become the lover of Ellen Smith (his brother's mother-in-law), a relationship which continued after his marriage in 1884.

In July 1885, Charles Dilke was accused of seducing Thomas Eustace Smith's daughter Virginia Crawford (Template:Née Smith), who was his brother's sister-in-law (and his actual lover's daughter), in the first year of her marriage to Donald Crawford, another MP.

Crawford sued for divorce, and the case was heard on 12 February 1886 before The Hon. Mr Justice Butt in the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division. Virginia Crawford was not in court, and the sole evidence was her husband's account of Virginia's confession. There were also some accounts by servants, which were both circumstantial and insubstantial. Dilke, aware of his vulnerability over the affair with Virginia's mother, refused to give evidence, largely on the advice of his confidant, Joseph Chamberlain. Butt found paradoxically that Virginia had been guilty of adultery with Dilke but that there was no admissible evidence to show that Dilke had been guilty of adultery with Virginia. He concluded, "I cannot see any case whatsoever against Sir Charles Dilke", dismissed Dilke from the suit with costs and pronounced a decree nisi dissolving the Crawfords' marriage.

The paradoxical finding left doubts hanging over Dilke's respectability, and investigative journalist William Thomas Stead launched a public campaign against him. Two months later, in April, Dilke sought to reopen the case and clear his name by making the Queen's Proctor a party to the case and opposing the decree absolute. Unfortunately, Dilke and his legal team had badly miscalculated (his legal advice has been described as "perhaps the worst professional advice ever given"). Though they had planned to subject Virginia to a searching cross-examination, Dilke, having been dismissed from the case, had no locus standi. As a consequence, it was Dilke who was subjected to severe scrutiny in the witness box by Henry Matthews. Matthews' attack was devastating, and Dilke proved an unconvincing witness. His habit of physically cutting pieces out of his diary with scissors was held up to particular ridicule, as it created the impression that he had cut out evidence of potentially embarrassing appointments. The jury found that Virginia had presented the true version of the facts and that the decree absolute should be granted.

Dilke was ruined. Other women claimed he had approached them for a liaison. Various lurid rumours circulated about his love life, including that he had invited a maidservant to join himself and his lover in bed and that he had introduced one or more of them to "every kind of French vice", and he became a figure of fun in bawdy music-hall songs.

For a time it seemed that he would be tried for perjury. The accusations had a devastating effect on his political career, leading eventually to the loss of his parliamentary seat (Chelsea) in the 1886 UK general election.

Matthews gained public acclaim, winning the seat of Birmingham East as a Conservative at the same election. Queen Victoria, who approved of his performance in the trial, demanded his inclusion in Lord Salisbury's cabinet, and he was made Home Secretary. The Queen had asked in vain for Dilke to be stripped of his membership of the Privy Council.

Dilke spent much of the remainder of his life and much of his fortune trying to exonerate himself, which adds weight to the view that Virginia lied about the identity of her lover. Over the years, it has been suggested that his political colleagues, including Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, and Chamberlain himself, may have inspired her to accuse him, seeing him as an obstacle to their own ambitions. Dilke was largely exonerated by an inquiry in the early 1890s, which cast doubt on the truthfulness of Virginia's evidence. Her description of their alleged love nest in Warren Street was full of inaccuracies and it has been speculated that she may have been attempting to distract attention from an earlier affair with one Captain Forster.





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