As only a few abbreviated excerpts from his wife’s divorce petition indicate, Beauchamp’s disgraceful downfall was colossal: ‘THAT the Respondent is a man of perverted sexual practices, has committed acts of gross indecency with male servants and other male persons and has been guilty of sodomy. THAT throughout the married life …the Respondent habitually committed acts of gross indecency with certain of his male servants, masturbating them with his mouth and hands and compelling them to masturbate him…THAT from the month of May 1909 to the month of April 1912 in the Chauffeurs rooms at 13 Belgrave Mews, West, the Respondent frequently committed sodomy with the said Samuel John Scown…1924…Respondent committed sodomy with a man named Cook… 1927…Respondent committed sodomy with a man whose name is unknown to Your Petitioner…’
William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp, center of the most scandalous divorce of 1931. With a wife who claimed not to know what homosexuality was until someone explained to her in detail her husband’s secret life, a son who wooed Evelyn Waugh to the other side of the rainbow and a pack of high-profile friends and lovers in British government, would you expect anything less than a great scandal? Perhaps most shocking of all was that the whole affair managed to be kept from the public for decades.
