Francis Hughes-Hallett

Francis Hughes-Hallett
"Rochester". Caricature by Ape published in Vanity Fair in 1886.
Member of Parliament for Rochester
In office 1885–1889
Preceded by	Sir Arthur Otway Roger Leigh
Succeeded by	Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen
Personal details
Born	Francis Charles Hughes-Hallett 1838
Died	(1903-06-22)22 June 1903
Political party	Conservative

Francis Charles Hughes-Hallett (1838 – 22 June 1903) was a Royal Artillery officer and Conservative politician who represented Rochester in the British House of Commons. He was damaged politically by a personal scandal.

Hughes-Hallet was the son of Charles Madras Hughes-Hallett and his wife Emma Mary Roberts. He became a colonel in the Royal Artillery. In 1885 he was elected as Member of Parliament for Rochester and reelected in 1886. However, a personal scandal led to his being hounded by the press and shunned by his parliamentary colleagues and he stood down from Parliament in 1889. He was involved in the investigation of the murder of Martha Tabram in Whitechapel in 1888, one of the cases linked with Jack the Ripper.

Military career

He was commissioned in the Royal Regiment of Artillery in December 1859 and served in the army until 1885.

Marriages

In 1871, Hughes-Hallett married Catherine Rosalie Greene, the widow of Sir Charles Jasper Selwyn and of Reverend Harry Dupuis. They had three children: Frank Victor (1872-1937, married Hilda Marion Cook and Katherine Gameson Swinnerton), Egerton (1873-1890), and Sybil Rosalie (1875-1958, married Graham Brown). Catherine Hughes-Hallett, who died in childbirth in 1875, also brought to the marriage four children from her previous marriage, a son, Harry Jasper Selwyn (1870-1919), a stepson, Charles William Selwyn (1858-1893, married Isabella Constance Dalgety), and two stepdaughters, Edith Adriana Selwyn (1859-1910, married Edward Grant Fraser-Tytler) and Beatrice Eugénie Selwyn (1865-1898, married Patrick Herbert).

In 1882, Hughes-Hallett wed a middle-aged American heiress, Emilie Page von Schaumberg (1833-1923), the daughter of James von Schaumberg and Caroline Page, but the marriage ran into difficulties five years later, when Hughes-Hallet was caught in flagrante delicto with his first wife's stepdaughter, Beatrice.

Scandal

During a country-house weekend around 15 August 1887 at Ellingham Hall, Bungay, Norfolk, the home of W. Henry Smith, Colonel Hughes-Hallett was caught in the bedroom of Beatrice Selwyn, whose stepmother had been Hughes-Hallett's first wife. As Smith, who was Miss Selwyn's uncle, wrote to Emilie Hughes-Hallett, "I went to your husband's bedroom shortly before midnight and found that he was not there. I then called upon a housekeeper ... as well as the young lady’s maid and I gave them instructions to enter her room. You know the rest. I gave him half an hour to pack up his things and turned him out of the house."

The affair had been of some duration, having begun in the Hughes-Hallett's London residence, where he lived with his second wife and his minor children. Hughes-Hallett also "admitted accompanying [Beatrice Selwyn] to various hotels—the Bear at Havant, the Crown at Emsworth and the Cannon Street Hotel. The lady gave birth to a child."

Complicating matters too was that Hughes-Hallett, always short of cash, had secretly borrowed money from Beatrice Selwyn, in the amount of £5,000. As Hughes-Hallett said in his defence, "Regarding the money part of the question, Miss Selwyn some time ago asked me to try to get her better interest on 5,000 pounds than she was getting. She covenanted by a deed in my possession to lend money for five years. Some weeks ago her solicitors suddenly called the money in. Within twenty-four hours the principal, with interest, was handed my solicitors for transference to her solicitors." He also initially disputed that he was the father of Beatrice Selwyn's child or that he hoped to have access to Miss Selwyn's £40,000 fortune.

W. T. Stead published the allegation of the affair on the front page of The Pall Mall Gazette for 20 September 1887.

Aftermath of the scandal

Though Hughes-Hallett maintained some degree of success in political circles, his personal reputation was largely destroyed. As The New York Times sympathetically stated in 1888, "the critical press are so unkind as to stigmatize him as a social leper ..." Still, it pointed out, he did not enjoy the "Parliamentary session, however, as no member will sit on the same bench with him". And Beatrice Selwyn's brother, Captain Charles William Selwyn, also an MP, threatened to horsewhip his sister's seducer if they ever crossed paths in the House of Commons.

Soon Hughes-Hallett separated from his wife, who went to live in Dinard, France, for the remainder of her life. In 1893 he sued Passmore Edwards, a newspaper publisher who had been the defeated Liberal candidate for Rochester, for libel, when Edwards declared that Hughes-Hallett had no business running again for Parliament unless he could be voted in as the Member of Parliament for Sodom and Gomorrah.

In the libel action, Edwards stated that "Sodom and Gomorrah as a suitable constituency for Col Hughes-Hallett carried no criminal imputation; that it only referred to uncleanliness of living, and that in respect of this Col Hughes-Hallett's reputation so stank in the public nostrils that nothing that could be said could affect it." As for the judge in the case, he said, "That Col Hughes-Hallett's reputation is so bad that nothing that can be said of him can injure it, and Col Hughes-Hallett has no right to ask for consideration from any man." The defendant lost the case.

Other History

Jonathan Luna may have been vetting Lawrence F. Stengel at the behest of Stewart Dalzell when he was murdered, because of the Lisa Michelle Lambert and Murder of Laurie Show case. This may be the reason R. Seth Williams was targeted by the FBI and the Philadelphia courts and such a harsh sentence for pleading to 1 count of bribery, when John Corsine was never prosecuted for his involvement in securities fraud on the MF Global case. On November 1, 2017 Jeffrey Cutler got a reference number for the report of INSURANCE FRAUD by Brian Hurter, Dennis Stuckey, David Buckwalter, Christina Hausner, Susan Peipher, Richard Mills as 17110104. Jefrey Cutler, the Tax Collector of East Lampeter Township started this cases as well as case # 17-2709, on appeal from case # 2:17-cv-00984, which mentions the 190,000 counts of mail fraud by Brian Hurter and Amber Green Martin for sending out fraudulent property assessments in Lancaster County Pennsylvania. The FBI tried to obstruct justice in the case with a EMAIL to CEASE AND DESIST reporting crimes to them and the office of the Philadelphia District Attorney. In Lancaster County a minimum of 2 African Americans (Jamaal Harris and Andrew Miller) were held without trial in excess of 4 years without trial, and Jamaal Harris was required to plead guilty to get out of prison. The same verbage used to put Lisa Michelle Lambert back in prison was used to deny Jamaal Harris relief in Federal court that was used to put Lisa Michelle Lambert back in prison. The local newspaper (LNP) and York Daily Record censored a memorial advertisement for his Uncle Irving Cutler, after payment, but refunded the money. The Advertisement was run on October 29, 2017 and November 11, 2017 by the Reading Eagle. High Inc. and their partner the LNP media group are the largest beneficiaries of the current assessment process. This has been reported to the Lancaster County DA. and the Pennsylvania Attorney General. Because of the programming errors in York PA., and other indicators Mr. Cutler has requested a recount for Judges in the November Election. Page 314A in the latest filing in case 17-2709 is the Entire 89 page WRIT of Certiorari previously sent to the Supreme Court to Overturn OBAMACARE. More information can be found at http://www.honorstates.org/index.php?id=106079

See also

• Murder of Laurie Show Lancaster County Murder and Federal Court
• Murder of Seth Rich Washington Murder and Federal Election
• Lancaster County Murder Details & Corruption Lisa Michelle Lambert
• Cutler Obamacare Lawsuit American Freedom Law Center Case
• Ray Gricar A DA from Pennsylvania that disappeared April 15, 2005, and was never found
• Three other unsolved United States Attorney deaths:
  • Beranton Whisenant an Assistant United States Attorney who was found on a beach in Florida, unsolved murder..Not Suicide **Jonathan Luna an Assistant United States Attorney who was stabbed 36 times in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, unsolved murder about the same time Lawrence F. Stengel was nominanated..
  • Thomas C. Wales federal prosecutor, unsolved murder.

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Francis Hughes-Hallett