William Beauchamp Nevill

Lord William Beauchamp Nevill (23 May 1860 – 12 May 1939) was an English aristocrat who was born into the wealthy family of William Nevill, 1st Marquess of Abergavenny, grew up in Eridge Castle, and attended Eton College. His marriage to Mabel Murietta, daughter of an alleged mistress of Edward VII, Jesusa Murietta, was a glittering affair, attracting many royal and aristocratic guests and 600 wedding gifts. However Nevill lost much of his good fortune when his father wanted to reject him for converting to Catholicism and turning to trade, and the remainder of it when his wife's rich father's business failed soon after the wedding.

Nevill did not attract newspaper attention in his lifetime for any kind of high living, foreign tours (other than his honeymoon), business ventures or mistresses. He kept one house in London, and had no children to put through public school or provide dowries for. He nevertheless accrued huge debts within eight years of his marriage, and was arrested for a fraudulent attempt to acquire money to pay debts in 1898, putting shame on his family and causing a national scandal. For this he was sentenced to five years of penal servitude with hard labour in Wormwood Scrubs and Parkhurst.

Having earned an early release for good behaviour, Nevill wrote his only book, Penal Servitude, under the pen-name W.B.N., detailing his prison experiences. The book attracted much public attention, and some controversy, although his concern for prison reform, and his considered approach and fair treatment of prison staff, was noted by most reviewers. Nevertheless, by 1907 he was back in prison serving a one-year sentence for another fraud, again committed for the purpose of obtaining money to pay debts. Throughout his incarcerations, his wife continued to support him faithfully.

After leaving prison for a second time, Nevill lived a quiet life, suffering his last years in pain following a road accident.

Background William Beauchamp Nevill (1860–1939) His siblings included Reginald Nevill, 2nd Marquess of Abergavenny, Henry Nevill, 3rd Marquess of Abergavenny and Lord George Montacute Nevill. He was uncle to Guy Larnach-Nevill, 4th Marquess of Abergavenny, and brother-in-law to Thomas Brassey, 2nd Earl Brassey, Kenelm Pepys, 4th Earl of Cottenham and Henry Wellesley, 3rd Earl Cowley. and educated at Eton. In 1861, William aged 10 months was at home in Hope Hall, Bramham, with 5 of his siblings and 13 servants, the parents being away visiting at Westminster. In 1881 Nevill was living at 34 Dover Street, Mayfair, with his father and 4 servants. The 1891 Census finds him at 18 Hans Place, Chelsea,

Marriage

Nevill's wedding "had been the principal topic of conversation for some time past in all sections of society". At Brompton Oratory by special permission of Cardinal Manning, on 12 February 1889, Nevill married Luisa Maria Carmen del Campo Mello (Kensington c.1864 – Kensington 1951), known as Mabel Murietta, who as a child had been a "great favourite" of the Prince of Wales. of Wadhurst Park, Sussex, a reputed "possessor of great wealth". The Prince of Wales said at the wedding breakfast that "he had been an old friend of the bride's father and mother, and had known [Mabel] from the days of her childhood". including the Prince and Princess of Wales (later Edward VII and Alexandra), the princesses Louise, Victoria and Maud, Prince George of Wales, the Duke of Teck and his son Prince Francis. Due to cold weather, the bride and female guests wore velvet and furs. "It was very interesting to watch the arrival of the guests, several vergers escorting some specially great lady, who would sail along with that wonderful air of being somebody which could never be successfully imitated". Charles Santley sang the passages in the offertory. "The Oratory was packed with sightseers, and the road outside, and other roads approaching the building, were thronged with people". In May, following her return, Lady Nevill was presented to Queen Victoria.

Nevill and his wife had no children. However, by 1898, he was still "commonly called Lord William Nevill". and in 1911 and 1921 he and his wife were living with six (later four) servants at 37 Onslow Gardens, SW London. In 1931 Dame Nellie Melba left £1,000 to Nevill and his wife. promoted to lieutenant on 4 May 1881, resigning his commission on 14 April 1882. He was aide-de-camp (ADC) to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at some point between 1876 and 1880. However, three or four years before his marriage Nevill converted to Roman Catholicism and went into trade, which gave "great annoyance to his father ... who was at one time credited with an intention to cut him off with a shilling; but the Prince of Wales apparently had interceded on behalf of his young friend with success". The Evesham Journal reported in 1898 that "Lord William Nevill [was] of blue blood but belong[ed] to the splended paupers. His marriage to a daughter of the Murriettas did not repair his battered fortunes, for the great Spanish financiers went to pieces shortly afterwards. Lord William borrowed royally". and a person whom Nevill had known as a youth and with whom he had lived on terms of intimacy.

Nevill discreetly removed himself to Paris, in March 1897. After Lewis failed to retrieve his money from Spender-Clay in the High Court, the Treasury took up the case, and Nevill's solicitor Sir George Lewis was informed in January 1898. He "at once advised his client to have the matter threshed out", and Nevill was "very prompt to surrender to the charge of fraud", returning forthwith to Sir George Lewis' offices in London – to be met there by a detective inspector who took him by cab straight to Bow Street Magistrates' Court.

HM Treasury versus Nevill, 1898 First appearance, Bow Street

At Nevill's first appearance at Bow Street in January 1898, having arrived post-haste from Paris to face the charge of fraud, The Herald reported that "[Nevill] created quite a sensation by his appearance at Bow-street this week, standing faultlessly attired in the dock, and frequently writing little notes to Sir George Lewis", his solicitor.

The East and South Devon Advertiser remarked, The accused was looking much brighter and smarter than on the occasion of the previous hearing, when it was evident that he was still suffering from the effects of recent illness. He stepped into the dock with a light step, and took a commanding view of the court, being apparently in no way unnerved by his position ... There was a large number of ladies and gentlemen in the court – the Extradition Court – which, being small, was inconveniently crowded. Many of those present were personal friends of one or other of the parties directly concerned in the proceedings. There were also several Scotland-yard officers watching the case.

Nevill was charged with "forging and uttering promissory notes for £3,113 and £8,000, and with forging and uttering a request and authority for the same sums, and with the intent to defraud Samuel Lewis by inducing Henry Herbert Spencer Clay to sign certain papers which might be afterwards used as valuable securities". The prosecution included Horace Avory again, and the defence team was John Lawson Walton, QC, MP, Henry Charles Richards, MP and William Otto Adolph Julius Danckwerts. Nevill pleaded guilty only to misdemeanour. On this day, Spender-Clay was exonerated from the former High Court accusation of complicity, and the total sum of signed bills was settled at £17,000 . In mitigation, Nevill's counsel Lawson Walton said in his closing speech: ... that there was a material distinction between the crime of forgery and misdemeanour of the class to which Lord William Nevill had pleaded guilty. Lord Wm Nevill, who undoubtedly obtained the signatures by deception, had come forward voluntarily to face the consequences of his act. He had made a full confession. He was in great financial difficulties at the time and did not properly realise that he was committing a breach of the law. He never intended that Mr Clay should suffer financially. He believed that the securities might remain in the hands of Mr Lewis until he got money from other quarters to meet his liabilities. Lord William Nevill had already suffered intensely by reason of his present position. He belonged to a family respected in all ranks of English life, and the suffering cast on his friends must have had a severe reaction on Lord William. In His Lordship's judgement, the crime was as great as if he had extracted this large sum from Mr. Clay's pocket, or had broken into Mr. Lewis's office and had stolen the money. There were absolutely no extenuating circumstances. Concluding an impressive address to the prisoner, the learned judge, amid profound silence, said: "You have brought dishonour upon an ancient and noble name, you have brought sorrow and suffering and shame upon those who are near and dear to you, you have forfeited the position which you held and which ought to have been a guarantee for your honesty at least, if not for your honour. Your crime has been great, and your punishment must be great also. I sentence you to five years' penal servitude". The announcement of the sentence created a great sensation in court. The prisoner was immediately removed from the dock. Nevill was committed for trial from Westminster Police court, then on 13 April 1907, he appeared before the Chairman of Clerkenwell Sessions, Robert Wallace KC and a "full bench of country magistrates" on a charge of theft. "Lord William was at the court in good time ... carefully groomed and neatly dressed he was unmistakably an aristocrat. He wore a double-breasted blue suit, with a light waistcoat, showing beneath the breast opening, and presented a lavish display of tie. Over his arm he carried a light ulster. His dark hair was neatly brushed back from his forehead, which was seamed with the wrinkles of intense anxiety. His slight moustache was almost grey".

On 31 October 1906 at his house in Eaton Place, London, Nevill had induced a Chelsea jeweller and pawnbroker Alfred William Fitch, of Miller & Fitch, to place £400-worth of Nevill's jewellery in a sealed box as security for a loan from Fitch to Nevill, Nevill having himself prepared a similar sealed box containing coals. Then Nevill surreptitiously swapped the jewellery box for the box of coals. and that she could have redeemed the pledge on this occasion if she had known earlier. "The prisoner ... only once betrayed any emotion, and that was when his wife appeared in court. He covered his face with his hands and wept". the jury pronounced the defendant guilty, and Nevill was sentenced to one year's imprisonment, with hard labour.

Imprisonments, illness and death The 1901 census finds Nevill in Parkhurst prison. While he was imprisoned, his wife "stood by him, and visited him often", He suffered "intense pain" and lived in retirement for the rest of his life. He died in Bramham, West Riding of Yorkshire, on 12 May 1939. "Whatever opinion may be entertained regarding the taste displayed by its author in issuing a work of this description, it certainly contains not a little interesting reading. The writer deals with prison life in all its phases, and some of its criticisms and suggestions seem well worthy of consideration – the more so from the fact that he writes in general in a moderate spirit, and bears testimony to the good intentions inspiring, as a rule, the existing arrangements. But now and again, of course, a harsh or unjust official is encountered ... a boy of sixteen or seventeen [was given] two days' starvation and eleven days' extra imprisonment for the heinous crime of trying to feed the sparrows ... In his chapter on prison food the author lays particular stress on the needless suffering caused by the withholding of green vegetables in spite of the repeated recommendations to the contrary of official committees ... Of his fellow convicts the author tells some remarkable stories ... [an] incorrigible scoundrel doing time for homicide [causes offence to the author, who contrives to scald the man with boiling water] ... Penal Servitude is a volume certain to be widely read". Westminster Gazette, 28 January 1903. "When next the House of Commons takes up the question of reform in the administration of our convict prisons, it will not want advice from what ought to be the best of all sources – that of men who have had the misfortune to undergo the hardships necessarily associated with penal servitude. [Nevil served seven weeks in Wormwood Scrubs, then moved to Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight, at first in the prison hospital due to an internal complaint and then the infirmary where he was an orderly from November 1898 to May 1899. For the rest of his first nine months he served in separate confinement, where he exercised one hour per day, and otherwise worked at knitting stockings in his cell,] which almost anyone can learn in a few lessons, and which, after a while, becomes rather absorbing. There is just enough thought required to keep the mind partly engaged; and as the knitter can walk or sit, or work in almost any attitude, he gets a certain amount of change. [He was then transferred to the first offenders' group, and worked with them on the prison farm, preferring the carting jobs, not minding whether he drove a horse or pulled the cart himself, saying, At least we were never whipped. Between the summer and autumn of 1899 he was back in hospital and knitting again, then put to work in the printing and bookbinding rooms, for nearly two years until the end of his sentence.] I liked being in the printers' party very much indeed. The only serious drawback was the small amount of exercise one got. [The book] deals ... at length with points of reform. [The author praises the warders, but] gives abundant details in support of the assertion that the food was not only insufficient but often bad. What with bad meat, bad potatoes and bad bread, the prisoners too often had to do their work on empty stomachs, while many of them fell sick from it ... Nevill appears to have borne his punishment very philosophically ... It is a pity that he has stooped almost to the level of Billingsgate in writing of the distinguished judge who sentenced him ... The book is generally moderately and sensibly written, and should prove helpful to all interested in prison administration or discipline". The Scotsman, 29 January 1903. A journalist from The Sketch said that "the interesting book by W.B.N. ... [had] attracted so much attention" that he spent two days "in and about" Dartmoor Prison to see "something of its inner life", but did not find it lacking.The Sketch, 11 February 1903. "The most engrossing book that I have read for months ... Were it not for the fact that the author writes from the point of view of a prisoner, one might almost suppose that he had been specially selected by the Government for the task of examining closely into our prison system, with a view to a thorough reform ... He sets himself earnestly to point out defects and to suggest remedies for them ... Those interested in prison reform will find Penal Servitude one of the most interesting as well as one of the most useful works upon the subject that have been issued for some considerable time". Keble Howard in The Sketch, 11 February 1903. Major A. Griffiths, former inspector of prisons, shares a long list of positive quotations from Nevill's book, about the excellence of prison warders and the way that prisons were run. Nevill's criticisms he declares to be minor points, for example, according to Griffiths, "The exception [to the prison governors liked by Nevill] is well-known as an upright, honourable gentleman whose offence seems to have been a too-rigid interpretation of his duties and a certain curtness of speech, with possibly the neglect of social amenities in dealing with his sensitive charges". In response to Nevill's strong words about the cruelty of the isolation cell, Griffiths says, "The separation, or more exactly the segregation, of prisoners has been largely due to the desire to check evil and indiscriminate association, the deteriorating influence of the worst elements ..." and to keep "first offenders ... strictly apart" for that same reason; otherwise the isolation cell was no longer used. Griffiths attributes Nevill's criticisms of the system to the author being "so shut in and circumscribed, so closely beset by irksome rules, so absolutely denied all independence, that he is for ever at odds with his keepers and the treatment he receives". Griffiths accepts the complaint about food, but questions whether the food was always as Nevill described, and answers that, "after all prison diet must be wholesome and sufficient as evidenced by the general appearance of those it nourishes". He says, "My chief quarrel with this book is its pretentiousness ... A prisoner cannot obviously be in possession of facts to entitle him to speak with authority". Griffiths gives the example of the boy overly-punished for feeding birds, saying that "[Nevill] could not, and did not, know that this man had repeatedly misconducted himself previously". He closes by saying, "With all this it may be willingly conceded that the writer, although often erroneous and occasionally self-sufficient, took his punishment on the whole like a man". Major Arthur Griffiths, former H.M. inspector of prisons, in The Tatler, 18 March 1903. "The writer ... gives his view on Penal Servitude in a manner which proves effectually that he is a thoughtful and observant man. The early chapters take the form of an apologia, but we are not concerned here with the justice or injustice of his sentence. The book is an honest attempt to ameliorate the condition of prisoners and it is as readable as it is well-intentioned. Humanitarianism has done a great deal already. but some of the reforms suggested by W.B.N. seem feasible and would probably do more good than harm. He suggests, for instance, that the period of solitary confinement should be curtailed and he remarks with no little justice that "many of the capital cases show outrageous inequality and justice." It is pleasing to notice, that on the whole, he has nothing but praise for the officials who are responsible for prison discipline. The book is singularly free of all exaggerations or accounts of prison horrors so frequently inserted to make a work more saleable. W.B.N. writes calmly and almost judiciously, and at the sametime (sic) his writing is more interesting than many novels". Englishman's Overland Mail 30 April 1903 "When he was transferred to Parkhurst he had to begin with nine months' separate confinement – one hour a day exercise and the other 23 hours alone in his cell. He wrote of this: The solitude and hopeless monotony, without anything to think of but the long years of suffering and disgrace ahead, produces nervous irritation, approaching in some cases a frenzy, and instead of softening a man, brings out all the evil there is in him. It was stated that the book yielded ... about £300 , which went to creditors. The Scotsman, 15 May 1939.