Tuesday 9 June 2015

William Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland ... more than eccentric ...


William Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland

A recluse who preferred to live in seclusion, he had an elaborate underground maze excavated under his estate at Welbeck Abbey near Clumber Park in North Nottinghamshire
The Duke was highly introverted and well-known for his eccentricity; he did not want to meet people and never invited anyone to his home. He employed hundreds through his various construction projects, and though well paid, the employees were not allowed to speak to him or acknowledge him. The one worker who raised his hat to the duke was promptly dismissed. His tenants on his estates were aware of his wishes and knew they were required to ignore him if they passed by. His rooms had double letterboxes, one for ingoing and another for outgoing mail. His valet was the only person he permitted to see him in person in his quarters - he would not even let the doctor in, while his tenants and workmen received all their instructions in writing.

His business with his solicitors, agents, and the occasional politician was handled by post. The Duke maintained an extensive correspondence with a wide-ranging network of family and friends, including Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Palmerston. He is not known to have kept company with any ladies, and his shyness and introverted personality increased over time.

His reclusive lifestyle led to rumours that the Duke was disfigured, mad, or prone to wild orgies, but contemporary witnesses and surviving photographs present him as a normal-looking man.

He ventured outside mainly by night, when he was preceded by a lady servant carrying a lantern 40 yards (37 m) ahead of him. If he did walk out by day, the Duke wore two overcoats, an extremely tall hat, an extremely high collar, and carried a very large umbrella behind which he tried to hide if someone addressed him.

If the Duke had business in London, he would take his carriage to Worksop where he had it loaded onto a railway wagon. Upon his arrival at his London residence, Harcourt House in Cavendish Square, all the household staff were ordered to keep out of sight as he hurried into his study through the front hall.

He insisted on a chicken roasting at all hours of the day, and the servants brought him his food on heated trucks that ran on rails through the underground tunnels.


The 5th Duke of Portland undertook the most substantial building works at Welbeck. The kitchen gardens covered 22 acres (89,000 m2) and were surrounded by high walls with recesses in which braziers could be placed to hasten the ripening of fruit. One of the walls, a peach wall, measured over 1,000 feet (300 m) in length. An immense riding house was built which was 396' long, 108' wide and 50' high,'At the time it was the second largest riding house in the world, exceeded only by the huge Manege adjacent to the Kremlin in Moscow'.


 Nearby was a tan gallops of 422 yards (386 m). It was lit by 4,000 gas jets and was heated to enable training at night and in winter. The 'Tan Gallops' is named after the spongy oak chips that covered its floor. They were a by-product from leather tanning and a good surface for the horses to run on.

A tunnel, more than one thousand yards in length, led from the house to the riding school. It was wide enough for several people to walk side by side. Parallel to it was another, more roughly constructed and used by workmen. 




A longer, more elaborate tunnel, one and a half miles long, intended as a carriage drive broad enough for two carriages to pass, led towards Worksop. This tunnel was abandoned in the late-19th century when a section forming part of the lake dam failed. Remaining stretches of tunnel survive on either side of the lake. The tunnel's skylights can be seen from the Robin Hood Way footpath which follows its course and a masonry entrance can be seen between two lodges at the northeastern limit of the park.

The 5th Duke excavated to create a number of extensions to the mansion. Although cited as being "underground rooms", these apartments are strictly "below ground", as they are not covered by earth or lawn; their flat roofs and skylights are visible in aerial photographs, although at ground level they are concealed from most directions by shrubbery. The largest is a great hall, 160 feet (49 m) long and 63 feet (19 m) wide intended as a chapel but used as a picture gallery and occasionally as a ballroom. There is a suite of five adjacent rooms constructed to house the duke's library.


Welbeck Abbey – Picture Gallery by George Washington Wilson
The duke made many alterations to the house above ground. Elaborate bathrooms were added. New lodges were built at the park entrances.

The work cost prodigious sums and employed thousands of men – masons, bricklayers, joiners, plumbers. While there were disputes from time to time (wages, hours) the duke got on well with his employees and earned the nickname 'the workman's friend'. He created employment for skilled and unskilled workers.

By 1879 Welbeck was in a state of disrepair. The only habitable rooms were the four or five rooms used by the 5th Duke in the west wing. All were painted pink, with parquet floors, all bare and without furniture and almost every room had a toilet in the corner.

The house was repaired by 6th Duke, and became notable as a centre of late Victorian and Edwardian upper-class society. The duke was a keen horse-owner, and almhouses he constructed on the estate are known as the Winnings, funded by money won by his horses in seven high purse races from 1888–1890.


 The Underground Man is the fictionalised diary of a deeply eccentric English aristocrat.
The duke has just completed a network of tunnels beneath his estate. His health is failing, but his imagination seems to know no bounds. And while he spends more time underground and retreats ever deeper into the darker corners of his house there are some ghosts that demand to be acknowledged and some memories which insist on making themselves known.


The extraordinary story of the Druce-Portland affair, one of the most notorious, tangled and bizarre legal cases of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.
In 1897 an elderly widow, Anna Maria Druce, made a strange request of the London Ecclesiastical Court: it was for the exhumation of the grave of her late father-in-law, T.C. Druce.
Behind her application lay a sensational claim: that Druce had been none other than the eccentric and massively wealthy 5th Duke of Portland, and that the - now dead - Duke had faked the death of his alter ego. When opened, Anna Maria contended, Druce's coffin would be found to be empty. And her children, therefore, were heirs to the Portland millions.
The extraordinary legal case that followed would last for ten years. Its eventual outcome revealed a dark underbelly of lies lurking beneath the genteel facade of late Victorian England

In 1897, a widow, Anna Maria Druce, claimed that the Duke had led a double life as her father-in-law, a London upholsterer by the name of Thomas Charles Druce, who had supposedly died in 1864. The widow claimed that the Duke had faked the death of his alter ego Druce to return to a secluded aristocratic life and that therefore her son was heir to the Portland estate. Her application to have Druce's grave in Highgate Cemetery opened to show that the coffin buried in it was empty and weighted with lead was blocked by Druce's executor. The case became the subject of continuing and unsuccessful legal proceedings.

When it was discovered that Druce's children by a former wife were living in Australia, Anna Maria Druce's claims were backgrounded, and she went into an asylum in 1903. The case was taken up by George Hollamby Druce from 1903 onwards, who set up companies to finance his legal proceedings in 1905, and in 1907 even instituted a charge of perjury against Herbert Druce, the elder son of Thomas Charles Druce by his second wife for having sworn that he had witnessed his father's death in 1864. Herbert had been born before his parents' marriage and thus was not eligible to claim the Portland title even if his father had been the Duke.

The photograph which illustrates this article is that produced by the prosecution as being of the Duke, but the defence denied this and said it was of Druce. Evidence of a fake burial was given by a witness named Robert C. Caldwell of New York and others, and it was eventually agreed that Druce's grave should be opened. This was done on 30 December 1907 under the supervision of Inspector Walter Dew and Druce's body was found present and successfully identified. Caldwell's evidence was so unreliable that the prosecution disowned him during the trial, and it transpired that he had habitually appeared in court giving sensational, and false, testimony: he was found insane and died in an asylum in 1911. Several witnesses were in turn charged with perjury.


The extraordinary story of the Druce-Portland affair, one of the most notorious, tangled and bizarre legal cases of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.
In 1897 an elderly widow, Anna Maria Druce, made a strange request of the London Ecclesiastical Court: it was for the exhumation of the grave of her late father-in-law, T.C. Druce.
Behind her application lay a sensational claim: that Druce had been none other than the eccentric and massively wealthy 5th Duke of Portland, and that the - now dead - Duke had faked the death of his alter ego. When opened, Anna Maria contended, Druce's coffin would be found to be empty. And her children, therefore, were heirs to the Portland millions.

The extraordinary legal case that followed would last for ten years. Its eventual outcome revealed a dark underbelly of lies lurking beneath the genteel facade of late Victorian England

THE DEAD DUKE, HIS SECRET WIFE, AND THE MISSING CORPSE by Piu Marie Eatwell - Book Trailer from Red 14 Films on Vimeo.

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