In constructing an image of the Hyde Park Hotel robbers the press drew as much from popular notions of the lives of the rich as from police reports: “Four men who gate-crashed parties, night clubs and restaurants. All of good family, all four public school boys, one the son of a general. High life they certainly had—all of them. They followed the sun, they travelled in luxury, they spent thousands of pounds seeking pleasure. They gambled, they bickered over the finer points of rare wines, they were pictured in magazines as fashionable-young-men-about-town.”1 The writers of such gossipy accounts called the suspects “playboys” and projected onto them what they believed to be their audience’s desires and fantasies. Readers often found the results entertaining, but a deeper look at the checkered pasts of these four young men on the make reveals more about their possible motives, and about the society in which they operated.
John Christopher Mainwaring Lonsdale was in some ways the most marginal of the four suspects. The twenty-four-year-old Lonsdale—plump, with his blond hair already thinning—had been born in Alberta, Canada, in 1914. Though his ties to the country were tenuous, the Canadian press took a perverse pride in referring to him as a “Calgary native.”2 In fact he came from a well-respected English family whose home was the Further House, Wimborne, Dorset.3 His grandfather, the Reverend John Henry Lonsdale, had spent some years as a barrister with chambers at 4 Kings Bench Walk before being ordained in 1887 and appointed to the curacy of Wimborne Minster.4 He had two sons. Arthur, the younger, educated at Radley and Trinity College, Cambridge, was killed at Neuve Chapelle on March 13, 1915.5 The elder, John Claude Jardine Lonsdale, born in 1889, immigrated to Canada in 1908, when he was only eighteen.6 Georgina Beatrice, his future wife, had come as a child in 1900. In 1916, John Claude Lonsdale and Georgina Beatrice Lonsdale were living in Macleod, Alberta, with their two-year-old son, John Christopher.7
During the war John Claude came back to Britain and enlisted in the Third Battalion of the Dorsetshire Regiment; he was promoted to second lieutenant and later captain.8 He returned to Canada once the conflict ended. The 1921 census had the Lonsdales living in Ellice, Manitoba. In fact they appear to have been quite peripatetic, which was often a signifier of migrants’ inability to establish themselves. Passenger lists document a number of the young John Christopher’s trans-Atlantic crossings. The family finally settled in England, John Claude becoming a successful businessman well known in the City.
For whatever reason, John Christopher failed to win the public respect garnered by his father and grandfather.9 This was despite having every social advantage. He was educated at Radley College (founded in 1847), a prestigious independent boarding school for boys on the southern outskirts of Oxford. He left Radley in 1929, head of the upper modern sixth. He learned French in Lausanne and claimed to have studied for the diplomatic service in Munich, Paris, and Berlin, though he never stated exactly when or where. Similarly, one has to take at face value his boast that at eighteen he worked in Paris as secretary for the American actress Marilyn Miller.10
We do know that at nineteen Lonsdale enlisted in the King’s Royal Rifles. Apparently garrison life did not suit him, and his father bought him out.11 In November 1933 he joined the RAF and was appointed an acting pilot officer. He served briefly in Egypt. In 1934 his short service commission was terminated, and he was discharged for overstaying his leave in Marseilles, making false statements, and issuing worthless checks.12 Under the name of “Trevelyan” that same year he joined the Dorsetshire Regiment, in which his father had served. He once again regretted his decision, but rather than be bought out, he simply deserted. His unit still listed him as a deserter when he was detained in 1937.13
Lonsdale drifted into ever more serious forms of criminality. In November 1933 he insured his jewelry through Cox and Kings Insurance Ltd. In January 1934 he put in a claim and received in return a check for £7 8s. 6d. at the No. 4 Flying Training School, RAF, Abu-Sueir, Egypt. But in February, now living in Paris, he asked for a stop payment order to be made on the check and a fresh one drafted. When the Hotel Ritz discovered that he had pocketed the cash from the second check and used the first invalidated check to pay his restaurant bill they went after his insurers, who in turn informed the police.14
Given Lonsdale’s shady reputation it was ironic that his sole financial coup resulted from winning a slander suit. Miss Pamela Blake, the twenty-year-old daughter of Lady Twysden, of Nea House, Highcliffe was the defendant. The case went to trial on June 17, 1936. Norman Birkett, regarded by many as Britain’s most formidable barrister, represented Lonsdale. He charged that on March 6, 1936, Miss Blake—portrayed in the press as a “young society girl” or debutante—told a girl at the Florida nightclub in Bruton Mews, Mayfair, that Lonsdale had a venereal disease. “Moon (which was the pet name of another girl) is going out with John Lonsdale, who has the——.” On March 7 at the bar of the May Fair Hotel she went on to assert that Lonsdale had inherited the complaint from his father. “He (the plaintiff) has hereditary——. That is why——[another girl] dropped him.”15 In the witness box, Lonsdale adamantly denied that there was any truth in the allegation. He presented himself as indifferent to any financial compensation but driven by an honorable desire to curb destructive gossip. “There is too much loose talk going on in Mayfair. Reputations are ruined by the lightest whisper or innuendo which grows alarmingly as it is passed on.”16
Birkett stressed that Lonsdale’s conscience compelled him to take legal proceedings. He insisted that his client was not seeking a large monetary reward; he simply sought the vindication of his honor. Nevertheless, a meaningful penalty had to be provided, Birkett asserted, as Lonsdale’s reputation had been severely damaged.17 For a businessman like Lonsdale, who claimed to be the assistant secretary to the International Exchange and Clearing Corporation Ltd., a financial house in the City, such a disparaging attack could entail real costs.18
No defense was offered. Pamela Blake’s solicitors, Joynson-Hicks and Company, had written to Lonsdale’s solicitors on April 17: “She desires through us to convey to your client her unqualified apology for any pain which her words may have caused him. She is also prepared to do all that she can to put the matter right, and with this end in view, is agreeable to signing any proper form of apology and withdrawal you think fit which your client can show.” In court her counsel added: “I ask you to bear in mind that this girl is only 20 years of age, and however much one regrets that she should publish such slanders, you cannot expect a person of that age to have the restraint and wisdom of people of more advanced age.”19 The sitting judge was not impressed. In his summation, Lord Hewart said that it would be difficult to imagine anything more disgusting or repulsive than Blake’s statements. She now admitted that there was not a word of truth in the disgraceful allegations. He concluded his stern lecture in awarding Lonsdale £500 damages.20 Lonsdale would meet Birkett and Hewart again in less happy circumstances two years later. For the moment, however, he was triumphant.
Miss Blake married a few months later.21 Though Lonsdale won his slander case, in so doing he lost a marriage. He had launched his suit in April 1936. On May 1, 1936, the press employed the traditional formula in announcing that “a marriage had been arranged” between John Lonsdale, son of J. C. J. Lonsdale of Wimborne and Mrs. Lonsdale of Paris, and Evelyne, younger daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Mervyn Wolseley of Sutton Park, Guildford.22 Miss Wolseley initially supported Lonsdale. The press quoted her as saying:
I knew John was innocent of all the nasty things that were said about him and I was determined to clear his name. He knew nothing of the beastly rumours until I told him and we immediately started to trace them to their source. I believed John so completely that when he proposed to me after he had started the action, I accepted, knowing full well his honour would be vindicated in the courts. It is unfortunately true that Mayfair is a hive of gossip and I hope that the action in which John has succeeded will help towards putting an end to such scandal mongering.23
Her parents were undoubtedly unhappy to see the sexual health of their future son-in-law made a subject of tabloid discussion. The trial in mid-June took its toll. On June 27, the Times carried the announcement that the Lonsdale-Wolseley marriage would not take place.24
Lonsdale had other projects on the go. He appears to have learned to fly in the RAF. Like many wealthy young men in the interwar period, he regarded the airplane as offering new technological powers that the elite had to recognize and embrace. He was associated in some way with the right-wing National League of Airmen, established in 1935 by the press baron Lord Rothermere, publisher of the Daily Mail and a fascist sympathizer. Rothermere’s plan was to use a group of young pilots, led by Norman Macmillan and Montague Smith, to impress on the public the need to catch up to Germany in the race for air power.25
In 1936 Lonsdale met the Honorable Victor Hervey, a rich and notorious ne’er-do-well. The two young playboys discovered that they not only had similar interests in flying and conservative politics. They were also both excited at the prospect of the money that could be made in gunrunning to the combatants in the Spanish Civil War. A detailed account of their undertaking is provided in chapter 10. Here it only has to be noted that they failed completely. Hervey incurred enormous debts. He was declared bankrupt at the age of twenty-one, to the tune of £124,000.26 Lonsdale, needing to ferret out some means of surviving, fell back on fraud.
Lonsdale spent most of 1937 in France. Some of his activities came to the notice of the authorities. In November 1937, Rudolph Slavik, a barman at the Hotel George V, complained to the Paris police that Lonsdale had used a bad check to defraud him of 1,000 francs. When he heard of Lonsdale’s arrest in England, he appealed to Scotland Yard for assistance but was informed that Lonsdale, who was awaiting trial, had “no means.” Therefore nothing could be done about the check stamped “returned R.D.” (“Refer to Drawer,” meaning payment suspended).27
Élie Lévy made a more serious charge. Lévy, a Parisian jeweler, asserted that Lonsdale had swindled him out of a ring worth 85,000 francs. The Paris inspector general wrote to the commissioner of police in London that on December 10, 1937, a warrant had been issued obliging Lonsdale (who now called himself a journalist) to appear before the juge d’instruction près le Tribunal de la Seine. Following the crime the police detained his “maitresse” Madame Souriat Chardanoff (née Chakoff). Lonsdale was freed “sous caution”—released on bail—but before the judge could rearrest him, he had left for London.28 Élie Lévy never received compensation, but he and his family did manage to escape France in 1944.29
December 1937 found Lonsdale back in England. On his return he at times went under the name “Mainwaring” so as, he insisted, to avoid entanglements in Hervey’s bankruptcy proceedings. Despite his many career disasters and encounters with the law, Lonsdale still maintained the image of living well. He boasted that his life of dueling, arms smuggling, gambling, and socializing with internationally known actors made the adventures of the average “thriller” look tame in contrast. Reporters recalled him dining at the Savoy and the San Marco.30 For a fraudster, appearances are everything. When the police arrested Lonsdale, the well-dressed young man had on his person a mere two shillings, nine pence.
On his return to England, Lonsdale had contacted David Wilmer, whom he had known for close to two years. Wilmer, who was the most socially well connected of the four, came from a military family. His father, Brigadier-General Eric Randal Gordon Wilmer, was born in India in 1882, the son of Colonel J. R. Wilmer of the Indian Army. Eric Wilmer enlisted in 1900, served in World War I, and spent many years thereafter in India. In 1935 he was replaced at Poona and retired to England.31 Much of his time was subsequently taken up by his duties as secretary of the War Commemoration Fund and other charities supported through Artillery House.32
Robert Paul Harley, J. C. M. Lonsdale, and Peter Jenkins. Evening News, Feb. 16, 1938. © The British Library Board
In 1910 at Ticehurst, Sussex, Eric Wilmer married Marjory, the daughter of Major-General Richard Worsley. The local press listed the names of the guests and the jugs, sauceboats, picture frames, inkstands, ashtrays, toast racks, candlesticks, sugar sifters, saltcellars, egg holders, scent bottles, salvers, tea sets, cigarette boxes, sugar bowls, and coffeepots—all in silver—given as presents.33 Marjory’s sister, Edith Dorothy Worsley, married Sir John Scott Horsbrugh-Porter, son of Sir Andrew Marshall Porter.34 Horsbrugh-Porter was an important figure in Gloucestershire.35 In May 1935 he led the jubilee festivities honoring the twenty-fifth anniversary of George V’s coronation, and in January 1937 he helped organize the celebrations in Bourton-on-the Hill for Edward VIII’s coming to the throne.36 The Wilmers were part of this comfortable social circle linked by marriage, politics, and professional interests. Their invitation to the marriage of Major Edward Latham and Lady Gwendoline Jellicoe, daughter of Earl Jellicoe, Admiral of the Fleet, at Langham Place was one indication of their elite social standing.37
Eric and Marjory Wilmer had two sons and one daughter. Their daughter, Thea, married Lieutenant Richard Jenner-Fust of the Royal Navy. He was killed in action in the Second World War; his two brothers were reported missing and assumed dead. In 1951, Thea wed Captain G. F. Spooner of the Royal Air Force, a leader of the British Schools Exploring Society.38
The Wilmers’ two boys attended Oundle School in Oundle, Northamptonshire. Founded in 1556 by the Worshipful Company of Grocers of the City of London, it promoted games and strong ties with the Church of England. John Whitworth, the future Air Commodore, was there at the same time as David Wilmer. Other notable old boys included Cecil Arthur Lewis, co-founder of the BBC, and Joseph Needham, the scientist and historian.
Frederick Clive, the Wilmers’ younger son, entered the school in September 1930, giving the family’s address as 26 Cheyne Row, Chelsea. He went on to officer training at Sandhurst and then served in the Second World War. The Oundle School magazine, the Laxtonian, listed him as one of the prisoners of war whom the Japanese released in 1945.39
David Wilmer, the eldest son, was born in London, October 6, 1913.40 When he entered Oundle in 1927 he gave as his father’s address The Senior Officers School, Belgaum, India. At school he played cricket and boxed as a featherweight, losing the sight in one eye as the result of an accident.41 After leaving Oundle in July 1930 he supposedly went on to study at Neuchâtel and Heidelberg, but these universities have no record of his registering as a regular student.42 Friends later reported that he also was a chorus boy in the 1932 production of The Miracle, a musical starring Lady Diana Cooper, the famous society beauty.43
David Wilmer broke with family tradition in not going into the military. The Times reported that he worked briefly as a clerk and then as a trainee for an advertising agency, where he was to earn the handsome sum of £500 a year. He apparently did not allow business to get in the way of pleasure, squandering his allowance of £6 a week in drink and dancing.44 In July 1937 his employer fired him, “it being thought undesirable that he should frequent night clubs.”45 Nevertheless the Daily Express still portrayed him as “a highly paid advertising agent living in Charles Street, Berkeley Square.”46 There is little evidence of his holding a regular job. There are, however, many reports of the active involvement of this “debonair playboy” in London society.
Described by the police as about five feet ten, slim, and “smartly dressed,” Wilmer was proud of his success with women. Presumably he had his hair waved to increase his attractiveness. But if he presented himself as a playboy, he was willing to try marriage. In October 1935 the press announced that David Wilmer had married Hilary Inez Elizabeth, elder daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John White of 20 Thurlow Place, SW7.47 Hilary was only eighteen. The newlyweds were happy for a few months, but in January 1936, according to her, “He then went out late at night and went away at week-ends.” She asserted that he was promiscuous and boasted of it to her. He treated her terribly and could not be trusted “financially or otherwise.” Finally he wrote stating that he would not return to her, and she had him watched. The public were outraged that Wilmer deserted his wife just before the birth of their child, but appearances could be deceiving. The divorce law at the time required that one party had to be guilty and one innocent. As the courts refused to recognize amicable separations, the husband customarily played the role of the villain. Accordingly in February 1937 Wilmer sent his wife a letter and an incriminating hotel bill indicating that in January and February 1937 he had committed adultery in a hotel in the Strand.48
Hilary Wilmer was emotionally involved with Patrick Gamble. Surprisingly enough, Wilmer was to use his estranged wife’s lover in constructing an alibi for December 20. Wilmer was to claim that he spent the day of the robbery collecting papers “relating to a Mr. Patrick Gamble’s prospects under his grandfather’s will—taking these to Messers. W. H. Speed & Co., Solicitors of Sackville Street, and discussing the possibility of raising some money for Mr. Gamble on his expectations with Mr. Bennett, Principal of the firm.”49
Wilmer knew how he could use charm to ingratiate himself in the eyes of his social superiors. Having had some experience in advertising no doubt heightened his appreciation of ways to curry favor. At the same time he had a nasty streak that expressed itself in physical attacks on social inferiors. On December 26, 1936, Wilmer and a friend, Anthony Lyon-Clark of Egbury Grange, St. Marybourne, near Andover, got drunk. At the Chequers Hotel in Newbury they came across a dance. When they tried to enter they were informed that it was a private party. Enraged at being refused entrance, Wilmer “struck an official in the face breaking his false teeth.” The schoolmaster who was the victim of the assault did not make a formal complaint as he was promised the matter would be settled out of court.50
The Boxing Day celebrations were not yet finished. At about 2:00 a.m. Wilmer and Lyon-Clark turned up at an inn, the Three Legged Cross in Crux Easton, on an isolated stretch of road south of Newbury. They roused Fred Greenaway, the licensee, to tell him that their car had skidded and gone into a ditch. He had to help them get it out. Greenaway, a fifty-five-year-old veteran recovering from pleurisy, refused and suggested they go to the nearby village of Highclere for help. They left. Thirty minutes later they returned and this time demanded accommodation. Greenaway, speaking to them from an upstairs window, refused to come down and let them in. Once again Wilmer found such insubordination maddening. He smashed one of the inn’s windows and threatened to continue: “if you don’t let me in I’ll smash every——window in the place.” Opening the door to confront the attackers Greenaway found himself hit in the face and ribs. Wilmer admitted punching him, but Greenaway believed he was hit with something heavy like a spanner. Wilmer elsewhere boasted of carrying a knuckle-duster.51 Greenaway’s wife ran for help and the police arrived. Wilmer told them that Greenaway had pushed him and in response he had instinctively lashed out, not realizing the publican’s age.52
David Wilmer. Evening Standard, Feb. 18, 1938. © The British Library Board
Wilmer was charged with assault and willful damage. The case was to be heard on February 26, but the day before the hearing Greenaway went into a meadow with a shotgun and took his own life.53 The case was adjourned until April 2. The inquest heard that Greenaway was worried about the upcoming trial and his mind was possibly unbalanced. His wife stated that he was chiefly concerned about getting a young gentleman into trouble. His doctor agreed that while the innkeeper had suffered no serious physical injuries, the prospect of testifying depressed him. As a result of there being no victim, the court withdrew the assault summons and instead charged Wilmer with willful damage. His legal counsel presented him as a hard worker, and employers provided supportive references. Wilmer was convicted at the Kingsclere Petty Sessions of willful damages for which he was fined £5, plus £2 10s. for damages and £16 15s. 6d. costs.54 It is not possible to say exactly what lessons Wilmer drew from these brushes with the law. One could surmise, however, that he might well have concluded that with money and luck the most difficult situations could be resolved. This was a view obviously shared by the other three suspects.
At twenty-one, Peter Martin Jenkins was the youngest and, despite a few pimples, the best looking of the four detainees. A review of newspaper reports and civil records allows one to sketch in the backgrounds of Harley, Wilmer, and Lonsdale. Jenkins’s autobiography, Mayfair Boy (1952), in some ways makes the task of tracing his early years much easier.55 His book has to be used with caution, however, as he clearly had a selective memory and set out to produce a self-serving account.
Peter Jenkins was born in St. John’s Wood, London, September 13, 1916. Walter Martin Jenkins, his father, was a successful wool merchant, earning in the late 1920s, so his son claimed, the enormous sum of £30,000 a year. Cobb and Jenkins tweeds were sold around the world out of its head office at 11 Great Marlborough Street, a building erected for the company in 1910 to the design of the architect E. Keynes Purchase.56
The Jenkins family had a London residence at 1 Duchess Street, W1, just off Portland Place, but Peter’s happiest memories were of their country house, “High Chimneys,” a grade II–listed building (as of 1950) in Burgess Hill, West Sussex. In this handsome eighteenth-century red brick farmhouse his mother oversaw a large staff of domestics, including a chauffeur who drove the family Rolls Royce.57 The Jenkins lived well. When Joan, the only daughter, married, she had her reception, Peter proudly recalled, at the Hyde Park Hotel.58
The family’s money made it possible for Peter to attend Harrow, one of England’s most exclusive independent schools. Located in Middlesex, to the northwest of London proper, this famous institution was founded in 1572 by John Lyon under a Royal Charter of Elizabeth I. One of the original nine public schools that were defined by the Public Schools Act of 1868, its famous old boys included several prime ministers (among them Baldwin, Peel, and Palmerston), many foreign statesmen, members of both houses of Parliament, and numerous princes and maharajahs.
Peter Jenkins was at Harrow from 1930 to 1932. He then spent some time at a more modest institution, Hurstpierpoint College.59 It is possible that because of some infraction, he was encouraged to make the move. He made no mention of the latter school in his autobiography, preferring to dwell on the socially influential friends he made at Harrow. He did appear to be more candid in regretting that he let down his old school. He justified himself to a degree, arguing that if he had not applied himself to his studies, it was because he believed that his father’s wealth guaranteed that he would always be taken care of.
He finished school in 1934. Unaware of his father’s financial problems, which had their origins in the 1929 crash, he began learning the wool trade. The story that he told repeatedly thereafter, and one the press was only too happy to retell, was that having been brought up in luxury, he was totally unprepared when his father admitted to having lost most of his money. The family suddenly had to cut back on expenses, moving to a flat at 40/44 New Cavendish Street. Walter Martin Jenkins died soon thereafter, in December 1934, and his wife Evelyn followed in 1935.
In the spring of 1935, the Times carried a notice asking creditors and others with claims on Jenkins’s estate to submit their demands.60 Peter, only nineteen at the time of his parents’ deaths, was far from being penniless.61 His father left a sizeable inheritance, although probably not the £52,000 Peter claimed. He found that £5,000 had been placed in trust for him, his father obviously having doubts about his ability to handle money. Only when he turned twenty-five was he to have unfettered access to the bequest.
Peter did not wait. He moved into a flat in South Bruton Mews, close to the Florida nightclub, and plunged into a hectic round of partying. By his own account he attended all the main events of the 1935 season—Ascot, Wimbledon, Henley, and the Eton-versus-Harrow cricket match at Lords. A reporter who interviewed Jenkins in 1937 found him at 8:00 p.m. dressed in silk pajamas and a silk dressing gown. He was drinking brandy and attended by a French secretary. He instructed the journalist: “Call me a Mayfair playboy.” Though recently robbed, he claimed that money was of little importance to him. He took pleasure in stating that he had just returned from the Riviera, where he spent up to £100 a week.62
The image he had of himself in dressing gown and pajamas was, in his words, “quite worthy of Cecil Beaton.”63 In comparing himself to a well-known bisexual society photographer, Jenkins presented himself as a follower of fashion. At the same time he confessed to worrying about being considered “effeminate.”64 Accordingly, he flaunted his patronizing of Dorchester chorus girls, west London brothels, and Soho striptease bars. He became, he reports, a “Deb’s Delight” but was indifferent to the daughter of a baronet chasing him. Unfortunately, the woman he loved viewed him simply as a “dissolute young playboy.”65 This was, of course, the role he embraced. Presenting himself as tragically heartbroken allowed him to justify his launching himself into another hectic round of drinks and parties, a clichéd “mad endeavour to forget.”66
Jenkins lived with friends and at expensive hotels and flats on money obtained from reversionary interests under his parents’ wills.67 That is to say he mortgaged away much of his inheritance.68 He called himself a “financier.” The reality was that he briefly worked as a stockbroker’s clerk but left with a bad character due to his drinking. Piling up debts, he soon gained a reputation for not paying his bills. Pursued by creditors, banned from bottle parties, nightclubs, and hotels, he was constantly on the lookout for easy ways of making money.
For a self-proclaimed playboy like Jenkins, marriage to a wealthy heiress, preferably an American, was an obvious way to attain financial stability. In his autobiography Jenkins refers several times to an unnamed woman whom he hoped to marry. Just before the Christmas of 1937 he told friends that he was about to be engaged to Eleanore Foster, a rich American actress who, he asserted, was worth £100,000 a year.69 To back up his story he showed cables from her and pictures of them together on the Riviera. When journalists questioned Foster, she made it clear that though she had been photographed with Jenkins on the beach at Cannes, she knew him only slightly and they certainly were not engaged. She indignantly denied sending him any cables.70
When sponging off friends and family failed to cover expenses, Jenkins turned to minor forms of fraud. In 1936 he was arrested for false pretenses at the Café de Paris and for writing six bad checks; at the police court additional instances were taken into account, and as a first offender he was bound over for obtaining credit by fraud, to wit illicitly taking drink and lodgings, worth £46.71 Jenkins was himself a victim of fraudsters. In October 1937 friends told him that huge profits could be made in purchasing armaments on the black market and reselling them to General Franco of Spain. To purchase airplanes Jenkins gathered together £685 in notes that he left in his Grosvenor Street flat when he went to meet his contact at a Jermyn Street restaurant. The hours went by, and the contact failed to appear. Jenkins finally sensed that something was terribly wrong. He rushed home to find all the money gone. He had been double-crossed. Never having met the supposed middleman, and not knowing where the planes were coming from, there was little he could do.72 Striking the pose of wealthy young man about town, he told a reporter who covered the story that the money was of little importance. In reality he was enraged, and hopeful that Robert Harley, a new friend to whom he had been introduced by Wilmer, was the sort of ex-military tough who could help him get it back.
The press described Robert Paul Harley as standing out in a crowd due to his slight American accent, “rather piercing eyes, jet black hair, slight moustache and aquiline nose.”73 At twenty-six he was a bit older than the others, but he came from the same social milieu. Like Wilmer he was the son of a much-decorated army officer.74 Henry Kellett Harley joined the British army in 1890 and was sent to India, where he was involved in the Chitral Expedition of 1895. In Africa, he participated in the Egyptian Army’s 1898 campaign in the Sudan and in the Boer War of 1901–1902. Having retired from the 7th Hussars in 1909, he returned to the colors to serve in France and Italy during the First World War. Promoted to the rank of colonel, he died at the relatively young age of fifty-three, in 1920.75
In 1899 Harley married the Honorable Margaret Holland, daughter of the first Lord Rotherham (William Holland), a Manchester industrialist who entered politics as a Liberal MP. In 1910 Asquith made him a peer.76 Before divorcing in 1908 the Harleys had one son and one daughter.77 In 1910 Harley married Esther (or Thella), daughter of Henry Blustin (or Blustein), a Jewish businessman from Kovno, Russian Poland.78 They had three sons. The youngest, Dennis, was born in 1915 in Maidenhead.79 Peter, the eldest, born in 1910, followed his father’s example in serving the empire.80 At Wellington College from 1923 to 1925, he went out to New Zealand in 1926, returning to England in the mid-1930s.81 He worked for the Mauritius Police Force in the 1940s and then the Nigerian Police Force until the 1960s.82
Robert, born in 1911, followed his older brother, attending Wellington College from 1925 to 1927. Located in Crowthorne, Berkshire, Wellington was an independent boarding school, built as a monument to the Iron Duke. Opened in 1859, its original mandate was to educate the sons of army officers and those in the colonial service. Some found its military atmosphere to be off-putting. The novelist George Orwell (who attended briefly in 1917) described the school as “beastly.”83 Esmond Romilly—tagged by the press as Winston Churchill’s “red nephew”—at age sixteen ran away from Wellington College and castigated the school’s military ethos in Out of Bounds: The Education of Giles and Esmond Romilly (1935).84 The actor Robert Morley, who famously declared, “Show me a man who has enjoyed his school days and I will show you a bully and a bore,” went on to muse that “the only reason for me visiting Wellington would be to burn it down.”85
The Harley family had social pretentions but, due to the father’s early death, lacked the financial resources to sustain them. After Wellington, the seventeen-year-old Harley worked briefly as a junior clerk. In 1930 his mother paid for his passage to Canada. The idea was that he would learn how to farm. He soon grew tired of rural life, however, and enlisted in the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry.86 In 1919 the regiment had been selected to form part of Canada’s peacetime army, to be called the Permanent Active Militia. The Regiment’s headquarters were established at Fort Osborne Barracks in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Harley (#20990) served for three years.87 When the news of his arrest broke, Canadian papers noted, “Harley was well known amongst Winnipeg’s cricket fraternity a few years ago and enlisted in the Princess Pat’s regiment.”88
He returned to England in 1935 and made a surprisingly advantageous marriage. The press reported that in Battle, Sussex, on March 22, 1936, Robert Harley had wed Freda M. Wightwick. Freda’s father was Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert Milner Wightwick, seconded to the Indian Political Service and officiating resident (or magistrate) at Jaipur. The family had spent many years in the Raj. Passenger lists document Freda in 1913 (at age two) and again in October 1928 (at age seventeen) sailing to India. Harley was obviously “marrying up.” Freda moved in the best circles and as a debutante had been presented at court.89 Her brother, John Wightwick, was to wed Audrey Idris, the daughter of Sir Trevor Wheler, Baronet.90
The marriage began well enough. The young couple chose as their honeymoon to sail on board the Queen Mary to New York City. There they were feted by American friends. In July the New York Times reported that a luncheon was given in honor of Mrs. Michael Harley of London by Miss Laura E. Marden of Glen Head, Long Island.91 To make the family complete, on January 20, 1937, Freda and Robert Harley, of Newdigate House, Bexhill-on-Sea, announced the birth of a daughter, Philippa.92 Nevertheless, due to Harley’s recklessness, the marriage soon floundered. Discovering that Harley was living with another woman, Freda left him in March 1937 and sought a divorce. At first glance it appeared that her chances of success were low. The existing law held that normally a divorce could not be granted to those who had not been married for at least three years.93
Having abandoned the security of both marriage and the military, how was a young man with expensive tastes supposed to survive in the harsh economic climate of the 1930s? Harley liked to spend money and fancied himself a playboy.94 The truth was he had no settled profession. After leaving the army he had a number of odd jobs including, some said, private tutor and member of a traveling circus.95 The Evening Telegraph reported that when he returned to Canada in 1936, “he worked for a year with a television agency.”96 What this means is unclear as until 1952 there were no television services in Canada. Journalists also said he had the notion of selling “television telephones” and “aerial bomb blueprints.” It was true that in England he occasionally posed as an American and, when broke, acted as a compère at certain nightclubs.
Harley described himself at other times as a newspaperman. The Times agreed that he did some literary work but insisted that he was no journalist.97 It is worth noting, however, that a passenger list shows that on April 8, 1936, Harley arrived at New York City on board the Europa with his friend William Aitken, who was a well-known newspaperman.98 Harley occasionally called the Daily Express with tips, telling them, for example, about Peter Jenkins being robbed. He similarly acted as a police informer, willing even to turn on friends, whom he referred to as “poor dumb-bells.” While serving in the Canadian army, he claimed that he used a whippet tank to quell Communist protestors.99 He also told tall tales of working for the US Secret Service, having his life threatened, and needing to carry a revolver. A reporter described Harley as “powerful, tall, his thick black moustache accentuating the pallor of his face.”100 His speaking with an American accent was a common affectation. In a 1938 novel a character explains the particular inflections of a pimp. “That’s because, for the last fifteen years or so, anything that looks big talks with an American accent.”101 Attempting to exploit the reputation of being a hard man who was familiar with guns and New York gangs, Harley was not embarrassed by his nickname, “Killer.” The moniker apparently referred not to his being a murderer but to his participation in a particularly nasty fight outside a nightclub.102
The reality was that Harley was no master criminal. Prior to the Hyde Park Hotel robbery he had been accused of a series of petty crimes. He was given to skipping out on his rent and other minor forms of swindling. In December 1937 he was charged with obtaining £29 by fraud, but the case was adjourned sine die pending the result of the Cartier case.103 Perhaps the saddest document in Harley’s police file was a letter written to the clerk of the court by a Miss Woolrich. Harley owed her seven shillings for the newspapers she had provided him while he was living at 58 Upper Berkeley Street in November 1937. He had suddenly disappeared, and she did not know what to do. She apologized for taking up the official’s time and acknowledged that for some, seven shillings was nothing, but as a small trader, she “respectfully” pointed out, it did matter to her.104 The authorities did not reply to Miss Woolrich’s pitiful query. They obviously felt, however, that it was well worth filing away, for it shored up the argument that Harley, broke and desperate, was prepared in December 1937—like his confederates—to risk involvement in a criminal conspiracy.
When the police assembled their files on the Hyde Park Hotel robbers, the picture that emerged was of four young men who prided themselves on coming from good families, of having attended elite educational institutions and, when in need, of being able to call on extensive networks of influential friends. Most observers assumed that those enjoying such social advantages might, while youths, sow some wild oats but would inevitably go on to become pillars of the community. In the case of the Mayfair men that did not appear to be true. Was it possible, asked the popular newspapers, that their being accustomed to a life of privilege, instead of nurturing a respect for others, implanted a dangerous sense of entitlement that ultimately led to their committing robbery?105