Sunday World - Sunday, June 9, 1895

BLACKMAILING REVELATIONS.

Samuel Wright, a person with effeminate voice and manners, who described himself as a valet out of employment, with no fixed address, was charged in London with stealing some old Mechlin lace, value £50 from an altar in Brompton Oratory. The prisoner visited the church at an early hour and tore the lace from the altar, and tried soon afterwards to pawn it for a few shillings. Sergeant Maguire, B Division, said the prisoner was well known to the police as the intimate associate of the most discreditable witnesses in the Oscar Wilde case and a notorious blackmailer. He was arrested by the police when they raided a house in Fitzroy square where men were dressed in female attire, and he lived by the vilest form of immorality and extortion. A letter was found on him from a West End solicitor making an appointment with reference to a demand he had recently made upon a person of position, and witness had seen an old invalid gentleman from whom five years ago he extorted no less a sum than £2,500 under the threat that he would make an infamous charge against him. Prisoner, who made no answer to the detective’s statement, was sentenced to six months’ hard labour.