‍Maud with the head of John the Baptist

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‍“It is safe to say that no lawsuit of modern times has attracted such universal and painful interest,” The Times, 5 June 1918.

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‍LESBIAN actress and exotic dancer Maud Allan took a huge risk when she agreed to star in a private showing of Oscar Wilde’s play Salome in London’s West End, featuring her almost naked and covered in jewels. The production earned her the newspaper headline ‘Cult of the Clitoris’.

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‍ And in 1918 it sparked one of the most read newspaper scandals of the decade when she was also accused of sleeping with Prime Minister Lord Asquith’s wife Margot.

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‍ Known for her sexually alluring Dance of the Seven Veils in which she kisses and licks the head of decapitated John the Baptist, Maud was the Madonna of starchy Edwardian times.

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‍ The period 1914-1918 was a time when women had new opportunities for independence, which led to a more visible presence of lesbians in political and cultural scenes, particularly in urban areas. They began to get their own clubs. And there was a shortage of men because of the war.

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‍ But there was still widespread disapproval of Wilde following his jailing 20 years earlier for sodomy, which was illegal in the UK. Lesbianism wasn’t illegal, but parliament was debating whether to outlaw indecency between women.

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‍ In 1918, after a two-year successful run of a version of Wilde’s play Salome, called Vision of Salome, Maud had agreed to repeat her specially-adapted role as the siren in a private, unlicensed show.

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‍ Most of the audiences at the Palace had been women, the Daily Chronicle said. “Nearly all of them brought along their binoculars”.

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‍ She topped the bill at the Palace for two years.

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‍ The original play by Wilde, whose works had been banned in the UK following his trial, is about the Biblical Salome who requests the head of St. John the Baptist on a platter as a reward for her sensual dance, with provocative poses.

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‍ For a ticket, the audience had to make special ‘under-the-radar’ applications, to a Miss Valettea of 9 Duke Street Adelphi W6.

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‍ The advert in the Sunday Times on February 10, 1918, read:

‍“OSCAR WILDE’S SALOME, MAUD ALLAN in private performances by J. T. GREIN’s INDEPENDENT THEATRE, April next.”

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‍ The advert was spotted by a notoriously right-wing MP, Noel Pemberton-Billing, who ran his own newspaper, The Vigilante. He immediately published a reactionary article about Maud and her unabashed female sexuality on stage, under the sensational headline: “The Cult of the Clitoris.”

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‍ The article referred to Maud who was half German, as Salome and accused her of being a lesbian associate of German wartime conspirators.

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‍ She gave 250 performances, broke all box office records, and she was paid the astronomical sum of £250 a week. The liberal newspaper the Daily Chronicle observed that, at one performance, at least 90 per cent of the audience had been female and commented:  “It might have been a suffragist meeting … the ladies were of all ages, well dressed, sedate.”

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‍ Pemberton-Billing speculated that Maud’s private performances of Salome would attract high-profile sexual perverts he believed were named in a ‘Black Book’ of 47,000 names being blackmailed by the German government.

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‍ The actress, he said, was a member of a woman cult who loved women’s bodies. And they made love to each other.

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‍ These accusations threatened to have a serious effect on Allan’s career, so she sued Pemberton-Billing for libel at the Old Bailey.

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‍ At the trial, Pemberton-Billing, acting in his own defence, called Lord Alfred Douglas, lover of Oscar Wilde and translator of Wilde’s Salome as a witness. He described Wilde as ‘the greatest force for evil that has appeared in Europe during the last 350 years.’

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‍ Allan’s lesbianism was proven, the defence claimed, by her knowledge of sexual and anatomical words such as ‘clitoris’. These words were largely unknown to most people at the time.

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‍ Lord Albermarle, reading The Times, reportedly asked colleagues at his gentleman’s club, the Turf Club, talking about the trial: “Who is this Greek chap Clitoris they’re all talking about?”

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‍ Then newspaper reporters later discovered that Lady Asquith was paying for a swish apartment for Maud in Regents Park.

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‍ In the end, Maud lost her case and Pemberton-Billing was cleared to cheering from the packed gallery.

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‍ The Black Book was never found and Maud never worked again. She fled to Los Angeles with a woman lover and died penniless in a nursing home on October 7, 1956 aged 83.

‍*****

‍DID YOU KNOW?

‍IN 1956, the Hollywood Press reported that Frank Sinatra had 12 copies of his gold, pinkie ring made featuring his family crest, to give to close pals as a symbol of his friendship, loyalty, and respect. Three of them were for Dean Martin, Quincy Jones, and Tony Bennett. The Sicilian crest shows a crowned, rampant lion with three stars. Tony Bennett later sold his ring at auction for $64,000.

‍*****

‍‘DAMN YOU ALL!’ LAST WORDS OF THE KING BEFORE HIS FATAL INJECTION

‍King George V: given fatal injection

‍IT TOOK more than 50 years for newspapers and the public to discover what really happened to King George V on his death bed. And even now, the whole story has not fully come out and probably never will. Was he murdered?

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‍ Depending on your point of view, and mixed with the law, the answer is probably yes, technically.

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‍ For in 1936 the 71-year-old King was injected with fatal doses of morphine and cocaine not long after dinner, to assure him of a painless death, by his physician Lord Dawson in time for the daily newspapers to run their headlines on his passing, particularly in The Times.

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‍ And his last words to the man who did it were: “God damn you!” as he drifted off to sleep after the injection. The official statement, however, was that the King’s last words were: “How is the Empire?” Patriotic words for the public consumption. A bit more like it.

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‍ It is intriguing to note that shortly after his death injections, Lord Dawson spoke passionately against euthanasia, which was illegal as it is now, and considered as murder, in a Common’s debate.

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‍ The truth about the King’s death only became public in November 1986, 50 years later, when Lord Dawson’s private diary was released to the press from the Royal Archives.

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‍ He tells how he administered two injections to the King at about 11 o’clock on the night of January 20, 1936, at Sandringham. That was scarcely two hours after he had written a brief medical press bulletin to reporters that declared, ‘’The King’s life is moving peacefully towards its close.’’

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‍ That close came in less than an hour after the injections. Lord Dawson, according to his notes, had already phoned his wife in London to ask that she advise The Times editor, a friend, to “hold back publication’’ that night.

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‍ ‘’A Peaceful Ending at Midnight,’’ said the headline the next morning in the newspaper that was deemed to be the most appropriate vehicle for major royal announcements. There was no clue as to what really happened.

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‍ The King, a heavy smoker, was reported to have died from a coronary thrombosis, or blood clot in an artery, which occurred while he was asleep. He had been in failing health for some months with a chronic bronchial complaint, but his final illness was brief.

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‍ Dawson’s notes, now preserved in the archives of Windsor Castle, were first examined by the physician’s biographer, Francis Watson at the request of his widow. The biographer said he omitted any reference in his book on the King to the euthanasia that had taken place.

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‍ But later he told the journal History Today: ‘’Lady Dawson did not want the truth about what happened in my book and I agreed. I didn’t think it appropriate.’’

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‍ Strangely Dawson’s notes reveal that he had been told by Queen Mary and the Prince of Wales — the playboy son who was to become Edward VIII and would abdicate — that at the time, they did not want the King’s life needlessly prolonged if his illness was clearly fatal. There is no indication that the King himself had been consulted. Probably not.

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‍ ‘’In my opinion the King was murdered by Dawson,’’ said Kenneth Rose, a biographer of George V, when he heard the news about the death injections.

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‍ His anger was followed by Sir Douglas Black, ex-president of the Royal College of Physicians, who said: Lord Dawson committed an ‘’evil’’ act for the sake of a ‘’marginal’’ good — the announcement of the King’s death in The Times.

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‍ Dawson’s diary claimed that after a dinner with the Royal Family, the King was injected with a small dose of morphine to enable him to sleep more easily. ‘’God damn you,’’ the King said, as he drifted into a coma. Had he realised?

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‍ Later that evening, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, prayed at the bedside of the unconscious King. Once the Archbishop retired, Lord Dawson prepared the final fatal injections, consisting of three-quarters of a gram of morphine and one gram of cocaine, as the King lay comatose.

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‍ When this information was revealed, the newspapers of 1986, including The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, reported the story with headlines acknowledging the “secret” and the controversial nature of the act, with some journalists and MPs considering it a form of murder.

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‍ The initial 1936 reports were therefore based on the official, carefully managed narrative of a peaceful death, and the “killing” aspect was unknown to the public and the press at the time.

‍*****

‍DID YOU KNOW?

‍The Words: “London bridge is down” were used to secretly announce Queen Elizabeth’s death by her private secretary to the Prime Minister, so he could announce her death to the Press?

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‍ D-Day” was the code word for the day of Elizabeth II passing.

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‍ “D-Day plus 1” were the code words for the day after the Queen’s death. 

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‍“D-Day plus 10” was planned to be her state funeral.

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‍TERRY MANNERS

‍8 December 2025