In the 1880s, Lord Chief Justice Coleridge was the senior and deeply respected 'celebrity' judge in the land. After the premature death of his adored wife, his unmarried daughter Mildred, in her early thirties, was expected to serve as his housekeeper, hostess and companion. But Mildred wanted to marry Charles Warren Adams, the irascible secretary of the `Victoria Street 'anti-vivisection' Society for which Mildred worked. After much-disputed accounts of an incident 'in a darkened room,' Lord Coleridge forbade the two to meet. And so began the scandal that intrigued London society for years.
The dispute ended in libel proceedings that revealed every squalid detail of the Chief Justice's tyranny over his daughter, and ended in total public humiliation of Lord Coleridge who became a defendant in his own court, when he was cross-examined by his would-be son-in-law. Such a situation is entirely without precedent in English legal history. Worse was to follow - the threat of breach of promise action as Lord Coleridge tried to end his infatuation for a younger woman with whom he had conducted an affair on a steamship returning from America. A second marriage was the solution.
Tom Hughes has written the first full-length account of a scandal that enthralled Britain for more than a decade. Based on Lord Coleridge's personal family papers, this compelling and brilliantly told story of social attitudes and behaviour that are beyond anything we can imagine today provides fascinating insights into 'a family which has gone to ruin itself.
