Assassination: The Royal Family's 1000-Year Curse (57 page)

Hall’s wife, [Queen] Ethel, divorced him for desertion, and he died in 1947 leaving no children to pursue the claim of ‘the last Tudor’. Hall had a younger brother living in America – however, he was not interested in the nonsense.

Not really an assassination attempt, nonetheless it was a threat of murder that the Palace felt had to be stopped.
With his mental and physical health deteriorating, and worn down by the difficulty of managing a coalition where his party was in the minority, in 1933 MacDonald was once more replaced by Baldwin.
It was a dangerous time. The burden of war reparations aggravated by the effects of the Depression and perhaps their natural inclination saw Germany move to the extreme right. The National Socialists (‘Nazis’) were now the second largest party. Under their leader, Hitler, they were more active in the streets than in parliament, some towns becoming almost war zones as those who opposed the Nazis or were disliked by them were beaten or killed. Not for the first or the last time, antiSemitism started in universities as Jewish students were vilified and attacked in Germany and in Austria. The next step was a boycott, introduced under the pretence that it was for political and economic reasons. Jewish lecturers were boycotted in universities, Jewish actors and musicians were boycotted with their performances interrupted by chants and abuse, and Jewishowned businessess were boycotted and picketed, as the media andpoliticianseitherjustifiedtheboycottsordeniedthatitwasa serious problem. The denial continued when boycotts and chants moved on to the next steps of violence and then murder.
In the first 1932 election, the Nazis with their ideology of fascism and racism gained 37% of the vote; in the November 1932 election their share of the vote fell to 33%. They had to seize power before it fell lower. With the other parties refusing to unite, President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor.
Only one European power had the military might to cause the Germans any concern, and on 9th February 1933 an English university sent out a message: the Oxford University Union resolved that “this house refuses in any circumstances to fight for king and country”.
On 27th February, the German parliament was burned down, and civil liberties were suspended. A week later, Dachau, the first concentration camp, was established. Within another week, Jews were expelled from jobs, many beaten or killed, and their shops and homes were attacked. The justification was, and still is, that the German Jews had taken jobs from Germans – there were only about 169,000 male Jews of working age in Germany (70,000 by 1939) out of a population of 70 million, and they actually thought that they were Germans.
By July, all political parties other than the Nazis were banned. In November, the Secret State Police, the
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, was established. Nazi control of Germany was now complete. Portugal and Spain became fascist dictatorships, joining Germany and Italy (Mussolini having already seized power and banned opposition parties). Everyone watched and did nothing as Germany re-armed, established an air force, formed armoured divisions and introduced conscription, all in breach of the Treaty of Versailles.
George was horrified at the rise of fascism, with Japan having long since conquered Manchuria and with Italy in the process of seizing Ethiopia, while the Germans concentrated on attacking their own people. He was convinced that within 10 years the Germans would start another world war, and he told the German ambassador of his views. George also warned the British ambassador in Germany not to trust the Nazis.
Then, within months of celebrating his Silver Jubilee, George, who had been in poor health for several years, fell ill. On the night of 20th January 1936, at Sandringham House, George’s doctor, Bertrand Dawson, determined that the King was dying of bronchitis.WouldGeorgebethefirstEnglishorBritishmonarchto die without anyone having tried to kill him? Would he avoid the curse? Now Dawson found himself faced with a problem. With the cut-off time for printing the next morning’s edition of The Times fast approaching, if George did not die soon, the announcement of his death would not be in The Times, it would be, as Dawson said, “in less appropriate evening journals”. That was unacceptable.
Dawson (the President of the Royal College of Physicians) told his wife to advise The Times to hold back printing for a short time. AsedativewasgiventoEdwardbyanurse,towhomheutteredhis last words: “God damn you.” Then, without consulting George’s family, Dawson gave the King lethal injections of cocaine and morphine. The news of the King’s death was given to The Times, and the print-run could start.
King George V was killed by his doctor. ‘A peaceful ending at midnight’ was the headline. The truth only emerged on publication of Dawson’s diaries 50 years later, Dawson adding that it prevented “hours of waiting when all that is really life has departed [that] only exhausts the onlookers…” He was elevated to Viscount Dawson of Penn later in the year.

George was a traditionalist, but he was always in favour of moderation. In India he expressed his disgust at racial discrimination; when someone described the strikers in the General Strike as revolutionaries, George replied: “Try living on their wages before you judge them.”

His father may have reversed Victoria’s lack of communication, but George reversed his father’s life of scandal. Also, George did not repeat his decision not to rescue the Russian royal family. After the war, he sent an officer to escort former Emperor Charles of Austria and his family to Switzerland. Then, when in 1922 the King of Greece was deposed, George agreed to a naval vessel being sent to collect the King’s brother, Prince Andrew, his wife and their children, amongst whom was the one-yearold Philippos (carried in an orange box) – now Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh.

Like many of his predecessors, George V preferred a younger son to the oldest one. George could not stand Edward’s flippancy and lack of propriety, telling Prime Minister Baldwin, “I pray to God that my eldest son will never marry and have children, and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne”.

Prince Albert’s first daughter, Elizabeth, was King George’s favourite. He called her ‘Lilibet’, and she called him ‘Grandpa England’.

Edward (‘David’ to his family) was a disappointment academically, but he behaved well in the First World War, insisting on visiting the front on several occasions.

The three-day Battle of Loos was a British offensive in September 1915. During the battle, Edward asked his driver to take him nearer to the front line so that he could see what was happening. After a short drive they stopped, and Edward left the car to look for a vantage point. They were spotted, and a mortar barrage was fired in their direction. Edward ran back to his car. It was no longer there, a high-explosive shell had destroyed the vehicle and killed the driver. Edward was lucky, the attempt to kill him had failed. Others were not so fortunate. After initial success, the battle ended with British troops exactly where they had started. Twenty thousand men had been lost, including Princess Elizabeth’s brother, Captain Fergus Bowes-Lyon (the present Queen’s uncle).

Some months later, Edward had another close call. Near the front line there was a small stone building that had been partially destroyed. On an inspection trip, Edward and several officers went into the building in order to use their field glasses unobserved.Theyhadbeenseen,andtheGermansbeganfiring shells at the house. When the first one burst, General Wardrop shouted to the Prince, telling him to flatten himself on the floor. Edward did not move quickly enough, so the General threw himselfatthePrince,lyingontopofhimuntiltheattackceased. The house was not hit, and Edward avoided death again.

A week afterwards, while making their way to an observation post on a hill, Edward and another officer crossed a field under artillery fire. The officers in the post were watching. Suddenly a heavy shell burst on the hillside. “Great God! It’s got him!” one of the officers shouted. He was wrong; when the smoke had cleared, the Prince could be seen sprinting to a recently captured German pill-box. Edward had escaped with his life once more.

With the war over, Edward carried out many public duties, and he was keen to visit the most deprived parts of the country. Yet something else in his character emerged after a visit to Australia, when he declared of the Aborigines, “They are the most revolting form of living creatures I’ve ever seen. They are the lowest form of human beings and are the nearest thing to monkeys.”

Nevertheless, Edward was considered dashing, the most eligible bachelor in the world, setting men’s fashions (but not the Windsor tie-knot, which was introduced by Edward VII), photographed and admired – one of the first ‘celebrities’. Eligible or not, Edward’s interest in women was largely restricted to older women and always directed at married women. His father was disgusted, saying of Edward, “After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in twelve months”.

Bessie Wallis Warfield was born in Pennsylvania, and she would move on from her modest origins, fuelled by a fierce ambition. After a number of affairs, she divorced her alcoholic husband, US Navy pilot Earl Spencer, by which time she had already become involved with Ernest Simpson. Born in America, Simpson had become a British subject and an officer in the Guards, and was at the time a shipping executive. He divorced his wife and married Wallis.

Simpson’s financial position later deteriorated, and at the same time Wallis’ friend, Lady Furness (who was the current mistress of Prince Edward), held a party at which she introduced Wallis to the Prince. Some time later, Lady Furness invited Wallis to lunch at the Ritz, and told her that she would be going to New York for a short time. “Oh”, said Wallis, “the little man is going to be so lonely.” “Well dear, you look after him while I’m away”, Lady Furness replied. Wallis did just that. When Lady Furness returned to England, Edward refused to see her or take her calls; Wallis had supplanted her friend as Edward’s mistress. Although Wallis was slightly younger than Edward, her abrasive and dominating behaviour was that of an older woman, and Edward was besotted with her. He showered her with money and jewels. The King was appalled, not least when Edward produced Wallis at court, where divorced people were not allowed.

When George V died, Edward automatically succeeded to the throne. As George V’s funeral procession made its way to Westminster Hall, all of a sudden the cross at the top of the Imperial State Crown resting on the coffin broke off and fell into the gutter. The watching Edward said: “Christ, what’s next?” He was right, it was a bad omen. It did not take long for the royal curse to strike. On the morning of 16th July 1936, Edward took part in a ceremony in Hyde Park to present new colours to six battalions of Guards regiments. Shortly after noon, with the ceremony over, the King’s procession rode down Constitution Hill on its way back to Buckingham Palace. Crowds lined the route, a military band leading, followed by Edward in uniform and bearskin.

In the watching crowd a nervous-looking man in a shabby brown suit made his way forward. The man dropped his newspaper as the parade approached, revealing a revolver in his hand. A woman standing next to the man screamed, and Special Constable Anthony Dick spun round as the man aimed the revolver at the King. Dick instinctively struck out and punched the brown-suited man on the arm. The blow knocked the loaded gun out of the man’s grasp, and it flew into the road, hitting a hind leg of Edward’s horse. Although the horse shied, Edward kept it under control, and he continued to ride to the Palace.

The assassin was an Irishman, Jerome Bannigan, a Nazi supporter who had distributed fascist newspapers in Paddington in west London. When questioned, Bannigan said that he had intended to shoot himself as a protest against the Home Secretary, but had suddenly changed his mind and decided to throw his gun at a leg of the King’s horse. Records