Tapped Wires

IN THE SUMMER OF 1889, the GPO’s Confidential Enquiry Branch discovered that telegraph boys from London’s Central Telegraph Office were selling sexual favors to elite men in a house of assignation at 19 Cleveland Street, a townhouse in Fitzrovia, just off Tottenham Court Road. The brothel’s owner, Charles Hammond, had procured a supply of teenage messengers through various contacts at the GPO to service gentlemen who arrived at his house without an escort. Chief among Hammond’s suppliers was Henry Newlove, a former telegraph boy who had recently been promoted to third-class clerk and “tracer” in the telegraph secretary’s office. According