Jail did not halt rake's progress

Marble Arch, for instance, stands grandly near where, in 1783, the last of nearly 400 years of official executions in front of an audience was held: for Terre Haute, Indiana, and closed-circuit TV, read Tyburn and open public galleries around the gibbet.

Tyburn still exists. It is a stream, now culverted underground, which gave its name to that grisly corner of Hyde Park which it passed en route from the Hampstead heights to the Thames; from the 13th century it provided drinking water for Londoners through conduits of elm trunks.

Elsewhere, the same paper told of the delight of American tourists who stumbled upon the rare public opening of many of those havens of private peace for wealthy denizens of London squares. Gee, said Elmer from New Jersey as he and blue-rinsed Ellie May wandered in Cadogan Gardens, "So it was just over there the cops fingered Oscar Wilde ..."

There was a photograph of a leafy oasis, also on the open-day itinerary, amid the fine houses a quarter of a mile west of Marble Arch and just across Bayswater Road from the park.

It is St George's Fields, an address which in 1787, nearly a year after Andrew Robinson Stoney Bowes' outrageous abduction to County Durham of his wife, he was pleased to use as a euphemism for ... the King's Bench prison.

Well, actually, at first in "state rooms" that a man of his standing was able to rent in the jail marshal's own house and later, after ten years properly inside, again in comfortable accommodation that was only nominally part of the prison regime. An initial sentence of three years was extended until his death because he was unable to raise parole sureties amounting, in today's terms, to many hundreds of thousands of pounds.

By the standards of prisoners in the jail proper, however, he was still a wealthy man. Many of them were debtors. One of these was visited by a daughter, Jenny Sutton, "a girl of perfect symmetry, fair, lively and innocent" who looked especially fetching when she was feeding pigeons with split peas out of her mouth.

She was soon installed in Bowes' rooms and remained his (chief) mistress for the 22 years he had still to live. That was another pleasure provided for; even earlier in his sentence he had made arrangements for the silver service of his lavish meals.

But chief among his appetites was the continuation of his obsessive efforts to prevent the Countess of Strathmore from divorcing him. At stake was the considerable income from her family's coal mines in County Durham and the great estates there attached to Gibside and - where he had imprisoned her after the abduction in London and before the desperate flight back and forth across the Pennines - Streatlam Castle.

Even after his conviction he still had control of this money. He used it not only to set in train a series of legal actions that continued for years, but also to buy into the ownership of the Universal Register. He used this forerunner of The Times to wage a campaign of vilification against the countess.

He had the newspaper publish an advertisement for the book of confessions he had forced her to write in the first weeks of their marriage when he discovered that her fortune had been ring-fenced (she maintained this precaution was aimed at the man, by whom she was pregnant, who remained her fianc until only days before she wed Stoney Bowes).

Under pseudonyms, he wrote both sides of a correspondence in the paper, crafting letters, ostensibly in her defence, in such a way that they prepared the way for a devastating counter-argument. Nor were Lady Strathmore's friends safe. He worked on the principle that any mud he could sling at them might also smear her.

One such opportunity occurred when the brother of James Farrer, the countess' solicitor who had offered a reward during the abduction drama, deserted his wife. Bowes leapt to the aid of the woman by printing, and probably writing, a pamphlet called The Appeal of an Injured Wife against a Cruel Husband, written by Mrs Farrer and dedicated to the Countess of Strathmore. Among its allegations was that the husband was not only adulterous but "carried on an intrigue of still more nefarious and degrading nature - that he was connected with a married woman and for purposes the most wicked ... the Countess of Strathmore".

If one's credulity is often strained these days by bizarre behaviour alleged in, say, the Lord Archer case, then what are we to make of the following?

Bowes, still a prisoner, remember, made all the arrangements for a "benefit" event, advertised thus: "The Lord Chamberlain has granted a licence for the performance of Tamerlaine sic at the Haymarket Theatre ... in which Mrs Farrer, who a short time ago published a pamphlet dedicated to the Countess of Strathmore, will perform the part of Arpasia ..."

And then he took Mrs Farrer into the King's Bench apartments, where she lived for a time with the rest of his mnage.

At about this time, this piece appeared in the Morning Post: "To some people - but we do not allude to debtors - to some people, a commitment to Banco Regis King's Bench is no great punishment. A certain delinquent daily eats, drinks and gets merry, and though surrounded by as many wives and children as Macheath John Gay's The Beggar's Opera had been a hit for the past half-century, keeps them in good order ... Among the evils that arise from imprisonment for debt may be reckoned the increase in female incontinence - the young women who attend on their unfortunate confined relatives being generally seduced. A recent instance of this kind has taken place, wherein poverty having expelled every generous feeling from the parent, he permitted the prostitution of his child Jenny Sutton to supply his wants, and she now lives openly with a prisoner of a different description ..."

When in 1789 the divorce decision went against Bowes, he lost control of his wife's money. He and Jenny had to go into the prison itself. But he secured the best rooms and launched himself into appeals and other legal actions that continued for years, even achieving the occasional victory.

He also threw his weight around with other inmates, beating up one who accused him of stealing the better part of £80 during an illegal gambling session before taunting the man with the disputed banknotes. On another occasion he broke the teeth of a man who refused to make way for him in front of the coffee-room fire.

When there was a serious riot he ingratiated himself with the prison authorities by taking their side. This was followed by his appointment as chairman of the prisoners' association.

Lady Strathmore's death cheered him up and also in 1800 some manoeuvre by the latest of his many solicitors enabled him to secure enough of his debts to be allowed beyond the prison walls while still remaining within its rules. He, Jenny, their children and numerous cats and dogs moved into a house in London Road, St George's Fields.

The jail was a rum place. One of the prisoners was a clergyman, who had a woman living with him. This woman's sister, "a very neat and modest" semptress, would visit the pair - and caught the eye of Bowes. He rented a second London Road house and installed her there; only the resistance of the Sutton brood prevented him bringing her into the first house while Jenny was away. The semptress gave birth to a child, whereupon Bowes paid her off and made her swear another prisoner was the father.

And so the years passed, well punctuated by instances that allowed Bowes to pick and mix freely from last week's long list of his unmitigated vices. They included, you remember, besides such as violence and inhumanity, his meanness. So it was in character that even the scant provision he made for the faithful Jenny was agreed only after friends pleaded at his deathbed.

That was in 1810, a decade after the death of the Countess of Strathmore, whose declining years had been largely occupied in making her peace with children she had earlier failed dismally. She was buried in Westminster Abbey - in her wedding dress.