Francis Hughes-Hallett

Francis Charles Hughes-Hallett (1838– June 22, 1903) was the Royal Artillery officer and Conservative politician who represented Rochester in the British House of Commons. He investigated one of the cases linked to Jack the Ripper murders, and was damaged politically by a personal scandal.

Hughes-Hallet was the son of Charles Madras Hughes-Hallett and his wife Emma Mary Roberts. He became a Colonel in the Royal Artillery. In 1885 he was elected as MP for Rochester. In 1888 he was involved in the investigation of the murder of Martha Tabram in Whitechapel. However a personal scandal led to his being hounded by the press and shunned by his parliamentary colleagues and he stood down from his seat in 1889.

In 1871, Hughes-Hallett married Catherine Rosalie Greene, the widow of Sir Charles Jasper Selwyn and of Reverend Harry Dupuis. They had three children: Frank Victor (1872-1937, married Hilda Marion Cook and Katherine Gameson Swinnerton), Egerton (1873-1890), and Sybil Rosalie (1875-1958, married Graham Brown). Catherine Hughes-Hallett, who died in childbirth in 1875, also brought to the marriage four children from her previous marriage, a son, Harry Jasper Selwyn (1870-1919), a stepson, Charles William Selwyn (1858-1893, married Isabella Constance Dalgety), and two stepdaughters, Edith Adriana Selwyn (1859-1910, married Edward Grant Fraser-Tytler) and Beatrice Eugénie Selwyn (1865-1898, married Patrick Herbert).

In 1882, Hughes-Hallett wed a middle-aged American heiress, Emilie Page von Schaumberg (1833-1923), the daughter of James von Schaumberg and Caroline Page, but the marriage ran into difficulties five years later, when Hughes-Hallet was caught in liaison with his first wife's stepdaughter, Beatrice.

During a country-house weekend at Ellingham Hall, Bungay, Norfolk, the home of W. Henry Smith, Hughes-Hallett was caught in the bedroom of Beatrice Selwyn, whose stepmother had been Hughes-Hallett's first wife. As Smith, who was Miss Selwyn's uncle, wrote to Emilie Hughes-Hallett, "I went to your husband’s bedroom shortly before midnight and found that he was not there. I then called upon a housekeeper ...... as well as the young lady’s maid and I gave them instructions to enter her room. You know the rest. I gave him half an hour to pack up his things and turned him out of the house."

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