Jack Saul

John Saul (29 October 1857 – 28 August 1904), also known as Jack Saul, and Dublin Jack, was an Irish prostitute of the Victorian era. He featured in two major homosexual scandals, and as a character in two works of pornographic literature of the period. Considered "notorious in Dublin and London" and "made infamous by the sensational testimony he gave in the Cleveland Street scandal", which was published in newspapers around the world, he has recently been the subject of scholarly analysis and speculation. One reason is the paucity of information on the lives and outlook of individual male prostitutes of the period. Saul has also drawn attention as a defiant individual in a society that sought to repress him: "a figure of abjection who refuses his status".

Christened Johannes (John) Saul, he was born in 1857 in a Dublin tenement slum to a hackney cab driver Guilelmus (William) Saul, and Eliza Revington. He was the second child and eldest son of eventually eight children; his parents did not marry until he was six months old.

As a poor Catholic youth, Saul's opportunities were limited. At eighteen he was charged with committing an indecent offence. Giving testimony in the later Cleveland Street scandal, Saul called himself "a professional Mary-ann" – a period euphemism for rentboy, and stated: "I have lost my character and cannot get on otherwise. I occasionally do odd-jobs for different gay people."

In 1878 Saul was working as a servant in the Dublin home of wealthy and prominent young doctor John Joseph Cranny. In October that year Saul and a friend, William Clarke, were arrested for burglary and the theft of a coat, walking stick, gloves and a salt-cellar from Cranny's home. The items were not claimed by Cranny and both youths were acquitted.

Prior to the case coming to trial, Saul was briefly imprisoned, where he was recorded as being fair and blue eyed with a fair complexion.

In 1879 he moved to London, sending home money to his mother who was very poor.

In 1884, Irish nationalists alleged homosexual orgies among the staff at Dublin Castle. Amongst those charged with conspiracy to commit indecent offences was Martin Oranmore Kirwan (1847-1904), a captain in the Royal Irish Fusiliers who was the son of a Galway landowner.

When Kirwan was a young lieutenant in the Dublin Militia, Saul had been one of his sexual partners. In 1884, Saul was interviewed by the police, and together with a John Daly who had also been frequently mentioned in the case, was brought from London to Ireland to be a Crown witness. Saul was never called to give testimony – a matter which is still cause for speculation. Saul later stated on the witness stand that he was told that it wasn't because of his disreputable character that his testimony wasn't used, but because his evidence was too old, relating to events of a considerable earlier date. His record of interview was destroyed in the Irish Civil War. Kirwan was acquitted on the grounds that the Crown did not produce sufficient evidence, but he resigned his commission.

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