DIRECTIONS
Some way up on the right, go through the gates that lead into the narrow Milkmaid’s Passage, named for the days when this was a rural area and maids would come along carrying fresh milk to the dairy of nearby St James’s Palace.
Leave the passage and turn onto Cleveland Row. Keep straight ahead to St James’s Street, passing St James's Palace on your right.
Built by Henry V111, St James’s Palace remained one of the principle residences of the Kings and Queens of England for more than three hundred years. Its most famous haunting, however, dates from the first half of the 19th century. In the early hours of May 31st 1810, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and brother to George 1V and William 1V, was awoken from a deep sleep at around 2.30am, by what he at first though was a bat fluttering around his chamber. The next thing he knew, he was subjected to a ferocious attack, as a sharp bladed weapon began slashing at his padded nightcap and gown. As he attempted to deflect the blows, his hands and wrists were cut, and in desperation he screamed for help. A valet by the name of Cornelius Neale rushed to assist, and found the Duke’s regimental sabre, covered in blood, lying on the floor by the door.
A doctor was summoned, and as his wounds were being treated, Cumberland asked for his other valet, Joseph Sellis to be sent for. Two servants went to rouse him, but as they approached his room, they were startled by a strange gurgling sound from within. Opening the door, they found Sellis lying dead on his bed. His throat had been cut back to the spine and his head almost severed from his body. A hastily convened inquest concluded that the dead valet had, for reasons unknown, attempted to murder his master, and in remorse had returned to his room to committ suicide.
Court gossip, however, had a different take on the matter, and talk of a cover up was rife. Some said that Cumberland had, infact, murdered Sellis and pointed out that Sellis’s hands were found to be clean and that there was bloodstained water in his wash - basin. Would the valet, the doubters wondered, have had the time or the inclination to wash his hands, having, apparently, almost cut his head off? Several alternative scenarios were soon circulating as to what had really happened. One version maintained that Sellis had found the Duke in bed with his wife and, in an ensuing struggle, had been killed to stop him exposing Cumberland’s adultery; another held that Cumberland had seduced Sellis’s daughter who, finding herself with child, had committed suicide. When Sellis confronted his employer, the Duke had silenced him forever to avert a scandal. In the mid 19th century, an even wilder theory had it that the Duke and his other valet, Neale, were involved in ‘the grossest and most unnatural immorality,’ and that Sellis, having caught them in the act, was murdered on the Duke’s orders.
Whatever the truth, there are occasions when the old palace has settled at night when the ghost of Sellis has been seen walking the corridors, a gaping wound across his throat, the sickly sweet smell of fresh blood trailing in his spectral wake.
