The Carnarvon Paternity Issue
Involving Prince Victor Duleep Singh
THE DAVID SOX LETTER IS UNSAFE
Whose baby are you, Porchey?
In my book "The Life and Secrets of Almina Carnarvon" (published in 2011), the cradle to grave biography of Almina, 5th Countess of Carnarvon, I revealed to the world that Prince Victor Duleep Singh, (1866-1918), the eldest son of the last Maharajah of Lahore, was likely the father of Almina's only son Porchey (Henry), who later became the 6th Earl of Carnarvon.
Other books besides mine, press articles, blogs and numerous citations on Google and in other media have repeated the same information.
However, a dark shadow has fallen on maintaining the original claim based on the evidence of a letter by Rev.H. David Sox, the Highclere Castle guide of the 1990s. Sox wrote a biography of Almina that the Carnarvons suppressed.
Following further research I am convinced that the Sox evidence I presented in 2011 - based on the contents of his letter dated 1 June 1996 - see below- is unsafe and that the letter may have been contrived.
Background
After she married, Almina was alarmed at the unlikely chance of motherhood by way of her frail husband, George. The marriage was not consummated.
At the time of the wedding in 1895 Almina was aged 19. George, the 5th Earl, was 29. He was a very weak and sickly man, riddled with venereal disease; moreover he had acute lung problems, was only self- interested, with an unpredictable nature and snarling temperament.
Almina and George sitting well apart- Highclere 1895
There was no romance, in fact the Carnarvons were turned off sexually by each other’s physical attributes.
Almina drew more and more anxious year on year as the nursery wing at Highclere Castle lay silent and empty.
Producing a Highclere heir was always going to be a drag, the big problem being that George was not fit for purpose.
Almina was under increasing pressure with back snipes and the gossip targeting the blame upon her.
She eventually fell pregnant in 1898.
It remains plausible that Victor Duleep Singh was the man who helped out his friends.
Prince Victor Duleep Singh and Lord Carnarvon
Victor and George : A Romantic Friendship
Prince Victor was Lord George Carnarvon’s best pal and confidante. They knew each other from school days at Eton, then Cambridge and as young playboys they sowed their oats together in the bath houses and whore dens of London and Cairo and took part in bizarre sex trips - that banned women on board Carnarvon's yachts at sea. There's was "a romantic friendship".
Books on the Carnarvons of Highclere Castle by William Cross, FSA Scot
The Sox Letter
The narrative I presented in 2011 in "The Life and Secrets of Almina Carnarvon" ( and later in related books, as shown above ) of Victor being Porchey’s dad needs some revision to point out the unreliability of the content of the David Sox letter of 1 June 1996.
In my books I describe the paternity issue as being “a grey area”. Citing Victor as the guilty party was never a water-tight judgement.
The Carnarvons admit that “Almina may have strayed”. Well, she had to do this in order to continue the family line, she was not the only Peeress obliged to do the same because of bad genes or an infirm spouse.
Other members of the Herbert family at Highclere Castle also had affairs outside their marriages.
DNA Testing
Only DNA testing would resolve the riddle about the presence of Duleep Singh-Carnarvon "Sikh/ Indian" genes/ blood, but that procedure is not going to be allowed by Highclere's present incumbent.
Aristocrats like the Carnarvons, who know or suspect that their kin have been adulterous won’t chance having their blood being tested for fear of the results and consequences.
Carnarvon Chums at Highclere 1890s
There are present day Sikhs who want to see such a test done as the Maharaja Duleep Singh's children left behind no known offspring. It is therefore for them a tantalising issue.
Other Evidence Pointing to Prince Victor
Apart from the Sox letter there remains other material about Porchey’s paternity in written testimony I have received and in audio interviews I have conducted stirring up Victor’s role as having done the deed. However, there are several men on the sidelines comprising the 1890s Carnarvon coterie, and others who set upon Almina’s availability who are suspects too, so not only Victor may be culpable.
I believed - in good faith - that when I wrote the 2011 biography (and in comments made later) that the most persuasive evidence for attaching Victor as Porchey’s dad - above all the rest of Almina’s early lovers- lay in the contents of the letter dated 1 June 1996 - written by Almina’s first biographer, Rev. H. David Sox – sometime a Highclere tour guide- who claimed he found something in Highclere Archives to show that Victor was the father of Almina’s son.
Rev. H. David Sox
That letter (part of it is reproduced below ) by David Sox was written to Almina’s godson, the late Tony Leadbetter. It is written to impress the eye on embossed Highclere Castle headed notepaper.
The Sox Letter to Tony Leadbetter
Notwithstanding the credibility of establishing the paternity issue from other sources, the content of the Sox letter is flawed, there are several errors ( not shown in this extract) besides the rapier sting of Sox’s claim about Victor. Of much greater concern is that this letter was conjured up, and that it is the work of a schemer.
My current researches into the hand that wrote the 1996 letter – Rev. H. David Sox- has established that when a money making enterprise was at stake – as with the expectations he had of glory and media attention over his biography of Almina- he was manipulative and not bothered about forgoing integrity or truth.
There is evidence that Sox sold his soul for rich pickings in 1988 betraying colleagues in the Turin Shroud Community by publishing a book that announced his own self praising endeavours and revealed the outcome of the secret, confidential results of carbon dating the famous Turin relic.
Even today, 30 years on, Sox's double dealing is a bad memory for several of his former Shroud colleagues who choke on his name.
Sox was also an expert on forgery and faking. He was a smart operator. With a claim declared to Tony Leadbetter that he’d found something as monumental as the paternity scandal in Highclere Archives, he'd also strengthened his position, Sox also had a key marketing angle to sell his proposed Almina biography.
In 2013, when challenged i.e. 17 years after writing the letter to Leadbetter Sox admitted that in fact he had not seen or found anything in the Archives about the paternity issue and Victor.
By the late 1990s Sox had secured a monetary deal with Highclere, who bought his Almina manuscript. The Carnarvons could not have any of Almina's secrets bursting open into the public domain.
The pay off by Highclere was enough to help Sox buy a house in Richmond, and sell it off later for £2.5million pounds.
TO BE CONTINUED
William Cross, FSA Scot
27 February 2022
This is an extract from "More on Prince Victor Duleep Singh and the Curse of the Carnarvons: The Final Twists" (2022) by the writer William Cross, FSA Scot
ENQUIRIES : PLEASE EMAIL WILLIAM CROSS
williecross@aol.com
