The Carnarvon Paternity Issue Involving Prince Victor Duleep Singh

 

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 5^th 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

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