The Archer-Shee Case: The Root Of Terence Rattigan's 'The Winslow Boy'

Contemporary Review, April, 2001 by John Rossi

BETWEEN 1908 and 1910 the English public underwent one of its periodic outbursts of emotion over a case of clear governmental injustice. George Archer-Shee was a thirteen-year-old cadet at Osborne Naval College in the Isle of Wight when he was charged with stealing a five shilling postal order from one of his classmates. His father, Martin, a wealthy upper middle class Bristol banker, refused to accept his son's guilt. Through the efforts of his eldest son, Major Martin Archer-Shee, the father secured the services of one of England's greatest banisters, Sir Edward Carson.

At fifty-four Carson was approaching the pinnacle of a brilliant career as a spokesman for the cause of Irish Unionism. (Even today his statue stands outside Stormont in Belfast.) He had achieved fame in the court room in 1895 through his persistent questioning of his old university acquaintance, Oscar Wilde. Ironically the lawyer who had brought down one famous gay playwright provided the inspiration for the best remembered play of another famous gay playwright.

Carson agreed to take the case after closely questioning young Archer-Shee for three hours about the details of the charge and finding him trustworthy. Although one of the highest paid banisters, Carson took only a nominal fee. It took two years to vindicate the young boy but Carson eventually forced a reluctant government to admit his client's innocence and pay an indemnity of [pound]7120, a huge sum for that time.

In an age before radio or television and with film still in its infancy, press reports of dramatic trials were followed with unusual intensity. The English public found the Archer-Shee case irresistible with its David versus Goliath implications. The idea of a young boy wrongly accused of stealing and being dismissed from his school without due process shocked and angered the public. They found his family's behaviour, particularly his father's willingness to risk his fortune to defend his son, emotionally appealing. The outcome also satisfied the public sense of outrage at an obstinate governmental bureaucracy and at an injustice eventually righted.

Carson's role also was satisfying personally. Although philosophically a conservative and a staunch Unionist, Carson had a reputation for being a dedicated opponent of bullying -- especially when the powerful sought to intimidate the weak. A truculent individual with a face like a 'jagged hatchet', Carson often allowed his emotions to sway his better judgment, a weakness he openly admitted. As he told a family friend, he found it difficult to allow 'my judgment to control emotions but that is of course the misfortune of my temperament'. Carson also was known to romanticize young boys who worked hard to achieve success. He often addressed youth organizations and spoke at school assemblies where he avoided the temptation to talk down to the boys.

The Archer-Shee case outraged Carson's sense of fair play. Because the government responsible for perpetrating this injustice was a Liberal one, unsympathetic to Carson's ideas about maintaining the Union between England and Ireland, it was easier for him to vent his anger. Carson also seemed happiest when fighting against great odds. The fact that the government's spokesman in the case, the Solicitor General, Rufus Isaacs, was also Carson's arch rival as the nation's best known barrister, appealed to his sense of vindication. All this made Carson a difficult personality, combining frequent melancholy with a strong fatalistic streak, happy to take on a case that seemed unwinnable.

The Archer-Shee case had some unusual twists. The family was Catholic, and Carson was the spokesman for a fierce kind of Protestantism. It says much for his sense of justice that he took the case despite the religious dimension. To Carson the Catholic matter was irrelevant. In fact, he boasted of his sympathy for those he called his 'Roman Catholic fellow countrymen', even supporting some causes dear to them such as the 1908 Irish University Act which set up Catholic Colleges throughout Ireland. In origin Carson himself had some Catholic antecedents as he was partially Italian.

The Archer-Shee story quickly faded into insignificance as greater events intervened: two World Wars and the depression. On the eve of the Allied victory over the Axis powers, the young English playwright, Terence Rattigan, began writing a play loosely based on the case's details, a drama that would launch him into the front rank of English playwrights of his day. There appears to be a Rattigan revival today. A few months ago BBC Radio selected a recent biography of the playwright to be read aloud. Last summer a superb performance of Rattigan's play about an ailing schoolmaster, The Browning Version, with that fine actor Edward Fox, received a warm reception in a tour of cities such as Oxford and Bath.

There is no clear explanation why Rattigan turned to the Archer-Shee case for inspiration at this time in his life. He claimed to have been fascinated with the case for sometime as an example of injustice that possessed dramatic possibilities. It had been in his 'store room of the mind' and the time for its emergence had arrived, he later wrote. It is possible that he had read an essay on the Archer-Shee case, that appeared in 1943 in a collection of essays by the popular American critic, Alexander Woollcott. Woollcott's essay could have ignited Rattigan's literary engine.