Who stole the Irish Crown Jewels, and where are they now? A new book and television programme aim to solve an old mystery, writes Arminta Wallace
Sex, lies, a jewel heist and a royal cover-up. Not what we usually think of as the stuff of Irish history, perhaps, but when it comes to tall tales, the story of the Irish Crown Jewels is in a league of its own. A historical melodrama with an intriguing whiff of ambiguity, it also contains a dash of tragedy - and more than its fair share of high camp. The Irish Crown Jewels? Didn't know we had any, you might say - and you'd be right. We don't. They were spirited out of Dublin Castle on or before July 6th, 1907 and never seen again; despite a thorough investigation by one of Scotland Yard's most highly-regarded detectives, the Kerry-born Inspector John Kane, and the setting-up of an official Viceregal Commission of Inquiry, the crime has never been solved.
Almost a century later the fate of the jewels continues to inspire a steady trickle of speculation - and occasional clumsy hoaxes. Despite a good deal of mumbling into telephones and surreptitious digging in isolated fields at dead of night, not so much as a single diamond has ever turned up. But a good yarn is always a good yarn, and the publication of a new book by the broadcaster and writer Myles Dungan, combined with Tuesday night's showing on RTÉ television of a new documentary film written and directed by Gerry Nelson, will almost certainly stir up a whole new level of interest in the topic.
As Dungan explains in The Stealing of the Irish Crown Jewels, the gems in question were given to the Order of St Patrick by King William IV in 1831. The knights of that order "boasted the bluest blood in the land", but it lacked official sparklers on a par with those of its fraternal British orders, the Garter, Thistle and Bath. And so a fistful of jewellery which had originally been given by William's late brother, George IV, to not one but two consecutive royal mistresses - the second lady had the decency to give them back when the king died - was remodelled into a salubrious-looking set of insignia, to be worn by the King's man in Ireland, the Lord Lieutenant, on suitably ceremonial occasions.
As befitted their somewhat dodgy past, the "Irish Crown Jewels" were small masterpieces of kitsch. The star - a mere five inches by four - consisted of a cross of rubies on a trefoil of emeralds set in an eight-pointed frame of Brazilian white diamonds. The emerald "shamrock" was surrounded by a sky-blue enamel circle, with the motto of the order and the date of its inception inscribed in rose diamonds. Smaller but more elaborately worked, the badge was similarly stuffed with emeralds, rubies and diamonds. Still, they added to the gravitas of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland when he stepped out to greet a visiting monarch. Or they would have done - except that on July 6th, 1907, four days before Edward VII was due to arrive for a state visit to Dublin, the jewels vanished.
The story of the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels is part daring heist, part comedy of errors. On the face of it, they were housed in the safest place in Ireland. Dublin Castle, bastion of British regal power in the country, was ringed by soldiers and policemen; the headquarters of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, the Dublin detective force, the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin military garrison were all within shouting distance. For good measure they were kept in a safe to which only one man had the key: the genealogist Sir Arthur Vicars who, as head of the Office of Arms in the castle, was the jewels' official keeper.
Alas, as it turned out, the safe was anything but. In April 1903 the Office of Arms had moved from the castle's tatty Lower Yard to spanking new premises in the Bedford Tower, complete with an impressive strong room for the storage of State valuables. When the builders tried to install the safe containing the jewels, however, it was found that the strong room's two-ton steel door was too small to allow the squat, square safe inside. Instead it was shoved into a room which was used as a research library and as a waiting room for visitors - to whom, it seems, Sir Arthur was wont to show off his precious charges at the drop of a (cocked) hat, and without always noting their names in the official record as assiduously as he should have done. In fact, as an Office of Arms employee was heard to remark at a London luncheon party days before the disaster, "Oh, I should never be surprised to hear that they were stolen some day. I have never considered them safe . . ."
The man who made that remark was Frank Shackleton, brother of the Antarctic explorer Ernest and one of Edwardian Dublin's most socially-mobile young blades. Did Shackleton steal the Irish Crown Jewels? A financial wheeler-dealer and a homosexual in a society which frowned almost equally on both, Shackleton has always been a prime suspect as the potential villain - despite the fact that he was out of the country when the theft took place. Sir Arthur Vicars, for his part, has grown over the years into a kind of unlikely anti-hero. Sacked for his role in the affair by the British Crown he was subsequently, in what must be one of the most unfortunate double whammies in Irish history, murdered by the IRA in north Kerry.
It would be a crime to reveal the denouement of either Dungan's meticulously-researched book or Tuesday night's highly entertaining documentary. Suffice it to say that, without being able to prove anything much either way, they reach strikingly similar conclusions. In the process, however, they raise a welter of fascinating hints and allegations. After-hours orgies in Dublin Castle; unlocked doors and drunken pranks; His Majesty's gay brother-in-law; nationalist plots and monarchist counter-plots. And what about the white diamonds often worn now by Queen Elizabeth? A gift, Buckingham Palace insists, from the President of Brazil. Ho, hum . . .
The Stealing of the Irish Crown Jewels: An Unsolved Crime, by Myles Dungan, is published by Town House. Hidden HIstory: The Strange Case of the Irish Crown Jewels will be broadcast on RTÉ1 on Tuesday night at 10.10 p.m.