In November 1913 Dr Blair, a Black doctor appeared at Willesden Magistrates Court. The events leading up to the case tell a sad story.
In September 23-year old Annie Horton from Wales, was employed as a maid and companion for Dr Blair’s wife at 194 Fordwych Road, (which is at the Cricklewood end of the road). She became pregnant by the doctor and was so distressed that she attempted to kill herself by taking salts of lemon. This was easily available, being used in photography and to remove ink stains, but was poisonous because it contained oxalic acid. Annie wrote a note to her landlady Mrs Penfold at 15 Canterbury Road Kilburn saying she was very sorry for doing it in her home and signed it A.E. Horton. The landlady called the police, and Annie survived but was then charged for attempting to commit suicide. In fact, this remained a crime until the 1961 Suicide Act.
Detective Inspector Burrell told the Willesden court that Dr Blair had ruined Annie. DS Squires said the girl’s sister who lived in Liverpool was prepared to take her back and look after her. Dr Blair’s solicitor said his client was prepared to pay her £1 a week for the next ten months by which time ‘she would be over her troubles’. When the baby was born, ‘he would provide for it in a proper and generous spirit’. The magistrate warned Annie that she was in serious trouble, and he could send her to the Central Criminal Court, but instead he bound her over into the care of her sister. The solicitor said the doctor would pay the court costs.
It proved impossible to find Dr Blair, but then I remembered that I had previously researched a Rupert Scott Blair. He was not a doctor at all, but a palmist and fortune teller who called himself Professor Zodiac. He was described in newspaper reports as ‘a coloured West Indian half-caste’.
On 23 August 1911 in Wandsworth, he married Mabel Gwendolyn Leeson who was 17, but he told her to say she was 21. They had met when she went to have her palm read. It turned out this was the wife of ‘Dr’ Blair who Annie had been employed to help.
We could not find a photo of Rupert Scott Blair and the only image is this rather crude drawing of him from a newspaper report.
He seems to have come to London about 1897 and was employed as a page boy in Regent Street. The first account we could find was at the end of August 1902. He was charged with living off the immoral earnings of a woman he brought from Birmingham and spent his time swaggering about town dressed in the height of fashion. He was convicted of stealing a watch and chain valued at £1 18s 6d from a French woman named Jeanne Deyer. In the first of many convictions, he was sentenced to nine months.
In March 1909 Scott Blair was at the Old Bailey. He had rented three houses in Chelsea, Acton Vale, and another area, which he used as brothels but left the houses before the rent was due. He was sentenced to 18 months with hard labour for keeping brothels and obtaining money under false pretenses.
He appeared as Rupert Scott-Blair, phrenologist, a boarder at 36 Priory Park Road Kilburn in the 1911 census. He was 36 years old, born in Kingston Jamacia. That year the magazine ‘John Bull’ carried a story by a reporter who had visited ‘Professor Zodiac’ in his consulting rooms, the Phrenological Institute at 19 Edgware Road. The reporter had seen sandwich board men in Oxford Street advertising, ‘Professor Zodiac, the only West Indian phrenologist and occult scientist. He will read your hand free of charge.’
The writer went to 19 Edgware Road and rang the bell. The door was opened by a boy in buttons who took him upstairs and asked him to write his name and occupation on a piece of paper. Then he was taken to a room where Prof. Zodiac was sitting at a desk. He gave the reporter a list with 15 questions, such as, ‘Will you marry? Will you soon be in better health? Is your present fiancée true? You could choose any one question to be answered for free. The man chose, ‘Will you soon be having some good changes? Then the professor peered at the man’s hand through a magnifying glass and said through half-closed eyes: ‘You suffer a great deal from sick headaches, and you should not think much. Towards the end of the year, you will have some domestic changes to your advantage. You can have a more extended reading for half-a-crown.’
The man ended the magazine article: ‘Not withstanding his advice not to think, I risked the sick headache, and came to the conclusion that the half-a-crown would be much more useful in my pocket rather than his, and took my departure.’
At the beginning of November 1911, the police and magistrates began a campaign against fortune tellers and palmists in London. There was no specific law about fortune telling so an 1824 law on vagrancy was used. Professor Zodiac was the first to be tried at Marylebone Court. He was described as a man of colour, with dark curly hair parted in the centre. He was very well dressed, with a well-polished silk hat, red tie, a fawn overcoat over a frock suit with silk facings and patent leather boots. Giving evidence, Detective Inspector Tappenden said that with Sergeant Parsons, he went to 19 Edgware Road where he found Rupert Scott Blair holding a large crystal in conversation with a woman. He read him the warrant, which was prepared after many complaints and allegations from young women about fortune telling.
In a desk, the police found a small cash book which showed that over the past year, Scott Blair’s income of £2 a week had risen to a maximum of £19. He was currently averaging £16. In total he had made around £600 in fifteen months (today worth about £63,000). His defense attorney said this accounting failed to show Blair’s expenses of £60 rent a year and the money spent on advertising. He went on to claim that Blair as a black man had been singled out for prosecution, while others who were white carried on their fortune telling without interference. Blair plead guilty and was sentenced to six weeks imprisonment. Following the conviction, the Home Secretary was questioned in Parliament about Scott Blair and the legality of fortune telling.
In 1914 Scott Blair was in Brighton posing as Professor Duleep. He engaged a young girl as a secretary. When she had been employed for a few days, she told him she had £100 in Consols (a type of government bond). He asked her to marry him and suggested that she should sell the bonds and invest the money in his fortune telling business. She cashed the bonds and gave him the money, at which point he said he was already married but living apart from his wife. He promised that he was going to divorce and marry the girl. Fortunately, she did not believe him and went to a solicitor who managed to get £80 back.
Scott Blair treated his wife Mabel very badly and she sued for divorce. The case was heard in March 1915 and was sensationally reported in the press. At the time Scott Blair was resident in Belfast, and Mabel then aged 22, was living in Gower Street.
Here is a newspaper photo of Mabel on her way to the divorce court.
Mabel told the court her husband had boasted about his immorality, saying he could have as many women as he liked, and if she interfered, he would kill her. The relationship ended in November 1913, at Fordwych Road. Blair had rung the bell to summon their servant and told her to show Mabel out of the house. She left and did not return. Mabel was granted a decree nisi on 31 March 1915.
A whole series of offences followed, spread over many years. In April 1915, Scott Blair as Professor Zodiac was working as a palmist in Clonmel in Tipperary. When he was arrested, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three months hard labour.
In Hastings in 1923, the 17-year old girl he hired as a secretary became pregnant.
In Liverpool in 1934 Blair hired a 19-year-old as his secretary. Her duties were to show patients in and if there were none, she had to dust the office and listen to him reading novels to her or telling stories about his thrilling life. She had only been there three days when he assaulted her, and she left at the end of the week.
In the Police Gazette he is listed as a habitual criminal and described as: A clever rogue who visits the principal towns, posing as a Doctor of Science, phrenologist, nerve specialist etc. and defrauds the public by professing to tell fortunes by means of palmistry. He advertises extensively in the press, by handbills and sandwich board men, and is patronised mostly by females. It is stated that he has had immoral relations with many of the young women who call on him to have their palms read. He rented furnished apartments in an excellent part of town, and posed as a doctor, writing prescriptions signed M.D. from 1931.
He was certainly a habitual criminal. Between 1902 and 1934 Scott Blair was charged with a total of 34 offences, mainly for palmistry and pretending to tell fortunes. He usually pleaded guilty. Despite the numerous prison sentences, nothing stopped him, and the magistrates called him an incorrigible rogue. Initially, the penalties were one to three months. But from 1917 and subsequent years he was given one-year sentences with hard labour, and by the time of his last arrest in 1934 he had spent a total of eleven years in prison.
Who was he?
He normally used the first name Rupert, and his surname was a combination of Burton Smith, Blair, Hamilton, Montmorency, and Costello. For credibility he used the title of doctor. As a fortune teller he was Professors Zodiac, Rajah, Duleep, and Mohmed.
In the 1939 register we get some idea of who he really was. He was living in Bradford at 109 Little Horton Lane. He said he was widowed and gave his occupation as psychologist and his date of birth as 20 Oct 1873. His name was Rupert E.C. Ghansaka. In the comments column it said, ‘now an invalid suffering from creeping paralysis’. He was sharing the house with two old age pensioners, and 42-year old Elizabeth Thorpe who was, ‘a nurse attendant to an invalid’.
Rupert Eric Costello Ghansaka died the following year in Bradford.
This was the end of an extraordinary life of a man from Jamacia who came to England and wanted to live the life of a dandy. He used prostitution and fortune telling as his income, and to attract young women wanting to know their future, and then sexually exploiting them.
We would like to thank Dr Chamion Caballero of The Mixed Museum for telling us about the case at Willesden which started our search.
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