Edward Mylius

Mylius was born in Belgium in 1878. His father was born in England, his mother in Italy. By 1891, Mylius was living with a sister in Hammersmith, West London, at the home of an uncle. Between 1895 and 1901, he worked as a clerk. By 1909, he was known to police for attending anarchist and socialist meetings. That year, he visited France, where he met Edward Holton James, an American-born socialist living in Paris. ==Libel case==

'' of 31 December 1910 after the arrest of Mylius Background George V became British sovereign on 6 May 1910, upon the death of his father, Edward VII. The king, while still a prince and heir to the throne, had married Mary of Teck in London on 6 July 1893. In January 1910, Edward Holton James wrote to Mylius to suggest an article based on an existing rumour that George V had previously married and had children via that marriage. Shortly thereafter, James began publishing a journal called The Liberator. James told Mylius that they had "an opportunity to make a formidable attack on the Monarchy". Libel publication In the 19 November 1910 issue of The Liberator, Mylius alleged in an article entitled "Sanctified Bigamy" that in Malta in 1890, George V had married "the daughter" of Admiral Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, and the marriage had produced three children. Charged with criminal libel, not the more serious seditious libel, he was tried before the Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Alverstone, and a jury. The prosecution, led by Attorney General Rufus Isaacs and assisted by Richard David Muir, George V recorded his feelings on the affair in his diary: :The whole story is a damnable lie and has been in existence now for over twenty years. I trust that this will settle it once and for all. His mother, Queen Alexandra, wrote to him: :Thank God that vile trial is over and those infamous lies and foul accusations at an end for ever and cleared up before the whole world. To us it was a ridiculous story your having been married before ...! Too silly for words ... My poor Georgie - really it was too bad and must have worried you all the same. Serving his sentence at Wormwood Scrubs Prison, Additional publication After Mylius was released from prison, he went to live in the United States. There, beyond the reach of English libel law, he published another version of the claim, which appeared in a 1916 pamphlet, The Morganatic Marriage of George V, printed in Greenwich Village by Guido Bruno. That inconsistency has been taken up by more recent writers investigating the allegations. ==Later years==

Mylius's immigration to the United States was not without incident. Upon arrival in December 1912 at Ellis Island, he was interviewed and ordered deported, due to his libel conviction in England. At some point, Mylius was the lover of anarchist Christine Ell, whom Eugene O'Neill modeled the title character of Anna Christie on. and lost it on stock market speculation. Eastman, the editor of the publication, received partial repayment, but after being authorized to collect an additional $1,000 from one of Mylius's accounts, found that Mylius had already withdrawn those funds from the bank. During the 1921 incident, Mylius was using the alias Edward J. Boskin and also used that name in the 1925 New York State Census. Genealogical research by Anthony J. Camp finds that Mylius married Lena Boskin, 20 years his junior, in New York City on 3 July 1944. ==See also==