Littlechild and the Sackville Claimant

In 1896, a private detective was sent to Spain to prove who should inherit the title of Lord Sackville

It was not what people would have thought of as a match made in heaven. Lionel Sackville-West, 2nd Baron Sackville, a member of the British aristocracy, and Pepita, a Spanish dancer, were from very different backgrounds and cultures - but despite this, they formed a relationship in the mid 19th century. Children were born of this relationship - and in 1910, they would be on opposite sides in a court case that gripped the nation and the press.

Pepita

Pepita, or Pepita de Oliva, was the stage name of Josefa Durán y Ortega. Born in Málaga around 1830, she was a startlingly beautiful woman who was said to be the daughter of a gypsy and circus performer. In 1851, she had married her dance teacher, Juan Antonio Gabriel de la Oliva, but a year later, she had started a relationship with Lionel, 2nd Baron Sackville, who had been introduced to her in Paris. The couple would have seven children, the first being born in 1858. Pepita died in 1872. 

Lord Sackville viewed Pepita as his wife, and on her death, he had placed a press notice referring to her as 'his wife, Josefina, Baroness Sackville-West'. But had he really been married to her? This became an issue when Lord Sackville died in 1908. His title went to one of his nephews, who married Victoria, one of Lionel and Pepita's children (and thus her husband's first cousin). Victoria and the new Lord Sackville were the parents of writer and gardener Vita Sackville-West.

Lionel, Lord Sackville, father of the claimant

However, one of Lionel and Pepita's sons, Ernest Henri Jean Baptiste Sackville-West, insisted that he should have the title, as the legitimate son of Lionel, and thus his heir. He claimed that his parents had married at some point in the 1860s. There was then a protracted court case to decide whether or not Ernest was legitimate; the case had to look at whether Pepita had gained a divorce from her dance tutor, and whether she had been legitimately married to Lionel.

This is where John Littlechild, the private detective, comes into the situation. He was called to give evidence in February 1910, towards the end of the court case, and it emerged that he had been engaged to look into the matter over a decade earlier, in 1896. He had been commissioned to examine whether Pepita had been married to her dance tutor, and so had travelled to Madrid in December 1896 to examine the marriage register at the Church of San Millán y San Cayetano.* While there, he managed to find the marriage entry for Josefa Durán y Ortega and Juan Antonio Gabriel de la Oliva. After seeing the original, he obtained a copy of the register, and took it to an expat English solicitor, Alfred Harrison, in Madrid. The two men then compared the original and the reproduction, to check they were identical.

Littlechild implied that the copy had since been altered by an individual (presumably the claimant). He had seen a photograph of the entry, taken recently, and he believed there had been 'some alterations' made to it. John Littlechild's evidence seemed to differ from those of a Spanish witness. Señor Remigio Diaz y Fernandez, an official who was in charge of the Madrid marriage registers, claimed that the marriage document was one of a batch that had gone missing - he himself had looked for the original document only to find that many from 1848 to 1851 were missing. The marriage records were kept in six-monthly bundles, and the one for the relevant time was absent. He believed it had gone missing while his predecessor was in office - presumably some time between 1896, when Littlechild had seen it, and 1910. Therefore, Littlechild's evidence was crucial in determining that Pepita had been legally married to her dance tutor in 1851, and that - as there was no evidence of a divorce, or a subsequent legal remarriage - this meant that her children by Lionel were illegitimate. Ernest Henri could have no claim to the title of Lord Sackville.

His claim dismissed, four years later, Ernest Henri killed himself in Paris. His wife had died of natural causes shortly before, but his grief was added to by his failure to recover from his failed attempt to gain the title of his father, and his property at Knole. It was probably the most famous case that John Littlechild was involved in, and made a difference from the usual cases that private detectives took on.

*NOTE: The press reports referred to the church of ‘San Millan’; at the time of Pepita’s wedding, this would have been Saint Millán Abad, but in 1869, this church was demolished, and the parish was merged with another to form the church and parish of San Millán y San Cayetano. Littlechild would therefore have visited the latter.

To read more about the Sackville claimant, buy Robert Sackville-West’s new book, The Disinherited