Dr. Kevin James on the Secrets of Irish Hotels | College of Arts

Dr. Kevin James on the Secrets of Irish Hotels

Posted on Monday, August 19th, 2013

In 1911, Irish dentist Shenstone Bishop petitioned for divorce from his wife, Ethel. He cited adultery – or, as he had stated in a petition filed two years earlier, his wife’s “doings with a gentleman.” When the jury failed to agree on a verdict, the Bishops wrote a deed of separation. Ethel then took rooms in several venues: Dublin’s Imperial Hotel, the North British Hotel in Glasgow and a Belfast railway hotel. In each place, staff members saw her accompanied by a man named Harry Raphael. Indeed, the guest book at the Belfast hotel recorded them as husband and wife – even as Mr. and Mrs. Bishop. Far from trying to keep the affair quiet, they had intended to be seen. They were hardly the first lovers to have selected grand hotels for a not-so-clandestine tryst, says U of G history professor Kevin James.
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