With plenty of lawyers standing for election this time round, James Morton takes a look at the seedier side of some past lawyer MPs whose careers became mired in sex and financial scandals

As the election rears its ugly head, dozens of lawyers are standing for Parliament. But over the years, lawyer MPs have had a habit of getting themselves into some splendid scrapes – mostly of their own making.


It was my friend Billy Rees-Davies QC, Conservative MP for the Isle of Thanet, who held pyjama parties – to which, I regret to have to say, I was never invited – who fell foul of a witness when defending a man on a brothel-keeping charge.


For no very clear reason he was cross-examining the madam about the layout of the premises and asked: ‘Have you a bathroom in your establishment?’ The girl replied: ‘You of all people, Mr Rees-Davies, dare ask me that question.’


Billy, who spent not a little time contesting drink-driving allegations, was eventually deselected in favour of Jonathan Aitken. One of the great rogue MPs and a friend of Mr Rees-Davies was the talented but maverick lawyer Nicholas Fairbairn, who was Solicitor-General for Scotland in Mrs Thatcher’s government. The flamboyant man, who designed his own waistcoats and was fond of one made out of antelope skins, lived dangerously.


There cannot be many fathers, let alone lawyer MPs, whose daughter has discovered one of his girlfriends suspended from a lamp-post outside their home. He resigned because, in a scandal over his decision not to prosecute three youths in a rape case, he disclosed the reasons to the local newspaper rather than to the House of Commons.


Dying from liver failure, he managed to summon the energy to cut his daughters out of his will. After his death in 1995, it emerged that he had a nine-year-old son whose existence he had managed to keep secret. Nowadays, MPs would probably be rather proud of this achievement – the fathering, not the concealment that is.


It was barrister David Mellor who was rocked by two scandals in the early 1990s. The first was that he had an affair with an actress whose otherwise limited claim to fame was that she had appeared in at least one not very widely distributed film. News reports included one, apparently false, allegation that he wore a Chelsea shirt in bed. He survived the fall-out from that, but it also transpired he had unwisely taken his family on holiday to the villa of the daughter of one of the chief supporters of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. He was sacked from the Cabinet and later retired from politics to make a successful career in journalism and broadcasting.


Of course, not all downfalls come by way of sex. One-time barrister Reginald Maudling fell from grace over property deals and his association with the architect John Poulson. In 1912, the Solicitor General Sir Rufus Isaacs narrowly escaped censure over his investment dealings in Marconi shares. His reward was to become the Lord Chief Justice.


However, it was Horatio Bottomley, a solicitor’s clerk turned publisher, turned stock promoter, turned MP, who was probably the most flagrant financial misbehaver.


Born in 1860, he first worked for a solicitor who drank and a managing clerk who was as crooked as a corkscrew. The managing clerk was prosecuted but, before Bottomley left the law, eventually to become a court shorthand writer, he learned his trade well. From then on he appeared in more than 40 major trials, always as a litigant or defendant in person.


It is said that after his first great success, the trial judge – the formidable Sir Henry Hawkins – suggested he take up law and that on qualification he would give him his own wig. Instead, Bottomley became an MP for South Hackney in 1906 under the Liberal banner and was re-elected in 1910. He was regarded as a good member but his field was finance, and a brilliant understanding of cross-examination.


However, in 1912 he went bankrupt to the tune of £233,000 and lost his seat. In 1914, he was convicted at Bow Street on a charge of running an illegal lottery, but the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction. Then in 1918 he was back in politics, successful as an independent. In the meantime, he bought and founded newspapers and magazines such as the popular weekly John Bull and promoted such grandly titled fraudulent companies as the Joint Stock Trust and Finance Corporation. As a sideline, there were quality racehorses that won classics, a manor house, and an ever-increasing amount of champagne.


It is thought that his swindles netted him around £50 million at today’s rates. The last was the £80,000 Victory Bond swindle. Working on the principle of the wholly admirable premium bonds, it was a lottery with investors able to draw their capital. In short order, all the money disappeared into Mr Bottomley’s pockets and those of his creditors. He received seven years, served five, and relaunched himself as a lecturer. He collapsed and died at the Windmill Theatre in London in 1932.


The most-told story of Bottomley is that when the Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law visited Wormwood Scrubs, there was Bottomley working the stitching machine. ‘Sewing, Bottomley?’ asked Mr Bonar Law. ‘No, sir, reaping.’


So a word to the wise and those standing in the forthcoming election. If, in common with many lawyers, you cannot tell the credit side from the debit or you have any skeletons in your cupboards or predilections that may come to haunt or tease you in your parliamentary career, now is probably the time to withdraw.


James Morton is a former criminal defence solicitor and a freelance journalist