On The Recs Radar: Sidney Fox’s Crime

Sydney Fox’s Crime promises to tell an intriguing true crime story set in the last year of the roaring twenties

Sidney Harry Fox was a male prostitute, a forger and a swindler. He was also devoted to Rosaline, his elderly mother.

Although penniless, the pair’s scam was to travel around the country defrauding hotels – with Sidney tapping his wealthy clients for funds while they left a trail of bounced cheques and unpaid bills.

In what became known as the ‘Mystery of Room 66’, Sidney and his mother had checked into the Metropole Hotel in Margate. A fire broke out and Rosaline was found dead in Room 66.

Nine days after her burial, the famous pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury – a celebrity of his day and a man known to despise homosexuals – exhumed the body. He produced one of the most controversial pieces of evidence ever put forward in a murder trial.

Sidney was found guilty of matricide in 1930 and he was executed by hanging at Maidstone Prison on April 8, 1930.

In Sydney Fox’s Crime, the production questions if the gay rent boy was wrongly hanged for murder. Written and directed by Scottish playwright Glenn Chandler, who is probably best known for creating the long-running TV crime drama Taggart, the play will star Sebastian Calver as Sidney, Amanda Bailey as Rosaline and former Blue Peter presenter Mark Curry as Fox’s barrister J. D. Cassels.