he Disappearance of
ictor Grayson

*

By
JUSTIN ATHOLL

*

One Day in 1920, A Handsome, Well-Dressed Man Went Into a Hotel in the
Strand, Booked a Room in the Name of Victor Grayson, Deposited Some
Luggage and Ordered a Drink—He Had Taken Half His Drink, When He Put It
Down and Went Out, Saying, According to One Story, That He Would Be

WHEN A PROMINENT personality
disappears and all efforts fail to find a
clue it makes headlines in the daily press.
Such was the case of Victor Grayson, who
never returned. From the day of his
disappearance to the present time, there
has been no certain trace of him, no cer-
tain knowledge of whether he is dead or
alive.

What gives special interest to the dis-
appearance of Victor Grayson is that he
was a well-known figure, a man who had
been an M.P. and a Socialist who seemed
destined for high political office.

His case has become one of the “classic”
disappearance mysteries with the added
interest that Victor Grayson may one day
turn up to explain how and why he dis-
appeared.

There is some uncertainty about his
age, but he was well under 40 when he
vanished, so that the assumption that
he may still be alive is not unreasonable.

Grayson was the son of a Liverpool
carpenter, and he was educated at Owens
College, where among his other fellow
students were two destined to hold high
political office — Ellen Wilkinson and
Frederick James Marquis (now Lord
Woolton ).

InteNpep For THe Criurcrt

He was intended for the Church, but
while he was at College became interested
in politics. He was an idealist and saw in
Socialism the only method of creating
decent conditions on earth. Soon he was
speaking at Socialist meetings, and re-
vealed himself as a gifted and natural
orator.

There is remarkable testimony to the
power of his personality on the platform,
but the final proof came in 1907 when.
standing as an “unofficial Socialist” for
the Colne Valley, he won the election and
entered Parliament as the first Independ-
ent Socialist.

He was already being picked out, per-
haps a little prematurely, as a future
Prime Minister. His gifts were oratorical

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rather than political, and in the House
of Commons he was a comparative failure.

His greatest asset was his “golden”
voice, and one commentator said that even
the insults he hurled across the floor of
the House were spoken in the accents of
an angel.

He toured the country making speeches,
and could attract an audience anywhere
and hold them fascinated. But when the
1910 election came round, the issues were
rather confused. Grayson was rejected
by Colne Valley, although it is notable
that he polled only 500 votes less than in

A studio portrait of Victor Grayson, taken
shortly before he vanished. from the heart of
London and the ken of thousands who knew him.

1907. He continued making speeches, and
was proclaimed the greatest “mob orator”
of the century.

Grayson was lecturing in New Zealand
when the 1914 war broke out. Some time
later he joined the New Zealand Forces
and returned to Europe. He was wounded
in France in 1918 and then demobilized,
when he again began addressing political
meetings with the idea of returning to
Parliament.

This was the man who disappeared. It
seems almost incredible that such a well-
known figure could walk out of an hotel
into the busiest street of London and
sunply vanish. But those are the facts.

Search was made for him and has been
renewed from time to time—the latest
occasion was in 1942, when Scotland Yard
was asked by his sister in Canada to make
a last attempt to trace him.

3ut he has never been found. The
pension to which his services in the New
Zealand Forces entitled him has never
been claimed.

He is still not legally dead, and there
is no official record of him anywhere in
the world since 1920, although there are
scores of unofficial references to his
“appearances.”

In 1924 he was reported to have
attended a Labour meeting in Maidstone,
giving an address in Belfast, then “van-
ished.” Irnest Hunter, John Beckett and
Seymour Cocks, all said they saw Gray-
son at Maidstone, but there appears to
have been no explanation of his appear-
ance or second disappearance, for if it was
really Grayson who appeared at the meet-
ing, he disappeared afterwards equally
mysteriously.

SEEN ON THE EMBANKMENT?

In 1925 he was reported to have been
seen on the Thames Embankment in rags
and two years later it was reported that a
letter from him had been received by a
friend in Colne Valley.

In June, 1939, Mr. Sidney Campion,
Public Relations Officer of the G.P.O.,

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