Josslyn Victor Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll (11 May 1901 – 24 January 1941)[1] was a British peer and a member of the British Union of Fascists, known for the unsolved case surrounding his murder and the sensation it caused during wartime in Britain.
Although possessing one of Scotland's most distinguished titles, the earls, by this time, had no wealth, and had to develop careers to earn their living. In 1920, Hay was appointed honorary attaché at Berlin under his father, who was earlier appointed chargé d'affaires there before the arrival of Edgar Vincent, 1st Viscount D'Abernon.[3] His father was soon appointed High Commissioner to the Rhineland, but Hay stayed in Berlin and served under Lord D'Abernon until 1922.
After passing the Foreign Office examinations, Hay was expected to follow his father into diplomacy but instead became infatuated with Lady Idina Sackville, a daughter of Gilbert Sackville, 8th Earl De La Warr, the divorced wife of the politician Euan Wallace and the wife of Charles Gordon. Lady Idina soon divorced her second husband in 1923 and she and Hay were married on 22 September 1923.[1]
Kenya
After causing a society scandal due to their marriage – she was twice-divorced, notoriously unconventional in many ways, and eight years his senior – Hay and his wife moved to Kenya in 1924, financing the move with Idina's money. Their home was a bungalow on the slopes of the Aberdare Range which they called Slains, after the former Hay family seat of Slains Castle which was sold by Hay's grandfather, the 20th Earl, in 1916. The bungalow was sited alongside the high-altitude farms which other white Kenyans were establishing at the time.
The Happy Valley set were a group of elite, colonial expatriates who became notorious for drug use, drinking, adultery and promiscuity, among other things. Hay soon became a part of this group and accumulated debts. Hay had inherited his father's titles in 1928 and his wife divorced him in 1930 because he was cheating her financially. Hay then married the divorced Edith Maude ("Molly") Ramsay-Hill on 8 February 1930. They lived in Oserian, a Moroccan-style house on the shores of Lake Naivasha, and his new wife became involved with the hedonistic lifestyle of Happy Valley.
Delves Broughton learned of the affair and after spending a night with Lady Broughton, Lord Erroll was found shot dead in his Buick at a crossroads on the Nairobi-Ngong road on 24 January 1941. Sir Jock was accused of the murder, arrested on 10 March and stood trial from 26 May. There were no eyewitnesses to the killing; the evidence against him proffered in court was weak; and his barber[6] was also foreman of the jury. Sir Jock was acquitted on 1 July. He died by suicide in England a year later.
Lord Erroll is buried in the graveyard of St Paul's Anglican Church in Kiambu, Kenya, next to his second wife, Molly.[7] His earldom and lordship of Hay passed to his only child, Diana, by his first wife, while his barony of Kilmarnock passed to his brother, Gilbert, who changed his surname to Boyd in 1941.[8][9]
In popular culture
The BBC television drama The Happy Valley, first transmitted on 6 September 1987, told the story of Erroll's murder, as seen through the eyes of the 15-year-old Juanita Carberry, daughter of John Carberry (10th Baron Carbery) to whom Broughton confesses his guilt even before he is arrested.[10]
^–"The question of the scent in the Buick was made much of, (in the trial) when it was probably no mystery at all. Joss reeked of the Truefitt & Hill scent CAR, as all his close friends knew," excerpt from The Life and Death of Lord Erroll, Errol Trzebinski, Fourth Estate, 2000.
