A cover steeped in scandal

Very good 1882 MALTA cover to ROME franked with Malta SG Z40 2 1/2d blue (GB SG157).

The recipient is Professor Hamilton Stilon MD, then doubtless a pillar of the establishment and professor of anatomy at the Uni of Malta in Valletta. What he was doing in Rome is unknown. What his wife was doing when he was in Rome is also unknown…

… what she was - allegedly - doing 12 years later is now a matter of public record.

In June 1894 the professor reportedly returned home to find his wife Rosa (daughter of a prominent Maltese merchant Olaf Gollecjer) in flagrante with the Italian Consul General Augusto Bazzoni. That’s how to make a Maltese Cross… In a fit of jealous rage he then reached for his pistol and shot Bazzoni. The wounds proved fatal and he died a week later.

The prof was charged with his murder but then acquitted on the grounds of justifiable homicide (crime passionelle etc). He had to give up his job and was officially ‘cancelled’ by the Italian authorities but went into private practice and did fine.

In a twist his son Alberto, a lawyer, later became Consul of Argentina in Malta.

But there may be much more to the story than the official version tells. It was rumoured after the acquittal that Stilon, a free mason, had killed Augusto Bazzoni at the orders of the Italian Grand Lodge. Bazzoni was a former mason who was suspected of revealing certain political secrets.

Allegedly lots were drawn as to who was to carry out the political crime and Prof. Stilon had drawn the fatal lot. It was also alleged that Mrs Stilon had been his willing accomplice in his plot, consenting to the ruin of her reputation in order to save her husband from the inevitable consequences of the planned Assassination.

1882 MALTA - ROME SG Z40 (SG157). STILON SCANDAL!! 1862 for 1882 CDS error