Sir Augustus Frederick William Keppel Stephenson KCB, QC (born before 1849 - died 26 September 1904) was a Treasury Solicitor and the second person to hold the office of Director of Public Prosecutions

Director of Public Prosecutions (England and Wales)

The Director of Public Prosecutions of England and Wales is a senior prosecutor, appointed by the Attorney General. First created in 1879, the office was unified with that of the Treasury Solicitor less than a decade later before again becoming independent in 1908...

 in England and Wales

England and Wales

England and Wales is a jurisdiction within the United Kingdom. It consists of England and Wales, two of the four countries of the United Kingdom...

.

Cases

One notable case occurred in 1889 when Stephenson was given the Cleveland Street scandal

Cleveland Street scandal

The Cleveland Street scandal occurred in 1889, when a homosexual male brothel in Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia, London, was discovered by police. At the time, sexual acts between men were illegal in Britain, and the brothel's clients faced possible prosecution and certain social ostracism if discovered...

 to prosecute. It involved various members of the aristocracy (such as Lord Arthur Somerset

Lord Arthur Somerset

Major Lord Henry Arthur George Somerset DL was the third son of the 8th Duke of Beaufort and his wife, the former Lady Georgiana Curzon...

 and the Earl of Euston), but these people were "allowed" (in the words of the radical journal the North London Press) to escape prosecution, something which attracted Stephenson a lot of criticism from the press.

Personal life

Stephenson was born in London in 1827 and was the son of Henry Frederick Stephenson, barrister-at-law. Henry Frederick Stephenson was M.P. for Westbury (1831-49). The mother of Augustus was Lady Mary Keppel. Lady Mary was one of the eleven children of the 4th Earl of Albemarle.
Stephenson married Eglantine Pleydell-Bouverie, daughter of Rt. Hon. Edward Pleydell-Bouverie

Edward Pleydell-Bouverie

Edward Pleydell-Bouverie PC, FRS , styled The Honourable from 1828, was a British Liberal politician. He was a member of Lord Palmerston's first administration as Paymaster-General and Vice-President of the Board of Trade in 1855 and as President of the Poor Law Board between 1855 and...

 and Elizabeth Anne Balfour, on 5 December 1864.