In 1896, the Anmer Hall estate was purchased at auction for £25,000 by the famed serial fraudster Ernest Terah Hooley before his first bankruptcy. The Prince had attempted to purchase the property prior to Hooley's acquisition. Through an intermediary, the Prince asked Hooley that he be allowed to purchase it from him, ostensibly for his daughter Maud. Hooley agreed, allowing him to buy it at cost in 1898. It has been alleged that a motivation for the Prince's action was to avoid the possibility of Hooley's business promoter Alexander Meyrick Broadley, whom the Prince had earlier forced from society, from becoming a constant guest on the estate, and therefore near-neighbour. Together with the Prince's eldest son and an equerry, Broadley had been implicated in the Cleveland Street scandal.