How American Dollar Princesses Took over Britain
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Hello, everyone. It's Daku Yir. And I'm Gabby. And welcome back to the podcast, my hoes. Welcome back, Gabby. Hi. Hello there. So

Sweet cheeks? Hello. Don't call me sweet cheeks on the podcast. This is not for flirting. You are sweet cheeks. You are. You're my sweetie sweet cheeks. And I am so glad to have you here and back. And you know what? You can't escape me now because you literally have a busted ankle, which means you can't run away from the stories I tell. I know. Guys, we had a worthy barons this past weekend and I was an archer in Steve's barony and, um,

At the very first battle, I like rolled my ankle, like immediately sprained my ankle. Then I was like, well, I'm not missing out on the entire day's worth of events. So I'm just going to ignore this. Within the first like...

Like 20 minutes, mind you, which I will say this going to this event. I even told you, hey, within the first five minutes of the event with the first time we went this last year, I twisted something in my groin and I had a limp for like an hour after that. Yeah, but that was like more temporary than a literal sprain. Oh no, mine was a pulled muscle. You actually sprained. Yeah, I haven't sprained an ankle since I was like 12, I want to say. Like it's been a while because I'm usually so careful, but

The enemies were crossing the bridge and we had to climb that hill and I panicked. And I just did not look right with my foot. Nah, it's perfectly fine. I was like, I'm not going to be the first to die. Trust me when I say you are not. A lot more people fell on that day. Yeah. In game. They were alive. I promise. But anyway, guys, we are launching a second Japan trip. This one is going to be a Mount Fuji hike. It's going to be specifically geared towards and around Mount Fuji. Um,

And it will be launching on Thursday. So if that's something that interests you, keep an eye out for the link. And if you're on Patreon, we will drop that link as an early bird just so you can get, you know, get ahead of everyone else. As it turns out, we launched last Japan trip. 17 of the 24 spots were sold before it is that the whole thing actually released. So these things go fast. If you want to join us, make sure to check that out as soon as things are available. But with that being said,

let's talk about a different kind of journey something that um gabby you are actually very passionate about here in the first place you've told me extensively about because

I'm not sure if anyone is aware of this who's seen stuff here for social media. She likes books. She really likes books, especially historical romance and like the setting of all these things. And one of the things that she would tell me about that she'd be learning is about dollar princesses, how this was a new term for her. And she was telling me all about it. And this got me very excited because that is a fascinating point in history. Gabby, do you want to give like just...

a brief summation of what a dollar princess is in the first place for anyone who's curious? Ah, don't put me on the spot. Don't put me on... Okay, so basically these were young women from the US who had really wealthy fathers. And so they would go over to, you know...

where they would have all of the what do they call the debutantes come out to get married you know the women to be presented to society yeah so they'd got on the marriage mart and of course the men would well the women on the marriage mart who were from england wanted to marry like the eligible bachelors all of these like wealthy powerful men the problem is those wealthy powerful men were starting to run out of money because nobility didn't really work and

And they didn't do a ton of investments or anything. So they were just living off of whatever family money they had and whatever they brought in from their estate. And then splitting that among every single relation that they had to support. So they didn't have a lot of money. Their wealth was like dwindling. And then these dollar princesses come out filthy fucking rich.

And they would marry them to get money. I need to stress this right now. She has no notes or anything in front of her on this. This is just pure passion because I would hear her off on the side. Oh, my God. Steve. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This just happened. This is scandalous. I read so many of these romance novels, guys. It's actually embarrassing because like a lot of them are just the same thing over and over again. But I eat it up every time.

That is what we're talking about here today. I had a whole intro going into this where I was going to do a thing of like, oh, imagine a normal, everyday, totally average girl meets a prince. They fall in love despite their difference in social standing. And she goes on to marry him, becoming a princess and goes on to lead a life of glamour.

nobility filled with balls and manners and high society and all that. Yeah. You know, the whole fairy tale treatment, the same kind of thing that you'd see in like every Disney movie or Hallmark movie. Like what was the thing we watched together? Like the whole Christmas Prince. I know, but usually that's like a poor girl finding the Prince. This was the princess looking for a rich girl. Exactly. Specifically needing that dowry. So all of those things that you see, I'm sorry to spoil this. I don't know if there's anyone listening who thinks that they're going to get Prince charming. Like,

Like literal Prince, like actual Prince Prince charming. Um, the thing that Disney and Hallmark and all that stuff kind of gets wrong is that you're not a small town country girl who owns a bakery or a flower shop or all this other stuff. You are a filthy fucking rich heiress to a steel or oil Baron. And that is what they want. Not you. I'm sorry. You're cute and quirky and amazing, but you're,

They want your money, honey. So I thought that was so interesting, though, because in one of the books that I was reading, the men of society did not work. And even if they were bankrupt, they still were expected to get credit given to them, which is crazy to me, because like, what are they? How are they paying that off? Some of them couldn't. Yeah. And so they would lose everything and be terrible. But they also didn't. They looked down on people who invested. Yes. That's just smart. Because that was still a form of work.

Investing? Yes. So all of those finance bros, like, you know, the finance influences who are like, actually make your money work for you and you'll never have to work a day in your life. They're lying. Yeah. That was the bleep. There were very few. I know we're going to go into this. There were very few positions that you are allowed to work as nobility.

Like being a representative, like an MP in parliament. That was something you were allowed to do. Yeah. Some minor stuff as clergy, a soldier or like Navy men. Like if you were a captain or an admiral or something like that, I know that was acceptable. I read a lot of Evie Dunmore and, um,

Gosh, I'm blanking on the other lady's name, but I read a lot of those. Yes. Too many. And so it is, my friends, then that we are going to be telling the story of dollar princesses. But in order to be able to talk about this, you have to understand the context in which dollar princesses arise in the first place, which is the rapidly changing social landscape of the 19th and early 20th century that specifically came about because of industrialization and the entire world was being flipped on its head rapidly. Right.

So in the hundred years from 1815 to 1914, this saw explosive growth of cities and factories all across major European and U.S. states. Measurable annual growth for these nations alone appeared for the first time in history that it was just continuously. Oh, yeah. Hey, it's not just a matter of, oh, there's been a good harvest this year or a slight development or the population grew. So the economy grows.

With the development of factories and manufacturing on a rapid industrial scale, the economy was rapidly growing at 8, 10, 20, 30 percent. I mean, that's probably a little big when I say that here, but still massive digit numbers in comparison to what they previously had.

The lives of those living was altered as never seen before because you were talking about inventions, steamboats, railroads, all these different kinds of things. The ancient rural life of the majority where people were stuck out on the farms is either, you know, the landowners or the tenant farmers, that sort of thing. That was basically a thing in the past now. And this is where you have to understand the setting for the British.

For the majority of their history, Britain's nobles and gentry and the landed elite, they lived off specifically the profits from farming and tenants. Like you either were a literal landlord where you got your rental money or tithe from the land, or you got it from the people who lived on the land that they were working. And by the early 20th century, agricultural wealth

was just so much smaller. It was dwarfed by what you could get from the riches of industry. Farms still made money, sure. And if you had a really big farm, you had a lot of land, you could still make money. But proportionally, in comparison to what someone with a single factory could do, one guy in a factory spread over one acre could do ten times the work of someone with 100 acres of farmland. Easily.

They couldn't easily support the upper class's high cost of living or the tax burden of an industrial society. And so many nobles and gentry could not work or, or yet, as Gabby already talked about, literally refused. They would not work. They would not do anything to supplement their income. To do so was simply unbecoming of a man or a woman of society as it was.

to engage in such a lowly action would cause a family social standing to fall. And that was something that was held in much higher regard than actual tangible financial wealth. It's like, Gabby, you know how I've talked about different things for like, I won't do something out of the principle of the matter. Yeah. And at different times, it's infuriated you. It's like, I wouldn't take a set amount of money to do a set thing because I have a principle, even when people have offered me things and

For anyone who has seen stuff that I do for YouTube, you have no idea how many political ads and things I have been offered to do things that I refuse because I have a standard in which, sure, I'll pitch a product of something that may seem kind of interesting or whatever, but I am never going to tell someone what they should believe or how they should think. That was my principle. Their principles were...

If we do any kind of labor whatsoever, we're the same as those dirty, filthy peasants outside. But what kills me is that the dirty, filthy peasants had to do all the work to support them. So I don't know. It just makes me mad. Yep. No, they were leeches. But like people let them be leeches for way too long. Like the idea that somebody...

would choose to exist like that and not work. Like even today, like a lot of wealthy people, yeah, they're filthy wealthy and they don't necessarily need all that money, but

they do something. Like, even if it's annoyed the fuck out of everyone, they do something. They are productive. They are actually extremely productive and work a lot. Generally speaking, they do. The thing about these people... Or they worked at some point. That's the thing. Yes, to create something. Yeah. So, you know, like Jeff Bezos and whatever, like he's super rich now, but at some point in the beginning, he wasn't, you know, and he worked...

So I don't know. It's just very different from just being born into nobility and then just never having to work a day in your life.

Oh, extremely. It's wild to me. Extremely so. Absolutely. I 100% agree. And the thing about this is that this whole financial difference in how they held themselves is even worse for British nobles. Because as the 19th century is wearing on, the price of agricultural goods was stagnating or even just plummeting like it was dropping. This was the Great Agricultural Depression of Britain.

Which that's something that needs to be explained. So in the context of all those different books and things that you are reading of all these, remember if you would read about those rural elites whose manners and things were basically falling apart.

Do you remember any of that, Gabby? Pardon? Like the rural elites and how shabby a lot of their stuff was, how run down it was. They didn't have as many servants. Yes. Oh, when we watched Persuasion, she was like, any house with less than five servants is a health hazard. Yeah. Because all those country estates that are out there that are based off of agricultural lands, they just didn't really make much money. And if the one thing they have drops in value, that means that they have even less money.

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The British agricultural depression is usually dated from the early 1870s to the end of the century. And over this 30 year period, there was a massive fall in grain prices that followed the opening of the American prairies to cultivation in the 1870s. So when American farmers got access to all that stuff for the big prairies and started producing massive amounts of wheat, corn, and everything else, well, America was and still is kind of to this day the world's breadbasket.

It's not nearly to the same degree in like dependence, but America produces a stupid amount of food products. Like we really do. We don't really need the outside world for basic food staples. Instead, we are a massive exporter of it. But how will we get the avocado? Oh, yeah. No, we still need those from Mexico. And the coffee. But for like grains, it's huge. Also, coffee prices have gone up. And that is just...

Not great because I don't even drink caffeine, but I need my decaf. No, fair enough. So I can pretend that I'm drinking caffeine like we could all day.

So, yeah, this all happens. The late 19th century would see the expansion of the American railway transport system and with the advent of inexpensive international transportation because of steamships, which cut the time that it would take to travel from, what was it, like six or eight weeks to Europe by boat down to only like two to three. I mean, we're talking about reducing the total trip time by not just half, but sometimes by two thirds, just wiped. What?

What is it like to travel between the continents on one of those ships as a noble person? I'm assuming as a peasant, you'd wear a gorgeous... Oh, you paid for first class. Like, remember, all of these ships, like these intercontinental... But what did you do? It's not like a cruise ship where you have entertainment nonstop. You're just...

There was for the first class. Okay, so they'd have like music and juice. There would be separate rooms, separate facilities, separate all that. Oh, they didn't work. So they wouldn't even be that bored. They'd just be used to talking to each other all day and eating. They would have musical performances. They would typically have balls. They would have their all their different kind of little things that would be done.

And that is something that those kinds of cruises became. What do you think the Titanic was? A boat. Yeah, but it was a boat. Big boat. It specifically was part of these big ocean liners that were

there in order to be able to transport people across the ocean. That was what they were doing. I wonder if people back in the day used to be like, well, actually, you know, it's less risky to travel by boat than it is by car. Like, you know what they do for planes right now? Technically speaking, it would be true considering all the shit that happens a little bit. But still...

You know, people probably would. I only bring this up because we fly so often and all of a sudden all the planes are having issues and I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So all these developments are happening, right? And as these technologies are developing,

It's not just at this time. Technically speaking, this happened earlier with a lot of the things you would see with the technology. But the British agricultural market was to a degree protected by something called the corn laws, which the corn laws. I don't know, Gabby. I'm trying not to lose on you on this. This is financial history with this. The corn laws were tariffs, which I know is a lot of thing that that's something that's topical for a lot of people today. Oh, you meant like actual corn, not like the slang corn.

No, like actual corn. Like corn on the ground. I was like, wait, what are you saying on the podcast? Gabby, we're not talking about historical corn books like they reference on TikTok. No, no, please. That's where my head was at.

So the corn laws were tariffs and trade restrictions on imported grain in the United Kingdom that existed from around 1815 to 1846. And these were laws that were designed to protect British farmers and landowners from cheap foreign grain. So, you know, keep prices high in order to be able to support the farmer, which is

kind of decent, but here's the thing. The high tariffs imposed made it way too expensive to import grain, even when domestic supplies were short. Like, you know, if there was a bad harvest or anything happened, which although that was great for supporting the wealthy elites who owned the majority of the land in the countryside, it meant that for the poor tenant farmers and for others on there, it really hurt them as well as any

anyone else that was poor and needed to, you know, buy their food, not just grow their food. So the price of bread increased drastically during this time and rioting was pretty common. Not good.

And so for these reasons, the British corn laws were repealed in 1846. And after that, and the opening up of the American prairies and all that, cheap imports of huge amounts of wheat from the American prairies were able to just flood British markets, which completely overwhelmed British wheat farmers, a large portion of whom were, again, not independent. They were taxed.

tenant farmers on land estates who owed a percentage of their harvest and rent to their landlords. And the effect of that would be that they would lose everything, end up getting shuntered off into the city, and rural landowning elites would see the number of renters that they would have and the value of their goods

dropped drastically because no one could afford to be a renter on their land. They would lose their livelihood of all these peasants that had to pay their rent.

I have questions about the ones that own the mines, though. But that's another podcast for another time. Oh, yeah. No, that is to be said about something with the mines, but that would be a very different thing. Also, by that time, a lot of the mines in many cases had many of them dried up. Except for coal. Coal was still a very big thing. And the coal barons there for Britain was a very big thing indeed. I know. I read a recent one about one of those. And he was very Scottish, though. Very, very cute.

They just don't write enough Scottish romance novels. And I'm mad about it. Wait, what were we talking about? We were talking about plummeting wheat prices and the collapse of rural nobility. That's what I was talking about, too. Those wheats aren't going to plant themselves. Yeah, exactly. So at the same time that all this is happening, industry was creating families that were way wealthier than even the oldest and most powerful noble houses of Europe.

This was for the Americans, the Gilded Age, which for a time period is fascinating. It is both incredibly impressive and cool. And yet at the same time,

so deeply corrupt and messy. It is. Oh, if you guys want to know about deeply corrupt and messy, watch Gilded Age on HBO. This is not an ad. It was just so messy. I love a good drama. Yeah, see, that's why I was explaining to her. She was like, oh my God, you'll never believe this happened. But this is like totally unrealistic, right? I told her no.

That stuff that you see in there, that is kind of par for the course for that time period. They started to make money. And because they were new money, because that's where new money and old money comes from. And I was always wondering, like, why does it matter? If you have money, you have money. Shut up. But yeah.

All the old money people would like close them out of society because they were just new money and they were just not as sophisticated. And it's like, you're poor now and they have all the wealth. Shut up. So then the people with the new money just started building their own train stations and everything because they're like, screw it, we'll make our own society. And they built their own musical. And oh my gosh.

Gabby can do this entire episode by herself. She can basically spoil everything that I'm about to say. Not from an academic perspective, purely from a romance novel and like TV drama perspective. So, yes, this is a time period. It's the decades between, you know, like the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the turn of the century. It pretty much was about 25 to 35 years. And this time period would see a stupidly explosive growth of sluggishness,

Steel mills, factories, railroads, things that were all created by the second industrial revolution, which made a small but still very sizable class of businessmen incredibly stupidly beyond imaginably wealthy.

and rich. By 1890, the wealthiest 1% of American families controlled around 51% of the nation's real and personal property. It was like people think that like a wealth concentration is bad today. Oh God, no, you want to see the 1%. You go back to like the late 1800s. Holy crap.

Among the richest of the rich were the so-called robber barons or the captains of industry who, in their efforts to obtain and make wealth, could oftentimes have them commit very what we would call today fraud.

unethical business practices, both in the way that they would treat their competition, the exploiting of workers, the creation of very lucrative monopolies. And in the process of doing all of this, they would manage to amass fortunes that would amount to quite literally billions of dollars today. And when I say this, oh, God, that's the average ones. In fact, for the greatest of these, the wealth of people like Cornelius Vanderbilt,

John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford. If you measure their wealth by today's standards, we're not talking billions of dollars. We are talking hundreds of billions of dollars. There are some estimates that put wealth for like, I think Carnegie at potentially over a trillion dollars in today's money. Wow. And because a lot of the stuff was so hard to keep track of and hidden as well. So they might have been the richest people and no, because it's who is it?

Currently? Well, technically it's Elon Musk right now. Elon Musk is the richest man. And before this, it was Jeff Bezos. Do you think like when they're the richest man and somebody passes them, they get in their heads about it? Like, oh, I'm such a failure. I'm dropping off. I'm in my flop era. I don't know. Because like at that point, it doesn't even matter. You're so rich, you don't know what to do with your money. But now you're not number one. I know.

I personally would never be in that situation. But if I were, I would totally be in my head about my flop era. Gabby, would you be the... Who was the person that people were... I'm trying to struggle. It's one of the Jenners. Kylie Jenner? Maybe it was Kylie because of her makeup brand. And we were like, oh my God, we can make the first self-made female billionaire. Oh, yeah. And it was apparently not true that she was the first...

billionaire or something, right? Like I said, it was self-made, but... None of that is true. Literally none of that is true. Yeah. I watched like a whole actual two-hour breakdown of that on YouTube one year, but it was two years ago. If you will ever think that you are not the brightest...

If you are an individual that thinks that you are doing good by trying to make a person a billionaire and you're not doing it because you like their product, you're specifically doing it in order to fit a cause that you were donating money to a person to become richer, to try and get the status of becoming a billionaire. A person who's already rich. That's crazy, dude. That is legitimately crazy. I can't even say that's stupid. That is just mentally unhinged. Because like, I don't know. I want everyone to have

enough money but you don't have to give your money to people who have like you know that much money like to create a billion I don't know but I'm not being an asshole when I say that right I don't know but it's not even just that um I think it was cruel world happy mind or something on YouTube that did a episode on it and it was more than just like that it was the numbers were falsified for one of the companies or something allegedly and

I don't know. I can't remember the exact details of that video because I watched it while I was at work. I listened to it at work. And it just, you know, you don't return everything when you're doing multiple tasks. But yeah. Well, all right. Well, again, we keep on going on little tangents here. Sorry. This is why we don't record together anymore much. There are so many things that we could cover in this. And I knew this would happen. I shouldn't have made this thing as long as I did because there are so many things that we could talk about.

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Okay, so yeah, setting in here, going then into the late 1800s, the super rich at this time when I'm talking about like Carnegie, Vanderbilt, etc., all this, I need to do an episode dedicated for like these guys specifically and everything that they did, how they got their wealth and how they operated because, oh my God, you think that you saw wealth being displayed in the Gilded Age?

Oh, no, no, not in comparison to what they actually did in history. Like this is this is levels of wealth that when we imagine billionaires on their yachts who have their own mini yacht that they take to get to their mega yacht. No, this this makes only the technology is different than that. These guys would go to stupidly rich levels.

The industrialists didn't just enjoy lives of luxury. Just as they competed in business, they were trying to outdo each other constantly with lavish spending and who could buy what and in what quantity and what rarity, etc. So I feel like that would not work in our world with social media.

I disagree. I think it would do the exact opposite because look at what happens in social media for people who quite literally go. And I know I mentioned this in here. Look at the ones who quite literally rent mansions to go and film content in to make themselves look more successful. And they rake in millions of views and stuff from this. There are people who fake their entire persona in order to make themselves influential in that regard. I don't know. Maybe I just consume media differently, but I like to watch...

the everyday person content, you know, like I'm not watching somebody in a mansion because I don't like to, because the thing that I learned about life and I learned early on in my twenties is if you constantly are like, okay, well I have to do this and I have to get that. I have to get the next car and I have to get the next house. You're always going to be chasing something instead of just being like, oh my goodness, I'm so thankful I have somewhere to live and I have a car. So I don't look at people with like much, much nicer things because I don't,

want to ever be in a place where I'm envious of that. And you and I would firmly agree with that. Unfortunately, we can't speak to the masses and the people that I'm talking about here would rack up millions of followers. And when I'm, and when I say that, I don't mean people who are hate watching them. I mean, who genuinely are watching them and following what they do. Cause I just feel like if,

Like I, I even see it now on social media when people are flashing insane amounts of wealth. Everyone's like, uh, read the room, you know? Yeah, correct. Correct. And that's why once you get to a point where people are that stupidly wealthy. Because if we were watching billionaires, because I don't think billionaires do the one upping each other right now. Because if you were watching, that's what I'm saying. So if you watch, that's what I'm saying. Billionaires one up trying to one up each other with lavish lifestyles would go horribly in the age of social media. That was my original point.

Fair enough. Like, yeah, people might watch, people might watch somebody that they think is rich, but it's not a billionaire. It's probably just somebody who's bad with money and making poor financial decisions to flex on social media. But,

I'm talking about like if Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos decided to like one up each other with yachts or something. Have like a yacht decorating competition or some shit. Like the way the way it would activate a revolt, like it would be a full on eat the rich type situation. I agree. That's what I mean. Fair enough. So like what they pulled off would have never been able to happen.

It's true. There's a difference between like, that's the difference, I suppose, with what you would say, the millionaires versus the billionaires. Exactly. Like there are different levels of rich. Like you could stomach maybe somebody who, you know, probably like you can watch someone with an insane house that you're like, hmm, they probably can't afford that. You know what I mean? Or like, oh, you know.

you know that they're not that rich. You could, most people could probably stomach content of them trying to flex because either way it's like, okay, that's cringe. But if a billionaire does it, you know they can afford to flex. Like it's more than cringe at that point. It's like,

deeply insulting. Yeah. And again, I do understand that. It's kind of funny that you bring up the whole thing about houses and things they can't afford because, oh my God, the way that these guys would flex on each other with their houses and what they would do. When we talk about mansions, oh my God, the Vanderbilt family castle, which when I say it's a mansion, it's a mansion, but I'm going to call this thing a castle because it is a 250 room mansion built on the

8,000 acre Biltmore estate in Asheville, North Carolina. That's what that is? When you talk about going to the Biltmore. I just want to see it. That's what it is. Because it's not a plantation. It's just a big ass castle. It's just basically a big ass castle in the middle of North Carolina. Yeah. Yeah. This thing was so massive that in order to build it, right, there was no land that was flat enough in order to make this. They had to level three entire hills with dynamite in order to be able to make enough flat land to construct this thing on.

That is how big we are talking about here. The structure would utilize over 10 million pounds of limestone. And to entertain all their guests, the Vanderbilts would go and equip this whole thing with a bowling alley, its own library, gardens, smoking and gun rooms. It would have, and this is an actual statistic,

This place at a time which did have electric heating and all this other stuff. Like, well, I mean, eventually it would get you to have all this other stuff. It had 65 fireplaces. How many how many square feet is the Biltmore? I think so. Well, it's an 8000 acre, 250 room. You know what? I'm going to look this up right now. Four feet.

Oh, are you looking it up? Biltmore House. Biltmore House. Biltmore. Yeah. Biltmore House. Because if you look up the estate, you're going to look at the acre. Oh, I don't want to talk about it. How money? Okay. This is according to the AI overview, though. So take it with a grain of salt because that thing is always wrong. But okay. The Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina is 178,926 square feet. And that makes it the largest privately owned home in the US. Okay, Gabby.

That thing could fit. And I'm doing the math right now. It could actually fit, without exaggeration, over 100 of our house in it. Yeah, we have like 1,500 square feet, bro. So just imagine that. A house that is 100 times the size of ours. Over. In fact, that's 115 times our size. I'd be able to get another dog.

Yes, you would be able to get another adopt. Yeah. So these estates, and this is like the primary example of the big one, they were oftentimes way more grand, opulent, modern furnished. They were so much better than a lot of the old European counterparts. Like the estates they would build in America made the ones in Europe just look like

run down little shacks. I'm not even kidding when I say that. They didn't have the same technology because the ones in Europe were built back when they had

candlelight and had only been built 20 years prior. The amount of wealth concentrated here was unimaginable. And this level of extravagance would cross over to fashion, just like in the royal courts of old, the industrialists and their wives would sail like once or twice a year to Paris or London or other or Milan, like places of fashion. And they would get like the latest court fashions of the area, especially Paris. Paris was a big one for this.

It was so common for them to do that with regular customers, the most famous clothes, like seamstresses, I guess you could say. I know there was a term for it. I don't remember what exactly it was. They would keep the measurements of these women on file just so that they would be able to make their expected dresses with the next season's fashions when they came out. And that way they could just go to Europe and pick up their dresses themselves and then go back to the States.

Not only would they do this for traveling there, they would employ their own private teams of dressmakers back in their home. And you know how there was that whole thing with Louis the 15th and Versailles and how he would just have his noble spending stupid amounts of money constantly changing their clothes for parties and everything. And it would keep them basically drained to financial resources. They did that.

but could afford it constantly. Many of these wealthy elite women were regarded as changing their entire outfit depending upon the function that they were going to five to six times a day being the average number. Five to 10 times a day? Five to six times.

So they changed that. Would you have to change like every two hours? Well, think about this. You have to have a specific outfit that you're going to be going to the opera in. Then a specific outfit that you're going to be going to lunch at afterwards. Then you're going to have a specific outfit that you're going to have for your walking excursion. And then after that, you're going to have a specific outfit that you're going to be utilizing for dinner. And then after your dinner outfit, you're going to be putting on one that you're going to be using for like the evening entertainment. And then your final outfit, you're going to have one for the night celebrations.

That's too many outfit changes. They had, you know what they need? They need at early 2000s Cosmo magazine that shows you how to take your outfit from day to night. Yeah. That's, that's, that's, that's not like, you know, your day outfit for the office. You got like a business cash going, but then you take off the jacket, you swap it out with that different jacket. You put on some higher heels, boom, night outfit. You spend five minutes doing that. Yep.

So I got to say for anyone, if there's any guys that go and complain about girlfriends or wives who get a dress to wear for one event and then never wear it again because they needed that one dress to wear one time, just think about this in comparison. And be thankful. And be thankful. Because it's no... And the thing is, Europeans had to do this exact same thing. Like, do you remember when we watched Bridgerton together? Remember how they had to have a new outfit for every ball they attended? Yeah, if they can afford it, yeah. That was the big...

And it wasn't just if they couldn't afford it. That's crazy to me, though, because I've never once seen somebody wear something and remember that they wore it. The only person I'm thinking about, like the only outfit I'm thinking about is my own. Oh, in high society, Gabby, they would have recognized it. Because the moment. That's a whole Lizzie McGuire outfit repeater moment. And this is the moment.

That if you saw a noble wearing the same outfit twice, like especially a woman wore the same dress. Well, that would probably have hurt them in the little, you know, the marriage market, because then they think that their father is running into problems with money and they'll have a lower dowry. Correct. Which is why in those circumstances, nobles would still go to these parties and do the exact same things, but they would furnish their lifestyle through debt.

They would continuously take out more loans to hold parties, to get more outfits, to do all these things. And as you said, they would get it with their name on credit. That's what they would do. I...

Still don't support credit scores, but it wouldn't have hurt that much. No, I don't support credit scores, but I feel like, you know, they're a little bit stressful. You know, you know what I mean? Anyway, I looked up the palace sizes of like Buckingham and Versailles. And Versailles is 721,206 square feet. And Buckingham Palace is 830,000 square feet. So still...

Biltmore could have been bigger. Yeah, it's a house, not a government palace. Well, I'm just saying, embarrassing. Somebody in the US needs to get out there and build a 900... No, why stop at 900,000? A million square foot palace.

Please, if you're listening, I don't know why anybody's looking up like that. In the middle of West Virginia. Please. I feel like it'd be a little bit too hilly there. Like you'd have to use a lot of dynamite. There's nothing that dynamite can't solve, my dear.

Okay, do it. I don't know why somebody who could afford to do that would be listening to this podcast. But Bestie, you know what you have to do. If someone that wealthy is listening to this podcast and you have not somehow gone on one of our trips yet by now, I mean, you could probably afford to do it all yourself and just do everything. You don't need us at all.

Yeah, they'd be like, ooh, you guys are traveling like that? Ooh. It's like we talked to some other creators who are like much bigger than us at one time. And they're like, oh, you guys travel with that many people? What if you like just didn't do that? That sounds terrible. Or it's like when we fly, people think that we fly...

Like premium or first class. We were sitting there in economy. And they're like behind us and they're whispering like, oh, I'd expect him to be flying first class. She's not kidding. We legitimately had people that recognized us sitting right behind us on one of our flights. And they were whispering about it. And I'm like, damn, sorry to disappoint. It's like, yeah, we're not...

The reason we travel so much is because we're kind of- Oh, oh, one time somebody came to our house and they were like, oh, I expected you to live somewhere much nicer. Like, damn, this house, we got it in 2020, okay? This interest rate is so low. I'm sorry. I could be like a multi-millionaire. I will live in this house. It's the principle of the matter. It's the principle of the matter. It's like when you win a really cool prize and then you're like, nope, this is my prize for life. I am not letting this one go.

Why replace it? If it's not broke, don't fix it. That's what I'm looking for. Yeah. Although this house has broken quite a bit. Our homeowner's insurance hates us. Yeah. Hi, everyone. This is Scott.

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Alright, I know I'm going to have to... I'm going to go on way too long. God, we are just talking too much. We are talking so much. I'm going to skip past a couple things in here. I'm going to shut up. No, don't skip past. I'll shut up. No, no. It's fine. It's fine. Basically, the gist of it is that this kind of lifestyle is extremely expensive and parties made this even worse because, you know, at parties, you actually had to show off your wealth. You couldn't just put a pretty thing on the outside and hide inside your bare room. No. So, in the Gilded Age, the super rich sought to outdo one another by throwing grand parties with massive guest lists and...

And there was a case where the aspiring socialite Alva Vanderbilt and her husband, William Kissam Vanderbilt, moved into their new mansion on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in 1883. And they celebrated by having a 1000 guest party with a late night housewarming event in which everyone had to dress up as, you know, some kind of historical thing.

And this was very common. They loved having historical themed parties where people would dress in all these very different outfits. Cornelia Martin, another one of these socialites in 1897, she had her own ball at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, which she transformed to be a replica of the Palace of Versailles. That's how expensive it would have been on the inside, because for anyone who's been to the Palace of Versailles, we have been twice.

Oh, my God, that thing is sickeningly expensive on the inside to just look at. Oh, my Lord. Her husband dressed as Louis XV while she herself was dressed as Mary Stewart in a gown that was made of gold and pearls and precious stones. One guest reportedly wore a suit of gold armor valued at $10,000 at the time, which is $330,000 today.

Wow. Yeah. The popularity of these parties would lead to people just dressing up. There was a story. Okay. I found one of these. There was a story of a woman named Kate Fearing Strong who wore, I kid you not, this is the quote, a taxidermied white cat as a headdress and a skirt fashioned from cat's tails to their, like the Vanderbilt's housewarming ball, which earned her the nickname Cat.

Puss. Okay, that's kind of funny though. That's the type of eccentric I would like to be, but not with real animals because that would creep me out, but I'd find something equally funny. Yeah. That's kind of funny. It's kind of funny. Disturbing, but...

Needless to say, these people were absolutely loaded, but there was one thing that many of them finally getting to the point when I say this, it's been 40 minutes. We're finally getting to the point. There was one thing that these people lacked and it's what they craved above all else. Respect and recognition from old money.

Not all, of course, like even within America, not having proper land and nobility in the sense of like land of titles you would see in Europe with counts and dukes and whatnot. There was still old money in the sense of like big landowners and business magnates whose families had been powerful since the early colonial days.

But the old money from Europe and America looked down upon the new money factory businessmen that were rapidly rising in power and wealth far quicker than their own families had risen. And in many cases would try to bar them from entry into different social circles, events, and so much more. This was infuriating to the new elite. And so if they couldn't get the respect that they deserved through, you know, earning it, well...

They would simply buy it. So it is then, my friends, we finally get to dollar princesses after all this time. But the setting is very important because you have to understand why this exists in the first place. And with these new, very wealthy families, an entire matchmaking industry would originate in no time to try and arrange marriages between the daughters of wealthy Americans and the basic broke bitch aristocrats of Europe, especially England. Suddenly, every wealthy American who wanted to be like

or not wanted to be, but like wanted to have a royal or a countess or a duchess or something in their family. Well, you could get that if you were basically willing to sell your daughter for top dollar at the market. It sounds cruel when I say that. It's real, though.

At the same time, this is happening for most members of the British aristocracy. These marriages were a kind of blessing in disguise to prop up their own fortunes, which were rapidly dwindling away. As you already mentioned here, Gabby, it's not just that they were in debt, right?

Their houses were crumbling. They couldn't afford the repairs on them. Their private boats and yachts were stuck because they couldn't afford the maintenance to be able to take them out to make sure that they were seaworthy in the first place. You couldn't actually go on a luxurious vacation when you were already 20,000 pounds in debt at a time where 20,000 pounds would be like a couple million today. And if you were nobility, you couldn't work in order to

get all that back and actually fix your life. You shouldn't work. Also, if they had less kids, though, they'd be splitting that money less. So they could have just

a little bit of thought. Oh, that made it even worse. The fact that like some families would have like eight or nine kids, four of them being sons. And then if those sons survived, you had to split your land and titles and well, not titles necessarily. Only one would get the title, but the wealth would be further subdivided amongst those smaller nobles at that point. Or they could have just sent all but, you know, that one son to the military to earn their money. I'm sure some of them did that. They did. But you know what the problem was with the British military at the time, Gabby, there? It didn't pay well. Not

Not only did it not pay well in that sense, it was more of a status thing, especially for the officers. You bought your commission. But after you bought it, did you get a raise? You did, but it wasn't worth the actual cost of the commission. Oh. It was a status thing. It's like I did a whole video on here before I looked at the cost of it, but it's...

It's not even close to earning back the income. If you were corrupt, you could actually make a lot of your money back and more. So they just had to be a little smart about it. They go in, right? They pay that commission and then they do some shady stuff. They make it back plus more. Now they're the richest son. Yeah. That's what I would have done. That was something that could happen.

And here's the point. This is what I find hilarious. You know how there's all those people magazines and all the stuff where it's like top 10 eligible bachelors and like all this stuff like secret hot royal of blah blah blah blah. Like you know those magazines? No, I don't.

But I love that you know those magazines. Tell me more about that. You've never seen any of this stuff when you pass by the grocery... Wait, no. I go to the grocery store. Yeah, I don't go to the grocery store. You don't see... You are the housewife here. Thank you. Act like it. Thank you. For anyone who has seen the magazines and grocery stores, you know exactly what I'm talking about. There was a specific publication at this time called Titled. That's literally what it was. And...

This thing would not only just list American women that had managed to snag their own kind of noble titles, it would list men that were unmarried. It would list what their titles were, what their reputed fortune was, if they still had one.

And so armed with this information and introductions from potential wealthy friends, American girls started going on mass to London every year during the social season to basically try to land a husband.

Oh, my gosh. That sounds like so much fun, though. You know how you went to like your school? There was the whole thing of like ring by spring. Yeah. Imagine a significantly more aggressive ring by spring with now all of a sudden you have a bunch of wealthy oil girls from Texas that are moving in to try and claim the. Bold of you to assume the ring by spring wasn't full of a bunch of wealthy oil girls from Texas. It basically was. I know. But imagine that.

But it's worse here because funnily enough, there's a kind of double edged sword in all this for British women. Remember how you were talking about how the British women, they hated these upstarts that were coming in and trying to seize their men. Well, they didn't have the same training for society. They didn't follow the same rules and they would be a little bit more. Have you met an American? Respectful in the most respectful way as now American myself. In Japan, I was very stereotypical American. My brother went out with us one day.

And after we were talking with each other, he leans over and he whispers to me. Yeah, now you're just as loud as him. And I was like, dang. I am very loud. How rude. Yeah. Ironically enough. So since a woman who had been presented at court herself is the only one that could actually recommend a debutante for presentation. Aristocratic women who technically speaking had a title but didn't really have much.

like their financial resources were very few. They would sometimes accept payments, gifts, bribes, basically bribes from wealthy families from either that existed there in England or from back in the Americas in order to facilitate a debutante's presentation to court. Basically, they would find a noblewoman that was kind of poor and needed support, and they would bribe her to present their girls at the ball. Because they needed...

You know, someone have to be presented. Yeah. They have to have like a person who kind of represented them. Yes. So this did bring them independent wealth, which was nice. But at the same time, it increased the competition for eligible landed bachelors.

Because these were women who had pretty much grown up from the very get go from the nursery that they had one mission in life. What was that one mission, Gabby? To marry a Duke for Nero or someone by count, you know, just one of the men with the hair, but not a rape until that one quiet friend in the group of four girlfriends that are all going to get married in each following book.

One of them, like the quiet, cute one falls for the rake. You're referencing another one of your series again. I'm referencing like three of them. It's always the quiet one that falls for the rake.

So it's exactly she said these were these were women who were raised from a young age that basically their entire purpose in life was to get married. And that's that was the reality. That was their entire existence. That was their goal was to secure a eligible bachelor to get a good match. And now all of a sudden, their career prospects, if you want to call it that, were being launched away by some American girl who showed up out of nowhere, who didn't have the

the right manners, the right knowledge, how to conduct yourself, the right upbringing. And now this was her competition and they were winning because they had money. That was infuriating. They absolutely hated it. But hey, the new ways and updates that were brought by American women, that didn't really help that image either. Even if arguably it was a very good thing.

Because look, for anyone who's listening to this right now, I'm not trying to be dismissive when I say this. If the marriages that I'm describing sound like they're cold, contractual obligations and negotiations, if they sound transactional, yeah, yeah, they were. These were straight. They were the daughters were basically being sold. And many of the women who went to England to seek love would die.

lose all the comforts that they had at home, all their friends, their family, all the comforts they had in exchange for getting this new title. But what did their family get from it? Just a daughter who was married to a Duke? Yes. That's it? Yes. They sold their daughter. They didn't even need the money. They just did that. Connections and bragging rights. It was basically a short... That's crazy work! It was a shortcut into getting access to all those social circles that they were banned from. True, true. Yeah, okay. That's still...

Leaves a bad taste in your mouth. So you know how all those, I was describing these, all this new money was growing up at a time of rapid industrialization and everything was changing. The advent of steam technology, electricity, everything else. Yes. So a lot of these American heiresses, these women had grown up in lives of just complete and utter luxury where they had every single modern convenience as it was developed or the prototype stages.

But once they were married, they were in England at manors. There were oftentimes decades, if not centuries old, where everything was run down. Even the process of trying to take a bath, there would be no plumbing half the time. Instead, you had to have a series of maids haul up buckets in order to fill a small tub for one to take a bath in.

Oh, that would... Listen, I'm not spoiled, but I don't like inconvenience. Yep. And so all these...

lovely stately rural estates and blah, blah, blah of England. Oftentimes we're pretty much old, dark, run down and cold. But can they fix it because they had all the money? Yeah, exactly. See, there you go. I like where your mind is going with this. And guess what? That creates a problem. Why? Because as all these new wives are coming into the English country, then they are remodeling the homes they inhabit. Right.

this is something that they would oftentimes face judgment for doing because they're changing their ways. They're removing the good British moral values with this coarse American. Yeah. Oh, no. We're comfortable in our home. The worst possible thing that could happen to the aristocrat. It's like I imagine the same argument for the way for it's like every time. And listen, I don't try to judge things oftentimes in here. I really don't. But like,

Europeans, use your AC more. AC is nice. I have a problem every time I go over when the AC is not on and it's too hot. That's because you're used to being cold all the time. That is true. I am actually used to being cold all the time. So the reason why I am cold when you are warm is because I'm from a tropical place where we don't typically use AC. We have fans and then those of us would have AC. We would just turn it on at night when you go to bed.

They're off the rest of the day and it's in like specific rooms of your house. The rest of your house isn't cool because we're not used to being cold from the moment we're out the womb. When it's like a normal temperature for you, I'm shivering. I understand that. But these guys...

They look down upon getting plumbing half the time. So, I mean, admittedly, there's a bit of a there's a bit of a difference that would happen in this case. But at least they got a really loving Duke husband. No, God, no. Who loves them and cherishes them and they live happily ever after. And they have like two kids and one kid is named after the mom and one kid is named after the dad. Nope. The end. Not like how it works in the fairy tales.

Not a fairy tale. It's a very lovely book. Nope. Or 50. In almost every case, and I say not almost every case, I mean, it would be unfair to say because they can't get the exact percentage from this, but the most famous cases, like when you think of dollar princesses and what ends up happening, the husbands would mostly end up treating these marriages as marriages of convenience.

Like it quite literally was a political marriage without being a political marriage. But in one of my books where he was like absolutely going broke and then he got this one girl who was super rich. They still fell in love, even though at first it was a marriage of convenience. And that's true. And it can happen in one of the stories I'll tell you is kind of like that. So maybe they fell in love. So. Oh, good. In most cases here, Gabby, it was transactional. They didn't love each other in the beginning. What ends up happening is that they.

The whole thing was literally about money. And what's horrible is that the irony of all this is that many times the girls were just frequently dismissed from the elite social circles that they were supposed to have been married into in the first place. Like their parents paid stupid amounts of money in order to get access to all this elite social circle. And they were still looked down upon. So not being, I come from a culture with arranged marriages where you met your wife,

While you were both covered, they cover you with like a cloth at the altar after they tie you together. So you got it. You got you got a seat in person. But that's when you saw you were getting married to you were like basically already fully married. Yeah. And then they lived happily ever after. Some of them. Yeah. Some of them. And some of them happened here. But most of the time it was just money.

And here's what I say. When I say that, oh, it's like marriage of convenience. The big thing, and you would even see this in a lot of the books or shows or other stuff that you've watched your gap. They would get married for political or whatever reasons. And then they would just have mistresses. Understandable. That's just what they would do because it was about the politics or about the money or whatever. And once that's done and they produce the obligated heirs that they had to, they just fucked off and did whatever it is they wanted. Is monogamy just like a new thing? No, not.

It's not. But within nobility, it's it gets very contentious. Someone on TikTok said marriages for like a span of seven year contracts or something. And I had to look it up again. And that's that's honestly a horrible idea, especially for family structures and whatnot. That that's a terrible idea for a short term. Well, before it was like a religious thing, I think is what they were saying.

Well, yeah, but the marriage was not always even that in the first place. Like there's cultures all over the world. Like that's that's not. Oh, yeah. People got married even before Christianity was a thing or before like like monotheistic. I'd like to imagine that wasn't like a marriage marriage. They were just like, we're besties who like each other and we'll just spend some time annoying each other until we die or get too annoyed. I'm going back to all the times I was looking at different stuff on Roman marriage and how things had to operate for. It's like if a woman was married.

if a woman was being beaten by her husband, she wasn't allowed to do anything. Her father had to come in and try to stop it because she physically was not... She wasn't allowed to divorce or do things. Her father had to come in and do something. What? Yeah. There was the whole case where it's like... God, I'm trying to remember. There was a big rape case that happened from that. We should do like a...

that history of marriage episode because I just want to see how people treated monogamy in that throughout history. You know what I'm saying? Because it feels like everybody cheated.

Constantly, apparently. Oh, the big famous stories? Yeah, a lot of the big famous stories are like that, especially when it comes to nobility specifically because of, again, marriage is a convenience. That's the big thing. But still, that all being said is that even if their life was quickly going to become miserable, way different than what they were used to, the marriages kept coming.

The 1915 edition of titled that same publication that we mentioned here before, it reported that 454 American heiresses had married into European noble families between 1870 and 1914. That's a lot of

Noble families. Yes. And so on that note, we're going to be diving into the story of two of these because at this point we've been going on for quite a while. But I do have to tell some some of these stories because otherwise what would really be the point of all this? The first one I had to mention, it's not the most famous case. In fact, we're not even going to be mentioning the most famous one because screw it, whatever. I think these ones are more interesting, in my opinion. Jenny Jerome.

Jenny Jerome was a beautiful brunette woman, reportedly with bold eyebrows. She was Jenny Jeanette Jerome and born on January 9th, 1854, the second child of New Yorkers Leonard Jerome, 36, and his wife, Clarissa, 28, at the couple's four-story brownstone in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

Of the three girls that he had, it was Jenny who became her father's favorite. And as a young woman, along with her siblings, Kalerita and Leone, I think, they all gained status in high society as dollar princesses. All three of them ended up marrying into nobility.

Leonard Jerome, the way that he got rich in the first place is that he had engaged in stock speculation to the point that he literally earned the nickname the King of Wall Street and was dubbed the father of the American turf for his horse racing track properties. This guy was a Wall Street broker at its finest and a horse racer. He was stupidly wealthy.

And in August of 1873, at a reception on England's Isle of Wight, Jenny, then at the age of 19 years old, would meet and charm. So she pursued him, Lord Randolph Churchill, age 24, a newly elected member of parliament. And after just three days.

The pair got engaged and then was married at the British Embassy in Paris on April 15th, 1874. Oh, sounds cute. Here's the funny thing about all this. When Jenny and Lord Randolph announced that they were engaged, his parents. Oh, my God. They were horrified. Holy crap. The couple had first off. They only known each other for three days. That was insane. Jenny was an American socialite, not a British noblewoman. And the Churchills were horrified.

horribly appalled by all this. And so they tried to block the match. They didn't want this to happen until they did the math. Now, Jerome's family might have been humble, at least in the beginning. But oh, my God, were they stupidly rich?

Lord Randolph's parents by this point were not. And Jerome's father was willing to pay a dowry that if you did the math here today would be the equivalent of six million dollars. OK, at this point, I need to find myself a dollar princess. So when you see what I'm talking about, when I say this is transactional, I mean, it is transactional. Yeah. Oh, I have a question. Yes. Would you marry?

For money, like a transactional marriage, would you tie yourself to someone that you didn't love just for wealth? No. What if this is you are from this time period, you need to do this to save your family estate? If it's to save my family, I would do so. But you are so loyal, you won't cheat. You're just going to be in a loveless marriage. Yeah. Sad. Yeah. Till the end of your days. Yeah.

Could not be me. Anyway, continue. Sorry, that's who I am. It's what I would do. That's me.

Several months later, Lady Randolph Churchill, now the new one, would give birth prematurely to their first child, Winston, on November 30th, 1874 in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. Is it that Winston? Is that Winston Churchill? Yes, this is the future prime minister, Winston Churchill, whose mother was an American socialite. In fact, not just this. If I recall correctly, I think one of the reasons why she was so scandalous, she didn't just have opinions.

She had a tattoo. Oh, a tattoo. I think I'm pretty sure it's this one. If I remember correctly, she had a snake wrapped around her wrist like a tattoo. Visible to. Yes. Not like a little teardrop on her shoulder blade. No, she had a snake tattooed on her wrist. That's so cool. Yeah.

So during the 1880s from this time, she proved to be actually extremely valuable for her husband's political career, not only as a hostess for like parties and other things, but through active campaigning. In fact, there's a debate amongst historians that say that she basically was Lord Randolph's campaign manager because she was active in every single thing that she did. She also played a huge role in the founding of the Primrose League, which was a kind of

social political organization that would create a discussion forum for different issues of the day specifically this was like a prototype for what would lead to the women's suffragette in england like it was a big thing for her she would actually get both women and men involved in the conservative party they were part of and when i say that she supported her husband

She did this in very interesting ways through her family contacts as well as extramarital romantic relationships. She slept around with powerful people even while being married. She greatly helped her husband's career because she would help support him

By sleeping around. It's generally accepted that she had a number of different affairs. Like during her marriage, she is accepted to have had affairs with the Prince of Wales, like the heir to the throne. Milan, the first of Serbia, Prince Karl Kinski and Herbert von Bismarck. Her husband was cool with it. There's a lot of.

contention about that for stuff like being hidden or like an open secret, etc. But also she may not have done it a lot in the beginning that she still stuck with him and did this anyway, but that their marriage, which was full of love in the beginning,

became less of love later. And so they just grew apart. So she still supported him, but she just started fucking around basically and doing what she wanted. And so after her husband died in 1895, she would go on to marry twice more before eventually dying in 1921. And there's a whole lot more that I could say about her because her life is really interesting, but I do have to kind of move on. It's just her story and with Winston Churchill,

That easily could be a whole other thing in itself. I highly recommend for anyone who's looking at this to really go in and look at another thing about her specifically because her story is nice. And the next one that we were going to be talking about, if you thought that one was kind of messy. Oh, no. This is the big and final one that we are doing. This is it. This is the end. And holy shit is the big one. This is the story of Frances Ellen Work, who was the great grandmother of

of princess Diana. So yes, princess Diana, the famous one who ends up, you know, the one that dies in the car chase, uh,

This woman, nicknamed Fanny, was the daughter of Frank Work, who came from Ohio to New York as a teenager. And when he did this, he orchestrated a kind of chance meeting with Cornelius Vanderbilt, which led to him becoming the personal stockbroker of Vanderbilt, which I can just say this right now. If you can imagine what that means. Oh, my God. With the Vanderbilts being involved, that's going to make you stupidly wealthy.

So Fanny basically enjoyed all the riches and privileges and everything of the Gilded Age, all the trappings that come with it. She was a regular at all the society parties in New York and Newport and everywhere she went, she had the latest fashions, which would cause heads to turn. But

There was a lot more to her. She was fiery. She was a good reader. She was fluent in French. She had a knowledge of furniture and art and everything. She was everything that you could imagine for being a well-learned woman. But more important than any of that, she was very headstrong, very stubborn, and did whatever the hell she wanted.

So when a very handsome lad by the name of James Burke, Rosh, who was the son of an Irish Lord that was basically empty in terms of monetary wealth, he had nothing, but was stupidly handsome. Reportedly, when he met her and proposed, she ignored her father's angry dismissal of him and was like, no, you better not do that. And no, she, she just fucking left and married him anyway. And her father, Oh, you want to hear his words on exactly what he said? Quote,

I'm an American to my backbone. I have only contempt for these helpless, hopeless, lifeless men that cross the ocean to carry off the very flower of our womanhood. If I had anything to say about the matter, I'd make international marriage a hanging offense.

Basically, this was a guy who had the exact opposite view of dollar princesses. He didn't want the title of English nobility and all that other stuff that came into play. He thought that they were parasites that were leeching off of the wealthy American businessman. And he hated that. So here's the thing about him. This Jim guy, Jim Rosh.

Between graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge and coming to America, Jim Rosh had been a revolutionist in South America. He had gone to Alaska and became a gold miner. He was an explorer in South America and Patagonia. He would run blockades during the Russo-Japanese War. This guy was the very definition of if you were looking at like an adventure novel or book, he was that. Except he was also stupid.

You may wonder what I mean by that when I say that. Oh, dear God. He came to America with Morton Freeman, which was the enemy of just as was previously described, helpless, lifeless men that

her father despised so much to the point that he was seen as being, quote, a mortal ruin by his own family. That is the nickname that they gave him because he would just launch himself from one horrible, stupid business idea and adventure to another, resulting in massive amounts of debt and failure. So he was very handsome, is very charming. But oh, dear God, was he inept and stupid. In fact, at this point, Gabby, this pair,

Do you know how we talked about what Teddy Roosevelt once did where he decided, hey, I'm going to go off and become a cattle rancher? Yeah. They did that, too, except they had no experience or desire or to do it properly at all. And at the same time, went out there because they, quote, would enjoy the occasional tussle with hostile Indians. Um.

They went out there because they had an idea of basically role playing as cowboys and they wanted to get in fights with natives so they could go on an adventure. I feel like there are other things they could have done. Yeah. So unsurprisingly, their whole adventure failed and our two heroes would then go and have to go back into society. They would put on fine suits and then try to get married to wives and save their lives.

And in this case, Jim managed to marry Fanny. And when this happened, his friend put a ring on the thing of Clara Jerome. Do you recognize the name? Jerome? It's the sister of the previous girl. Oh, Jenny. Yeah.

And that's a Winston Churchill's aunt. That's how it's all related. That's why I wanted to put this in here. So get this right. Fannie and Jim get married in September of 1880. And although she's not entirely disinherited, her father reduces her allowance to $7,000 a year. Oh, no. Which, mind you, at the time. Hold on. Actually, I didn't even put this in here. Can you do some math for me real quick? Can you do a thing of like, what is $7,000 in 1880 comparison today? 1880. Yeah.

Today, $7,018.80 is worth $216,591.67. Okay.

Wow. That's, that's a lot. That was her allowance. That was, that was her allowance. That was her allowance. Hey, you know, even if it was a small, pitiful, stupidly pitiful amount. Oh, I'm tearing up. You're gone. It was still more than seven. It was still $7,000 more than her husband was bringing in, which was nothing. My allowance was like five bucks.

My dad did not love me. Yep. Oh, you just said, yeah. No, no, no. I wasn't saying that to you. I was trying to say, no, I wasn't doing that. I was trying to transition to the next thing I was saying. So I was going, yep. So I promise you, I wasn't saying that to you. Okay. This is just horrible timing. I promise you, this is horrible timing.

Uh, yup. So that using the allowance that she got, um, she would manage to go and pay off Jim's gambling debt of $50,000, which mind you, okay. 7,000 is the equivalent of like 200 something thousand dollars today, which means that if you want to multiply that by seven, that means he had gambling debt. That was over $1.5 million. Wow. That is insane.

And so the young couple would then leave for London, where being an accomplished woman, a brilliant talker and a beauty, Fanny would make her way to the front ranks of London English Society and would begin to kind of do everything. They divided their time between London and Ireland, returned to Jim's childhood home, Trebolgan, where two of their children would end up being born. But it very quickly became apparent that Jim didn't just have some gambling debts. He wasn't just a gambler who had set things aside.

He couldn't stop gambling. And even worse than that, worse than getting them into debt, he cheated on her constantly. So after this, after Jim managed to just get another, mind you, she already paid $50,000 away. After he got another $100,000 in debt, the equivalent of over $3 million today in just one year.

Frank would end up paying for the last time to cover his son-in-law's debt and then ordered them to stop pouring money down a rat hole. That is the direct quote from him. In 1886, after just six years of marriage, their house in London was stripped bare by the bailiffs and Fanny, finally seeing the light, would return to New York with her daughter.

Jim refused to let her take their twin boys back with her. He was going to basically hold them hostage. And back home, she was again reinstated to her father's will. He didn't cut her off completely. And she started divorce proceedings, which was a pretty lengthy process because getting divorced in America was that did not mean that your divorce was actually going to be recognized in England. But Jim refused.

realized, oh, hey, she's gone back home. That means she has money again. He went back to her with the boys, basically dropped them off at her father's house, their grandfather, and pretty much tried to not hold them hostage. What's the term that I'm looking for? He tried to use leverage them. Yeah, that's it. He tried to leverage them to basically get money again.

Yeah, their marriage was permanently broken by this point, and they would get a Delaware divorce, which basically means that the marriage was irretrievably broken through a variety of reasons that could not be put together again. But even with the divorce happening, Jim and even his own mother, like Jim's mother back in Ireland, was continuously sending letters back and forth, basically begging them to please take care of her son, to not let him go astray.

he could have just not gambled. I know. I mean, I understand. Well, I guess back then they didn't have treatment for gambling addiction.

But still, you know, I don't know. So as for what her father would say about this whole measure, he would say, and I quote, I have supported that man until I had to decline to pay his debts. He wrote to me himself. He begged me to come to his assistance. He asked me to save him from bankruptcy. I deemed it wrong to assist him further after his wife and children had come to this country. I have letters from his mother where she begs me to save her son. Yeah.

Life at this point resumed pretty much as it had before her marriage, but Fannie would soon famously complain that it was very hard to make ends meet on an allowance of only $60,000 a year. Isn't that like almost $2 million? It's like $1.8 million. Yes. Yeah. And so disagreements over money would cause her to move out of her father's house in New York and go to Two Mile Corner Farm, which literally had been a present from daddy.

It's like when you run away as a child and you're like, I'm leaving. This house is so unfair. And you just go sit in the backyard. Basically, basically. And so this was, you know, it was a horse farm. Basically, they had all kinds of horses and stuff there. And it was Fanny's passion for horses that led her to take lessons to drive a four in hand carriage. In fact, she became the first woman to drive a four in hand carriage through Central Park. She did whatever the hell she wanted.

Her instructor, though, can you see where this has a whole pool boy kind of element that I could be listing? Her instructor was a young professional reportedly from Hungary who went by the name of Aurel Batonyi. According to him, his parents spent most of their time in Monte Carlo. And aside from owning vast amounts of estates, the family had over 100 different racehorses. His mother had the largest collection of emeralds throughout Europe. He posed himself as being extremely wealthy.

But the other story was that his name was actually none of that, that he was just Arthur Cohn and he worked at the writing school, that he didn't have any money. Either way, she fell in love. And the thing is, at the age of 87,

Fannie's tired dad would once again have to deal with the journalists who would come to the door and go, sir, I'm going to make noise. Sir, do you have anything to say about the fact that your daughter has run off to Europe once again with a young Hungarian lad? Oh, my God. She cannot keep doing this. She did. So instead of giving her allowance at this point, he cuts her out of the will entirely. Like at this point, it's the it's the 13th.

change that he has made to his will because that is how many times he has to deal with her crap. So at the 13th change, he said, and I quote, she is nothing more to me. Yeah. This time though, things were going to be different. Fanny returned to her farm at Newport, but aside from a handful of the, the, um, the equine set, uh,

Arl was not really accepted by society and she was being just abandoned by all of her former friends. Despite the fact that Arl had claimed for years to have great wealth and power and privilege, it didn't appear to be real. And so Fanny being Fanny, you know how she was basically, I'm sure you could probably get the impression she was a bit of a spoiled brat.

The fact that he couldn't deliver all these great promises that he had been making to her meant that she could only last so long without money. And so it was over by the following year. Oral would attempt to sue his would-be father-in-law to the tune of $1.5 million. He tried to sue him for $1.5 million for, and I quote, you want to hear what the lawsuit was? What? Alienating his wife's affections.

Basically, he blamed his father in law for making his wife hate him. I think he being a broke bitch, as the ladies would call it, is why his wife hated him. Yep. A low value man is what the podcast girlie should call him. Pretty much. So he then lashed out at her, tried to sue her and would accuse her of adultery, which ultimately came to nothing.

In October of 1907, Arl was dispatched back to Europe with a one-way ticket before ultimately he disappears. We have no other record of what exactly happens to him. This is so messy. I love her. Yep. So divorced again and safely back in America, Frank, her father, would take Elm Court, which is still actually owned by their descendants today, in case you want to know that. He took it off the market and with the 15th and final modification to his will,

Fannie was once again made a full beneficiary to her father's $14 million fortune. She was put back in the will. But that man was so old. The fact that she kept getting herself picked off and he was like 85. She has no sense of self-preservation. Yep. And so depending upon what account you read, because at this point, we don't really know what happened in history. Either she never really regained her social standing or no, she went off to have a grand old time and do more parties and all kinds of stuff in New York and Paris and more.

blah, blah, blah. Something happened. Either way, she doesn't get married again. She retains Elm Court and would later buy an apartment at 1025th Avenue, where eventually she dies at the ripe old age of 90, unmarried. She is at that point best remembered for remember those children that she had? Yeah. They would go on to have their own descendants. She is the great grandmother of Diana Francis, Princess of Wales. And that is her own story for being a dollar princess.

As for what happened to the dollar princesses in general, well, in the end, it kind of petered out. The trend really began to slow once the newly rich women who had been shunned by American high society actually started to get accepted by high society.

Because get this, at this point, it's not about old money. The people who were in power at this point were all the new money, which meant that if the majority of the social circles were being operated and controlled by people who were this new money type, they can't kick out people who are also new money. So at that point, there's no reason for the dollar princesses to go to Europe and they stay in America. And the dollar princess trend just kind of ends there.

Thus, that's the end of today's episode. Oh my god, this was a long one. We haven't done one that's like an hour and 20 minutes or anything in a long time. That's because you don't have me there to derail your... It's not just a derail though, it is genuinely a good conversation. And the best part was you couldn't escape me because your ankle is jacked, my dear.

I know. I was like really vibing with this episode. It was fun. We need to do more of the... I find it fascinating. And you know, we can definitely cover more stuff on like the Gilded Age, the Victorian Age, and all that kind of stuff here that you find fascinating from your books because there's a lot of really good history that goes into this time with very interesting people. I mean, I could have probably done this entire episode on just the stories of dollar princesses, but you know me.

I have to give context and background. I know. Anyway, my friends, that is the end of today's episode. Thank you so very much for listening. If you want free episodes, if you want additional episodes, make sure to check out Patreon for only a dollar a month. You can get access to extra episodes, add free episodes and more. I will see you all here next time. Thank you all so much for listening. Goodbye, my friends. Bye.