260: The 1889 Hamilton Scandal w/ Bill Shaffer - A True Crime History Podcast

Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

Erik Rivenes

True Crime, History, Education

4.7 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2022

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Robert Ray Hamilton, great-grandson of Alexander Hamilton, was a successful man in the late 1880s. Powered by family money and fame, he spent his time developing real estate and serving in the New York State Assembly. But his life came crashing down on him in 1889 when his wife Eva (whom he'd met at a brothel) was arrested for stabbing their baby's nursemaid in a violent argument. Soon famed New York City police detective Thomas Byrnes would dig up tawdry details on Eva's plot to con her husband out of his fortune.

My guest is Bill Shaffer, author of "The Scandalous Hamiltons: A Gilded Age Grifter, a Founding Father's Disgraced Descendant, and a Trial at the Dawn of Tabloid Journalism". He shares some of the twists and turns in this truly unbelievable Gilded Age tale of baby farms and fraudsters.

More information about the author and his work can be found at his website here: https://www.billshafferbooks.com/

Purchase the book here: https://www.kensingtonbooks.com/9780806542256/the-scandalous-hamiltons/

Become a Most Notorious patron: https://www.patreon.com/mostnotorious
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Transcript

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1:17.2	Welcome everyone to another episode of the most notorious podcast,
1:30.3	Amiric Rivenes. Great to have you here with me. And it is great to have Bill Schaeffer as my guest.
1:38.1	He has a Master's of Arts in History of Design and Curatorial Studies from the new schools
1:46.8	Parsonschool of Design. And the book he is here to discuss today is entitled The Scandalist
1:54.8	Hamilton's, a gilded grifter of founding father's disgraced descendant and a trial at the dawn of
2:04.1	tabloid journalism. Great to have you on. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it, Eric.
2:12.6	Yes, certainly. So this is your first book. It is indeed. I've written some short form pieces,
2:22.5	design focus kind of short essays, but this is my first full-length book.
2:26.8	How was the process as a first-time author? It was pretty interesting. I have to say the way I got
2:36.4	to the book is I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and I do historical design and architectural
2:43.6	research for other authors for design consultancies, things like that. And I was walking, I was actually
	...

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