Hello, I'm Carl Raymond, the host of the Gilded Gentleman History podcast where every two weeks we journey into corners light and dark of

America's Gilded Age, Francis Bellepuck, and England's late Victorian and Edwardian

eras.

One of the great advances towards the end of the 19th century, and certainly in the

Gilded Age,

was the tremendous volume of press that became available to inform New Yorkers and just about

everyone else, just what was going on. Dozens of newspapers reported on all aspects of

Gilded Age life, including, and perhaps most sensationally, crime.

In the late 1880s and into the 1890s, one particular crime, or actually series of crimes,

took New York readers by their high, starched collars, and just wouldn't let go.

It was a crime that included fraud, lurid love affairs, attempted murder, adultery, and false

identity, and that's just for starters. And it all centered on one of New York society's elite,

the great-grandson of none other than Alexander Hamilton. Indeed, this sion of one of New York and America's great families found himself caught up in a very

tangled web that made almost daily headlines for nearly two years.

Today, the story had been forgotten with all of its shocking details until my guest today has

brought it all back to light.

When you hear the tale, you'll agree it's hard to imagine that we know nothing of this tale today,

but thanks to a new book by Bill Schaefer, my guest today, we can go back in time to the gilded

age with all of its elegance, but also the gritty underbelly

to relive it all.

Bill Schaefer is the author of the scandalous Hamilton's, a Gilded Age grifter, a founding

father's disgraced descendant, and a trial at the dawn of tabloid

...