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#18 Who were the real Lady Whistledowns?

Gossip Papers, Bridgerton

The Gossip Papers


Questions/musings for podcast:

  • Why are we all so fascinated by tales of the long eighteenth-century?

    • Similarities with our own time?

      • Commercial development (RG addition: the eighteenth-century saw the emergence of the capitalist economic system that we’re all familiar with today)

      • Culture of consumption (RG addition: luxury spending became a thing! The middle class emerged as a result of economic boom, and consequently the wealthier class were purchasing items for the sake of showing off their wealth!)

      • Importance of print culture in everyday life 

  • What were gossip papers?

    • Gossip papers, often referred to as scandal sheets or gossip columns, were a means of distributing gossip and information - most commonly regarding the wealthy elite. 

      • E.g 1770s Town & Country which ran a monthly column on the sex lives of England’s elite

      • Or The Morning Post, a highly popular paper that published light-hearted stories about high society which included exhaustive coverage of the balls of London’s social season 

        • E.g the paper’s coverage of the Prince Regent’s 1811 fête in the drawing room at St. James’s Palace described exactly who everyone danced with:

          • “The first couple who tripped on the light fantastic toe were Earl Percy, and the accomplished, and deservedly celebrated beauty, Lady Jane Montague, daughter of the Duchess of Manchester”

  • When, if ever, was London taken over by Lady Whistledowns?

    • The heyday of gossip columns/scandal sheets was not in fact regency, but around the 1770s/80s - by 1770 there were sixty newspapers printed in London every week and a sophisticated network of news gathering and distribution 

      • A little earlier than Bridgerton would have one believe …


Key historiographical info:

  • The circulation of printed media

    • Tim Clayton: heavily credits coffee houses and inns for circulation of ideas. Such establishments would purchase pamphlets, papers and prints to attract customers. The display of topical prints in shop windows also helped to circulate satirical images to the non-reading public. Moreover, advertisements in newspapers helped to alert audiences to an ever expanding market of prints and magazines.

  • The dawn of public opinion?

    • Press freedom as a mediation between parliament and people

      • This concept of public opinion was promoted by newspapers and reform groups from the 1760s

        • Radical MP John Wilkes’ only furthered this with his challenges to Parliament 

        • Moreover, freedom was on the mind as a result of increasing radicalism in both America and France

    • Victoria Gardner: “contemporaries described a daily buzz around news acquisition in the metropolis as Londoners pounded the streets from one coffee house to the next, searching for up-to-date news”

  • What was a celebrity?

    • Stella Tillyard: “In the eighteenth-century someone possessing celebrity was at a simple level someone celebrated, the centre of a throng, a person surrounded, the object of joyous attention”

      • However, between 1763 and the mid-1780s, when the Peace of Paris ended the Seven Years’ War, Britain and Continental Europe were opened up to one another again, something approaching “a cult of celebrity did sweep Europe”

    • Attitudes to celebs: “It was feverish, sensational and evanescent, driven underground at the century’s end by religious revival, war, the collapse of optimism in many fields of endeavour, and the harsh moral climate that was the result”


Newspaper Context

  • General background 

    • Following the restoration of the monarchy, the 1662 Printing Act heavily restricted news publications 

      • It was only when this lapsed in 1695 that newspapers grew in relevance and significance 

        • Previously, the number of printing presses was legally limited

          • Post-1695 anyone became free to set up a printing business and newspapers, pamphlets and prints were all produced in far greater numbers than ever before.

          • Helped to develop a more public culture 

          • Increasing interest in the affairs of others 

          • Known as a bit of an ‘English Casanova’

          • They married in August 1744, but kept it secret so that Elizabeth could maintain her position as a maid of honour 

          • Marriage did not last as from 1749 the couple remained separated 

          • Union only lasted four years as Kingston dies in September 1773

          • Kinservik: “By making the trial so public, he raised the stakes for everyone involved, thereby ensuring it would not be a speedy matter; rather, it would take at least a week, considerably enriching him with each passing day.”

          • Yates said the following in defence of his column 

          • “[T]he anecdotes and rumours of these columns are gathered from the conversation of those who are most likely to be well acquainted with the topics under discussion. It must be further evident that occasionally stories which eventually turn out not to be founded on fact will creep in, but they are simply narrated as rumours, as what people are talking about, as “on dits” and are never vouchsafed as facts. (“Lounger” 71)”

          • Suggestion therefore that gossip was part of cultural life

          • Only furthered by the fact that writers such a Yates usually came from “theatrical backgrounds”

          • However, his eavesdropping did end up getting him into trouble as Yates ended up serving a four month sentence in prison for libel due to a false anonymous source - always check your sources ;)

    • 18th-century printing boom

      • Annual newspaper circulation of 2.4 million copies in 1713, and 16 million in 1801

    • Joel Wiener: “By the 1870s, additional changes began to transform the ‘look’ and content of journalism: a greatly increased number of pictures and illustrations; livelier, personalised writing that emphasised human interest; and more attention paid to sports, gossip and other tangential variations of sensationalism”

  • Culture of bribery

    • Papers also gained a lot of ‘funding’ from the use of blackmail/bribery 

      • E.g Robert Walpole, first PM, purchased The London Journal and spent over £40,000 bribing other papers to write favourably of him and his policies in the 1730s

      • Advertisement helped to reduce the need for such methods 

        • But it was still persistent, especially when it came to the circulation of scandal 

  • Commercial power

    • Increasing profits from advertisement freed papers from a dependence on political subsidies 

      • Could now more freely report on whatever was thought to interest the purchasing public 

  • What about libel?

    • Stella Tillyard, who wrote “Celebrity in 18th-Century London” for History Today: “The law of personal libel was so weak as to be non-existent”

      • By the 1750s public figures were commonly referred to in the press by the initials of their names or titles

        • With the King going by “a certain great personage”, or a “very great personage”

          • With these code letters/words no gossip was unprintable…

      • Tillyard: “A free press and a weak libel law created a climate of speculation and gossip far freer, more direct, personal and scurrilous than we have today”


Case study: Duchess of Kingston - trialled in April 1776

  • Background

    • Elizabeth Chudleigh or the Duchess of Kingston was on trial for bigamy 

      • Last great state trial was Lord Byron’s manslaughter case a decade earlier, and it is safe to say that the tales of the Duchess spread like wild fire

        • Offers insight into both frivolous and criminal reporting at the time

      • Known as the ‘doubly-noble prisoner’, Chudleigh was a media sensation 

        • At 22 (1743) she was appointed as a maid of honour to Augusta, Princess of Wales

          • Thus, she was quickly established as part of the ‘ton’

          • She soon met Augustus John Hervey, third son of John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey

          • Known as a bit of an ‘English Casanova’

          • They married in August 1744, but kept it secret so that Elizabeth could maintain her position as a maid of honour 

          • Marriage did not last as from 1749 the couple remained separated 

          • Union only lasted four years as Kingston dies in September 1773

          • Kinservik: “By making the trial so public, he raised the stakes for everyone involved, thereby ensuring it would not be a speedy matter; rather, it would take at least a week, considerably enriching him with each passing day.”

          • Yates said the following in defence of his column 

          • “[T]he anecdotes and rumours of these columns are gathered from the conversation of those who are most likely to be well acquainted with the topics under discussion. It must be further evident that occasionally stories which eventually turn out not to be founded on fact will creep in, but they are simply narrated as rumours, as what people are talking about, as “on dits” and are never vouchsafed as facts. (“Lounger” 71)”

          • Suggestion therefore that gossip was part of cultural life

          • Only furthered by the fact that writers such a Yates usually came from “theatrical backgrounds”

          • However, his eavesdropping did end up getting him into trouble as Yates ended up serving a four month sentence in prison for libel due to a false anonymous source - always check your sources ;)

        • In 1750 she started seeing Evelyn Pierrepont, 2nd duke of Kingston

          • They co-habited, unmarried for close to 20 years - suggesting they may have had true feelings for each other?

        • In 1768 Hervey reentered her life and requested a formal separation

          • They colluded in legal subterfuge to get the ecclesiastical courts to annul their marriage - it never existed 

          • The following month Elizabteth married Kingston

          • Union only lasted four years as Kingston dies in September 1773

          • Kinservik: “By making the trial so public, he raised the stakes for everyone involved, thereby ensuring it would not be a speedy matter; rather, it would take at least a week, considerably enriching him with each passing day.”

          • Yates said the following in defence of his column 

          • “[T]he anecdotes and rumours of these columns are gathered from the conversation of those who are most likely to be well acquainted with the topics under discussion. It must be further evident that occasionally stories which eventually turn out not to be founded on fact will creep in, but they are simply narrated as rumours, as what people are talking about, as “on dits” and are never vouchsafed as facts. (“Lounger” 71)”

          • Suggestion therefore that gossip was part of cultural life

          • Only furthered by the fact that writers such a Yates usually came from “theatrical backgrounds”

          • However, his eavesdropping did end up getting him into trouble as Yates ended up serving a four month sentence in prison for libel due to a false anonymous source - always check your sources ;)

  • Why ‘doubly noble’?

    • 1775 - Hervey became 3rd Earl of Bristol 

      • Ie noble regardless of which man you consider to be her husband 

    • Doubly a media sensation?

  • The issue of inheritance

    • Kingston left his entire estate to Elizabeth on the condition that at her death or remarriage, the estate was to go to Kingston’s nephew Charles Medows

      • His older brother Evelyn Medows was disinherited and therefore attempted to undermine the will by contesting the validity of Elizabeth’s marriage

        • Ultimately leading to her trial 

  • Trial outcome

    • 22 April 1776 119 lords pronounced Elizabeth guilty

      • Elizabeth claimed privilege of peerage and escaped punishment leaving England the following day 

        • Spent the next decade in Paris 

  • Gossip and the trial

    • Trial itself functioned as a high society event 

      • Due to her title Elizabeth was trialled in the House of Lords 

        • Seating was limited and highly sought after so newspaper notices warned women not to wear their hair too high as it would obstruct the view of the trial 

      • Coffeehouses opposite the Lords were reserved for the festivities by esteemed guests - often the centres of satirical art and gossip circulation 

    • Why was a public trial so advantageous?

      • Many people profited, notably newspapers and gossip columns alike 

        • Historians such as Matthew Kinservik noted that for Henry Bathurst, the Lord High Steward and therefore the presiding judge, the media frenzy was extremely financially beneficial 

          • As Lord High Steward he was due to be paid £1000 per day

          • Kinservik: “By making the trial so public, he raised the stakes for everyone involved, thereby ensuring it would not be a speedy matter; rather, it would take at least a week, considerably enriching him with each passing day.”

          • Yates said the following in defence of his column 

          • “[T]he anecdotes and rumours of these columns are gathered from the conversation of those who are most likely to be well acquainted with the topics under discussion. It must be further evident that occasionally stories which eventually turn out not to be founded on fact will creep in, but they are simply narrated as rumours, as what people are talking about, as “on dits” and are never vouchsafed as facts. (“Lounger” 71)”

          • Suggestion therefore that gossip was part of cultural life

          • Only furthered by the fact that writers such a Yates usually came from “theatrical backgrounds”

          • However, his eavesdropping did end up getting him into trouble as Yates ended up serving a four month sentence in prison for libel due to a false anonymous source - always check your sources ;)

    • Not only huge for London papers and mags - large provincial interest 

      • Reportings in Ireland, Scotland and Welsh papers. 

        • Much focus on her as crazed woman 

          • Hampshire Chronicle, 29 April 1776: “The Duchess was so exceedingly affected whilst she delivered several parts of this speech, that she was seized with hysterics, and in that condition was carried out of the court”

        • In her death, memoirs were printed in papers up and down the country with extensive focus on her status and the intricacies of her trial


Case study: Richard Worsley and Seymour Worsley of Appuldurcombe House

  • Quick character summaries

    • James Gilray 

      • Took up caricature in 1780

        • Known for satirical illustrations or prints 

    • Sir Richard Worsley and Lady Seymour Worsley

      • Husband and wife 

      • Richard inherited Appuldurcombe (Isle of White) in 1768

      • The two met in 1772, and by 1776 were married with a son

      • Seymour soon sought solace in fashionable society 

        • Hanging out with the Duchess of Devonshire 

    • George Bisset

      • Arrives on the island in 1780

      • Shortly after his arrival he is made captain of Worsley’s militia 

  • Geo/political context

    • Threat of French invasion looming - local troops ordered to assemble in Kent 

      • As a result, Worsley’s militia, including Bisset and Lady Worsley, moved to the mainland

        • All moved together to a large house in Maidstone 

  • The affair

    • Soon George and Seymour were seeing each other

      • And then eloped 

        • This led to Richard’s decision to “sue George for a cripplingly massive sum of money, on the grounds that his treacherous captain had ‘damaged’ his wife”

          • Rumours swirled as this was believed to be Lady Worsley’s 28th affair/sexual conquest 

  • The trial 

    • Sensing a theme?

      • Trials were events of the season, especially if they were scandalous and involved the elite 

    • One of the most damning pieces of evidence in George’s favour was the tale of the bathhouse…

      • In September 1781 George, Seymour and Sir Richard decided to visit a local segregated bathhouse 

        • Supposedly the men found a high window above the women’s bathing rooms and Richard offered George a view of his wife

        • As one can imagine such details resulted in a press frenzy with famous satirist James Gillray creating multiple prints inspired by the events


‘Sir Richard Worse-than-Sly, Exposing his Wife’s Bottom - O fye!’, 1782, James Gillray

‘A Peep into Lady W!!!!!y’s Seraglio, 1782, James Gillray

  • Hardly an attempt to hide the identity of the subject…


  • The trial outcome

    • After such a media circus, it was clear that there was very little sympathy for Richard within public culture 

      • Richard was therefore awarded compensation of a single shilling 

  • Details of the trial were covered minute by minute

    • Resulted in the publication of pamphlets such as ‘Amorous Adventures of Sir Richard Easy, and Lady Wagtail’


The development of the gossip papers:

  • Turning point 

    • In the 1840s mainstream newspapers moved towards cleaner subjects 

      • leading to the shuttering of scandal sheets like the Age, the Satirist, and the Town.

        • Remaining ‘scandal rags’ were prohibited by the Obscene Publications Act of 1857”

    • However, the publication of oral gossip was still popular 

      • “Longer at the Clubs”

        • Gossip column established in 1855 by Edmund Yates

          • He was the ultimate eavesdropper - He paid people for gossip that was overheard at elite events to put in his publication

          • Yates said the following in defence of his column 

          • “[T]he anecdotes and rumours of these columns are gathered from the conversation of those who are most likely to be well acquainted with the topics under discussion. It must be further evident that occasionally stories which eventually turn out not to be founded on fact will creep in, but they are simply narrated as rumours, as what people are talking about, as “on dits” and are never vouchsafed as facts. (“Lounger” 71)”

          • Suggestion therefore that gossip was part of cultural life

          • Only furthered by the fact that writers such a Yates usually came from “theatrical backgrounds”

          • However, his eavesdropping did end up getting him into trouble as Yates ended up serving a four month sentence in prison for libel due to a false anonymous source - always check your sources ;)

    • Starkly different however to the earlier Georgian gossip column 

      • As explored by Lauren Mccoy: “Victorian gossip writers and editors often suggested that newspaper content was too dry and perhaps needed something like a gossip column to convey liveliness and a personal connection to the news”

        • But only in moderation 

          • Placed in the interior pages near art and literary criticism 

          • Suggestion therefore that gossip was part of cultural life

          • Only furthered by the fact that writers such a Yates usually came from “theatrical backgrounds”

          • However, his eavesdropping did end up getting him into trouble as Yates ended up serving a four month sentence in prison for libel due to a false anonymous source - always check your sources ;)

      • Whereas, Mccoy: “Georgian-era scandal sheets used coarse language and covered even coarser issues, as the title of the adultery-focused Crim-Con Gazette makes clear”

        • Thrived off blackmail and intimidation tactics 

    • Yates and his “Lounger” fit in well as part of this newfound sanitised culture 

      • Yates went on to publish The World - first society journal 

        • Signified the commercial success of gossip column 

          • These journals mainly focused on gossip, rather than news

          • However, his eavesdropping did end up getting him into trouble as Yates ended up serving a four month sentence in prison for libel due to a false anonymous source - always check your sources ;)


Sources


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