The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse - Piu Marie Eatwell

Written by Piu Marie Eatwell
Read by Barnaby Edwards
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse: An Extraordinary Edwardian Case of Deception and Intrigue

Publisher: W. F. Howes Audio/The Whole Story
Released: Jul 5, 2015
Length: 9 hours

1897: An elderly widow, Anna Maria Druce, made a strange request of the London Ecclesiastical Court: it was for the exhumation of the grave of her late father-in-law, T.C. Druce. Behind her application lay a sensational claim: that Druce had been none other than the eccentric and massively wealthy 5th Duke of Portland, and that the—now dead—Duke had faked the death of his alter ego. When opened, Anna Maria contended, Druce’s coffin would be found to be empty.

At the close of the Victorian era, as now, privacy was power. The extraordinarily wealthy 5th Duke of Portland had a mania for it, hiding in his carriage and building tunnels between buildings to avoid being seen. The eccentric duke, Anna Maria contended, had faked his death as Druce, and her son should inherit the Portland millions.

Piu Marie Eatwell evokes an era when the rise of sensationalist media blurred every fact into fiction and when family secrets and fluid identities pushed class anxieties to new heights.

The Druce/Portland case was a cause celebre at the end of the Victorian Age and dragged on for years. To make matters even more confusing, another man stepped forward who announced that he was the rightful heir as an out-of-wedlock son of the Duke and that the Druce case was balderdash. It couldn’t have been more confusing.

Ten years passed before the case ended in January 1908, ultimately involving 12 judges, 14 hearings, and numerous investigators and witnesses. Eatwell follows the case from beginning to end, providing background on judges, lawyers, evidence (some fraudulent, some circumstantial and problematic), and unreliable witnesses; details the duke and Druce’s similarities (appearance, mannerisms, diet, infirmities, habits); and covers the provocative madness of the trial. The rigorous research is the book’s strength. Eatwell often digresses to insert background, enriching the narrative with juicy details from the time period, or to note other sensational cases (both George Eliot and Charles Dickens were involved in double lives, for instance), positing that the period’s restrictive social mores often forced people into scandalous situations.

Another review…
The author did some amazing research on this case and keeps as unbiased as possible in her reporting. It was a legal nightmare and a very complicated state of affairs (literally). There are many characters to keep track of and this can sometimes be a problem for the reader but it is a minor complaint. I certainly won’t give away any of the results of the legal battle or the rather amazing postscript to the narrative. It can be a slow read but an interesting one indeed.

VERDICT This true crime tale that reads like a novel is recommended for lovers of historical crime stories, Victorian and Edwardian scandals, media history, and historical legal thrillers with many twists…Library Journal