WEIRD Things That Were Normal in the Gilded Age | History for Sleep

Have you ever stopped to wonder what actually counted as normal for the richest women in Gilded Age New York? Not the romanticized version, all marble staircases and orchestras and gowns sweeping across a ballroom floor. The real version. The full version. The one where dogs sit at the dinner table in jeweled collars, women swallow arsenic to look paler, brooches are woven from a dead relative's hair, and an entire household of servants is trained to make sure the family never once has to see them working. Because here is the paradox nobody tells you about: the strangest part of this era was not the wealth itself, it was how completely normal the wealth made everything look, even things that would stop a modern dinner party cold. In this video, we step into the world of Adelaide, a composite of the women who actually lived this life, thirty something, married into old New York money, mistress of a Fifth Avenue mansion staffed by servants trained to remain invisible, and keeper of a social calendar so exact that a single wrongly folded calling card could quietly end a friendship, and a single missed invitation could end a family's entire standing in society. Topics Covered: Gilded Age America, Gilded Age New York high society, filthy rich Gilded Age women, Fifth Avenue mansions, Newport cottages and the Vanderbilts, Gilded Age dinner parties and etiquette, Mrs. Astor and the Four Hundred, Gilded Age servants and household staff, dollar princesses and Gilded Age marriages, weird Victorian and Gilded Age beauty customs #historyforsleep #gildedage #sleephistory #americanhistory #fifthavenue #sleepvideo