The Servants Who Blackmailed Their Masters: A King Paid CASH for His Own Mother's Letters

The Servants Who Blackmailed Their Masters: A King Paid CASH for His Own Mother's Letters Officially, the perfect servant saw nothing, heard nothing and repeated nothing. Every great house was built on that promise, from a castle in the Scottish Highlands to a mansion on Fifth Avenue to a bungalow in Beverly Hills. But the people who carried the trays knew exactly what their silence was worth. In 1905, a New York banker paid a gossip magazine's messenger in marked bills. A royal estate manager's son found more than 300 of Queen Victoria's letters in a black trunk, and King Edward VII paid to get them back. A prince from India handed two checks to the aide-de-camp paid to protect him, and a London court renamed him Mr. A. A Hollywood secretary refused to sign a confession after 27 hours, and the star she served watched her own life read aloud to a jury. Only one secret in this story was never sold. It went into a coffin, under a layer of flowers. Chapters: 00:00 — The marked bills at the Holland House 03:11 — ACT I — THE RISE 07:55 — ACT II — THE FACADE 12:31 — ACT III — THE CRACK 17:38 — ACT IV — THE RECKONING 21:41 — ACT V — THE AFTERMATH 24:03 — The ring in the coffin Source Material Visual material used in this production is obtained from publicly accessible archives, including Wikimedia Commons, Wellcome Collection and Europeana. Copyright & Fair Use Notice This channel incorporates copyrighted material under the principles of Fair Use as recognized by U.S. law. Under Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act, certain uses of copyrighted works such as for analysis, commentary, educational purposes, research, and reporting are permitted without prior authorization from the copyright holder. Sources William d'Alton Mann and Town Topics — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William... John Brown, Queen Victoria's attendant — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Br...) William Cooper Hobbs, the Mr. A case, The National Archives — https://discovery.nationalarchives.go... Clara Bow and the Daisy DeVoe trial — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Bow U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Connecticut, August 17, 2012 — https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/... #documentary #history #oldmoney #scandal