The Astor Who Faked His Own Death and Bought a Peerage

The Astor Who Faked His Own Death and Bought a Peerage In July 1892 the American press reported that William Waldorf Astor had died of pneumonia. The report came from his own household staff. It was not a mistake and not a rumour that got away from him — one of the richest men in the United States had arranged to be reported dead. It was found out within days. He had twenty-seven years left to live, and nobody has ever explained why he did it. What you can see is what he was running from. He had been elected to the New York Assembly and the State Senate, then stood for Congress twice and lost twice, and was mocked in print until he stopped standing. In 1891 he left the country. Twenty-five years after that, the same man was made a baron, and the year after that a viscount, in a legislature nobody votes for. This film covers the Waldorf Hotel he built on the site of his own house next door to his aunt Caroline; the Pall Mall Gazette and The Observer, which he bought and then handed to his son; Cliveden and Hever Castle, which he bought and rebuilt; and the peerage. On the peerage it is careful, because that is where a documentary decides whether it is being rigorous or merely suggestive. British honours in this period were demonstrably for sale — Parliament established it in 1922 and criminalised it in 1925, and the 1916–22 window contains both of Astor's titles. None of that establishes that Astor bought his. His barony predates Lloyd George's premiership, his wartime donations were real and large, and there is no receipt. The film says so out loud rather than letting the context do the insinuating. It ends with what he actually caused. When he died in October 1919 his son Waldorf inherited the viscountcy, was removed from the Commons to the Lords, and vacated his Plymouth seat. Waldorf's wife Nancy won the by-election and on 1 December 1919 became the first woman to sit in the House of Commons. CHAPTERS 0:00 A death reported by his own staff 1:15 The fourth generation 4:05 What losing involved 7:26 The hotel 9:21 Buying in 12:50 The peerage 16:19 What survives 18:00 So what was he This is the sixth film in a series on Gilded Age New York, and it closes the Astor sequence begun in the fourth and fifth. It also answers the first, on Consuelo Vanderbilt: Act 4 sets his purchase of an English position beside her marriage settlement deliberately. SOURCES New York Tribune, 12 July 1892, on the false report of his death. Records of his service as United States Minister to Italy, 1882-1885. Purchase and disposal of the Pall Mall Gazette, the Pall Mall Magazine and The Observer. Sale records for Cliveden, 1893, and Hever Castle, 1903. Letters patent creating the barony, 1 January 1916, and the viscountcy, 3 June 1917. Parliamentary debate on the sale of honours, July 1922, and the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925. Plymouth Sutton by-election result, declared 28 November 1919. Where a claim is contested, uncorroborated, or merely traditional, the narration says so — including the story that the Waldorf Hotel was built to spite Caroline Astor, which the evidence does not support, and the widely quoted remark about America not being a fit place for a gentleman to live, whose exact wording is less certain than the conduct behind it. IMAGE CREDITS Sixty-eight images: sixty-four public domain, four released under CC0, all via Wikimedia Commons and originally held by the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Rijksmuseum, the Bibliotheque nationale de France and others. The twenty most used are listed here; full per-image provenance is kept in the production manifest. Astor 4445869566 384763740a o W.W. Astor LCCN2014684666 Hever Castle across Church Field 2 Waldorf-Astoria 1904-1908b FIRST ANNUAL DINNER (held by) PENNSYLVANIA SOCIETY (at) Ely House 1772 Dumfries House, Aiton, Circa 1811 Cliveden from below Cookham Ferry, England-LCCN200269696 Nancy Astor Broadway and the Post Office Building, New York, U.S.A. Hever Castle in the County of Kent, from Edward Hasted's A Plymouth, Mme (Nancy) Astor s'adresse à la foule après THE HISTORIC SCENE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS WHEN THE MILI Le discours de M. Lloyd George, No 3906 page 27 Portrait of the 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor Albert Thomas, Lloyd George and lord Reading (1914-1918) Anon-Hever-Castle-98095 Fifth Avenue North from St. Patrick's Cathedral past Van 1919 Plymouth Sutton by-election results The Waldorf Astoria, New York (NYPL b12647398-62142) #GildedAge #History #Astor