The Gossip Game: The Man Who Blackmailed the Gilded Age

Blackmail in the Gilded Age

0:00Before the era of the tabloid, New Yorkers got their gossip fix from a publication known as Town Topics, where the shocking secrets of the Gilded Age were revealed. But its publisher, William Dalton Mann, was into more than just a bit of sleaze. He used these scandalous revelations to blackmail members of New York's high society. In this episode of The Gilded Gentleman, Carl Raymond and his special guest, Vanity Fair writer Joe Pompeo, introduce you to this forgotten scheme which threatened to tear

0:31apart the morals and polite mannerisms of Gilded Age society. And for more adventures through Gilded Age New York, check out The Gilded Gentleman podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy.

Sensationalism and the Celebrity Press

0:46As followers of that glittering and gaudy moment in American history known as the Gilded Age know, it was a time of elegance, grandeur, and enormous social transition, but also untethered ambition, drive, and competition. And aside from all of that, there was a nearly universal grab for power among the men to rule industry and gain wealth, and among the women to secure social rank,

1:16and among everybody else, just to survive. But the Gilded Age, it could be said, was often fueled by greed, gossip, and scandal. One standing in society was often defined by what the press said about you. And as the Gilded Age gathered full steam, newspapers, magazines, and journals exploded into production, all needing the most sensational stories to capture readers' eyes, make impressions, true or not,

1:47but most of all, to create wealth for their publishers. At the center of much of the glitzy, Gilded Age celebrity press was an innocuous-sounding publication called Town Topics. Once a social publication focused on art, music culture, and literature, under a new owner with his own unbridled ambitions, it grew to be New York's equivalent of one of our scandal sheets of today, reporting news of varying quality and accuracy, but all leading to a complex scheme of blackmail

2:23and extortion. Until, of course, to the shock of its publisher, it was all dramatically exposed in a sting operation that sent him off to a public and damning trial, covered extensively by, of course, the press. Joining me today to delve into the drama of Town Topics, the gossip it reported, and the schemes of its publisher is journalist and author Joe Pompeo. Joe wrote a fascinating article on Town Topics for Town & Country magazine,

2:55and it is his research and perspective that forms the basis of our show today.

3:05Joe Pompeo is a former senior correspondent at Vanity Fair and the author of Blood and Ink, the scandalous jazz-age double murder that hooked America on true crime. He is currently working on the forthcoming California Screaming, Misfits, Mayhem, Murder, and Hollywood's Punk Rock Revolution, due to be published in 2027. He's developing a podcast adaptation of Blood and Ink for iHeart

3:35Media and Vanity Fair. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, Town & Country, Airmail, The Hollywood Reporter, and many other publications.

Historical True Crime and Dark History

3:47Gosh, Joe, welcome to the Gilded Gentleman table today. We have been talking about this show for a while, and I'm so glad you're actually really here. I'm excited to be here. And, you know, I wrote this article, I think, you know, more than a year ago. So it was very fun to delve back in because it's such a great, got such a great story. Oh, there were so many angles and complications, and we're going to talk about as many of them as we possibly can today. And Joe, I've so longed to do a show on town topics, and I was so excited

4:18to read your article. So it was certainly a convergence of forces for that. But not only the gossip, but really the true crime behind it. And so much of your work is about true crime and scandal and all of that. What is it that attracts you to these kinds of stories? Well, you know, it's funny because I am, I've sort of been pegged into the true crime genre, but I don't, you know, I'm not like a modern day true crime consumer. I'm much more a fan of

4:48historical true crime and dark history and scandals of old. I like those sorts of non-fiction books. There's something transportive about them. And I think, you know, history in general is very rich and enjoyable to me. But I think when you can access history through these kind of dark, juicy scandals and crimes, it's a lot more fun. So I think, you know, as a reader, as a consumer of media, I know I'm drawn to a lot of stuff like that. So I also enjoy writing and researching it

5:18myself. The other thing that I think is fascinating about it, because I've done a few shows on true crime, is when you go back a hundred years, obviously they didn't have the forensics that we have today. They didn't have the same crime investigative approaches that we have today. So it's kind of fascinating to see how things were uncovered, how they were researched, right? Don't you think that whole element sort of plays into that too? Yeah, absolutely. And even, you know, some things like the notion of fingerprinting, I mean, that was a, you know, that's something that emerged in the time

5:48period that, you know, your show covers. I also think there's something to be said for when you're, these are stories that we approach with a certain degree of levity, because they happened so long ago. It's, you know, there is a detachment when you're writing about old crime that happened versus crimes that happened last year, last month, where there's victims alive and family members for whom it's very raw. There's something that's, it's nice having the detachment of, you know, decades or a hundred years or more to sort of approach these stories still with, you know, making sure you're

6:19treating those victims with respect and treating their stories the way that they, they deserve to be told. Because some of this stuff was really horrible, right? I mean, you know, I'm thinking like murders, but even some of the stuff and, you know, we're going, we're going to be talking about today. This was still, you know, personal, personal scandals and things that, you know, were probably traumatic for people in their own way. So, you know, we should be mindful of that, but it also is just a lot of fun. Absolutely. So let's dive in here because there's an awful lot to say about, about Town Topics, the publisher and what all happened here. So let's just begin with Town

6:53Topics, this, this publication that seemed to come out of nowhere, but perhaps not really.

Origins of Town Topics

6:59So Town Topics, the Journal of Society. So Joe, just what was this? Well, so Town Topics, it was originally publication found, it was founded in 1879 under a different name and it was called originally Andrew's American Queen, a National Society Journal. And it was owned, published by W.R. Andrews, who is a manufacturer of dress patterns. And I think his interest in doing a publication like this about fashion and society was essentially to advance his own

7:30business interests. So it was pretty boring. You know, the subject matter was, you know, lists of guests at social functions, descriptions of what everyone was wearing, you know, that sort of thing. So it didn't really find much of an audience. And over the next few years, it sort of bounced around between different owners. At one point, the owner was Lewis Keller, who's someone that maybe that name is familiar to your listeners. He was the person who would go on to found the social register. And it was during Keller's brief ownership of the magazine that it became

8:02known as Town Topics. So he changed the name. But it wasn't until the spring of 1885 that the publication took on more of the form that it would come to be famous for. And that's when it was sold out of bankruptcy to a man named Eugene Mann. And shortly thereafter, Eugene's brother, who was named, who was the Colonel William Dalton Mann, he brought a one third interest in the publication. Now, under Eugene Mann's stewardship of this magazine, you know, it expanded its scope. It became sort of something of a thriving enterprise for the first time. It described itself as a journal

8:35devoted to, quote, society, fashions, drama, music, art, books, the club, racing, yachting, military, flowers, household, etc. And it also is very, you know, kind of self-important and audacious. And I think under its masthead, it claimed to be the newsiest, brightest, wittiest, wisest, cleverest, most original and most entertaining paper ever published. So it had a lot of bravado. And Eugene Mann, he published it. He was the publisher for a total of six years. And during his time at the helm, the circulation rose from something like 5,000 to 60,000. And then eventually

9:11in 1891, he transferred full ownership to his brother, William Dalton Mann. And it was under under Colonel Mann that it, you know, grew even further. And it then grew from 60,000 to a figure, you know, reportedly somewhere as, you know, above 100,000. So that was really when it became, you know, more of more of a force and something that had a very large readership in New York City. Oh, boy, that is a lot of copies. Even today, it's not it's not bad, right? Yeah, not bad. But this is interesting to me, because this really illustrates and we're definitely going

9:42to get into the Colonel and what happened when he took over the magazine. But what I really want to talk about for the moment is this moment in in sort of journalistic history. And I did a show on newspapers about a year ago. And it was fascinating to sort of track what was happening in the Gilded Age. And would you talk a little bit about that? Because we had sort of the journalism wars between Pulitzer and Hearst and also technology was changing. So we had different printing. We had

10:13distribution. I mean, it was all of these things were coming together. And aside from any salaciousness that fit into this, right? Can you talk about what was going on at the moment here?

The Rise of Mass Media

10:23Well, and I would even back up a little bit earlier. And I think, you know, you could argue that the mid 19th century was really, you know, kind of the birth of mass media, mass consumer media, as we know it today. And that was really as a result of the rise of the penny press. So this was going back to the 1830s, 1840s. These were these daily publications literally sold for a penny, whereas the commercial trade papers of the day would have been like six cents, you know, and they're really more towards geared towards businessmen and things like that. But now, you know, your average working class person in New York City can pick up one of these papers

10:56for a penny. And these were, of course, Benjamin Day's New York Sun, James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald and Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. These are sort of like proto tabloids, down market, largely down market news for the working class, a lot of crime, a lot of scandal, a lot of sensation types of things that maybe, you know, a publication like Town Topics will come to cover and certainly later on the tabloid press. But then by the late 19th century, bringing it, you know, what the era that the period we're talking about today, you know, maybe around 1885 and there on, this one, we're starting to see the advent of the yellow press, yellow journalism,

11:29which is Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. So these, at this point, kind of become the dominant players, even more sensational, really, than the penny papers. And Pulitzer and Hearst were also maybe trying to more overtly influence politics and maybe even world affairs. And they, of course, find themselves in this ruthless circulation war, but at the same time, these are still just, those are still just two of, you know, more than like a dozen, maybe even as many as 20 or something like that. I don't know the exact number off the top of my head, but morning and evening newspapers all in New York City during this period. So it really

12:03is quite a robust newspaper market. Same time, you have all these new magazines that are popping up. There's McClure's, which, you know, gives rise to the Muckrakers. There's Collier's. It's another sort of magazine rooted in, you know, investigative journalism and social reform. And Collier's, we'll come back to, because it ends up actually playing a key role in the sort of, in the town topics scandal. And then there's Harper's, just caters more to kind of like the literary and political elite. Same thing with the Atlantic Monthly. And then there's these emerging sort of like women's magazines, Ladies Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar. So again, they're

12:37more upmarket covering domestic issues, fashion, things like that. So it's a, you know, we're starting to see kind of a robust, diverse media market in America that could cater both to, you know, kind of the moneyed classes and also poor working class people and immigrants and things like that. One of the things I find so fascinating about this is we think today the 24-hour news cycle that we're all somehow all swept into is a new thing. It's not a new thing. This was practically 24-hour news cycle back then, right? And because we had morning papers and afternoon papers, right? And there was

13:11different editions. So when you do research and you start to look at, you know, it's not just like what did a paper publish on January 19th, 1885? It's like the news in the morning was much different than what you'd read in the evening. There would be new developments. Papers in the evening can get a jump on the next day's news. So it was, you know, maybe not completely 24 hours. And of course, people aren't reading the news with as much immediacy, but there were a lot more publications in print back then for people to be picking up on the street every day.

13:41Yeah. And it was all paper, which is hard for us to imagine today. You had mentioned a few minutes ago when you were talking about Hearst and Pulitzer, yellow journalism. For any listeners that are not familiar with that, could you define what that means? So that is really, I think, you know, this is real. I mean, think of it as just as the easiest way for a listener to understand it is just, I mean, sensation, taking stories, making them embellishing, making them, you know, maybe a little something more than they really are playing to all the most sensational aspects of a story when maybe in reality, it's not quite as

14:13exciting as it seems in the newspaper. And there's also kind of like a crusading element, you know, if they wanted to really champion a certain cause, they would go really, really hard at that. So that kind of all falls under the umbrella, I think, of yellow journalism. But, you know, it's one of a piece of, you know, what we would consider more kind of like tabloid news. You know, tabloids didn't officially be, that didn't officially become a genre until in 1990, well, in America, at least, until the roaring 20s, really. But what we think of as tabloid

14:43news, yellow journalism, sensation, over the top, that's kind of what we're talking about. So with this plethora of newspapers and magazines and journals and all this stuff coming out all over the place. Back to town topics, how did that fit in with all of this? Was this something really unique? Was this, if we think of it as a gossip rag, was it the only one in town? How did it fit in? So, you know, it kind of embodied elements, maybe a little bit of each of the types of publications we're talking about. You know, it had the kind of like domestic women's focused

15:16coverage that the women's magazines were doing. It certainly didn't have like muckraking and things like that. But, you know, much like, you know, Harper's or the Atlantic Monthly or other papers would have been covering the arts. You know, it was in that, it was in that zone. And then, of course, it, you know, it had all this, this gossip, this scarless gossip too. But at the same time, it was kind of, you know, something of its, of its own. There wasn't quite anything like it. I think there was, I think there were some publications that did gossip, certainly not others. I mean, society, if there were other society publications at the time, they wouldn't have been

15:48doing gossip the way Town Topics was. I think there was maybe like, like Broadway niche publications that kind of did a lot of, maybe did Broadway gossip. But I would say it was more on the unique side than not. And we're going to talk about how Colonel William Dalton Mann actually chose a rather unique path for, for sharing that gossip. I do want to ask, what do you think was the audience? What was the target audience? You can tell I came from a marketing background. So I'm always like, what's the target audience? What do you think it was for Town Topics? Yeah, I think in my, in my town and country feature, I called it a trenchant chronicler of

16:23the 1%. You know, that was, that's kind of a term we think of today. But to kind of give you a sense of the 1% of the time, that was, that was probably the target audience. You know, it was for and about the well-heeled, the moneyed class of the Gilded Age, the movers and shakers of society and business. I think also by extension, I would think it was probably also for anyone who wanted to read about those types of people and could afford to do so. You know, obviously, we don't have like a breakdown of, of Town Topics audience, but I would, I would imagine it would have appealed to the sort of like

16:53downstairs domestic servant class, you know, who exists in such close proximity to the richest of the rich, probably like to, to gossip about their employers and what's happening upstairs. But really, I think it's, it's, it's, it's geared towards the wealthy and people who want to read about their,

Colonel William Dalton Mann

17:09their foibles. So now let's discuss the publisher here, this Colonel William Dalton man, who in some ways, he could actually be said he was the most famous man in the Gilded Age, the we don't know, because he had a lot of control and he had a lot of power. So who was he? Can you just give us an idea of his background? Where did he come from? What was that Colonel thing? And how did he come to relaunch Town Topics? Yeah, so you're right. He is sort of a rather under the radar figure. He's not

17:43a guy who has, you know, quite a robust Wikipedia entry for, for instance. But I would just first say for anyone who is interested in this figure, William Dalton man, there is a great book that was written by a New Yorker staff writer, famous New Yorker staff writer named Andy Logan, published in 1965. It was called The Man Who Robbed the Robber Barons. And I just want to give a plug to that because, you know, I did really draw heavily on, on this book and it seems to be the source that has the most research on this rather kind of obscure figure. And it was excerpted in two issues of

18:14The New Yorker that you could actually find on online now, just called Town Topics. So if you're interested in this, I would check that out. Here's this book. It was reprinted in 2001. I have this copy here. David Remnick wrote like a nice intro to this. So, and in this book, Andy Logan, she described Mann as the ranking blackmailer of American society. So that's kind of like, you know, maybe that's what should be on his tombstone. And she notes also that, you know, he just, he achieved this distinction during a period when some of the most ruthless infighters of the Gilded Age would respond to Mann's request for an interview by arriving at his office within the hour cash in

18:49hand. So William Dalton Mann, born in Sandusky, Ohio, and September 1839, supposedly comes from colonial Puritan stock. He has kind of this elusive upbringing. And even Andy Logan, you know, kind of hints at this in her book. We don't, I think that the record on Mann is kind of what he has put into the historical record about himself. I just want to, I want to read this because I think it captures it really well. So in her book, so Andy Logan writes, Mann later noted in Town Topics that there had been half a dozen children in his family,

19:20but he never got around to mentioning the means by which his father contrived to feed and clothe this ample brood. When Mann was in his mid-teens, the family moved to Adrian, Michigan, and he left the fold to be, as he later described, educated as a civil engineer. How and where he did not specify. By late 1858, again, according to his own account, he was living in Manhattan and whatever his source of income, it was sufficient to keep him in good standing for a while at the Astor House, one of the town's most fashionable hostelries, and to allow him to make frequent visits

19:51to the theater of the day. So my, you know, there's maybe like a hint of like, maybe a little grifter intrigue there. It also sounds like, I mean, maybe at least he's maybe kind of grifter, grifter adjacent. But in any case, you know, he does, he fights in the civil war. He commanded a union regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg. After that, he kind of like fashioned himself into a businessman, entrepreneur. He patented some sort of military accessory that he, that he sold. He dabbled in an oil swindle that I think he kind of got in trouble for. And then he eventually he

20:22relocates to Alabama, and he joins the Democratic Party, and he switches sides, essentially, you know, because he doesn't want to be ostracized socially in the post-war South. And this is when he starts to invest in newspapers. He also launched an unsuccessful bid to be a congressman in Alabama. And then he has to go with the railroad industry. And aside from town topics, this is probably the thing he's most, most known for. He patented what was known as the man boudoir car. And this was kind of like a luxury locomotive accommodation that was successful in Europe. But in America, it kind of failed to,

20:55to compete with Pullman and Pullman eventually just, you know, ate the company up and bought it. So, so again, like, you know, he seems to be maybe something of like a scheming businessman, a bit of a shapeshifter, definitely a striver, ambitious, maybe not the most scrupulous individual. And then by 1891, he finds himself at the helm of this very popular New York Society publication. Which is interesting, because, you know, I guess we'll never know if he planned to take it over on the up and up. But he certainly develops a scheme around town topics and a way to use

21:30that to make money for himself. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. And I don't know what is, you know, we don't know what his motives were exactly. I think, you know, I don't know if he, he saw this, this scheme that we'll talk more about from the outset, but I think he certainly would have thought it was a shrewd business decision one way or another. And it definitely, it gives him proximity to this kind of power and influence that he, he clearly craves, you know, he wasn't able to establish, establish power and influence through his own business ventures and he failed in politics, but now he is running a publication

22:02that is read amongst the rich and powerful. So if anything, it's kind of, it seems like it's an entree for him into a world that he wouldn't have otherwise had had the best access to. And I think also it's a way for him to actually manipulate the rich and powerful. So it's that power shift, right? Because he doesn't see himself part of this powerful elite at all, but by what he does, and we'll talk about that coming up, he's the one that ends up taking the power. You think that's accurate? I mean, he definitely has power, you know, and again,

22:36he's kind of like this nothing, where did this guy come from? Can't really quite corroborate his, his background. He's, he's not one of the great robber barons or someone from old actual old money that, you know, has a proven record of either success or just good breeding in society. So, you know, he is kind of an outsider who comes in and does kind of make his own power for and wield his own power for himself. So interesting about the Gilded Age, because you could be whoever you said you were and not that many quest, not that many people questioned it, right? Yep. And with that,

23:09Joe and I are going to take a short break, but we'll be back to continue the story. And we're back. This is Carl Raymond, host of the Gilded Gentleman History podcast. And today I'm with journalist and author Joe Pompeo, and we are discussing the gossip and scandal around the Gilded Age magazine, Town Topics. So Joe, just to give us all kind of an image here, um, just what

23:43was a typical issue of Town Topics like? What did it cover? What was its formula? You know, in your Town and Country article, you, you had a great comment. You said that Tina Brown would have understood the editorial philosophy of Town Topics. So what does all that mean? I think my exact quote, I said Town Topics embraced a high-low formula that a 19th century Tina Brown would have felt at home with. So there was this kind of erudite coverage of, of the theater and books and fine art. At the same time,

24:17there was all this scarless gossip and scandal that kind of appealed, you know, appeals to our most, our most prurient interest. So it was kind of a mix of those, of those two things. And I think that part of the Appeal of Town Topics, I mean, part of what makes it fun to think about today is that, you know, all these super rich, proper Gilded Age society people, like, you know, they wouldn't want to be caught dead reading it, but I think they were just as interested in that stuff as, as the rest of us. So that's a similar, you know, like similar to kind of the editorial philosophy of like a Vanity Fair or, you know, or even like a Town and Country to an extent, you know, um,

24:51kind of like scandal mixed with this kind of more high-minded material. I just imagine all these Gilded Age folks waking up on whatever day it came out, the new edition, and flipping through it just to make sure they weren't in it. Yeah. That's sort of how I imagine that. And on the show, you know, you can kind of see that on the show Gilded Age, you know, it does kind of make a cameo, at least, I've seen it at least once when, who is, who is the, who is the, uh, the lady's maid? What is her name? Winter. Oh, she becomes Mrs. Winterton.

25:21She becomes Mr. Winterton at one time. She's flipping through, in the privacy of her home, of course, flipping through the latest, latest Town Topic. So yeah, you can actually kind of see that in the show. Now we're going to get into what man really did here and really created that, that made Town Topics really this, this sensational piece that it was. So he created a column that he called

The Saunterer and Blind Items

25:43the Saunterer. So Joe, what was that? Who was that? And what did that allow him to do? Yeah. So, well, so the column, I think the column was called Saunterings and the Saunterer was kind of like the editorial persona, the Saunterer who's kind of, I guess, sauntering through, you know, different parties and, and luncheons and the opera, whatever, you know, and kind of picking up all that was, that was the idea, you know, kind of picking up all of the, the tittle tattle along the way. It was actually created under Eugene Mann, under his brother.

26:14And, you know, really this was kind of like a dirt dump, you know, this was bad behavior and scandals. And it was quite, it was quite racy stuff too. And Eugene Mann, I think part of the reason he tired of running Town Topics, he did get into some legal trouble at various points. He was, he was apparently arrested at least once or twice on a charge of transmitting obscene material in the mail reportedly because Saunterings had published an item about the prevalence of abortion among society women. So it was, it was stuff like that. It wasn't just kind of idle gossip. It got into the down and dirty. So also, you know, adultery,

26:48babies born out of wedlock, promiscuity, homosexuality, maybe, maybe a little venereal disease, basically everything that these society people wouldn't want you to know about themselves. Yeah, it sounds kind of awful, actually. And what do we know about how he got this information? My understanding is he had this network of chambermaids and doormen and all these people. Is that correct? How did he get this info? What do we know about this? Yeah, so he did, he did have paid official paid correspondence, or I think I've seen them referred

27:21to as agents, you know, people who were probably in, you know, in all the different fashionable communities of the time that were, you know, able to give him information maybe on his payroll. I don't know who exactly they were, but you're right. Like the, some of the best stories did come from these more unpaid informants. And we don't know how we cultivated them, but, you know, you could, you could guess that, you know, these are, you know, and I think you see this in the show too, right? In Gilded Age, there's these kind of plot lines of, you know, the, a domestic servant who is

27:54pissed off about something or other. So they're selling information on their employer. Also, you know, I think that, you know, we'll get more into this, but in terms of how people were able to stay out of town topics, there's people that were probably trading gossip about others to, you know, in exchange maybe for, you know, not having their own gossip exposed. There's probably a little bit of that, but we don't, we don't really quite know exactly how it worked, but there is this notion that there were people that were known as immunes and that they could kind of pay for their, you

28:24know, exemption from the, of, of the publication. But yeah, it does seem like, you know, most of the, the best dirt often came again, kind of from like the downstairs set. And he did have this whole network of, of people that were feeding it to him. But then we sort of ratchet it up a little bit here with this business model. I don't know what else to call it. There were other sort of ancillary publications that fed into this. One was called the smart set and the other facts and fancies of the 400. What were these and how did they sort of contribute to this scheme that

28:57he was developing? Well, so first, so, I mean, the, the publication town topics would have made money apart from these kinds of spinoffs that we'll, that we'll talk about. You know, there's made money from circulation and advertising. It costs 10 cents a week, I think $4 a year. It had a circulation of, you know, maybe 60,000 to more than a hundred thousand over its lifetime. So, you know, do your own back of the envelope math there. And of course, the more circulation you have, the higher you can charge for advertising. But then he did create these sort of spinoff publications called, as you said, the smart set and facts and fancies of the 400.

29:30So the business model with these was to charge, and I think these were kind of just vanity publications. I don't, you know, I don't even know quite what they were and if anyone really did, but they were kind of just probably about rich people. And what, you know, I think it was probably a cachet to be included in these. And the business scheme here was that he would charge these like ridiculously wildly inflated prices for subscription to these publications. And there was kind of this tacit understanding that if you, if you ponied up for them, that would kind of keep you in his

30:00good graces, keep you out of town topics, saunterings column. I think in the case of at least one, I think it's at least with the smart set, I don't think it ever even came out. I don't think it was ever published. It was more like they were talking about telling people, you know, buy a subscription to the smart set, you know, for whatever. And people would give the money and then hopefully feel like by doing so, they would be safe. So Joe, how did some of this Gilded Age elite keep out of town topics here? What if something, if you, what if you were on the brink of divorce, as so many of them actually were, and you didn't

30:35want that covered? What did you do? Well, so again, you know, I think, you know, these subscriptions, that was definitely something you would definitely, if you're asked to buy one, you'd want to take them up on that offer. Another way was to purchase stock in town topics, you know, to help, help keep the business strong and secure. And then man also received unsecured loans, most of them that were never repaid from a lot of rich and powerful men. So, you know, some of these included a 90,000 and this is all again, this is in Gilded Age dollars. So much, much more today, but he got $90,000 from a guy named James

31:11Arkeen, who is a little lesser known, but he was some Wall Street guy and whose clients included William Rockefeller Jr. He got $1,000 from William C. Whitney, $2,500 from J.P. Morgan, $7,000 from Howard and George Gould, $10,000 from Charles Schwab, and $25,000 from William K. Vanderbilt. And those are just kind of the ones that, you know, we know about. So that was another way, you know, and it wasn't, I don't think it worked so much like, okay, Willie Vanderbilt has this scandal that he needs to keep quiet. So he goes and bribes man. It was more like an understanding.

31:44There was an expectation that if you gave man money, certainly a lot of money, he'd make sure to keep you out of the saunterings column. So I think it was, a lot of it was kind of preemptive, you know, kind of maybe preemptive bribery. Insurance. Insurance. Yeah. Insurance policy. So what we're really talking about here is blackmail extortion. Yes. Right. And a manipulation of the press for money. Have I got all that pretty accurate here? That's definitely at least through a modern lens. It would not be unreasonable to read it in that way. However, my friends and listeners,

32:20this is all not going to stay as it is. So for that, Joe and I are going to take a short break, but we'll be back to continue the story. And we're back. This is Carl Raymond, host of the Gilded Gentleman History Podcast. And today I'm with journalist and author Joe Pompeo, and we are discussing the gossip and the scandal around the Gilded Age magazine, Town Topics.

32:50So I'm curious here, we talked about this, this sort of column saunterings that, that man invents and adds. Can we attribute any other journalistic inventions that we may even use today directly to man and town topics? Joe, what do you think about that? Well, so you've, um, I'm sure you've heard of something called the blind item or anyone who's listening, who's ever read, uh, the New York Post's page six, or if you remember the website Gawker, uh, there was something called the blind

33:25item where it would be a piece of gossip that, you know, you either couldn't confirm or it was like too hot that you, you know, you don't want to risk, you know, kind of a lawsuit or something like that. And you kind of float what such and such was seen doing, you know, such and so and so with, with whoever, right. And you sort of leave people guessing, but also plant enough of an impression that you can kind of maybe actually deduce who it was. So this is actually something, I mean, uh, town topics is credited as being the inventor of the blind item. So all these kinds of things

33:58that I was, these types of stories they would run in saunterings by and large, I don't think exclusively, but for the most part, they weren't actually like naming the person who it was, but they were writing it in such a way that there was really no doubt who they were talking about. And, you know, to go back to the Andy Logan book, you know, she, she writes clues to the identity of his targets were provided by giving the subjects address, for example, or by a line reading the young man's last name incidentally is the same as the title of the leading primate of the church of Rome. Readers thus

34:31had little trouble recognizing, say a bride who had once born twins out of wedlock, a cotillion leader with syphilis or a matron facing divorce proceedings because of her friendship with a lady librarian. So really, you know, you're kind of insulating yourself from, you're giving yourself plausible deniability. So one of these people can come and complain. You said, well, I didn't, I didn't print anything about you. And then certainly you're kind of insulin, insulating yourself in a, in a legal sense. Um, but it was a very like mischievous impish way to, you know, float some of the dirtiest down and dirty gossip that you could without really getting in trouble

35:05yourself. And we still see some of that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think, I mean, I haven't, I don't, I don't read page six regularly anymore, but I imagine it probably still includes the blind item. Um, it's always been, you know, kind of a popular feature of, of tabloid journalism. So I'm dying to ask you here, Joe. So what were some of town topics, most scandalous stories from what you've been able to see and find? What were some of the biggest headlines here? You know, I don't, I don't know that there was like anything that was rises to the level of like,

35:37this is earth shattering news that other newspapers are going to pick up. I think, you know, I think collectively, it was just a lot of this sort of like, you know, really dirty gossip about, about people that they would not want public. But the one that, that comes to mind in terms of something that really, I think shocked people was Saundrings did an item, a blind item about Alice Roosevelt, who is the daughter of, of Theodore Roosevelt. And the backstory here was that apparently Colonel Mann had some sort of grudge against Roosevelt over some kind of real

36:09estate deal that went awry or something like that. So he wasn't happy with Roosevelt. And then Alice Roosevelt goes to Newport. So obviously that's, you know, a guest who would make a big splash there and all the press is covering it. And it's all this kind of very, you know, kind of positive descriptions of what she's doing there. But then Town Topics comes out and they ding her. And again, you know, we, they ding, you know, the only person you could imagine them writing about is Alice Roosevelt, that they, you know, say she was flying all around Newport without a chaperone and indulging freely

36:42in stimulants. And she was enjoying fancy dances for the edification of men. So they're basically accused, you know, basically saying she was out there slutting around and doing, getting drunk and, you know, like not behaving like a proper young lady. So I think that this was something that, you know, this is the president's daughter and he's going after this, this young, this young woman really, you know, why, why is he doing this? So I think that's one that I think, you know, really raised a lot of eyebrows. And also it's important because this story would actually come back to bite him and it would play a role in his own scandal that would essentially kind of bring,

37:16finally bring Town Topics to heel.

The Fall of Town Topics

37:18And that's what I want to talk about now, because this is a really interesting scandal that, that happened. And it really, I think, was the beginning of bringing him down here. And it involved the husband of really a very famous wife. And this was the husband of the writer and etiquette expert, Emily Post. And now this is before she was the etiquette expert. The future etiquette expert, Emily Post.

37:49So Joe, what happened here? What was the setup? So in 1905, Edwin Post, who he's a, he's a banker, a stockbroker in, in Manhattan. As you said, he's married to Emily Post, who is not yet the Emily Post as we know her today. And he gets this phone call and the guy on the other end of the line says, you know, I'm an editor at Town Topics. And he said, you know, I have, I want to dispatch one of my representatives down to talk to you about what he just described on the phone as an unspecified personal matter. So immediately you

38:20could picture, you know, the butterflies rising in Edwin Post's stomach. So the next day, Post gets this visit from a guy named Charles P. All. I hope I'm pronouncing that last name right, but we're just going to go with all. And he tells Post, you know, you know, I think, you know, would you like to buy a subscription to this forthcoming Town Topics spinoff called The Smart Set for $500, which would be about $18,000 today? And, and Post said, well, why would I, why would I do that? And he basically says, well, you know, I think, you know, we wouldn't, you wouldn't want Town Topics to, you know,

38:53let its readers know about the, the quote, fair charmer he'd been canoodling with up in Stanford, right? Would he? So, so all says, I'll give you some time. And he leaves Post to think about whether or not he wants to, you know, submit to this essentially blackmail and, you know, Post indeed, you know, he doesn't want this coming out in public that he's having an affair. He'd also been having a bad year in the stock stock market. So he really couldn't afford to buy the subscription to The Smart Set. So he goes to his wife, Emily Post, and, and he, um, as the story goes,

39:26kind of comes, comes clean. And, you know, she wasn't the famous etiquette expert, but I think, you know, it was still in her nature to, you know, do the right thing. And, and she advises her soon to be ex-husband that, you know, the right thing to do here is expose this conspiracy. And, you know, this, this would be not just for you, this is for the, for the greater good, you know? So she reportedly is the one who kind of encourages him, or at least gives her blessing to go to the district attorney and, and report this, this scheme. So a few days later, Edwin

39:57Post goes and meets all at the Holland house hotel on fifth Avenue. And then all, he hands all an envelope containing five, $100 bills, all puts it in his pocket. And then he says something to the effect of, uh, you know, you're getting off easy. We've had scandals worth, worth $20,000. That was one of the quotes that's reported in the newspapers about this exchange. And then all reportedly also boasted to Edwin Post about how town topics made so much of its money from the suppression of, of stories. So then all of a sudden the police detective jumps

40:28out who's been observing the exchange and they, you know, they, they grab all and they, they arrest him, they haul him down to the station. And, um, man comes out and, and it's like, Oh, this all guy, this is a rogue actor. I have no idea what's, what's going on here. He says, no one for a pecuniary or like consideration can buy his name in or out of the columns of this, of this paper. So he, again, is kind of, he has this plausible, quasi plausible deniability and, you know, can't be directly implicated in this matter involving Charles all trying to bribe Edwin Post. But this is what's going to give the authorities. They see this as their chance to

41:01finally take town topics down. And how do they do that? I mean, this leads to a trial and Belmont gets involved here. Like where do we go from here? It's kind of a cliffhanger. So the New York district attorney launches an investigation. He is a guy named William Travers Jerome. Again, one of these kind of like names you've never heard of, but he's actually quite a, quite a, quite a player. He's a distant cousin of Winston Churchill. And he's also the prosecutor who will take on Harry Thaw in the, in the Stanford white trial and Stanford white murder case. And he apparently has been waiting for an opportunity

41:33to, to pounce on man. And it just so happens that Jerome is friends with a guy named Norman Hapgood and Norman Hapgood is the editor of Collier's weekly, which you mentioned earlier and Collier's weekly. They hated town topics. They thought man was, you know, a piece of trash, whatever. And they, they were particularly appalled by this item in the saunterings about Alice Roosevelt. So the publisher of Collier's Robert Collier, he also really dislikes man because apparently they had like written nasty things about his father, Peter, Peter Collier. So he was the

42:06founder of Collier's magazine. So basically like Collier's hates man and the editor is friends with the district attorney. So what happens is Collier's starts coming out with this really aggressive series of editorials, you know, kind of crusading against town topics and also particularly calling out this guy named Joseph M. Duell. Again, I'm hoping I'm pronouncing this right. And Duell was, he was legal counsel for town topics, kind of a fixer for man. I think he kind of played like a pretty significant role in the operation and he also happened to be a New

42:39York judge. So, you know, very conflict of interest type stuff going on there. So they come out with like, just, they're just beating the drum like week after week and in the pages of Collier as they write in one piece, they say man forces the socially prominent to pay and be praised or refuse this blackmail and be maligned. They write Duell is part owner and one of the editors of a paper of which the occupation is printing scandal about people who are not cowardly enough to pay for silence. And they, and in another edition, they write the notorious editor of town topics is guilty

43:09of practices, which should make decent men ashamed to meet. And so they're kind of coming out and saying what everyone knows and they're, they're attacking it. And man's kind of inclined to just shrug it off, but they knew that this guy Duell, you know, who, who's a, who's a legal man, a judge could, would not, you know, want to stand for his name being dragged through the mud like this. So they basically goaded him into bringing a criminal libel action against Norman Hapgood, the editor of Collier. So this is, this is part of the plan because now Hapgood's old pal, the district attorney, William Travers Jerome will prosecute this libel case. They can call man

43:45as a witness, but then Hapgood's lawyers can grill man under oath, you know, and ask him all these things about his illicit business practices. So there's a trial on January 1906 in the Manhattan Criminal Courts building. It's crowded to suffocation as, as someone described it in the newspapers. There's tons of reporters. Women have all come dressed out, come dressed in their finest to watch this spectacle. Cause you know, I mean, court, courtroom, um, the court cases were like entertainment. It was theater, right? It was theater. Yeah. So man takes the stand right after

44:16Duell testifies and the district attorney just asks him like these three quick questions. He's basically says, you know, was, was Joseph M. Duell an editor of that paper? And he says, no. And he says, was, you know, was your, was your paper, was it's business publishing scandal? He says, it was not. And he says, did it ever engage in blackmail? And man says, never. And they're kind of like, great. And then, so all of a sudden, you know, they hand the floor over to the defense attorney for Hapgood. His name's, uh, James Osborne. So he cross examines man and it's, it's described, um, as merciless. You know, he just kind of like comes out and some of the most damning testimony

44:51comes out during, during this phase of the trial. And that this includes, you referenced, uh, uh, Oliver Belmont earlier, some of his testimony when he's called to talk about town topics is some of the most damning. So they ask man first, did you ever ask Mr. Belmont to take stock and town topics? And man says, I have no recollection of it. So then they call Belmont to the stand and he says, you know, I was, uh, you know, asked to buy $5,000 worth of company stock and I refused. And then he also shows a letter that he had gotten from man and he reads it aloud in court

45:24that says, if you do not care to take the shares to the extent I desired, could you not lend me a little money, say $2,000 a month? I need scarcely say I will be most grateful. So he's basically showing the, the evidence just right there in court that this is precisely what man has been doing the whole time. So in the end, you know, man is tested. He's not on trial, but he's, he's, he's under oath. And, you know, he has to, he basically forced to admit all these unsecured loans that I mentioned earlier that he, you know, had taken from, from Whitney and Morgan and the

45:56Goulds and, and Vanderbilt and all that. So this all comes out in the trial. And then they also call kind of former disgruntled town topic staffers to testify who say, you know, he, he kept this list of people who were immune from criticism. So there, this notion that there is this kind of list of people who have, you know, whether with information or money or whatever, he's not going to go after that, that is kind of confirmed publicly as well. So, you know, again, this was

A Cautionary Tale of Journalism

46:22not man on trial. This was Collier's was the editor of Collier's who's basically on trial for libel. And after hearing all this stuff, the jury says, no way, you know, he's, he's innocent. So Hapgood's acquitted. And then at the same time, they have very tactfully exposed town topics in man for what it was. So it's, it's funny, this reporter goes up to Jerome and he points out that he's lost the first case that he had personally prosecuted during his term. And Jerome just laughs and goes, I am much depressed. Cause you know, they, this was, this was part of the plan whole time. He obviously, you know, they threw the case,

46:52they set man up and it worked. So man, you know, he does go, he's separately prosecuted for perjury and he's found not guilty. And so there's really no like, you know, legal comeuppance for him. But what this, what this had the effect of the effects this had was that, you know, emboldened other people who'd been maligned by man to speak up. So all of a sudden it's getting saddled with, you know, libel lawsuits and the publication town topics does kind of start self-censoring more and, and, and, you know, not going after people in the quite the same way.

47:23And it was never quite the same again after that, you know, it lost, it lost that punch really, which is why everyone, even though they all hated it, this is why everyone had read it. So it did, it survived another 17 years. It survives into the jazz age and it outlives man who, you know, dies of the flu of all things at his home in Morristown, New Jersey in 1920. Oh my gosh, what a story there. But he finally is exposed while he doesn't get sent off to jail. He probably should have, but it kind of all blows up, right? Because I can imagine circulation goes

47:59down, he's not making any money. He can't pull the same kind of blackmail and extortion that he did before it, right? Is that just kind of, you know, it also just tarnishes his legacy. You know, William, William, William Dalton man today, the reason we're talking about him, the reason, the reason town and country is publishing an article on him in the year 2025 or whenever that article came out is because of this, of his own scandal, not because he was a general in the civil war, not because of the man, boudoir car, you know, he, he is remembered for his own dirty business. So there's a great irony

48:30in that. We talked a few minutes ago about the blind item and how he introduced that and how we see it today. Is there any other legacy, either good or bad from the world of town topics that we see in modern journalism today? Well, I think you could definitely see, you know, echoes of town topics in, you know, things like something like the national inquire scandal with, with Trump, right? Which was the catching kill where they kind of are actually, you know, in that case, blatantly

49:00buying stories and then intentionally suppressing them. So it's kind of not apples to apples, but there is a similar kind of a similar impulse there. This notion of keeping, keeping stories secret under lock and key. And there's, you know, there's other different scandals along these lines that have, have popped up in recent years that I, again, I don't, I don't think that these people were using necessarily town topics as a, as a playbook, but the national inquirer, they kind of, they tried to blackmail Jeff Bezos because he was, you know, investigating them for how they got these text

49:31messages about him. And they basically threatened to expose a very private personal photograph they had of Jeff Bezos. If he didn't call off his, his, the attack dogs who were investigating the inquire. And he said, he said, no, thank you. And he went, he went public with it. You know, there, I don't know if you remember the Jared Paul Stern extortion scandal when he was a page six reporter at the New York post, basically like telling Ron Burkle, he'll, you know he asking for money to keep stories out. So I think that any of these kind of really dirty, like tabloid tactics that, you know, involve not just like breaking news, but leveraging the information you have for,

50:07for money or influence or whatever that, that I think that all, you know, kind of harkens back to what, what town topics was doing for the town topic story. I interviewed this brilliant gilded age scholar named Nancy Unger, who really, I think encapsulated what I'm talking about. And she said, the common thread that runs through these incidents is the suppression of stories, the notion of using journalism, not simply to inform the public, but to promote private ambition. So that's something we saw with town topics and something that we still see, uh, in some cases today. Do you ultimately see this as a cautionary tale? I think it's a cautionary tale. I think that,

50:43you know, I think of, for instance, what happened to Gawker getting sued over the publication of the Hulk Hogan sex tape, which was bankrolled by Peter Thiel, who was mad about something they wrote about him. And ultimately not, not that it was, that this makes it right to go after a publication like that, but there is an element of eventually, you know, if you're going after very powerful people with a lot of money and resources and, and, and pissing them off and maybe crossing some journalistic lines for sure, you know, it's going to come back to bite you. And, you know, Gawker does not exist today

51:17for, I, I, I, maybe, maybe it's been revived. I've lost track of that whole story, but they were basically put out of business just as town topics was eventually, you know, saw, saw its own downfall and, and man was exposed. So I think there's a cautionary tale for sure that questionable journalistic practices that involve, you know, exposing dirty, dirty secrets about rich people is, you know, sometimes playing with fire. So Joe, now we have come to the trademark Gilded Gentleman question, and I'm just so curious here

51:49what you're going to say. So I'm going to give you a little variation of this. So if William Dalton and Mann were actually sitting here with us, certainly what would you want to ask him? What would you want to ask anyone else that had dealings with town topics too? Well, in terms of Mann, he once bragged, um, he said something like that he had, he had cartloads of stories locked up in his safe that would turn New York upside down. So I don't know if that was

52:20just a boast, but I would definitely like to know what some of those stories were, where they're actually, you know, were there actually really big stories that he was covering? I mean, it's quite possible that he was also, I mean, again, we've kind of hinted at this, but this guy's kind of a grifter. Maybe he didn't have as much dirt on some of these rich guys as, as that quote might suggest, you know, and he was kind of was just swindling them out of, out of their, their tens of thousands of dollars at the time. But I'd certainly want to know, you know, well, okay, we'll show us, show us the receipts. You know, what are some of these, what are some of these stories that could have, could have turned New York upside down anyone else who was around

52:54him? I guess I would want to ask, you know, if I had Charles P all sitting here, you know, like, tell me what, you know, was he giving the orders? Tell us, you know, he, cause you know, man, I think has never really, he didn't publicly admit and say that this was this whole scheme that he concocted. I guess I'd want to, someone who knew one of his emissaries, one of his lieutenants that maybe had reason to turn on him. I'd probably want to know, you know, how much he was really pulling the strings, you know, or how much of it was just kind of like, you know, the same way they say, you know, the editors of the New York Post

53:27don't need to get a call from Rupert Murdoch to know what the front page should be. They're just kind of like reading his mind. They know what, you know, so how much was man kind of like that or how much was he, you know, sending Charles all to the meeting with, with Edwin Post and directing, you know, him to extract the hush money or whatever. So I'm also, before we leave here, curious about some of the other work that you're, you're doing, cause there certainly seems to be a through line here. So 2022, right? You published Blood and Ink, the scandalous jazz age double murder that hooked America on true

53:59crime. I just, I love that title. How did you find that story? I'd love to have you back and talk about that. Actually. We should. There's some, and there's some great, there's some, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a jazz age story, but there's some great Gilded Age connections and characters there. You're booked. How'd you find that? What was curious to you about that story? Well, I think that I'm pretty sure that that's what put town topics on my radar. Cause I was researching kind of like the origins of us tabloid journalism. And as, as someone who covered, you know, I was a media correspondent at Vanity Fair and other publications previously. So media

54:31history and the tabloid press have always been interests of mine. And like I said, you know, I, I love reading kind of these older, dark true crime mystery stories. And, you know, there's a couple, a couple other books in that zone that I, that I had liked reading and I wanted to find a story like that myself. So I literally went to talk to a former graduate school professor of mine at the Columbia journalism school. You know, he's a brilliant media scholar. And, um, I said, you know, I'm looking for a story like this. And she was, we were kind of talking about, you know, different,

55:01um, newspaper sensations from the 19th century into the 20th century. And she just mentioned this case called the Hall Mills murder case that involved, you know, this, this rich family and a philandering reverend who was murdered next to his mistress, choir singer. And it was this big tabloid, one of the great tabloid stories of the, of the, of the 1920s. And, um, I saw the connections between, you know, my interest in journalism history and tabloid media and, you know, like an unsolved murder mystery. And I just said, you know, well, at least I mentioned it to my agent and she said,

55:34that sounds like a book. So, you know, that's where, yeah, and it was. So, so final question

Legacy and Future Projects

55:38about the town topics, scandals story. What do you think that tells us about the Gilded Age in general? So I think when we, you know, the stereotypical lay person's understanding of the Gilded Age is kind of like, you know, it's this age of these robber barons and this, this, these great men, the tech titans of their day, right. You know, who, who just amassed all this wealth. And, you know, we think of like the railroads and we think of industry and all that sort of stuff.

56:12Whereas the same, you know, in, in England, we think of the Victorian era. I mean, maybe we think of that, but I think with the Victorian era, we think more about these kinds of class anxieties. I'm a big fan of like Wilkie Collins, right? So like the, the kind of like the sensation novels, even Charles Dickens, like the theme of Victorian England was very much about anxieties about class and secrets being exposed and, you know, one's position in society and the threat of losing that. And I think researching this, this story about Gilded Age America and New York, where we don't necessarily think of that as kind of the, the default identifier of the age, it made me realize

56:47there's, there was more of a connection to that kind of like more, you know, historical Victorian period than, than is really obvious, I guess, on, on face value, if that makes sense. I'd love to know what you, if you think that, what do you think about that? I agree. And I think that story, like so many of them really has a larger commentary on where America was in the Gilded Age at that time and society and what was seen on the outside versus what was really going on in the inside just permeates everything. And that's a good example of that. Oh gosh, Joe, thank you so much for joining me here today to delve into all of this.

57:22It has been so great having you here. Thank you so much. Thanks. It was, it was a blast. And we've already started talking about another show. And so I will ask you here in front of all my listeners, would you be willing to come back to the Gilded Gentleman table and sit here with me again and talk about some more of your work? I would love to. And as a little teaser, you know, we can maybe talk about Ebenezer Stevens and Edith Wharton and their relation to the accused murderess from, from Blood and Ink. So that's something that maybe we could unpack if I, if I come back. I would love that. You know, anything with a Wharton connection, I'm ready to talk about. So

57:55absolutely, Joe, thank you so much. I can't wait to have you back. Sounds good. I look forward to it. And to my listeners, my guest today has been journalist and author Joe Pompeo. So Joe, how can listeners follow you and keep up with everything you're working on? Best way probably would be to subscribe to my email newsletter at joepompeo.substack.com. And if you're someone who, you know, you can keep up with my work that way, but also if you are a fan of, again, historical true crime and narrative history, I do a monthly Q&A with, you know,

58:28prominent narrative history or historical true crime authors talking about the research behind their books. So that's a, that's something you'll get every month. And also I do a monthly kind of roundup of new books coming out in that genre. So yes, you can keep up with me, but you also get, get some good content out of it as well. I've signed up. I can't wait to find out what you're doing next. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you. And thank you for joining me for another episode of the Gilded Gentleman History Podcast. The Gilded Gentleman is produced by Bowery Boys Media. And this episode was edited and

59:00produced by Karen Gannon. Make sure to follow me on Instagram at Carl the Gilded Gentleman for images related to each podcast episode. I invite my listeners to become patrons of the show on patreon.com slash the Gilded Gentleman. Your support helps me with the cost of research and production to continue to be able to do the show. I couldn't do it without you and I'll see you soon. After all, what's life without a little glint of gold?