The Dead Duke His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse doc ↠ reader½ Piu Marie Eatwell

> The Dead Duke His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse doc ↠ reader½ Piu Marie Eatwell

text The Dead Duke His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse

The Dead Duke His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse doc ↠ reader ½ Piu Marie Eatwell ½ The extraordinary story of the Druce Portland affair one of the most notorious tangled and bizarre legal cases of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras In 1897 an elderly widow Anna Maria DruceGrave of her late father in law TC 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 Druc Piu Marie Eatwell has chosen one of the most fantastical of legal trials that spanned the late Victorian to the Edwardian period for another entry into the genre of turning well researched historical crimes into an accessible book for non academicsThe journey the author takes us through started in 1898 when a widow named Anna Maria Druce applied for the exhumation of the grave of her late father in law Thomas Charles Druce Mr Druce had been a furniture dealer owning the Baker Street Bazaar a forerunner of what we know as a department store but Anna Maria believed that he had been the alter ego of the eccentric 5th Duke of Portland Her claims meant that Tomas Druce had faked his death in 1864 and spent the next fifteen living at the ducal seat Welbeck Abbey in Worksop NottinghamshireThis real life drama ended up spanning an entire decade after Anna Maria’s reuest for the grave in Highgate Cemetery being refused but with the discovery that Thomas Druce had been married before Both men were eccentrics Thomas Druce refused to reveal any details about his early life he had fixed habits and moved his family freuently from property to property whereas the Duke was rarely seen in public had an aversion to sunlight and spent his time at Welbeck Abbey constructing a series of tunnels and rooms underground Who can deny that fact is often stranger than fictionThe beauty of this book and others of its ilk like The Suspicion of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale or The Magnificent Spilsbury and the case of the Brides in the Bath by Jane Robins is that they give a real feel for the time as well as providing us with well researched historical evidence This tale is complex particularly as it is full of claim counter claim hypothesis and on the flip side lies and forgeries but the chapters are divided up to give background to the next part as well as the new revelations that kept the courts and the media busy A story running for so long had the public eager to find out the latest especially as the revelations uncovered some behaviour that was definitely against the morals of the timeThe story doesn’t end when the mystery is resolved the police were also kept busy following up some of the claims made including Inspector Dew who became known for his apprehension of Dr Crippen which meant for me this story had links to other true crimes committed in the same period presumably so few were the members of the newly formed CID that his career saw a wide variety of criminals Mentions are also made of the love of Sherlock Holmes but without it feeling like the author was trying to cram every detail into the bookApart from in the first chapter where the author gives us a potted history of the ownership of Welbeck Abbey the book couldn’t read less like a history book so well thought out is the structure making it an immensely readable and enjoyable piece of what must have been months of researchI’d like to thank Midas PR or allowing me to read a copy of this book for review purposes it will now stand next to the rest of my historical crime selection on my bookshelf The Dead Duke His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse was published by Head of Zeus in hardback in September 2014 and the author will be o

kindle Ñ The Dead Duke His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse Ù Piu Marie Eatwell

The extraordinary story of the Druce Portland affair one of the most notorious tangled and bizarre legal cases of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras In 1897 an elderly widow Anna Maria Druce made a strange reuest of the London Ecclesiastical Court it was for the exhumation of the This story of the British case surrounding the 5th Duke of Portland certainly illustrates that truth is stranger than fiction The unmarried eccentric and reclusive Duke died without issue in 1864 and the Dukedom passed to a distant cousin At the end of the 19th century a woman came forward who stated that her late father in law Mr Druce was in fact the above mentioned Duke and that the Duke had been leading a double life When the Duke tired of his alter ego he killed him off and that Mr Druce's grave was empty since he was buried as the Duke his true identity later in the century; therefore she claimed that her husband Mr Druce's son was the rightful heir to the Portland titles and estates She petitioned the court to have Mr Druces grave opened to prove that it was empty And thus it beganThe DrucePortland case was a cause celebre at the end of the Victorian Age and dragged on for years To make matters even 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 confusingThe 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 I round up the rating to 35 stars

Piu Marie Eatwell Ù The Dead Duke His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse text

The Dead Duke His Secret Wife and the Missing CorpseE's coffin would be found to be empty And her children therefore were heirs to the Portland millions The extraordinary legal case that followed would last for ten years Its eventual outcome revealed a dark underbelly of lies lurking beneath the genteel facade of late Victorian Engla I was pretty eager to read this book and the first 12 was really interesting But the second 12 was just boring material that felt like filler To uote Tim Gunn it needed an editing eye