num_pages: 368
description: At the close of the Victorian era as now privacy was power. The extraordinarily wealthy 5th Duke of Portland had a mania for it hiding in his carriage and building tunnels between buildings to avoid being seen. In 1897 an elderly widow asked the court to exhume the grave of her late father-in-law T. C. Druce under the suspicion that hed led a double life as the 5th Duke. The eccentric duke Anna Maria contended had faked his death as Druce and her son should inherit the Portland millions. Revealing a dark underbelly of Victorian society Piu Marie Eatwell evokes an era when the rise of sensationalist media blurred every fact into fiction and when family secrets and fluid identities pushed class anxieties to new heights.
language: English
title: The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse: An Extraordinary Edwardian Case of Deception and Intrigue
publisher: Liveright