“I thoroly dislike … these international marriages … which are not even matches of esteem and liking, but which are based upon the sale of the girl for her money and the purchase of the man for his title”. (Theodore Roosevelt to Ambassador Whitelaw Reid, 1906; English Heritage)
Whoa … let’s look back.
British estates “supported huge communities with labourers who worked the land. In the early and mid 19th century rural landowners were the wealthiest class in the wealthiest nation, growing nearly 10 million acres of cereals.”
“However, by the late 19th century the days of wealth and prosperity in farming had slipped away as we entered the Great Depression of British Agriculture. The social and physical landscape changed substantially.” (The Field)
“The British agricultural depression is usually dated from the early 1870s to the end of the century, and was largely caused by the fall in grain prices that followed the opening up of the American prairies to cultivation in the 1870s …”
“… the late 19th century expansion of the American railway transport system, the advent of inexpensive international transportation with the rise of steamships, and other advances in agricultural technology.” (Thomas Martin)
“In the late 19th century, in the years following the American Civil War (1861–5), America underwent rapid development. Often referred to as the Gilded Age (c.1865–1900), this period was characterised by rapid industrial expansion, unprecedented economic growth (largely in the north of the country), mass migration from Europe, and growing inequality caused by the concentration of wealth within an elite class of society.”
“America became a world leader in heavy industry, particularly steel production, coal mining and the building of new railroads. The booming economy fuelled New York’s stock market, which came to rival and eventually replace London as the financial capital of the world.”
“From this economic boom rose a new class of wealthy families. Described as ‘new money’, they were often associated with conspicuous consumption and a desire to gain entrance to social elites in Britain and Europe as well as in America.” (English Heritage)
“Whilst the lower cost of grain had benefits for Britain’s growing urban population, British grain farmers suffered. Combined with the poor harvests and atrocious weather conditions of the 1870s, the resulting Great Agricultural Depression of 1873 to 1896 caused destitution for farm labourers.” (Museum of English Rural Life)
“Wary of the falling price of grain, many landowners sought to protect their financial interests by switching to sheep farming. However, this was often not done by negotiation with tenant farmers, but by force.”
“Before 1850, the Hampshire chalklands—for instance—had always focused on arable farming. Yet, as grain prices fluctuated, farmers found that their contracts suddenly insisted they rear a minimum number of sheep, and demanded that they apply for permission to plough any land.” (Museum of English Rural Life)
“The British aristocracy has always been a very exclusive club. It’s this small group of men with titles – you know, your barons and your viscounts. And in the late 1800s, they were firmly established as the largest landowners in Britain.” (Wailin Wong, NPR)
“The decline in late 19th century agricultural prices, by reducing the incomes of aristocratic landed estates and of non-aristocratic landed families, led to richly dowried American heiress brides being substituted for brides from landed families in British aristocratic marriages.” (Thomas Martin)
“So cash-strapped British aristocrats represented the demand side of the dollar-princess marriage equation. For the supply side, we have to cross the Atlantic to the U.S., where some families were emerging as the nouveau riche – new money.” (Darian Woods, NPR)
“These new-money American families coveted status, but they couldn’t get it. They were shunned by American high society, which was ruled by old-money families in New York.” (Darian Woods, NPR)
“In the latter part of 19th-century America,… young [American] women married into British and European noble families. Some Gilded Age families wanted their daughters to gain titles to secure their social standing, and many willing aristocrats needed the significant marriage settlements to repair crumbling estates and fill up their bank accounts. ” (The Gilded Gettleman)
“The wave of trans-Atlantic marriages came to a halt with the outbreak of World War I, which upended life for people across socioeconomic classes. The resulting cultural and economic changes meant that women could have jobs other than getting married. They didn’t have to be mineral deposits anymore.” (Darian Woods, NPR)
In addition, “American heiresses found husbands among European aristocratic families outside of Britain. All told, … some 500 American women married European aristocrats [up to] World War I. Their dowries were estimated at more than $4 billion in today’s money.” (Darian Woods, NPR)
One such Dollar Princess, the daughter of a prosperous American financier and a socially ambitious mother, was “Jennie Jerome, born in Brooklyn of a mother who was one-quarter Iroquois Indian, was one of the few tattooed women in high society. The dark beauty’s tattooing was a snake coiled around her left wrist.”
“She married Lord Randolph Churchill and for many years was a glamorous figure in English society.” She was the mother of … Winston Churchill. (International Churchill Society)
“Downton Abbey” is modeled on the Gilded Age ‘dollar princesses’. The family’s fortune, the young unwed heiress ends up in London and marries into the British aristocracy. “The family in ‘Downton Abbey’ is fictional.” (Wailin Wong, NPR)
Leave your comment here: