Town Topics: Gossip and Scandal in the Gilded Age
The tale of the Gilded Age's most scandalous newspaper Town Topics and the insidious methods by which its publisher manipulated the city's powerful with techniques akin to blackmail.
The Gilded Gentleman · Joe Pompeo, Carl Raymond
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Show Notes
When Town Topics magazine appeared in the 1880s, Gilded Age New Yorkers enjoyed its coverage of the arts, culture, and social scene of balls, opera, and grand parties. But there was another element in the mix—the often salacious, sensationalized, scandalous coverage of the drama of the gilded set in the publisher’s column “Saunterings.”
Using a network of informants across the city, the publisher, Colonel William D’Alton Mann, frequently printed implied gossip about "The Four Hundred" — unless, of course, he was paid to keep it out of his pages.
Town Topics became a blackmail and extortion scheme for Mann—until a dramatic sting operation involving the husband of future etiquette writer Emily Post exposed it all.
Journalist and author Joe Pompeo joins the Gilded Gentleman table to delve into Town Topics and all of its scandals and true crimes.
This episode was edited and produced by Kieran Gannon.
For other true-crime newspaper-themed shows, listen to the recent Bowery Boys podcasts on the disappearance of Judge Crater and the Subway Vigilante shooting.
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