Elizabeth A. DeWolfe, "Alias Agnes: The Notorious Tale of a Gilded Age Spy" (UP of Kentucky, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Elizabeth A. DeWolfe, "Alias Agnes: The Notorious Tale of a Gilded Age Spy"

New Books Network – February 11, 2026
Host: Jane Semeka
Guest: Elizabeth DeWolfe

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Episode Overview

In this episode, historian Jane Semeka sits down with Dr. Elizabeth DeWolfe to discuss her latest nonfiction book, "Alias Agnes: The Notorious Tale of a Gilded Age Spy" (UP of Kentucky, 2025). The book uncovers the entwined stories of Madeline Pollard, an infamous plaintiff in a sensational breach of promise lawsuit against a U.S. Congressman, and Jane Tucker, an enterprising stenographer-turned-undercover spy. DeWolfe’s research combines literary detective work with women’s history, challenging prevailing narratives about women’s agency, reputation, and friendship in the Gilded Age.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Story Behind "Alias Agnes"

• Main Characters

  • Madeline Pollard: A young woman from Kentucky with literary ambitions but little financial or familial support. She sues her former lover, Congressman Breckenridge, for breach of promise when he reneges on marrying her, causing national scandal.
  • Jane Tucker: A Boston stenographer who becomes a spy when hired by the Congressman’s legal team. Her mission: Be-friend Madeline and covertly relay her secrets. Their ten-week acquaintance unfolds against the backdrop of a riveting Gilded Age trial.
    ([00:55])

• DeWolfe’s Fascination with the Case

  • DeWolfe stumbled on the story via a rare "salesman's sample" of a book about the trial, found in her husband’s rare bookshop—mere miles from home.
  • Realizing that Pollard’s life before and after the scandal was unexplored, DeWolfe pivots her project from Pollard’s biography to a dual study with Tucker as “Alias Agnes Parker.”
    ([02:46]–[09:26])

2. Historical Detective Work: Bringing Women's Stories to Light

• Methodological Challenges

  • DeWolfe recounts the difficulties of documenting women’s lives, often starting with records dominated by men and piecing together details from obscure sources.
  • “When we're looking, especially at the unknown woman, we often have to start with the men.” ([05:56], DeWolfe)

• Discovery of Archival Material

  • Both the Breckinridge and Tucker family papers were preserved—the latter thanks to historical interest in the family’s sea captain heritage, even as female voices were initially overlooked.
  • It took cross-referencing letters, sales records, and biographies to confirm Jane Tucker’s double identity as Agnes Parker.
    ([09:39]–[13:49])

3. Gender, Agency, and Motivation in the Gilded Age

• Jane Tucker’s Motivation

  • Economic necessity and the desire for independence drove Tucker’s foray into espionage.
  • “She wanted an independent life. ... She had kind of an unspecified illness. But as soon as she decided to take this job, she makes a new dress and off she goes.” ([15:07], DeWolfe)
  • Parallels are drawn to stunt reporter Nellie Bly, whose undercover work both inspires and nearly exposes Jane’s mission. The tension of being found out is personified in a dream Madeline shares.
    ([17:51]–[21:15])

• Friendship, Betrayal, and Emotional Complexity

  • The complex relationship between Pollard and Tucker—filled with suspicion, trust, need, and ambiguity—mirrors larger dynamics of women's mutual support and rivalry.
  • “Was Madeline using Jane just as Jane was using Madeline?” ([21:56], DeWolfe)
  • The book unpacks both women’s vulnerabilities and survival tactics in a society eager to label and police them.

• Media, Shame, and Public Consumption

  • Pollard’s lawsuit forced her private life into the national spotlight, turning her into a commodity in Gilded Age consumer culture. Four books, an opera, plays, and jokes circulated in her wake.
  • “She had to, in our language today, manage her brand.” ([23:57], DeWolfe)

4. Respectability, Class, and the Double Standard

• On Respectability and the Law

  • The legal battle pivots not just on breach of promise but on whether Pollard deserves to reclaim respectability—an honor usually reserved for leisured-class women.
  • “Nine years is a pretty long game for an adventurous. That's a long game.” ([27:17], DeWolfe)
  • Breckinridge’s defense slanders Pollard, suggesting she’s not the “kind of woman to whom marriage is possible,” thus shaming her and denying her status.

• Intersectionality in Women’s Lives

  • The relationship between Pollard and Tucker and their interactions with other trial figures—elite and working-class women, both Black and white—highlight the fractures and networks among women.
  • “How do we, as women, support one another? Are we building women up or are we building blocks that won't allow women to pass? Who are the privilege holders?” ([33:05], DeWolfe)

5. Manipulated Intimacy

• The very notion of female friendship is weaponized by Jane/Agnes, exploiting Madeline’s need for companionship and trust to “subvert female friendship and get this information to please men.”
  ([39:08], DeWolfe)
• Despite her skill and loyalty, Jane is ultimately not rewarded—left jobless and without the recognition she expected.
  • “At the end of this whole episode, she's right where she was in January, back at home, broke.” ([40:11], DeWolfe)

6. Teaching Opportunities and Broader Lessons

• Relevance for Today
  • The book provides multidimensional portrayals of Gilded Age women—crossing class, race, and ambition—making it ideal for use in classroom settings.
  • DeWolfe recommends staging the trial in class and using the diverse cast as entry points to explore labor, legal rights, reproductive health, and women’s economic strategies. ([42:02])
  • “The idea here between Jane and Madeline and all of the women and men in this story is they're all doing the same thing. They just all want their piece of the American dream. So what is the American dream? Or is it dreams, plural?” ([44:58], DeWolfe)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Discovering the Story
  “I don't find my stories, they find me.” ([02:46], DeWolfe)

• On Historical Method
  “We need to think more broadly and dig a little more deeply. ... For us, it's new eyes in a new generation that ask different questions of the archive than was asked in the 1970s or 60s or 50s or so forth.” ([13:49], DeWolfe)

• On Espionage and Undercover Work
  “A couple of different things pulled Jane to this task, to this mission. One was certainly money. Jane wanted an independent life. ... She wanted a great adventure. And here it was.” ([15:07], DeWolfe)

• On Betrayal and Female Friendship
  “She ends up selling and cleaning and pretending to be Madeline's new bestie, all to subvert female friendship and get this information to please men who themselves, despite all their promises, end up really kind of throwing Jane under the bus. ... At the end of this whole episode, she's right where she was in January, back at home, broke.” ([39:08]–[40:11], DeWolfe)

• On Societal Double Standards “Breckinridge is trying to show the opposite ... slut shaming her slut shaming. So does that negate any promise? He ... says, so she's not the kind of woman to whom marriage is possible. ... There are no job offers at the end, she doesn't get paid.” ([29:00]–[40:11], DeWolfe)

• On Women's Histories and Solidarity
  “How do we, as women, support one another? Are we building women up or are we building blocks that won't allow women to pass?” ([33:05], DeWolfe)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:55] – Introduction to Madeline Pollard and Jane Tucker
• [02:46] – How DeWolfe found the story and rare book episode
• [05:56] – Research methods; starting with men’s papers to find women’s stories
• [09:39] – Discovery and verification of Jane Tucker’s archival papers
• [15:07] – Jane Tucker’s motivations; undertaking spy work
• [17:51] – Nellie Bly’s influence and the peril of undercover work
• [21:56] – Emotional dynamics and trust between Madeline and Jane
• [23:57] – Media and the commodification of female scandal
• [27:17] – Respectability, class, and the legal strategy
• [33:05] – Broader lessons about women’s solidarity and divisions
• [39:08] – Manipulation of female friendship; Jane's lack of reward
• [42:02] – Using the story in the classroom; lessons for today

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Final Thoughts

Elizabeth DeWolfe’s "Alias Agnes" not only narrates a suspenseful historical episode but opens up broader reflections on the power dynamics in women’s lives, the workings of reputation and trust, and the nuances of female relationships in a society governed by double standards. The book—and this interview—showcase how reevaluating archival materials with fresh perspectives can unearth stories previously overshadowed by male-centric narratives, inviting historians and readers alike to reconsider who gets to be visible in history.

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Recommended for listeners/readers interested in:

• Gilded Age history
• Women’s and gender studies
• Legal and social history
• The dynamics of societal scandal and personal agency
• True crime and historical detective stories

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[B]

Welcome. I'm Jane Semeka, professor of history at Brookdale Community College. Today we'll be discussing a new book by Elizabeth DeWolf called Alias the Notorious Tale of a Gilded Age Spy, published by the University Press of Kentucky. Elizabeth DeWolf is a professor of history and co founder of the Women's and Gender Studies program at the University of New England. Dr. DeWolf is an award winning author. Among her other books are the Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories and Shaking the Women Family and Mary Marshall Dyer's anti Shaker Campaign, 1815-1867. Elizabeth, welcome to the show.

[A]

Thank you, Jane. It's a pleasure to be here.

[B]

So tell us, what is Alias Agnes about?

[A]

This is the story of two women whose lives intersected in Washington D.C. in 1894. Our first woman is Madeline Pollard. She was born in Kentucky and she had big dreams for a literary life and a life of culture. But she had little money and little family support. In 1894, she was the most infamous woman in America. She had sued her former lover, a US Congressman, for breach of promise with when he failed to marry her as promised. Now our second woman is Jane Tucker. She was a stenographer scrabbling to make an independent living in Boston. She became an undercover detective when one of the Congressman's lawyers approached her to serve as a Gilded Age spy. So her mission, locate and befriend Madeline Pollard and in their feminine heart to heart talks, steal Madeleine's secrets and turn them over to the Congressman's legal team. And so Alias Agnes follows Jane and Madeleine's fraught friendship of 10 weeks in the background of this incredible breach of promise trial that gripped the nation in the spring of 1894.

[B]

So this is a real page turner. I mean, I think that this is a nonfiction book with a real feel, suspenseful, page turning feel. But what sparked your interest in this story?

[A]

Well, this is one of those stories that I think happens to a lot of historians. What I say is I don't find my stories, they find me. So in this case, I was at a book fair in New Hampshire with my husband, who is a rare book dealer, and he was set up at this show. I went along to keep him company and help him out. But the show was winding down, the crowd was thinning and it was getting really boring. So I was poking through another dealer's stock and I found what's called a salesman's sample. So it's basically like Amazon preview in the Gilded Age. It's a mock up of A proposed book that publishers would have salesmen distribute to see was their interest in this book, should they go ahead and publish it. And this book, this proposed book was about the Pollard Breckenridge trial of 1894. I was really intrigued because I had never heard about it, and I was intrigued by a young woman who would have the guts to sue a sitting congressman. So I didn't buy the sample right then, but when we got home, I couldn't get it out of my brain. So I did a little work, little Googling research, and found out that the salesman sample indeed was published as a book in 1894. So then my task became, could I get a copy of it? And indeed, there were three copies available in the US on the rare book market. One was out west, really expensive. What was in the middle of the country was kind of the middle range price. I looked down, and the third copy is in the state of Maine, where I live. So once a graduate student, always a graduate student. I think, hey, I can drive and save the shipping. I looked down to see the dealer who has it, my husband. The book is one mile from my house. So he had had it, you know, for years by the catalog number we knew had been sitting in the back of his shop forever. So I buy the book, and as I read it, I think this is a story. Because the only other material about her, either from 1894 or the scant few articles about her, basically summarized her life as a congressman's mistress. No one thought to ask, what was her life like before she met the congressman and what happened to her after? And so that's what grabbed me. And then when I realized, when I found that the Breckenridge Papers survive at the Library of Congress, I knew I had my project.

[B]

Oh, wow. That's fantastic. It's almost destiny that it happened to be right in your husband's store all the time. It's really. How interesting. So did you become something of a detective doing this research?

[A]

I did. I actually fulfilled my childhood Nancy Drew dreams. And I didn't have the pumps that Nancy had. She always threw off her pumps before she ran after a bad guy. But my sensible sneakers took me to the Library of Congress and several other places. And I began this project as really a biography of Madeline Pollard. That I wanted to find out her life before and after. And that was important not only to round out the portrait of her in history, but really to kind of methodologically challenge myself is what can we find out about women? And as you well know and know, Doubt many of your listeners know when we're looking, especially at the unknown woman, we often have to start with the men. And so that is why I started with Congressman Breckenridge's papers. Along the way, as I was reading his correspondence with his legal team in preparation for the trial round About January of 1894, we're about six weeks away from trial. It's clear he is at sea. They don't have a defense. Part of the reason why is he really didn't have one. But he was just going off on so many tangents. His legal team was worried. And it was clear in the letters that one of his attorneys, a man named Charles Stowell, was proposing a scheme. And he even says in the letters, but I dare not put this in writing. And I'm thinking, huh, what's going on here? The letters, the correspondence, start to be peppered with references to Ms. Parker and Ms. P. And that set off a little bell in my head, because I had also discovered when I began the project, that in 1894, there were actually four books written about the trial. And one was written by a woman named Agnes Parker, who purportedly was an undercover detective befriending Madeline Pollard to steal her secrets. Now, her eventual book reads like some kind of gothic novel with oh and ha and oh and all sorts of really fanciful things. But it made me wonder, could it be true? And so that set me on a new quest. Who was Agnes Parker? And so it took quite a while, took about six weeks and some lucky breaks and some very dogged research to figure out that Agnes Parker was this woman named Jane Tucker. And then the big reveal for me was on the key document that located my Jane Tucker. And There were approximately 7,000 women named Jane Tucker in 1894 in the United States. This document located my Jane Tucker in the very first line, saying that she had gone to Washington from Maine, where I live. And so Jane Tucker is right up the road. So, you know, once again, the history goddesses are saying, this is your project. And at that point, I knew my book had just changed from a biography of Madeline Pollard to a story of Madelyn Pollard and Jane Tucker, alias Agnes Parker.

[B]

Oh, wow. You know, it's like you get chills just hearing the surprises and all the fortuitous events that lead you to find what you're going to find. And so the Breckinridge papers had been saved, and the Tucker family papers had been saved, too.

[A]

Yes, we're very, very fortunate. Jane Tucker's family. Her father was a sea Captain, as was her grandfather, very successful and wealthy sea captains. And they lived in coastal Maine, in Wiscasset. And as the years went by, the house was lived in by the Tucker family. And then Jane lived in that house until her death in the 1960s. Then her niece lived in it. And so nothing was thrown out. The house is architecturally unique, so it became a property of Historic New England, which is a architectural preservation and history society headquartered in Boston. So when that house became a historic property, all of the correspondence, and thankfully the Tucker women were letter writers. All of that went to Boston. But the interesting thing is, initially those papers were saved because of the sea captain heritage to really to highlight. And 1960s and early 1970s tours and advertising are all about the sea captain and his young wife, who often in advertisement, wasn't even given a name, let alone mention of the daughters. And so this kind of gendered older view of history ends up saving Jane Tucker's letters. And another kind of fascinating aspect of the research is when I learned it was that Tucker family, I made an appointment to go down to historic New England, told them this whole story and my research to find Jane, and they pretty much sat there across a big table in the archive saying, no, no, we're sorry, you have the wrong Jane Tucker. It's a very common name. And she was never a spy. She did this, she did that. And I thought, where did I go wrong? I was so sure. And one of the staff members said, where did you say this happened? I said, Washington in 1894. And I literally saw her eyes go wide. And she said, wait, I cataloged that collection. I know there were letters from Washington. And so, you know, she ran up, got the letters, brought her back down. If you didn't know this whole backstory, you would assume Jane was working in Washington as a secretary, a civil servant, as thousands of other women had. And Jane had worked in Boston, she worked in New York. And she's very careful not to reveal what she was doing to her parents and family members, what she was really doing. So as far as they knew, she was working in basically an officer secretarial sort of role. But when you triangulate with Breckenridbridge's letters, the book the Real Madeleine Pollard that Jane eventually writes, and Jane's letters, you find references to renting a typewriter, trying Kentucky brandy, all these kind of cross references that told me, and then told the archive we had found the right Jane Tucker. And they were delighted. They were delighted and have been terrifically supportive of this project. So I'm very grateful to historic New England.

[B]

Oh, that's wonderful. I mean, it's just such a stroke of luck that those Tucker papers were saved when, you know, as women's historians, we know how much winds up in the dumpster. And it's wonderful that not only were those papers saved, but that your work with them is going to make others look at them, too.

[A]

And I think that's really one of the great important lessons here, is there are still so many stories we can tell that are buried in the archive, or even not buried so much, but just not looked at. We need to think more broadly and dig a little more deeply. And it's not a giant conspiracy that someone is hiding the stories. It's just, you know, for us, it's new eyes in a new generation that ask different questions of the archive than was asked in the 1970s or 60s or 50s or so forth. Yes, we heard you. Nine years of bring back the snack wrap and you've won.

[B]

But maybe you should have asked for more.

[A]

Say hello to the hot honey snack wrap. Now you've really won. Go to McDonald's and get it while you can.

[B]

And, you know, we've been educated to know how to look for these stories and inspired to write these books and to ask the. Like you said, ask the questions and start to bring some of these. Bring these stories back to life and put them in the context of the larger story. So it's great. So what led Jane Tucker to go undercover and to work as a detective? Spy.

[A]

Yeah. In the day, she was called a girl spy, so, you know, very Nancy Drewish. A couple of different things pulled Jane to this task, to this mission. One was certainly money. Jane wanted an independent life. She was not interested in. She did not appear to be interested in marriage, motherhood, a domestic life she had as a model. Her mother, who was much younger than her father and her father went off on all these sea voyages and entrepreneurial things, leaving poor Mrs. Tucker in the house with, you know, with young children, five children, an old house, main winters. And it was. Her marriage was so unhappy that at one point, she even checked herself into a mental health facility. And so Jane saw that. And she also had the model of her two older sisters who left Maine for independent lives. One became an actor in a traveling troupe, and another sister was a writer and lived in Colorado. So Jane, from a very young age, wanted a great adventure. And here it was. There's also a pragmatic side. Money. The economy in 1893, going into 1894, was awful. And Jane had lost two jobs in a row because of economic downturn. And here is a former employer writing her, begging her to take this job. And he said, I'll pay you whatever you want. Meet me in Boston and I'll tell you the details. And so here's an opportunity, as Jane would say, to grab the gold. She didn't mean that in a greedy way. She meant it in I can achieve my slice of the American dream by taking on this role, which might help me be financially self sufficient. She also felt a lot of loyalty to this former employer, Charles Stoll, who was Breckenridge's longtime friend and attorney. So she is pushed a little bit away from this domestic sphere. She had lost her job, returned to Maine. She had kind of an unspecified illness. But as soon as she decided to take this job, she makes a new dress and off she goes. And her mother reports in a letter to Jane's sister that, you know, Jane seemed happy when she left, and even her bowels were regular. So there you go. We're work has digestive benefits, evidently. So a push and a pull.

[B]

Yeah, right, yeah. And she seemed to be inspired a bit by the life and career of Nellie Bly, who comes up in the book a couple of times. And so can you talk to that a little bit?

[A]

Yeah, Nellie Bly. And it's absolutely fascinating to see that reference because Nellie Bly was a journalist, sometimes referred to as a stunt reporter, who would masquerade to get an undercover story, very famously masquerading as a woman troubled by mental health issues to get into a New York City insane asylum. And she was able to reveal the pretty horrific treatment. And her reporting led to real changes in the way that the mentally ill were treated. So similarly, Jane Tucker arrives in Washington and becomes Agnes Parker and knocks on the door of the House of Mercy, a home for fallen women, and meets the matron of this home and has to fake her way in, crying and stalling for time behind a sodden handkerchief as she tries to create a story on the fly about why she's begging to get into a. That most of the inmates are begging to get out of. And she's able to do that. So she's having this Nellie Bly moment of taking on a new Persona to reveal hidden information, which she eventually will do in her book. But the idea of Nellie Bly at one point almost sinks her mission. So Madeline and Jane, who she knows as Agnes, in the evenings play games with the young women girls, some of them who are there for their year of Reformation. And one of the games they play is the Nellie Bly board game. So Nellie Bly then famously races another female reporter around the world. Right. The idea of you can get around the world in 80 days. She did it in 72 and won this race. This became a board game, very popular board game. And everyone's playing it and having a good time. The next day, Madeline reveals to Jane that she had a bad dream and that she, in the dream, Jane was really Nellie Bly. And Jane knew right away that she didn't mean Nellie Bly like, let's travel Europe, she meant Nellie Blythe the journalist. And Madeline reveals that she was worried that a Nellie Bly type character might try to steal her secrets. Exactly what Jane was doing. And Jane tries to bluff it off. Oh, oh, what a horrible dream. As if I could do that. This very kind of, you know, self deprecating stance. But Jane knows at that moment that Madeleine's intuition is awake and thinking, huh, is Agnes all she appears to be?

[B]

Yeah. And that's really, that really colors their friendship all the way through this. This every now and then it seems like Madeline really suspects something is not right. But then she continues to have, you know, walk, go on walks with her and to include her in her. I mean, she's, I don't know whether it's because she's desperate for the friendship, feeling so exiled by society and by, you know, the fashionable people that had been in her life, but it's a, it's a very tantalizing part of their friendship. Whether Madeline really trusts her or doesn't trust her.

[A]

Yeah, it's a great question. And exactly that. Madeline was a very intuitive woman and so you would think she would listen to her inner self and really push Jane away. And we see part of that there's. In the real Madeline Pollard book, there is a considerable gap where it's clear Jane and Madeleine have really very little contact. And so there's a little bit of pushback. But you're absolutely right that Madeleine does continue to invite Jane in. And I wondered that too. Was Madeleine using Jane just as Jane was using Madeline? Because she had that confidant, she had that sister, mother friendship that she was so desperate for in her exile, and particularly within the House of Mercy because the, the teachers there would not even dine with Madeline. The House of Mercy matron, Sister Dorothea just abhorred her. It must have been, it was just so isolating. And Madeleine Pollard just must have been feeling quite adrift. Yet that inner voice, that inner voice is telling her, be careful.

[B]

Sure. And she had, you know, so much of this book also relies on newspaper accounts and what's being printed in the paper and all these really terrible news stories that are embarrassing to Madeline Pollard. And so she had to have also really been concerned that somebody might leak her, you know, details about her and get paid for them for the tidbits and that she was just too. It was just too tempting.

[A]

Yeah, it is. And you know, and that's absolutely it. You know, you have these newspapers and here's the thing. When we see Madeleine Pollard, when she decides to sue Breckenridge for breach of promise, we can say, yeah, you go, girl. Absolutely. He promised, went back on it. But in doing so, she had to reveal everything about their nine, almost ten year relationship, which included three pregnancies, which included her living this double life as a society woman, you know, kind of by day and by parties, but a mistress as well. And so Madeleine herself is revealing information. The papers, of course, are glomming onto anything they can get, whether it's true or not. And this was humiliating, embarrassing. Her mother disowned her. Her family had nothing to do with her except for one brother who begrudgingly came to Washington to kind of serve in that chaperone role. So for Madeline, it was such a difficult time and she had to manage her image. She had to, in our language today, manage her brand. Because the other thing we see that's so interesting and it's so interesting in the Gilded Age is this rise of consumerism and capitalizing on scandal. Right. Four books published about the scandal. There was an opera, there were plays, there were jokes. Madeline Pollard becomes kind of, you know, if, if it were today, she'd be a meme. And the jokes with Madeline Pollard as a punchline continue all the way to the 1940s. So she has become herself this, this consum, you know, a consumable entity. And that to me was very fascinating. But it's also very. And that gets back to my initial impetus for the project. Who was Madeline Pollard? Beyond these oh, here's a mistress, ha ha, here's a mistress joke. That's what drove me with this project.

[B]

Yeah. And, you know, on the other side of it, it's just she's a. She can be also looked at as sort of a pathetic character who was 30 years younger than Breckenridge and had been carrying on this sexual relationship with him. He was a married man and with grown children and, you know, you can't help but feel sorry for, you know, her ruined reputation and what that meant to women at that time of not having the ability to ever be considered respectable again is sad. And, you know, it really makes you question sometimes throughout this story is, should we feel sorry for her or is she kind of manipulating the situation like, you know, you kind of don't know.

[A]

Yeah, and that's, you know, that's the thing, you know, people would say, well, it's really fascinating. So, you know, one might say, well, she, you know, she made her bed. Literally. Right? She made her bed. And, and what would she, what was she expecting? Well, she was expecting marriage because he promised. We might say, well, she was an adventurous. She's just trying to class hop and get into that leisure class. And, and, and on the one hand you think, well, well, sure, who wouldn't want that life? That's the life she wanted. And nine years is a pretty long game for an adventurous. That's a long game. So one of the challenges for this research was to dig beyond the newspaper articles and the works that were published during the height of the scandal and to look for evidence of Madeleine's, you know, dreams and aspirations before she even met Breckenridge. And I was able to find some, you know, tantalizing documents from before she even encountered him, which authenticate her desire for literary life. So when she starts out with this, you know, when she starts her experience as a mistress, her father is dead, she hasn't lived with her brothers in 20 years. She is a young woman without protection, and Breckenridge knows that. And she's in a bad situation with a benefactor who would pay her college tuition if she would marry him. And once Madeline enters college, she realizes that the education that's supposed to free her because of her deal is just drawing her right back into rural Kentucky life, which is not what she wanted. And so she is very vulnerable. And I think Breckenridge takes, he knows it and he takes advantage of her. Yet, yet Madeleine stays the course and that becomes the focus of the trial. Although it's Breckinridge on trial. Did he or did he not promise marriage? But it's really Madeleine who's being examined. And for exactly the point you brought up, is she legitimately a member of the leisured society or is she what was called an adventuress? Is she class hopping above her place? And in terms of respectability, that's what this trial, that's the prize in the trial in breach of promise, which was usually brought by the daughters of the leisured class. It's a way to return their respectability should they be jilted or left at the altar. It's a way for the court to say, it's not you, it's him. You're still respectable. So Madeleine is pretty gutsy again in using a leisure, really, a law that's designed for the leisured class. And so what people are weighing is did she ever have a respectability that the court can return? And so that's what this trial is really, you know, hinging on is Madeleine's authenticity in terms of her dreams, her aspirations, her. Her couple of years in Washington society and everything that came before. And does that, you know, Breckenridge is trying to show the opposite and saying she was no virgin. She slept around, yada, yada, yada, slut shaming her slut shaming. So does that negate any promise? He says she. He says in court, he literally says, so she's not the kind of woman to whom marriage is possible. So any words he said, you know, are moot because she's not a marriageable woman. And that's what. That's what's coming down now. You know, many of her fellow residents at the House of Mercy would have been, you know, young women who were domestic servants. And we know how dangerous and fraught that position was. If she had been in that position, there wouldn't have been a breach of promise trial.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Absolutely. Yeah. Because the assumption is the working class woman, especially an immigrant, not entitled to it. Not entitled, yeah, right, exactly.

[B]

And I think the relationship between the two women is really fascinating too, because they are frenemies or faux friends, as you write in the book. So I just wanted to read a paragraph from page 259 that Jane had more in common with Madeline than perhaps she was willing to admit. Although they took different routes, they sought a similar destination, directing their lives in the face of. And despite the challenges women faced. Working class wages barely sufficient for the means of life. Glass ceilings for women professionals like Mary Parsons and Belle Buchanan, whose expertise was questioned and mocked rules of etiquette that served as a litmus test on the social legitimacy, on social legitimacy. Laws and cultural beliefs that limited women's right to property, fair wages, ambitions, reproductive health care, education, the vote, and practices like the sexual double standard, collectively denying women a full measure of personhood. So that, you know, from. To place this also their friendship in sort of this larger context of women's history. So what do you think that this story kind of tells us about women's lives in the Gilded Age?

[A]

I think they were Complicated. And I think there's a lot of shades of gray too often. And we see this. We even see this in women's histories to textbooks. When we skim the chapter titles, the chapter titles make, in some ways, make it look like all women are united. And we go from the beginning of the 19th century, we have no rights, and then at the end of the 19th century, we're on our way to suffrage. Yay, women. But we know from the contents of those very good books that that's not the case. And so that really brings it really, to me. It brought up questions of women's relationship to each other, and not only in the Gilded Age, but today as well. How do we, as women, support one another? Are we building women up or are we building blocks that won't allow women to pass? Who are the. Who are the privilege holders? And how can we help other women rise, be vocal, be visible in history and in present life? So I think that, to me, was one of the most interesting things that I hadn't thought about going into this project, was how women related with each other. And what's interesting when you look beyond, even beyond Jane and Madeleine, to the other women involved in the trial, like elite Julia Churchill Blackburn. She's not there because she's supporting Madeleine Pollard. She's there to protect her own family name because her security in her social standing and financially revolves around the name of her dead husband. And so she's there to protect that name after the trial. And we see that. We see that throughout the trial. From, you know, elite Julia Churchill Blackburn, to working class Louise Lowell, to formerly enslaved Sarah Gist. They are all there managing their place in society. What's fascinating is the day after the verdict, a society, a progressive society of women in Washington, send flowers to honor the women who bravely testified in court. And it was brave. The jury is all male. The whole courtroom is male. Judge does not allow women in the courtroom because it's too unseemly. So these women get up, and here they are, you know, ostensibly speaking on behalf of a mistress. And so this society is going to send flowers. They send flowers to Julia Churchill Blackburn. Right? Elite women. Churchill, as in Churchill Downs, Churchill's. They send flowers to Mary Deshay, the sister in law of Breckenridge, who speaks about her late sister, Breckenridge's late wife, that he cheated on. They do not send flowers to Sarah Gist, whose testimony was key in marking when this trial, when the affair began. They do not send flowers to Madeleine Pollard, who revealed the most Painful episodes of her life to a national audience to fight for, as she said, to fight against that double standard. No one recognizes what she did. So there you have this really interesting idea about the. I kept thinking about kind of networks of women who can talk to whom, who supports whom. How does that look like? And what are the con. What would be the consequences if they had sent flowers to battle, if they had sent flowers to Sarah Gist or sent flowers to any of the working class women who testified? So that was really interesting. So I guess the lesson for me, as I read deeper and deeper, is that we, as women historians and historians of women, we have a lot more work that we can do to suss out how these relationships worked.

[B]

Yeah. And I love the couple of the scenes where Agnes, Jane, will hold Madeline's hand. And Madeline's hand is soft and manicured, and Jane's hand is calloused and rough from sewing and from typing and from taking stenography. And, you know, that the class differences, the working requirements for these women who are determined to have lives outside of marriage, you know, it just. It really sets it in clear relief, you know, and, you know, the whole idea of, you know, think about Carol Smith Rosenberg and the female world of love and ritual and how the idea of the idealization of women's friendships with each other and even romantic friendships, which seems to be really also hanging in the background, that I think that Agnes sort of manipulates that. Right. Because she uses the idea of women's kind of this woman's world of friendship and love and emotional support in order to get the information that she's hired to get. You know, so that was one of the things that I thought that bubbled up for me because I, you know, I really am interested in that idea and to see how it ends up kind of getting turned on its head a little bit in this story.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. And that's so true that she is using that very idea. And the ironic thing is that Jane did not have a lot of close women friends. She was judgy, she was snarky. She just didn't seem to have a lot of beyond. Her sisters did not have a lot of close women friends. And so here. And she didn't like the domestic life. So what does she end up doing? She ends up selling and cleaning and pretending to be Madeline's new bestie, all to subvert female friendship and get this information to please men who themselves, despite all their promises, promises, promises, end up really kind of throwing Jane under the bus. There are no job Offers. At the end, she doesn't get paid. At the end of this whole episode, she's right where she was. Was in January, back at home, broke.

[B]

That kind of shocked me.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

You know, she's so good. And that Charles Stoll really recognizes her talent and her. How sharp she is. And other than him, though, nobody else. You know, I. I'm kind of surprised she doesn't end up with a. Being able to parlay this experience into something else.

[A]

I was too. And I was disappointed in stolen. I was disappointed in some of the lawyers because they repeatedly promised they both recognized her skill, but at the same time, they didn't listen to her. And Jane gave the lawyers very good advice. So, you know, her contributions. Was she good at what she did? Absolutely was. She was clever. She could think on her feet.

[B]

Feet.

[A]

She was smart. She was creative in the ways that she worked around problems. She was good at this job. Did she affect the outcome of the trial? I don't really think so. I think Breckenridge was in so deep it wasn't going to work. She did pass along information that helped at moments with surprise witnesses and schemes that the plaintiff's attorneys were engaging in as well, and she was able to reveal those to Breckenridge's team. But when she offered clear advice on how to approach Madeline on the stand, and she knew Madeline better than anyone, including Breckenridge, they didn't listen to her. And that was to their peril because Madeline was able to play those attorneys in court.

[B]

So let's turn to teaching for a minute. How can a college instructor use this book in a history class? Do you have any thoughts on that?

[A]

I do. I think because of all the various women of different social classes and different economic strata, there's a real opportunity here to look at how the diversity of women's lives intersect in not only this one event, but in life in general. So there's a real opportunity here to look beyond the kind of people who go to Newport and people who clean the floor dichotomy of the Gilded Age. And there's, you know, there's plenty of documentation. You could then go from. Okay, if this is what Sarah Gist does as a formerly enslaved woman, what else can we learn about formerly enslaved women at this period of time? And look at all these women who are going into business for themselves. Gist and Louise Lowell, Jane. It's absolutely fascinating. And for me, because I love to have fun in the classroom, what I would do is I would stage the trial, and there are Plenty of other people that you can draw on real or types that could get students into the primary sources of the trial and have, you know, have fellow students weigh the evidence. What do they think about Madeleine Pollard? What would the verdict of the trial be if students staged it? I think it would be a lot of fun and there's opportunities. I teach mostly non history majors because of the nature of my health centered institution. And so in my classes I try to draw on these students majors. So there's opportunities here. If you have students who are in a health profession, you know, like nursing or pre med, investigate. What would it have been like for Madeline in her three pregnancies? What was pregnancy like? And for the business majors, this trial becomes a commercial entity in itself. So what is the marketing there? What's the marketing strategy that people are using? What's the branding? All the offers that were made to Madeline are trying to capitalize on her fame. So kind of the TikTok influencer is nothing new. We're seeing this in the Gilded Age, less social media. So I think there's lots of opportunities here to use this as a stepping stone to look at the depth of the Gilded Age. And the idea here between Jane and Madeline and many of and all of the women and men in this story is they're all doing the same thing. They just all want their piece of the American dream. So what is the American dream? Or is it dreams plural?

[B]

Yeah. No, I think this, this is a beautifully researched book. Fantastic read, a page turner. And I really think that if you pick this book up, you're just going to absolutely love it. And I'm going to recommend it to my book club because I think they would really, really like this book. So I thank you for writing it. It was fantastic. So thank you for joining me on the show today. And so thank you, Elizabeth DeWolf, for your book alias, the Notorious Tale of a Gilded Age Spy, published by University Press of Kentucky. Until next time, this is Jane Semeka. Keep reading.