June 7, 2022 • 46 mins
Margaret Whigham Sweeney Campbell was the most notorious tabloid figure of her day. Her divorce from Ian Campbell, Duke of Argyll, would be the longest and costliest divorce in British history until that point, and would help usher in the all-too-modern tabloid trend of tearing scandalized women apart.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankie listener discretion advised.
In nineteen thirty one, a socialite named Ethel Margaret Wigham
(00:21):
held her nineteenth birthday party at the Embassy Club, one
of London's most exclusive supper clubs at the time. It
was the kind of place where film stars and royalty
co mingled, and Margaret was the center of it all.
She was the beautiful, wealthy daughter of a Scottish business man,
and after her coming out as Debutante of the Year
(00:43):
in nineteen thirty she soon became a darling of London
society thanks to her glamorous fashion and her aura of confidence.
According to legend, the knight of the birthday party, Margaret
had an astrologer predict her future. I see happiness, laughter,
much love, but beware there is danger. Danger from what
(01:07):
Margaret asked, treachery. The astrologer replied, you will be betrayed
by the people you trust. Flash forward thirty years and Margaret,
then fifty years old and the Duchess of Argyle, arrived
at court wearing a tailored peacoat, mink rap and pearl earrings.
(01:30):
She was there to begin the divorce proceedings from her
second husband, the Duke of Argyle, which would end up
being the longest and costliest divorce proceedings British history had
ever seen. The couple had met after Margaret's divorce from
her first husband, American businessman Charles Sweeney, but it soon
(01:52):
became clear that Margaret had found another doomed match. The
Duke was filing for divorce from his wife on the
grounds of adultery, alleging that Margaret had taken eighty eight
lovers in their time together, a list of lovers that
included cabinet ministers, Hollywood actors, and royals. It was a
(02:13):
tabloid frenzy, not only thanks to the couple's titles and
the breadth of the accusation, but because of the voyeuristic
intimate details that were being made public. Margaret later described
her second husband as quote in every essence a Gemini Gemini.
(02:33):
People are usually two faced, aren't they? You should never
trust them? Charming and treacherous. The story of the Argyle
divorce and the story of Margaret's life are both complicated
ones to tell. It's hard to separate the truth from
the tabloid narrative, and it's hard to discern what the
(02:55):
truth even is at all. Margaret's recountenances are filled with contradictions, misrememberings, and,
according to some outright lies. In more recent years, there
have been attempts to reframe Britain's view of Margaret with
our modern understanding of issues at play, like sledge shaming
and ideas about revenge porn. Last year, the BBC aired
(03:19):
the drama A Very British Scandal, which sought to paint
a more nuanced, insightful portrait of the inner lives of
the subjects at the heart of the scandal. But as
you might imagine, television is meant to entertain, and the
show still provides all of the sensationalized scandal that you
might hope for from its title. Perhaps in the end,
(03:43):
that's the only way you can really do justice to
the story of the woman who thought of herself as
a sensation. Later in life, Margaret would reflect quote, I
had wealth, I had good looks. As a young woman,
I had been constantly photographed, written about, out, flattered, admired.
Included in the ten Best Dressed Women in the World
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list and mentioned by Cole Porter in the words of
his hit song You're the Top, The top was what
I was supposed to be. That last claim is actually
only a half truth. In the original version of his
song for the musical Anything Goes, Cole Porter never wrote
a line about Margaret. The original lyric of the song
(04:28):
and the one that is used today goes You're an
O'Neill drama, your Whistler's Mama, great charming. But in there
was a British production of Anything Goes with some of
the lyrics anglicized by P. G. Woodhouse. Today, that one
production is a curio of history with lyrics that sound
(04:52):
not only less relevant but downright confusing to some listeners today.
Whatever you're expecting the ang a sized lyric to be,
it's probably not this, But the PG Woodhouse couplet goes
your Mussolini, your Mrs Sweeney. Mrs Sweeney, of course, referencing Margaret.
(05:14):
Any person who could share a lyric with Mussolini, where
audiences would think, yes, those two people are of the
same cultural cash a certainly deserves our historical examination. Unfortunately,
for all of the glamor of Margaret Wigham Sweeney Campbell's life,
there was also a twisted undercurrent of pain and a
(05:37):
now all too modern story about how tabloid media builds
women up just to tear them down. I'm Danish sports
and this is noble blood. Margaret was the only child
of George Wigham, the millionaire chairman of the Selling Ease Corporation,
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and his wife Helen. Though Margaret was born on her
maternal grandparents estate in a sleepy Scottish town a few
miles outside of Glasgow, Margaret's first memory of a home
was the Park Avenue apartment in New York City, where
she spent much of her childhood. Margaret recalled having no
friends as a girl, preferring to keep the company of
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teddy bears. When she wasn't with the Teddy's, she preferred
the company of her parents. As the only child of
a wealthy family, she became spoiled and close with her
doting father. Her relationship with her mother was more difficult.
Margaret would later recall that she would enter her mother's
bedroom each morning, not knowing if she was going to
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be quote bright and loving or complaining and bad tempered.
As Margaret grew up, her mother became obsessive over her
daughter's appearance. The fixation with looks likely came from Helen's
own childhood insecurities from never feeling like she was attractive
enough compared to her siblings. The constant attention given to
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Margaret's looks, even though it was negative, made the young
Margaret a self described vain little girl. Her mother also
took issue with Margaret's developing stammer, which began after she
was forced to start writing with her right hand, even
though she was naturally left handed. Margaret was taken to
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London to be treated by Lionel Log, the same speech
therapist who helped King George the sixth manage his stammer,
who you might have seen portrayed by Jeffrey Rush in
the movie The King's Speech. The real Lionels methods proved
ineffective on Margaret, much to her mother's disappointment. Margaret would
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later recount her mother telling her, no matter how pretty
you are, Margaret, you will get nowhere in life if
you stammer. As Margaret grew older, the effect of a
childhood without hearing the word no from her father began
to cement in Margaret's personality. She believed that anything could
be bought, and she had little respect for authority or
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for any adults who weren't her parents. Though Margaret was
beginning to physically appear older and present herself as more sophisticated,
she still doated on the teddy bears from her childhood,
much to her mother's chagrin. One day, Margaret forgot to
bring her teddy bears inside from the lawn and found
them the next morning soaked and destroyed. She would consider
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this the spiritual end of her childhood. Margaret's mother soon
gave her the talk, which Margaret recalled as going something
like quote, it's this awful thing we women have to
put up with, we close our eyes and bear it.
Margaret had no desire to hear about this, and the
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discomfort with the topic of sex stuck with her for
some time. Margaret's parents thought she was growing up too fast,
and so she was transferred to the Heathfield School, where
girls learned academics, played lacrosse, and attended twice daily prayer.
None of that interested Margaret, who detested the school's expectations
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of conformity. She once retreated from her peers and noted
that she had no friends at the school, proclaiming, quote,
I don't like women in a mass I think they
should be individuals. Margaret was brought to and from school
every day in a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce, which probably
provides some indication as to how her fellow students saw her.
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Margaret felt that the disdain with which the other girls
treated her was earned simply because she was much more
sophisticated than them. As the car drove away, she shouted
bye bye, girls. Enjoy your hockey and your lacrosse. I'm
off to a matinee in London. She She was at
the school for only two months before her family was
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forced to make a decision. Margaret could live at the
school as a boarder or she'd be forced to leave,
so she left and began learning from a governess. During
that time, Margaret found her passion for boys. She was
surprised to find they liked her speech impediment, seeing it
as a vulnerability they could care for, something she described
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as a cold comfort. When Margaret was fifteen, her family
spent the Easter holiday at Benbridge on the Isle of Wight.
It was there she met David Niven, a seventeen year
old public schoolboy and future Oscar winning actor. Margaret became
infatuated and soon lost her virginity to him. Even once
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she returned home from the vacation, she couldn't stop thinking
about David, and she roped a friend into sneaking off
to London with her to visit him, an incredibly bold
move for a woman, let alone a fifteen year old
girl of the time. Her rebellious streak came to a
sudden halt when she learned she was pregnant. Her father
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was furious and all hell broke loose in the house.
This was the nineteen twenties and teen pregnancy is still
taboo today. Margaret underwent a secret abortion and no one
was to speak of the quote incident again. In ninety nine,
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Margaret and her mother began preparing for Margaret's debut as
a debutante, despite being a year younger than the typical
deb Margaret reflected that quote, my mother must have realized
that there was no holding me back. On May one,
nine thirty, the first day of the London Social season,
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Margaret's coming out party was held. Their bold choice to
kick off the season was backed up by an unlimited
dress budget. They were determined to make a splash. Margaret's
popularity with boys, while recently traumatizing to her family, led
her mother to see Margaret in a new light. Margaret
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was no longer simply the stuttering, plain looking creature who
seemed so foreign to her. The nineteen thirties wave of
debutantes favored women like Margaret, bright and bold, fashionable and modern. Quote.
The girls of the nineteen thirties not only had good looks,
they knew how to dress, and they had far more
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self confidence than their predecessors. Margaret would later reflect. Margaret's
party cost forty thousand pounds and entertained four hundred guests.
She made her entrance to the sound of a big
band orchestra, and she was dressed in a Norman Hartnell
turquoise dress embroidered with diamonds and pearls. Her mother had
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insisted that she wear white, the traditional color for debutantes,
but Mark Gret wanted to stand out from the others.
She purposefully stained the white dress that her mom had
bought for her, which of course forced her to change
into the turquoise one. The dresses designer, Norman Hartnell would
eventually become dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth the Second, and Margaret
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would credit herself with Hartnell's rise to fame, and we
can't say she's entirely wrong. She was a bona fide sensation.
One Society column summed it up by saying, quote, she's
shown out above everyone else, as is fitting for the
heroine of such an evening. Throughout the season, at just
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seventeen years old, she became one of the most photographed
women in London, and magazines called her the prettiest debutante
of the set. Margaret's celebrity was on the rise, and
her mother, Helen began to grow exhausted by the number
of different invitations her daughter received. Eventually, Helen stopped going
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with her altogether, leaving Margaret to attend events unschaper owned.
It was during this time that Margaret developed what she
called the Wigham system. She danced with any boy who
asked her for the first half of the night, decide
her favorites, and then dance only with them for the second.
The men didn't mind, but other debs began to refer
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to her as quote that Maggie Wigham. That year, she
also began to frequent clubs like the Embassy with a
different number of men, including the Prince Ali Khan, who
tried to marry her side note he would later marry
Rita Hayworth. And Margaret also developed a sizeable friend group
of other society women. One of the men she would
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eventually charm was American businessman Charles Sweeney, who claimed to
initially dislike her. I could not stand her, he wrote
to me. She was a conceited, garrulous show off whose
company I avoided as much as I could. Their mutual
friend groups made encounters unavoidable, and one night, due to
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them both ending up without a partner, they agreed to
be each other's dates to the Embassy Club. Sweeney would
write that that night changed everything. He quote fell under
the spell of Margaret Wiggham's charm. After a few more dates,
Charles Sweeney unofficially proposed, and she accepted. This meant the
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world to him, but little to Margaret, who didn't see
proposals as real commitments. The proof is in the fact
that she soon also became unofficially engaged to their friend
Max Aitken. Neither of the men knowing about the engagement
she had to the other. Eventually, despite a third, more
formal engagement being thrown into the mix, Margaret had begun
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to see more of Sweeney, who was hurt by her
betrayal of multiple engagements but still harbored feelings. Once Margaret
had officially broken off the other engagements, she and Charles
Sweeney became officially engaged. The wedding date was set, and
her time as quote the Wigham as the press called her,
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was coming to an end. The wedding was a glamorous affair,
so many onlookers and members of the press wanted to
see her heart n all dress, which featured an eighteen
foot train embroidered with orange blossoms that surrounding traffic was
blocked for three hours. The literal traffic stopping dress was
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recently displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum. After the wedding,
Margaret would become pregnant, but it would be the first
in a series of miscarriages, of which there would be
eight total. During a later pregnancy, Margaret became so ill
that the baby had to be delivered still born in
order to save her life. Margaret fell into a deep depression,
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both from the loss of the child but also from
Charlie's absence, despite staying at her side throughout her illness,
as she recovered, he would visit her briefly in the
hospital each night before heading out to a club. While
it would still be a while before their divorce, that dynamic,
no doubt reaffirmed Margaret's feeling that Charlie Sweeney did not
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see her for the person she was. That quote, all
he wanted for a wife was a pretty brainless doll.
She tried to be that for the next several years,
but as World War Two began, their focus was torn
away from their personal conflicts, and each contributed in their
own way to the war effort. While the couple did
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eventually have two children together, the tears in their marriage
were forever evident. Both of them committed adultery, but neither
would accept the blame for the dissolution of the relationship.
In the pair officially divorced, Margaret was thirty four years old.
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In the wake of the Second World War. The London
social scene was just beginning to return, and Margaret was
now ready to return with it. She would find the
next major phase of her life beginning not in London, though,
but on a train to Paris, where she would be
seated across from a tall man with a pointed nose
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she'd come to learn that his name was Ian Campbell
and that he would soon be the Duke of Argyle.
He already knew who she was, apparently over a decade earlier,
he had seen Margaret on the staircase of a London nightclub,
and he turned to his wife at the time and said,
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quote that captivating creature is the woman I'm going to
marry someday. Ian Douglas Campbell was penniless but titled. His
great grandfather was the eighth Duke of Argyle, and thanks
to the ninth and tenth not having sons, Ian inherited
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his family's title and home in Verae Castle from his
second cousin, the eleventh Duke of Argyle, was a bit
of a mad academic, and his neglect of the castle
in favor of other pursuits saw it fall into ruin.
That meant that Ian also inherited the responsibility of restoring
the estate. For this he depended on his wife Janet
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and then his second wife Louise, both heiresses. Ian himself
never worked and was addicted to alcohol, drugs, and gambling.
Even before his dukedom, he was in deep debt. Both
of his wives would later accuse him of abuse and
squandering their money. Years later, his future son in law
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would describe him as quote one of the cold list
nastiest men I've ever known in a wild cameo. That
future son in law also just happened to be the
writer Norman Mailer, who if you know anything about Norman Mailer,
you know that he might have given Ian a run
for his money in the bad husband department. But back
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to Ian and Margaret. When the pair met, they were
both recently single, Ian and his wife having separated after
the war on the ground of mutual adultery. I can
imagine that pointing out other women he wanted to marry
while the two were together didn't help. On that train
ride to Paris where they met, Margaret was a sympathetic
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listener to ian struggles, and he to hers. Ian had
been a prisoner of war and he was readjusting to
a life of freedom. Both were starved for connection. Margaret
invited Ian back to her home as soon as they
arrived in London, and there they slept together for the
first time. Margaret soon began to pursue Ian with the
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intention of marriage. Her first husband, Charlie, would later write
in his memoir quote, she had always been intrigued by
the idea of becoming a duchess Ian. By this point, officially,
the Duke was still in the process of persuading Louise
to agree to an official divorce. He was thrilled by
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Margaret's pursuit of him. This time, he didn't have to
do the work of finding an heiress himself. Their courtship
was largely secretive due to his status as technically a
married man and hers as a divorcee. One night, they
attended a West End play together, Ring Round the Moon,
about a twins attempt to rescue his brother from what
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he believes will be a disastrous marriage. In hindsight, it
seems like an omen that evening, Ian proposed to Margaret
with the promise that as soon as the divorce with
Louise was finalized, she would be his duchess. Of course,
Margaret accepted. Ian's charm worked on Margaret's parents just as
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it had on her. They were impressed with his title,
and they were excited at the prospect of their daughter
becoming a duchess Ian. Even immediately charmed George into becoming
a patron of the Campbell clan. And he pledged twenty
five thousand pounds towards Inveray's restoration, with no return expected.
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Margaret herself was determined to bring the castle back to
its former glory, and she blamed much of its current
disarray on Louise, his ex wife, and not Ian himself.
For Margaret and her father's donations, they received a deed
of gift which will come back to bite her later.
(22:51):
But in nineteen fifty one, Louise finally agreed to the divorce,
but with Ian about to be officially mark it, he
began to reveal his true colors for the first time. Unprompted,
one night, he launched into a verbal attack on Margaret's children,
her father, even Margaret herself. The next morning, she asked
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him what had provoked his rage, which only sent him
into another tirade. This was just days before their wedding.
She felt that it was too late to back out,
and she was too ashamed to tell her father, who
she knew would tell her to call off the marriage
and prioritize her happiness, the advice that he had given
her during one of her earlier engagements. Plus there was
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the guilt that Margaret felt about the money they had
already sunk into Ian's castle, so Margaret wrote it off
and went through with the marriage. On the eve of
Margaret and Ian's wedding, she received a letter from her
ex husband, Charlie, warning her not to marry Ian. Charlie
had spoken Louise, who had told him of Ian's opportunistic
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scheming and his mistreatment of her and their sons. Charlie
Sweeney wrote quote, I only hope you're not deluding yourself
that Campbell is inspired by any great love, because he's not.
Margaret ignored this letter, thinking that both Charlie and Louise
were jealous bitter xes. Margaret and Ian were married on
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March twenty second, nine six hours after the divorce with
Louise was official. It was a smaller ceremony, a far
cry from Margaret's first wedding. This time, she wore a
gray chiffon dress with a pussy bow, a feathered hat,
and her signature set of pearls. The two honeymooned at Inverie,
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and she spent the time in workman's overalls. Immediately following
through on her promise to help restore the castle, post
of Margaret's work was unfruitful in very ray was beginning
to seem like a lost cause. The money she was
putting into the castle was also being put towards Ian's debts,
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which she learned about upon their return to the home.
As much as Margaret cared about restoring the castle, she
was not suited to life in the countryside, and it
was agreed that Margaret would keep her home in London
for social visits. As you might have predicted, Ian's character
didn't improve after the wedding. He would often get into
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public altercations, and Margaret spent much of their time together
in public apologizing for him. His verbal abuse eventually escalated
into physical violence, and during a trip to Jamaica, Margaret
remembers an acquaintance having to rush into their room to
stop Ian from physically attacking her. Margaret attempted to prevent
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her husband from drinking so often, hoping to return him
to the man she originally knew. She offered to recreate
his favorite club Whites, in their home so that he
could avoid the party atmosphere, but he bitterly explained that
he went to the club to escape her. Ian began
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to belittle her in front of her friends and As
a result, her stammer started to worsen, which made it
difficult for her to speak up for herself. Margaret later
wrote that quote Ian had a markedly sadistic streak in
his character. Things like that were done deliberately to hurt me,
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and hurt me they always did. I realized now that
if I had not given him the satisfaction of knowing this,
Ian would have been deprived of much pleasure. Their relationship
was complicated by Ian's manipulative nature and Margaret's willingness to
make excuses for it. Quote out, he toyed with me
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as a cat plays with a mouse. Every time he
sent that I had come to the end of my tether.
He would then choose to become his most agreeable self,
ready to do anything to please me. Eventually, after three
years of marriage, in Veray was ready to open to
the public for tours. Ian took his role as duke
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seriously and spent his days greeting visitors and leading tours.
Margaret was hopeful that he had turned a new leaf,
but when the tourist season ended, he reverted right back
to his old cruel ways. Margaret decided to take a
trip abroad and their lives and eventually homes became separate.
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They remained married, but Margaret considered nineteen fifty six to
be the real turning point for the rest of her life.
This is where things take a turn for the soap operatic.
The divorce wasn't actually the first legal proceeding that would
make the Argyle's headlines. That was actually a libel suit
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against Margaret from Ian's secretary. Van McPherson was the widow
of a man who had been a prisoner of war
with Ian, and so their connection between Ivan and Ian
went beyond the typical employer employee relationship. Vaughan's loyalty to
Ian was so apparent that Margaret began to believe that
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the two were conspiring against her. Margaret's assessment that Ian
could do something drastic wasn't entirely out of nowhere. Ian
had recently recovered from influenza, but had become addicted to
drena mill, a drug that was so widely abused in
the UK at the time that it's no longer prescribed.
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The drugs led to bouts of erratic behavior and mania.
We don't know if Margaret's suspicions about Vane were accurate,
but Ian was in act plotting against her with his
doctor to have her certified as insane. Years earlier, Margaret
had fallen down an elevator shaft and the pair in
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and his doctor wanted to claim that it had caused
brain damage. To do so, they needed a note from
Margaret's doctor, who had refused and informed her of their plan. Margaret,
even having her paranoia validated, continued just to blame her
husband's actions on the adrenalmal and so loyal as ever
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to her husband, Margaret focused on the belief that Yvonne
was the one speaking to the press. She later claimed
that the proprietor of the Daily Mail told her that
Yvonne was on the books for years, but there's no
actual evidence. Margaret was so convinced in fact, and so
determined to prove her case that she sent in a
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fake telegram pretending it was from Van. It read quote
rushing off for and days, but all as ready as
we planned to tear strips off Margaret financially and otherwise
A million thanks for your love, support and invaluable information
without which I would be helpless. Happy Easter and then
into battle side by side a Vaughan. Ian asked Margaret
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to apologize. She refused, and soon she received a letter
notifying her that Van was suing her for damages. In
nineteen fifty nine, Ian and Margaret took a trip to
Australia on ducal duty. There, Ian discovered the diary that
Margaret had kept for the past three years. Inside were
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the names of half a dozen men and a meticulously
recorded schedule that showed each time she had met with them.
When Margaret discovered him with the diary, he accused her
of cheating, and she didn't deny it. How could she
really Ian flew home alone in the next day and
their marriage was effectively over. Instead of following her husband
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back to England, Margaret extended the trip to New York.
Ian took the opportunity to go through Margaret's belongings in
their home. He hired a locksmith to break into her
cupboards and stole her letters, diaries, and a Manila folder
addressed to her. Inside were some notes of no consequence
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and two polaroid photos which would go on to become
the central scandal that would mar Margaret's legacy for the
rest of her life. The photos showed Margaret performing oral
sex on an unidentified man who would become something of
a folk legend as quote the Headless Man. Although Margaret's
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back is to the camera, she could easily be identified
by her signature, pearls and hairstyle. Wrapped around the photographs
were sheets of paper reading before during oh and finished.
The polaroids, inflammatory as they were, didn't anger Ian as
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much as another piece of paper he found On a
sheet of hotel parchment, Margaret had pasted fragments of words
cut out from innocuous letters written by Louise, Ian's ex
wife and the mother of his children. The excerpts, which
included Louise's signature, were arranged into a fake letter in
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which she is questioning the paternity of her and ian sons.
It seems that Margaret, in an attempt to save her
status as Duchess, was seeking to discredit the legitimacy of
Ian's sons from his first marriage and then have her
own child with him. Or rather, Margaret was trying to
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fake a pregnancy by patting her stomach and later pass
off a child as Ian's. She asked a Polish friend
to bring her a baby to England. Don't be stupid,
dear was the friend's response, and Margaret abandoned the plan,
Although she kept all of the incriminating evidence. This was
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the final straw for Ian. He wasn't a particularly involved father,
but his wife had crossed a clear line. Margaret was
furious when she returned home to see that Ian had
stolen her possessions, but she had yet to realize that
he had also discovered her drafts of the forged letters
(33:38):
from Louise. So when Margaret went through with the plan
to quote find these letters and show them to Ian,
it resulted in her second libel suit, this time from Louise.
Ian knew that he had sufficient grounds for divorce, but
he still needed the smoking gun, the diary that he
(34:01):
had found in Australia. He devised a plan with his
daughter Jean to raid Margaret's house for it. At six
in the morning, they entered her home using a key
that Ian had kept. Not having found what they were
looking for in the study, they entered her bedroom, where
Margaret was still sleeping. The noise woke her, and when
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she asked what they wanted, Jean held her down to
the bed while Ian stole the diary from her bedside table.
The two fled the scene immediately. Ian swiftly notified Margaret
that his divorce petition was sent to the Court of
Session in Edinburgh, and he informed her that she was
now banned from Inverary Castle, which was only functioning because
(34:47):
of her father's money. She would make sure that Ian
remembered that, and soon she visited with her father and
his new wife, Jane, who he married after Helen passing
several years earlier. In perhaps the most bizarre accusation yet.
During that trip, Margaret noticed Jane and Ian spending time
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alone together and concluded that they were having an affair.
Margaret's paranoia was no doubt fueled by her view of
Jane as an interloper in her and her father's relationship.
After that trip, Margaret remained persistent in her assertion that
she had a right to live in Inveraray, despite her
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clear distaste for country life, and so Ian formally acquired
an interdict banning her from the castle. Margaret was given
one day to retrieve her belongings and identify what was hers,
as decreed by the deed of gift she and her
father had received at the time of her engagement to Ian.
Margaret would soon learn that the deed, like much of
(35:55):
her early impression of her husband, was a facade. Ian
had more gagged everything on Margaret's deed in nineteen forty nine,
before they had even been married. Margaret's deed was worthless.
In February of nineteen sixty two, Margaret and Ian arrived
at the Edinburgh Court of Session. The courtroom was packed
(36:18):
to capacity, with both British and foreign press, all eager
to see what would become of the Duke and the
quote dirty duchess. Presiding over the case was Lord Wheatley,
a judge known for his harsh sentences for crimes involving sex.
He also happened to be a member of the Campbell
(36:39):
clan on his mother's side. The trial began with Ian
presenting his evidence. Margaret's lawyer rejected the use of her
diary on the grounds of confidentiality, but wheatly approved it
and it remained the key piece of evidence. Ian was
cross examined for five hours. Margaret was cross examined for thirteen,
(37:03):
while Ian ultimately accused her of sleeping with eighty eight men.
There were three who were brought into the trial. Baron
Sigmund von Braun, a former Nazi and then West German
ambassador to the u N John Cohene, an American businessman,
and Peter Combe, the former chief press officer at the
(37:24):
London Savoy Hotel. Worth noting is that of the eighty
eight men that the Duke claimed he could list, a
number were actually gay. Margaret didn't want to out her
friends at a time when homosexuality was still a criminal offense,
and so she didn't defend herself against the accusation. Of
(37:44):
the three men who were brought into question, only Comb
denied an affair. Margaret confessed she had an affair with
von Braun, who was married, but it had happened before
her own marriage to Ian. As their letters were not dated,
the court couldn't conclude that she was lying. The evidence
against Kohene was also too weak to utilize. That left
(38:08):
Comb the sole defender present in court. He was twelve
years younger than Margaret and she knew his mother, so
Margaret claimed the relationship was strictly platonic. What she didn't
know was that Ian had hired a private investigator to
watch her, and the investigator had taken photographs of Comb
(38:28):
leaving her house in the early hours of the morning.
Margaret argued that Comb was helping her to take care
of her beloved French poodles, but the judge dismissed that
claim with the belief that Margaret would have entrusted that
task to servants. Having gone through the diaries and the letters,
only the polaroids, those pieces of evidence that would follow
(38:50):
Margaret for the rest of her life remained. Initially, Margaret
denied she was the one in the photographs, insisting they
were from Ian's pornography. Collect once the court was able
to identify that it was in fact her due to
the specificity of the necklace and hair, she admitted that, yes,
it was her, but she claimed the headless man was Ian.
(39:15):
This story wasn't bought, but to prove that it wasn't him,
Ian underwent a medical examination. It provided a win in court,
but a loss in self esteem. As Margaret's biographer put
it quote, Ian had to live with the humiliation of
publicly declaring his lesser dimensions. Margaret never revealed the identity
(39:39):
of the headless man, but it has been the topic
of speculation for years. Was he a Hollywood actor politician?
The British press debated for years it even prompted a
personal investigation from the Master of Roles at the time,
who came up with a scheme to compare the handwriting
of government men he suspected as potential culprits to the
(40:01):
handwriting on the captions of the Polaroid. It was a
fruitless attempt. Ultimately, Ian was granted a divorce from Margaret
on ground of adultery with Peter Comb in May, three
months after the proceedings began. Margaret was not present when
Lord Wheatley read his fifty thousand word judgment, a reading
(40:23):
that lasted three hours and ten minutes. Ian was there, though,
and he heard the judge his distant cousin describe his
now ex wife as quote, a highly sexed woman who
had ceased to be satisfied with normal relations and had
started to indulge in what I can only describe as
(40:44):
disgusting sexual activities to gratify a basic sexual appetite. Years later,
in a rare interview, Margaret would reflect on Wheatley's judgment quote,
I thought he was such a bastard. You don't attack
if you're a judge, you judge, she said, mimicking balancing scales.
(41:05):
It was the longest and costliest divorce Britain had ever
seen up until that point. Margaret was ordered to pay
seven eighths of the cost. Ian paid just one eight,
seeing as that was all he could afford. Ian's own
adultery was of little concern to Wheatley or the public
(41:27):
at large. Margaret was given all sorts of nicknames in
the press, all crude and none particularly clever. Quote dirty duchess,
blowjob duchess, fallacio duchess. Some of the headlines at the
time read such dirty linen in high places or She's
(41:49):
a poisonous liar. Margaret was one of the earliest targets
of the British presses relentless vitriolic vexation on a noble woman,
a relation ship from the British press that we've seen
in more recent years with women like Diana, Princess of
Wales and Megan Markle. Calling Margaret a liar wasn't untrue.
(42:13):
She had lied to Ian, and she had lied in court,
but the press went steps beyond steps too far. Later
in life, Margaret, who had been a tabloid star since seventeen,
reflected that she had seen a drastic shift in the
tabloid presses level of professionalism and their treatment of celebrities.
(42:34):
In a very British statement, she remarked, quote, they've become
very unkind to put it quite mildly. Just three weeks
after the divorce was finalized, Ian married an American heiress
with whom he had been having an affair for the
past two years. He and the heiress remained together until
(42:56):
his death in ninety three. Over the core of the
years following the divorce, Ian sold the right to publish
his and Margaret's private letters. His thirst for revenge, even
after he had won in court, would come back to
bite him. His beloved club Whites, where he had once
went to quote escape Margaret voted him out on grounds
(43:20):
of poor conduct. As for Margaret, she never remarried, but
she continued to live her life as she always had.
This included more men, more scandals, more legal conflicts, and
more poodles. It's possible the poodles were maybe the truest
loves of her life. When she eventually began to run
(43:43):
out of money, she opened her London home up for tours.
She was later forced to move into a suite in
a hotel, and when she couldn't pay that rent, she
moved into a nursing home, where she ultimately passed in
nine she was eighty one years old. Two years later,
an opera based on her life and divorce, titled Powder
(44:06):
Her Face, premiered. To sum up his work, the composer
Thomas A. Day quoted the phrase, even horrible people are tragic.
That's the story of the Duchess of Argyle. But stick
around to hear Margaret in her own words. So much
(44:50):
of Noble Blood is me attempting to create portrayals of
historical figures that are nuanced and empathetic but not fawning.
I always try I to frame a story to be
true to the fundamental humanity of the people involved. No
one is all good or all bad. Everyone is products
of their environment and experiences. But because this is a
(45:14):
history podcast, often we're constructing our versions of figures from
history from multiple sources. Sometimes, if we're lucky, we get
their own writing, but usually it's from the writing of
other people around them. My goal with this podcast is
always to give voice to people from the past who
maybe we never thought about in nuanced terms. In the
(45:37):
case of the Duchess of our Gyle, we are afforded
a rare gift her actual voice. Thanks to the BBC Archives,
you can hear the Duchess actually speaking about her own
life and her scandalous divorce. I'm linking a video in
the episode description and I think it's well worth a
(45:57):
listen to try to understand one of the most impossibly
complicated women in history in her own words. Noble Blood
(46:19):
is a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and
Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me
Danish Sports. Additional writing and researching done by Hannah Johnston,
hannah's Wick, Mirra Hayward, Courtney Sunder and Laurie Goodman. The
show is produced by rema Il Kali, with supervising producer
Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and
(46:43):
Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankie listener discretion advised.
In nineteen thirty one, a socialite named Ethel Margaret Wigham
(00:21):
held her nineteenth birthday party at the Embassy Club, one
of London's most exclusive supper clubs at the time. It
was the kind of place where film stars and royalty
co mingled, and Margaret was the center of it all.
She was the beautiful, wealthy daughter of a Scottish business man,
and after her coming out as Debutante of the Year
(00:43):
in nineteen thirty she soon became a darling of London
society thanks to her glamorous fashion and her aura of confidence.
According to legend, the knight of the birthday party, Margaret
had an astrologer predict her future. I see happiness, laughter,
much love, but beware there is danger. Danger from what
(01:07):
Margaret asked, treachery. The astrologer replied, you will be betrayed
by the people you trust. Flash forward thirty years and Margaret,
then fifty years old and the Duchess of Argyle, arrived
at court wearing a tailored peacoat, mink rap and pearl earrings.
(01:30):
She was there to begin the divorce proceedings from her
second husband, the Duke of Argyle, which would end up
being the longest and costliest divorce proceedings British history had
ever seen. The couple had met after Margaret's divorce from
her first husband, American businessman Charles Sweeney, but it soon
(01:52):
became clear that Margaret had found another doomed match. The
Duke was filing for divorce from his wife on the
grounds of adultery, alleging that Margaret had taken eighty eight
lovers in their time together, a list of lovers that
included cabinet ministers, Hollywood actors, and royals. It was a
(02:13):
tabloid frenzy, not only thanks to the couple's titles and
the breadth of the accusation, but because of the voyeuristic
intimate details that were being made public. Margaret later described
her second husband as quote in every essence a Gemini Gemini.
(02:33):
People are usually two faced, aren't they? You should never
trust them? Charming and treacherous. The story of the Argyle
divorce and the story of Margaret's life are both complicated
ones to tell. It's hard to separate the truth from
the tabloid narrative, and it's hard to discern what the
(02:55):
truth even is at all. Margaret's recountenances are filled with contradictions, misrememberings, and,
according to some outright lies. In more recent years, there
have been attempts to reframe Britain's view of Margaret with
our modern understanding of issues at play, like sledge shaming
and ideas about revenge porn. Last year, the BBC aired
(03:19):
the drama A Very British Scandal, which sought to paint
a more nuanced, insightful portrait of the inner lives of
the subjects at the heart of the scandal. But as
you might imagine, television is meant to entertain, and the
show still provides all of the sensationalized scandal that you
might hope for from its title. Perhaps in the end,
(03:43):
that's the only way you can really do justice to
the story of the woman who thought of herself as
a sensation. Later in life, Margaret would reflect quote, I
had wealth, I had good looks. As a young woman,
I had been constantly photographed, written about, out, flattered, admired.
Included in the ten Best Dressed Women in the World
(04:05):
list and mentioned by Cole Porter in the words of
his hit song You're the Top, The top was what
I was supposed to be. That last claim is actually
only a half truth. In the original version of his
song for the musical Anything Goes, Cole Porter never wrote
a line about Margaret. The original lyric of the song
(04:28):
and the one that is used today goes You're an
O'Neill drama, your Whistler's Mama, great charming. But in there
was a British production of Anything Goes with some of
the lyrics anglicized by P. G. Woodhouse. Today, that one
production is a curio of history with lyrics that sound
(04:52):
not only less relevant but downright confusing to some listeners today.
Whatever you're expecting the ang a sized lyric to be,
it's probably not this, But the PG Woodhouse couplet goes
your Mussolini, your Mrs Sweeney. Mrs Sweeney, of course, referencing Margaret.
(05:14):
Any person who could share a lyric with Mussolini, where
audiences would think, yes, those two people are of the
same cultural cash a certainly deserves our historical examination. Unfortunately,
for all of the glamor of Margaret Wigham Sweeney Campbell's life,
there was also a twisted undercurrent of pain and a
(05:37):
now all too modern story about how tabloid media builds
women up just to tear them down. I'm Danish sports
and this is noble blood. Margaret was the only child
of George Wigham, the millionaire chairman of the Selling Ease Corporation,
(06:01):
and his wife Helen. Though Margaret was born on her
maternal grandparents estate in a sleepy Scottish town a few
miles outside of Glasgow, Margaret's first memory of a home
was the Park Avenue apartment in New York City, where
she spent much of her childhood. Margaret recalled having no
friends as a girl, preferring to keep the company of
(06:22):
teddy bears. When she wasn't with the Teddy's, she preferred
the company of her parents. As the only child of
a wealthy family, she became spoiled and close with her
doting father. Her relationship with her mother was more difficult.
Margaret would later recall that she would enter her mother's
bedroom each morning, not knowing if she was going to
(06:45):
be quote bright and loving or complaining and bad tempered.
As Margaret grew up, her mother became obsessive over her
daughter's appearance. The fixation with looks likely came from Helen's
own childhood insecurities from never feeling like she was attractive
enough compared to her siblings. The constant attention given to
(07:07):
Margaret's looks, even though it was negative, made the young
Margaret a self described vain little girl. Her mother also
took issue with Margaret's developing stammer, which began after she
was forced to start writing with her right hand, even
though she was naturally left handed. Margaret was taken to
(07:28):
London to be treated by Lionel Log, the same speech
therapist who helped King George the sixth manage his stammer,
who you might have seen portrayed by Jeffrey Rush in
the movie The King's Speech. The real Lionels methods proved
ineffective on Margaret, much to her mother's disappointment. Margaret would
(07:49):
later recount her mother telling her, no matter how pretty
you are, Margaret, you will get nowhere in life if
you stammer. As Margaret grew older, the effect of a
childhood without hearing the word no from her father began
to cement in Margaret's personality. She believed that anything could
be bought, and she had little respect for authority or
(08:12):
for any adults who weren't her parents. Though Margaret was
beginning to physically appear older and present herself as more sophisticated,
she still doated on the teddy bears from her childhood,
much to her mother's chagrin. One day, Margaret forgot to
bring her teddy bears inside from the lawn and found
them the next morning soaked and destroyed. She would consider
(08:37):
this the spiritual end of her childhood. Margaret's mother soon
gave her the talk, which Margaret recalled as going something
like quote, it's this awful thing we women have to
put up with, we close our eyes and bear it.
Margaret had no desire to hear about this, and the
(08:57):
discomfort with the topic of sex stuck with her for
some time. Margaret's parents thought she was growing up too fast,
and so she was transferred to the Heathfield School, where
girls learned academics, played lacrosse, and attended twice daily prayer.
None of that interested Margaret, who detested the school's expectations
(09:19):
of conformity. She once retreated from her peers and noted
that she had no friends at the school, proclaiming, quote,
I don't like women in a mass I think they
should be individuals. Margaret was brought to and from school
every day in a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce, which probably
provides some indication as to how her fellow students saw her.
(09:43):
Margaret felt that the disdain with which the other girls
treated her was earned simply because she was much more
sophisticated than them. As the car drove away, she shouted
bye bye, girls. Enjoy your hockey and your lacrosse. I'm
off to a matinee in London. She She was at
the school for only two months before her family was
(10:03):
forced to make a decision. Margaret could live at the
school as a boarder or she'd be forced to leave,
so she left and began learning from a governess. During
that time, Margaret found her passion for boys. She was
surprised to find they liked her speech impediment, seeing it
as a vulnerability they could care for, something she described
(10:26):
as a cold comfort. When Margaret was fifteen, her family
spent the Easter holiday at Benbridge on the Isle of Wight.
It was there she met David Niven, a seventeen year
old public schoolboy and future Oscar winning actor. Margaret became
infatuated and soon lost her virginity to him. Even once
(10:47):
she returned home from the vacation, she couldn't stop thinking
about David, and she roped a friend into sneaking off
to London with her to visit him, an incredibly bold
move for a woman, let alone a fifteen year old
girl of the time. Her rebellious streak came to a
sudden halt when she learned she was pregnant. Her father
(11:08):
was furious and all hell broke loose in the house.
This was the nineteen twenties and teen pregnancy is still
taboo today. Margaret underwent a secret abortion and no one
was to speak of the quote incident again. In ninety nine,
(11:29):
Margaret and her mother began preparing for Margaret's debut as
a debutante, despite being a year younger than the typical
deb Margaret reflected that quote, my mother must have realized
that there was no holding me back. On May one,
nine thirty, the first day of the London Social season,
(11:49):
Margaret's coming out party was held. Their bold choice to
kick off the season was backed up by an unlimited
dress budget. They were determined to make a splash. Margaret's
popularity with boys, while recently traumatizing to her family, led
her mother to see Margaret in a new light. Margaret
(12:11):
was no longer simply the stuttering, plain looking creature who
seemed so foreign to her. The nineteen thirties wave of
debutantes favored women like Margaret, bright and bold, fashionable and modern. Quote.
The girls of the nineteen thirties not only had good looks,
they knew how to dress, and they had far more
(12:32):
self confidence than their predecessors. Margaret would later reflect. Margaret's
party cost forty thousand pounds and entertained four hundred guests.
She made her entrance to the sound of a big
band orchestra, and she was dressed in a Norman Hartnell
turquoise dress embroidered with diamonds and pearls. Her mother had
(12:55):
insisted that she wear white, the traditional color for debutantes,
but Mark Gret wanted to stand out from the others.
She purposefully stained the white dress that her mom had
bought for her, which of course forced her to change
into the turquoise one. The dresses designer, Norman Hartnell would
eventually become dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth the Second, and Margaret
(13:18):
would credit herself with Hartnell's rise to fame, and we
can't say she's entirely wrong. She was a bona fide sensation.
One Society column summed it up by saying, quote, she's
shown out above everyone else, as is fitting for the
heroine of such an evening. Throughout the season, at just
(13:40):
seventeen years old, she became one of the most photographed
women in London, and magazines called her the prettiest debutante
of the set. Margaret's celebrity was on the rise, and
her mother, Helen began to grow exhausted by the number
of different invitations her daughter received. Eventually, Helen stopped going
(14:01):
with her altogether, leaving Margaret to attend events unschaper owned.
It was during this time that Margaret developed what she
called the Wigham system. She danced with any boy who
asked her for the first half of the night, decide
her favorites, and then dance only with them for the second.
The men didn't mind, but other debs began to refer
(14:23):
to her as quote that Maggie Wigham. That year, she
also began to frequent clubs like the Embassy with a
different number of men, including the Prince Ali Khan, who
tried to marry her side note he would later marry
Rita Hayworth. And Margaret also developed a sizeable friend group
of other society women. One of the men she would
(14:46):
eventually charm was American businessman Charles Sweeney, who claimed to
initially dislike her. I could not stand her, he wrote
to me. She was a conceited, garrulous show off whose
company I avoided as much as I could. Their mutual
friend groups made encounters unavoidable, and one night, due to
(15:07):
them both ending up without a partner, they agreed to
be each other's dates to the Embassy Club. Sweeney would
write that that night changed everything. He quote fell under
the spell of Margaret Wiggham's charm. After a few more dates,
Charles Sweeney unofficially proposed, and she accepted. This meant the
(15:28):
world to him, but little to Margaret, who didn't see
proposals as real commitments. The proof is in the fact
that she soon also became unofficially engaged to their friend
Max Aitken. Neither of the men knowing about the engagement
she had to the other. Eventually, despite a third, more
formal engagement being thrown into the mix, Margaret had begun
(15:51):
to see more of Sweeney, who was hurt by her
betrayal of multiple engagements but still harbored feelings. Once Margaret
had officially broken off the other engagements, she and Charles
Sweeney became officially engaged. The wedding date was set, and
her time as quote the Wigham as the press called her,
(16:15):
was coming to an end. The wedding was a glamorous affair,
so many onlookers and members of the press wanted to
see her heart n all dress, which featured an eighteen
foot train embroidered with orange blossoms that surrounding traffic was
blocked for three hours. The literal traffic stopping dress was
(16:36):
recently displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum. After the wedding,
Margaret would become pregnant, but it would be the first
in a series of miscarriages, of which there would be
eight total. During a later pregnancy, Margaret became so ill
that the baby had to be delivered still born in
order to save her life. Margaret fell into a deep depression,
(17:00):
both from the loss of the child but also from
Charlie's absence, despite staying at her side throughout her illness,
as she recovered, he would visit her briefly in the
hospital each night before heading out to a club. While
it would still be a while before their divorce, that dynamic,
no doubt reaffirmed Margaret's feeling that Charlie Sweeney did not
(17:24):
see her for the person she was. That quote, all
he wanted for a wife was a pretty brainless doll.
She tried to be that for the next several years,
but as World War Two began, their focus was torn
away from their personal conflicts, and each contributed in their
own way to the war effort. While the couple did
(17:45):
eventually have two children together, the tears in their marriage
were forever evident. Both of them committed adultery, but neither
would accept the blame for the dissolution of the relationship.
In the pair officially divorced, Margaret was thirty four years old.
(18:06):
In the wake of the Second World War. The London
social scene was just beginning to return, and Margaret was
now ready to return with it. She would find the
next major phase of her life beginning not in London, though,
but on a train to Paris, where she would be
seated across from a tall man with a pointed nose
(18:28):
she'd come to learn that his name was Ian Campbell
and that he would soon be the Duke of Argyle.
He already knew who she was, apparently over a decade earlier,
he had seen Margaret on the staircase of a London nightclub,
and he turned to his wife at the time and said,
(18:48):
quote that captivating creature is the woman I'm going to
marry someday. Ian Douglas Campbell was penniless but titled. His
great grandfather was the eighth Duke of Argyle, and thanks
to the ninth and tenth not having sons, Ian inherited
(19:10):
his family's title and home in Verae Castle from his
second cousin, the eleventh Duke of Argyle, was a bit
of a mad academic, and his neglect of the castle
in favor of other pursuits saw it fall into ruin.
That meant that Ian also inherited the responsibility of restoring
the estate. For this he depended on his wife Janet
(19:34):
and then his second wife Louise, both heiresses. Ian himself
never worked and was addicted to alcohol, drugs, and gambling.
Even before his dukedom, he was in deep debt. Both
of his wives would later accuse him of abuse and
squandering their money. Years later, his future son in law
(19:56):
would describe him as quote one of the cold list
nastiest men I've ever known in a wild cameo. That
future son in law also just happened to be the
writer Norman Mailer, who if you know anything about Norman Mailer,
you know that he might have given Ian a run
for his money in the bad husband department. But back
(20:19):
to Ian and Margaret. When the pair met, they were
both recently single, Ian and his wife having separated after
the war on the ground of mutual adultery. I can
imagine that pointing out other women he wanted to marry
while the two were together didn't help. On that train
ride to Paris where they met, Margaret was a sympathetic
(20:41):
listener to ian struggles, and he to hers. Ian had
been a prisoner of war and he was readjusting to
a life of freedom. Both were starved for connection. Margaret
invited Ian back to her home as soon as they
arrived in London, and there they slept together for the
first time. Margaret soon began to pursue Ian with the
(21:03):
intention of marriage. Her first husband, Charlie, would later write
in his memoir quote, she had always been intrigued by
the idea of becoming a duchess Ian. By this point, officially,
the Duke was still in the process of persuading Louise
to agree to an official divorce. He was thrilled by
(21:24):
Margaret's pursuit of him. This time, he didn't have to
do the work of finding an heiress himself. Their courtship
was largely secretive due to his status as technically a
married man and hers as a divorcee. One night, they
attended a West End play together, Ring Round the Moon,
about a twins attempt to rescue his brother from what
(21:46):
he believes will be a disastrous marriage. In hindsight, it
seems like an omen that evening, Ian proposed to Margaret
with the promise that as soon as the divorce with
Louise was finalized, she would be his duchess. Of course,
Margaret accepted. Ian's charm worked on Margaret's parents just as
(22:10):
it had on her. They were impressed with his title,
and they were excited at the prospect of their daughter
becoming a duchess Ian. Even immediately charmed George into becoming
a patron of the Campbell clan. And he pledged twenty
five thousand pounds towards Inveray's restoration, with no return expected.
(22:30):
Margaret herself was determined to bring the castle back to
its former glory, and she blamed much of its current
disarray on Louise, his ex wife, and not Ian himself.
For Margaret and her father's donations, they received a deed
of gift which will come back to bite her later.
(22:51):
But in nineteen fifty one, Louise finally agreed to the divorce,
but with Ian about to be officially mark it, he
began to reveal his true colors for the first time. Unprompted,
one night, he launched into a verbal attack on Margaret's children,
her father, even Margaret herself. The next morning, she asked
(23:16):
him what had provoked his rage, which only sent him
into another tirade. This was just days before their wedding.
She felt that it was too late to back out,
and she was too ashamed to tell her father, who
she knew would tell her to call off the marriage
and prioritize her happiness, the advice that he had given
her during one of her earlier engagements. Plus there was
(23:39):
the guilt that Margaret felt about the money they had
already sunk into Ian's castle, so Margaret wrote it off
and went through with the marriage. On the eve of
Margaret and Ian's wedding, she received a letter from her
ex husband, Charlie, warning her not to marry Ian. Charlie
had spoken Louise, who had told him of Ian's opportunistic
(24:03):
scheming and his mistreatment of her and their sons. Charlie
Sweeney wrote quote, I only hope you're not deluding yourself
that Campbell is inspired by any great love, because he's not.
Margaret ignored this letter, thinking that both Charlie and Louise
were jealous bitter xes. Margaret and Ian were married on
(24:29):
March twenty second, nine six hours after the divorce with
Louise was official. It was a smaller ceremony, a far
cry from Margaret's first wedding. This time, she wore a
gray chiffon dress with a pussy bow, a feathered hat,
and her signature set of pearls. The two honeymooned at Inverie,
(24:51):
and she spent the time in workman's overalls. Immediately following
through on her promise to help restore the castle, post
of Margaret's work was unfruitful in very ray was beginning
to seem like a lost cause. The money she was
putting into the castle was also being put towards Ian's debts,
(25:12):
which she learned about upon their return to the home.
As much as Margaret cared about restoring the castle, she
was not suited to life in the countryside, and it
was agreed that Margaret would keep her home in London
for social visits. As you might have predicted, Ian's character
didn't improve after the wedding. He would often get into
(25:36):
public altercations, and Margaret spent much of their time together
in public apologizing for him. His verbal abuse eventually escalated
into physical violence, and during a trip to Jamaica, Margaret
remembers an acquaintance having to rush into their room to
stop Ian from physically attacking her. Margaret attempted to prevent
(25:59):
her husband from drinking so often, hoping to return him
to the man she originally knew. She offered to recreate
his favorite club Whites, in their home so that he
could avoid the party atmosphere, but he bitterly explained that
he went to the club to escape her. Ian began
(26:20):
to belittle her in front of her friends and As
a result, her stammer started to worsen, which made it
difficult for her to speak up for herself. Margaret later
wrote that quote Ian had a markedly sadistic streak in
his character. Things like that were done deliberately to hurt me,
(26:40):
and hurt me they always did. I realized now that
if I had not given him the satisfaction of knowing this,
Ian would have been deprived of much pleasure. Their relationship
was complicated by Ian's manipulative nature and Margaret's willingness to
make excuses for it. Quote out, he toyed with me
(27:01):
as a cat plays with a mouse. Every time he
sent that I had come to the end of my tether.
He would then choose to become his most agreeable self,
ready to do anything to please me. Eventually, after three
years of marriage, in Veray was ready to open to
the public for tours. Ian took his role as duke
(27:22):
seriously and spent his days greeting visitors and leading tours.
Margaret was hopeful that he had turned a new leaf,
but when the tourist season ended, he reverted right back
to his old cruel ways. Margaret decided to take a
trip abroad and their lives and eventually homes became separate.
(27:45):
They remained married, but Margaret considered nineteen fifty six to
be the real turning point for the rest of her life.
This is where things take a turn for the soap operatic.
The divorce wasn't actually the first legal proceeding that would
make the Argyle's headlines. That was actually a libel suit
(28:07):
against Margaret from Ian's secretary. Van McPherson was the widow
of a man who had been a prisoner of war
with Ian, and so their connection between Ivan and Ian
went beyond the typical employer employee relationship. Vaughan's loyalty to
Ian was so apparent that Margaret began to believe that
(28:28):
the two were conspiring against her. Margaret's assessment that Ian
could do something drastic wasn't entirely out of nowhere. Ian
had recently recovered from influenza, but had become addicted to
drena mill, a drug that was so widely abused in
the UK at the time that it's no longer prescribed.
(28:50):
The drugs led to bouts of erratic behavior and mania.
We don't know if Margaret's suspicions about Vane were accurate,
but Ian was in act plotting against her with his
doctor to have her certified as insane. Years earlier, Margaret
had fallen down an elevator shaft and the pair in
(29:11):
and his doctor wanted to claim that it had caused
brain damage. To do so, they needed a note from
Margaret's doctor, who had refused and informed her of their plan. Margaret,
even having her paranoia validated, continued just to blame her
husband's actions on the adrenalmal and so loyal as ever
(29:32):
to her husband, Margaret focused on the belief that Yvonne
was the one speaking to the press. She later claimed
that the proprietor of the Daily Mail told her that
Yvonne was on the books for years, but there's no
actual evidence. Margaret was so convinced in fact, and so
determined to prove her case that she sent in a
(29:53):
fake telegram pretending it was from Van. It read quote
rushing off for and days, but all as ready as
we planned to tear strips off Margaret financially and otherwise
A million thanks for your love, support and invaluable information
without which I would be helpless. Happy Easter and then
into battle side by side a Vaughan. Ian asked Margaret
(30:18):
to apologize. She refused, and soon she received a letter
notifying her that Van was suing her for damages. In
nineteen fifty nine, Ian and Margaret took a trip to
Australia on ducal duty. There, Ian discovered the diary that
Margaret had kept for the past three years. Inside were
(30:41):
the names of half a dozen men and a meticulously
recorded schedule that showed each time she had met with them.
When Margaret discovered him with the diary, he accused her
of cheating, and she didn't deny it. How could she
really Ian flew home alone in the next day and
their marriage was effectively over. Instead of following her husband
(31:06):
back to England, Margaret extended the trip to New York.
Ian took the opportunity to go through Margaret's belongings in
their home. He hired a locksmith to break into her
cupboards and stole her letters, diaries, and a Manila folder
addressed to her. Inside were some notes of no consequence
(31:28):
and two polaroid photos which would go on to become
the central scandal that would mar Margaret's legacy for the
rest of her life. The photos showed Margaret performing oral
sex on an unidentified man who would become something of
a folk legend as quote the Headless Man. Although Margaret's
(31:50):
back is to the camera, she could easily be identified
by her signature, pearls and hairstyle. Wrapped around the photographs
were sheets of paper reading before during oh and finished.
The polaroids, inflammatory as they were, didn't anger Ian as
(32:11):
much as another piece of paper he found On a
sheet of hotel parchment, Margaret had pasted fragments of words
cut out from innocuous letters written by Louise, Ian's ex
wife and the mother of his children. The excerpts, which
included Louise's signature, were arranged into a fake letter in
(32:33):
which she is questioning the paternity of her and ian sons.
It seems that Margaret, in an attempt to save her
status as Duchess, was seeking to discredit the legitimacy of
Ian's sons from his first marriage and then have her
own child with him. Or rather, Margaret was trying to
(32:55):
fake a pregnancy by patting her stomach and later pass
off a child as Ian's. She asked a Polish friend
to bring her a baby to England. Don't be stupid,
dear was the friend's response, and Margaret abandoned the plan,
Although she kept all of the incriminating evidence. This was
(33:18):
the final straw for Ian. He wasn't a particularly involved father,
but his wife had crossed a clear line. Margaret was
furious when she returned home to see that Ian had
stolen her possessions, but she had yet to realize that
he had also discovered her drafts of the forged letters
(33:38):
from Louise. So when Margaret went through with the plan
to quote find these letters and show them to Ian,
it resulted in her second libel suit, this time from Louise.
Ian knew that he had sufficient grounds for divorce, but
he still needed the smoking gun, the diary that he
(34:01):
had found in Australia. He devised a plan with his
daughter Jean to raid Margaret's house for it. At six
in the morning, they entered her home using a key
that Ian had kept. Not having found what they were
looking for in the study, they entered her bedroom, where
Margaret was still sleeping. The noise woke her, and when
(34:23):
she asked what they wanted, Jean held her down to
the bed while Ian stole the diary from her bedside table.
The two fled the scene immediately. Ian swiftly notified Margaret
that his divorce petition was sent to the Court of
Session in Edinburgh, and he informed her that she was
now banned from Inverary Castle, which was only functioning because
(34:47):
of her father's money. She would make sure that Ian
remembered that, and soon she visited with her father and
his new wife, Jane, who he married after Helen passing
several years earlier. In perhaps the most bizarre accusation yet.
During that trip, Margaret noticed Jane and Ian spending time
(35:09):
alone together and concluded that they were having an affair.
Margaret's paranoia was no doubt fueled by her view of
Jane as an interloper in her and her father's relationship.
After that trip, Margaret remained persistent in her assertion that
she had a right to live in Inveraray, despite her
(35:31):
clear distaste for country life, and so Ian formally acquired
an interdict banning her from the castle. Margaret was given
one day to retrieve her belongings and identify what was hers,
as decreed by the deed of gift she and her
father had received at the time of her engagement to Ian.
Margaret would soon learn that the deed, like much of
(35:55):
her early impression of her husband, was a facade. Ian
had more gagged everything on Margaret's deed in nineteen forty nine,
before they had even been married. Margaret's deed was worthless.
In February of nineteen sixty two, Margaret and Ian arrived
at the Edinburgh Court of Session. The courtroom was packed
(36:18):
to capacity, with both British and foreign press, all eager
to see what would become of the Duke and the
quote dirty duchess. Presiding over the case was Lord Wheatley,
a judge known for his harsh sentences for crimes involving sex.
He also happened to be a member of the Campbell
(36:39):
clan on his mother's side. The trial began with Ian
presenting his evidence. Margaret's lawyer rejected the use of her
diary on the grounds of confidentiality, but wheatly approved it
and it remained the key piece of evidence. Ian was
cross examined for five hours. Margaret was cross examined for thirteen,
(37:03):
while Ian ultimately accused her of sleeping with eighty eight men.
There were three who were brought into the trial. Baron
Sigmund von Braun, a former Nazi and then West German
ambassador to the u N John Cohene, an American businessman,
and Peter Combe, the former chief press officer at the
(37:24):
London Savoy Hotel. Worth noting is that of the eighty
eight men that the Duke claimed he could list, a
number were actually gay. Margaret didn't want to out her
friends at a time when homosexuality was still a criminal offense,
and so she didn't defend herself against the accusation. Of
(37:44):
the three men who were brought into question, only Comb
denied an affair. Margaret confessed she had an affair with
von Braun, who was married, but it had happened before
her own marriage to Ian. As their letters were not dated,
the court couldn't conclude that she was lying. The evidence
against Kohene was also too weak to utilize. That left
(38:08):
Comb the sole defender present in court. He was twelve
years younger than Margaret and she knew his mother, so
Margaret claimed the relationship was strictly platonic. What she didn't
know was that Ian had hired a private investigator to
watch her, and the investigator had taken photographs of Comb
(38:28):
leaving her house in the early hours of the morning.
Margaret argued that Comb was helping her to take care
of her beloved French poodles, but the judge dismissed that
claim with the belief that Margaret would have entrusted that
task to servants. Having gone through the diaries and the letters,
only the polaroids, those pieces of evidence that would follow
(38:50):
Margaret for the rest of her life remained. Initially, Margaret
denied she was the one in the photographs, insisting they
were from Ian's pornography. Collect once the court was able
to identify that it was in fact her due to
the specificity of the necklace and hair, she admitted that, yes,
it was her, but she claimed the headless man was Ian.
(39:15):
This story wasn't bought, but to prove that it wasn't him,
Ian underwent a medical examination. It provided a win in court,
but a loss in self esteem. As Margaret's biographer put
it quote, Ian had to live with the humiliation of
publicly declaring his lesser dimensions. Margaret never revealed the identity
(39:39):
of the headless man, but it has been the topic
of speculation for years. Was he a Hollywood actor politician?
The British press debated for years it even prompted a
personal investigation from the Master of Roles at the time,
who came up with a scheme to compare the handwriting
of government men he suspected as potential culprits to the
(40:01):
handwriting on the captions of the Polaroid. It was a
fruitless attempt. Ultimately, Ian was granted a divorce from Margaret
on ground of adultery with Peter Comb in May, three
months after the proceedings began. Margaret was not present when
Lord Wheatley read his fifty thousand word judgment, a reading
(40:23):
that lasted three hours and ten minutes. Ian was there, though,
and he heard the judge his distant cousin describe his
now ex wife as quote, a highly sexed woman who
had ceased to be satisfied with normal relations and had
started to indulge in what I can only describe as
(40:44):
disgusting sexual activities to gratify a basic sexual appetite. Years later,
in a rare interview, Margaret would reflect on Wheatley's judgment quote,
I thought he was such a bastard. You don't attack
if you're a judge, you judge, she said, mimicking balancing scales.
(41:05):
It was the longest and costliest divorce Britain had ever
seen up until that point. Margaret was ordered to pay
seven eighths of the cost. Ian paid just one eight,
seeing as that was all he could afford. Ian's own
adultery was of little concern to Wheatley or the public
(41:27):
at large. Margaret was given all sorts of nicknames in
the press, all crude and none particularly clever. Quote dirty duchess,
blowjob duchess, fallacio duchess. Some of the headlines at the
time read such dirty linen in high places or She's
(41:49):
a poisonous liar. Margaret was one of the earliest targets
of the British presses relentless vitriolic vexation on a noble woman,
a relation ship from the British press that we've seen
in more recent years with women like Diana, Princess of
Wales and Megan Markle. Calling Margaret a liar wasn't untrue.
(42:13):
She had lied to Ian, and she had lied in court,
but the press went steps beyond steps too far. Later
in life, Margaret, who had been a tabloid star since seventeen,
reflected that she had seen a drastic shift in the
tabloid presses level of professionalism and their treatment of celebrities.
(42:34):
In a very British statement, she remarked, quote, they've become
very unkind to put it quite mildly. Just three weeks
after the divorce was finalized, Ian married an American heiress
with whom he had been having an affair for the
past two years. He and the heiress remained together until
(42:56):
his death in ninety three. Over the core of the
years following the divorce, Ian sold the right to publish
his and Margaret's private letters. His thirst for revenge, even
after he had won in court, would come back to
bite him. His beloved club Whites, where he had once
went to quote escape Margaret voted him out on grounds
(43:20):
of poor conduct. As for Margaret, she never remarried, but
she continued to live her life as she always had.
This included more men, more scandals, more legal conflicts, and
more poodles. It's possible the poodles were maybe the truest
loves of her life. When she eventually began to run
(43:43):
out of money, she opened her London home up for tours.
She was later forced to move into a suite in
a hotel, and when she couldn't pay that rent, she
moved into a nursing home, where she ultimately passed in
nine she was eighty one years old. Two years later,
an opera based on her life and divorce, titled Powder
(44:06):
Her Face, premiered. To sum up his work, the composer
Thomas A. Day quoted the phrase, even horrible people are tragic.
That's the story of the Duchess of Argyle. But stick
around to hear Margaret in her own words. So much
(44:50):
of Noble Blood is me attempting to create portrayals of
historical figures that are nuanced and empathetic but not fawning.
I always try I to frame a story to be
true to the fundamental humanity of the people involved. No
one is all good or all bad. Everyone is products
of their environment and experiences. But because this is a
(45:14):
history podcast, often we're constructing our versions of figures from
history from multiple sources. Sometimes, if we're lucky, we get
their own writing, but usually it's from the writing of
other people around them. My goal with this podcast is
always to give voice to people from the past who
maybe we never thought about in nuanced terms. In the
(45:37):
case of the Duchess of our Gyle, we are afforded
a rare gift her actual voice. Thanks to the BBC Archives,
you can hear the Duchess actually speaking about her own
life and her scandalous divorce. I'm linking a video in
the episode description and I think it's well worth a
(45:57):
listen to try to understand one of the most impossibly
complicated women in history in her own words. Noble Blood
(46:19):
is a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and
Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me
Danish Sports. Additional writing and researching done by Hannah Johnston,
hannah's Wick, Mirra Hayward, Courtney Sunder and Laurie Goodman. The
show is produced by rema Il Kali, with supervising producer
Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and
(46:43):
Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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