Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky. Listener, discretion is
Speaker 1: advised before we begin, just a quick note of housekeeping.
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Speaker 1: bit of bonus content, and bonus episodes where myself and
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Speaker 1: series The Tutors. Also, if you want Noble Blood merch,
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Speaker 1: We have toe bags, pins and mugs. I use my
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Speaker 1: And finally, I have a book coming out, So if
Speaker 1: you enjoy the podcast, I really think you'll enjoy this book.
Speaker 1: It's called Anatomy, a love story, and it's all about
Speaker 1: the underbelly of the dawn of medicine in nineteen century Edinburgh.
Speaker 1: And if you're interested at all, there's been a weird
Speaker 1: issue with the supply chain of publishing and so pre
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Speaker 1: story interests you at all, please take a look and
Speaker 1: maybe preorder it. We actually moved the publication date up.
Speaker 1: It comes out January two, and now onto the episode.
Speaker 1: On July nine three, a fashionable foreign couple staying in
Speaker 1: London went to see the Operetta The Merry Widow. The
Speaker 1: pair was well known, notorious even They were fixtures in
Speaker 1: gossip columns and at fashionable parties. Though the couple styled
Speaker 1: themselves as the Prince and Princess Fammi Bay, the husband
Speaker 1: wasn't actually a prince. He Ali Fami Bay was well
Speaker 1: a bay, which is an honorary title like governor in Egypt.
Speaker 1: He was exorbitantly wealthy, born into a family rich from
Speaker 1: the cotton industry, and he was a playboy in his
Speaker 1: early twenties who had traveled to Western Europe and who
Speaker 1: had fallen in love with a frenchwoman ten years his senior.
Speaker 1: That woman was named Marguerite Alibert. By thirty two, Marguerite
Speaker 1: already had a string of famous lovers, and she had
Speaker 1: quite a reputation. She had worked as one of the
Speaker 1: most elite courtisans in Paris, a sex worker in a
Speaker 1: brothel that catered to only the wealthiest and most aristocratic
Speaker 1: of callers. By the time she met and married Ali
Speaker 1: Fami Bay. She was already quite comfortable financially thanks to
Speaker 1: the settlement of an earlier divorce. Whether she married Fami
Speaker 1: Bae for money or love, it was fewer than six
Speaker 1: months before the marriage imploded in on itself. The couple
Speaker 1: fought viciously, sometimes violently. The night of July nine, a
Speaker 1: porter in the Savoy Hotel where they were staying heard
Speaker 1: them shouting at one another, and then the porter heard
Speaker 1: something else three gun shots. Prince Ali Fami Bay had
Speaker 1: been shot by his wife. This would be enough of
Speaker 1: a scandal to be an interesting episode of noble Blood,
Speaker 1: a marriage gone wrong that ended in murder, But there's
Speaker 1: one wrinkle to the story that makes it one of
Speaker 1: the largest royal scandals of the twenty century. The extent
Speaker 1: of the scandal wouldn't be fully uncovered until and even today,
Speaker 1: details are missing, letters have been burned, police files conveniently misplaced.
Speaker 1: Because you see, one of Marguerite Alibert's earlier lovers was
Speaker 1: a man who used the pseudonym the Earl of Chester
Speaker 1: while cavorting with the Demi Monde in Paris. Marguerite would
Speaker 1: have called him David. You might know him as the
Speaker 1: Prince of Wale, or the Duke of Windsor, or the
Speaker 1: future King Edward the eight, the man who would ultimately
Speaker 1: abdicate the throne of England so that he could marry
Speaker 1: his twice divorced American paramore Wallace Simpson. King Edward the
Speaker 1: Eighth isn't short on scandals. There was the aforementioned giving
Speaker 1: up the crown for a divorcee, and then there were
Speaker 1: his shocking Nazi sympathies during the Second World War. But
Speaker 1: his relationship with Marguerite Alibert led to another scandal that's
Speaker 1: largely gone ignored by the public thanks to a careful
Speaker 1: cover up by the British royal family. With the death
Speaker 1: of Czar Nicholas the Second and the Romanov family just
Speaker 1: a few years in the past, the situation for all
Speaker 1: of the royal families of Europe remained precarious at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the nineteen twenties. With no real power, the
Speaker 1: British monarchy relied on public goodwill and popularity. It was
Speaker 1: just then that Marguerite Alibert was going to stay on
Speaker 1: trial in England for the murder of her husband, and
Speaker 1: she just so happened to have kept all of the
Speaker 1: incriminating love letters that the Prince of Wales had written
Speaker 1: to her. It was a formula for disaster. I'm Danis
Speaker 1: Schwartz and this is noble blood. The future King Edward
Speaker 1: the Eighth, who I'll just refer to from now on
Speaker 1: as the Prince of Wales his title at the time
Speaker 1: of the story, was a late bloomer. Sexually, he was
Speaker 1: an awkward formal boy, fastidious about his figure, and also
Speaker 1: self centered and narcissistic in a way that made him shortsighted.
Speaker 1: He lost his virginity at age twenty two at a
Speaker 1: meeting with a French sex worker set up by two
Speaker 1: palace aides. He was eager to continue to sow his
Speaker 1: wild oats, so to speak, with the many high class
Speaker 1: courtisans in Paris, where he was stationed for much of
Speaker 1: World War One, while England and the rest of Europe
Speaker 1: was experiencing cataclysmic violence and never before seen death in
Speaker 1: trench warfare. The heir to the throne had nominal military
Speaker 1: duties in France and instead spent most of his time
Speaker 1: enjoying the nightlife. That was where the young Marguerite Alibert,
Speaker 1: going by the Nomdiger Maggie Miller caught his eye. Marguerite
Speaker 1: was a petite woman with long auburn hair. She was
Speaker 1: several years older than the Prince, who was by then
Speaker 1: twenty three, and she was well known for being sexually adventurous.
Speaker 1: I read one description of her as a quote renowned
Speaker 1: Boudoir gymnast. Marguerite was born in eighteen ninety to a
Speaker 1: working class Parisian family. Her mother was a housekeeper, her
Speaker 1: father was a captain driver. Marguerite was the oldest of three,
Speaker 1: with a little sister and a little brother. Later in
Speaker 1: life she would exaggerate and embellish her own childhood. She
Speaker 1: would make her life sound exciting, even romantic. Marguerite would
Speaker 1: say that her brother was a soldier killed during the
Speaker 1: Great War, but the truth was far sadder and more mundane.
Speaker 1: Marguerite's brother didn't live long enough to serve in any war.
Speaker 1: He died when he was four years old, hit by
Speaker 1: a truck when he was out playing in the street
Speaker 1: while a teenage Marguerite was supposed to be watching him.
Speaker 1: The grief was overwhelming, something Marguerite had to compress and
Speaker 1: lock into a box somewhere deep inside herself. The rest
Speaker 1: of her family blamed her for her brother's death, and
Speaker 1: as punishment or penance, she was sent to live with nuns,
Speaker 1: the Sisters of Mary. Life under the nuns was grueling
Speaker 1: and emotionally fraught. They braided her daily with their thin
Speaker 1: lips and spittle, telling her that her sins were the
Speaker 1: cause of her brother's death. But they also gave her
Speaker 1: an education, and it was there that Marguerite would learn
Speaker 1: the foundations that would come to serve her well in
Speaker 1: her society life to come. She learned to sing. They
Speaker 1: say that Marguerite had a pleasant mezzo soprano that she
Speaker 1: would eventually put to you, singing in nightclubs and at parties,
Speaker 1: performing to catch the eyes of possible customers. But before
Speaker 1: all that, while Marguerite was still a teenager, the nuns
Speaker 1: placed her as a domestic servant in the household of
Speaker 1: a lawyer named on Rie Jules Lingua, although in Marguerite's
Speaker 1: version of the story, she was the beloved god daughter
Speaker 1: of Madame Lingua. But Marguerite's position there wouldn't last long.
Speaker 1: She was kicked out of the house when she became
Speaker 1: pregnant at age sixteen. We don't know who the father was,
Speaker 1: but the way, Marguerite told that he was a childhood
Speaker 1: friend who became a colonial administrator in India, also killed
Speaker 1: in the Great War. It's almost certainly a lie or
Speaker 1: an exaggeration. With no employment, Marguerite returned to her family
Speaker 1: home with her infant daughter, Raimond. Her family could barely
Speaker 1: provide for themselves, let alone for a baby, and so
Speaker 1: Ramond was sent to stay on a farm in central France.
Speaker 1: It would be years before Marguerite, as an adult, would
Speaker 1: be able to send for her daughter to come back
Speaker 1: to Paris. It was at some point during this period
Speaker 1: that Marguerite's charm and attractiveness caught the attention of a
Speaker 1: Madame Dinar, the mistress of a high class brothel in
Speaker 1: the sixteenth are Andissement. According to Dinner, Marguerite was instantly
Speaker 1: comfortable among the upper class. Marguerite became, according to dinner quote,
Speaker 1: the mistress of nearly all of my best clients, gentlemen
Speaker 1: of wealth and position in France, England, America and other countries.
Speaker 1: One of Marguerite's clients was the married businessman Andre Millare,
Speaker 1: whose last name Marguerite would borrow temporarily. Miller was wildly
Speaker 1: jealous and He would eventually pay Marguerite off with two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand francs to and their dalliant, and she would
Speaker 1: kick herself later for not negotiating a higher fee. But
Speaker 1: Marguerite would soon have an even more powerful lover, the
Speaker 1: Prince of Wales himself. After seeing the woman he called
Speaker 1: Maggie Miller, he asked his friends to arrange a lunch
Speaker 1: between the two of them at the Hotel de Creon
Speaker 1: in Paris. Those were the sort of machinations that were
Speaker 1: common at the time among the aristocratic as cover for
Speaker 1: the very common practice of employing sex workers. Marguerite and
Speaker 1: the Prince hit it off instantly. They had a lot
Speaker 1: in common as people. They were both vain and vaguely frivolous,
Speaker 1: but perhaps more importantly in this context, she provided the
Speaker 1: Prince with a wealth of sexual experiences and experimentation. It
Speaker 1: would be a trend throughout the Prince's life that he
Speaker 1: gravitated toward older, sexually dominant women, and according to sources,
Speaker 1: Marguerite was no exception. The pair was together for eighteen
Speaker 1: months throughout the First World War while the Prince was
Speaker 1: stationed in Paris. In that time, he wrote Marguerite around
Speaker 1: twenty letters in which he called her mom babil and
Speaker 1: with the poor judgment that I would argue would characterize
Speaker 1: the rest of his life, in which he also shared
Speaker 1: detailed war secrets and made insulting comments about his father,
Speaker 1: King George the Fifth. The Prince, with the arrogance of youth,
Speaker 1: assumed that because he was sending the letters through the
Speaker 1: King's Messenger, a service of couriers employed through the British
Speaker 1: Foreign Office who hand delivered important documents, that the letters
Speaker 1: were entirely secure. He was wrong. When the Prince's attentions
Speaker 1: moved on to another paramore, a married woman named Frida
Speaker 1: Dudley Marguerite, wielded the letters as weapons to prevent herself
Speaker 1: from being cast aside and ignored, with nothing to show
Speaker 1: for it. In a letter to one of his advisers,
Speaker 1: anticipating blackmail, the Prince wrote, quote, Oh, those bloody letters,
Speaker 1: and what a fool I was not to take your
Speaker 1: advice over a year ago. I'm afraid she's the one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand pounds or nothing type, though I'm disappointed and
Speaker 1: didn't think she'd turned nasty. Of the whole trouble is
Speaker 1: my letters, and she's not burnt one. But then something
Speaker 1: would happen to Marguerite that would make blackmail less appealing.
Speaker 1: She met a man who seemed keen to marry her,
Speaker 1: a young Air Force officer named Charles Laurent, whose family
Speaker 1: just so happened to be filthy, which they owned a
Speaker 1: department store and, ironically enough, the Hotel de Crean where
Speaker 1: Marguerite had first met the Prince for lunch. With a
Speaker 1: high profile marriage as a dangling possibility, Marguerite didn't want
Speaker 1: to invite the possible scandal of blackmailing a royal prince,
Speaker 1: and so the issue, to the Prince's relief was dropped.
Speaker 1: Marguerite married Charles Laurent for a brief, unhappy few months,
Speaker 1: after which, to the vast relief of Laurents scandalized family,
Speaker 1: the marriage was dissolved, but Marguerite would leave the marriage
Speaker 1: with a hefty payout, rich enough to begin to live
Speaker 1: her life independently in an apartment on the fashionable Enny Martie,
Speaker 1: living with servants, a full time groom, two limousines, and
Speaker 1: a closet full of couture chanel. Just a year later,
Speaker 1: she made the acquaintance of Ali Fami bay An Egyptian
Speaker 1: cotton air with an annual income of over two million pounds.
Speaker 1: Fammy Bay was in his early twenties, but he lived
Speaker 1: like he had been in the upper class his entire life,
Speaker 1: generously spending his money and running in elite social circles.
Speaker 1: Within six months of meeting the thirty two year old Marguerite,
Speaker 1: he overrode the objections of his family and married her,
Speaker 1: first in Europe and then in a Muslim ceremony in Egypt.
Speaker 1: The mitch match was obvious from the start. Coming from
Speaker 1: a more traditional family, Ali fami Bay had anticipated that
Speaker 1: marriage would mean his wife would settle down and become
Speaker 1: more domestic, less of the flirtatious socialite Marguerite had always been.
Speaker 1: In a letter to Marguerite's younger sister, Yvonne, Fammy Bay
Speaker 1: playfully wrote that he believed Marguerite could be tamed, but
Speaker 1: in the meantime he was bitterly jealous. The way Marguerite
Speaker 1: writes it later, Fammy Bay was emotionally abusive and he
Speaker 1: kept her all but captive. But it's also worth noting
Speaker 1: I think that that characterization of the relationship after the
Speaker 1: fact would be a very convenient narrative given what happened next.
Speaker 1: The couple was staying at the fashionable Savoy Hotel in
Speaker 1: London in July of nine three. They went to the
Speaker 1: opera to see the Merry Widow and returned to their
Speaker 1: suite Later that evening. A porter in the hallway overheard
Speaker 1: a violent shouting match, but he couldn't make out exactly
Speaker 1: what the couple was saying. But there was no mistaking
Speaker 1: what the porter heard next three gun shots, one, two, three.
Speaker 1: The porter rushed into the room to see Ali Fami
Speaker 1: Bay slumped against a wall, bleeding from a shot to
Speaker 1: the head. Marguerite was standing with a brow thirty two
Speaker 1: caliber pistol in her hand. I've lost my head, she
Speaker 1: allegedly said, I've shot him. Medical attention arrived and they
Speaker 1: brought Ali Fami Bae to the hospital, where he died
Speaker 1: an hour later. The authorities then came from Marguerite, arresting
Speaker 1: her and charging her with the murder of her late husband.
Speaker 1: It was a chaotic night at the Savoy, with police
Speaker 1: sirens and lights going off through the night, But there
Speaker 1: was another chaotic scene happening in London, one that was
Speaker 1: happening with much less public attention. The official household of
Speaker 1: the Prince of Wales had gotten word that his former
Speaker 1: mistress had shot a man, and they went into crisis
Speaker 1: mode immediately. The Prince's summer schedule, which had included several
Speaker 1: visits to Wales, was canceled and the Prince was instead
Speaker 1: booked on a three month stay in Canada. They bought
Speaker 1: him a ticket on an ocean liner out of Liverpool
Speaker 1: for as soon as humanly possible. The goal was crisis management,
Speaker 1: preventing anyone from discovering that the Prince had been sexually
Speaker 1: involved with a scandalous murderous They knew all too well
Speaker 1: that if Marguerite Alibert was found guilty, she would be
Speaker 1: sent to be hanged at the gallows. And nothing is
Speaker 1: more dangerous than a woman with nothing left to lose.
Speaker 1: Eight weeks after Marguerite was arrested at the Savoy Hotel,
Speaker 1: she was put on trial at the Old Bailey. Her
Speaker 1: defense lawyer was a man named Edward Marshall Hall, nicknamed
Speaker 1: the Great Defender, already famous in England for the high
Speaker 1: profile cases he had worked on. One of those high
Speaker 1: profile cases was for another sex worker, an Austrian woman,
Speaker 1: for whom in he successfully had a murder charge downgraded
Speaker 1: to manslaughter. Famously, Hall had turned to the jury and pled, quote,
Speaker 1: look at her, gentleman. God never gave her a chance,
Speaker 1: won't you. Other famous cases for Hall included the Brides
Speaker 1: in the Bath murderer, in which the defendant had three
Speaker 1: wives who all suspiciously drowned while taking baths, and a
Speaker 1: murder that's often referred to as the green bicycle case,
Speaker 1: in which the victim was seen riding alongside a man
Speaker 1: on a green bicycle before her death. Hall's client was
Speaker 1: a man who had been traced to the victim and
Speaker 1: who had inconveniently enough thrown his distinct green bicycle into
Speaker 1: the river Sore with the serial number filed off after
Speaker 1: the case had been made public. The client was acquitted.
Speaker 1: All of which is to say Marguerite was well represented
Speaker 1: by a tenacious and well practiced man when it came
Speaker 1: to murder charges. His defense for the Princess Fammy Bay
Speaker 1: was that her husban Spin was a brute and a
Speaker 1: sexual pervert, and that her first two shots had been
Speaker 1: into the air to scare him off attacking her when
Speaker 1: he kept coming at her. Only then did Marguerite point
Speaker 1: the gun at him. And shoot mistakenly thinking that she
Speaker 1: was out of bullets. The actual core of the defense
Speaker 1: strategy was rooted in exploiting extremely racist imagery. Hall paints
Speaker 1: Fammy Bay as a cruel and unnatural foreigner, and that
Speaker 1: his poor white wife was helpless to protect herself against him.
Speaker 1: To quote one of Hall's racist comments, I dare say,
Speaker 1: the Egyptian civilization is one of the oldest and most
Speaker 1: wonderful civilizations in the world. But if you strip off
Speaker 1: the external civilization, you get the real Oriental underneath. Another quote,
Speaker 1: her great mistake, possibly the greatest mistake a woman could make,
Speaker 1: was a woman of the West in marrying an Oriental.
Speaker 1: Hall's defense alluded unsubtily to the prince's sexual appetites being unnatural,
Speaker 1: playing into a racist trope about sodomy and polygamy, both
Speaker 1: being practices from the East come to corrupt the poor,
Speaker 1: chasted white women in the West. Hall argued that Famibe
Speaker 1: was a pervert, and Hall also ensured that the jury
Speaker 1: never thought of his poor former wife as anything but
Speaker 1: a woman of pure virtue. Any mention of her previous
Speaker 1: sex work was forbidden from being included in the trial,
Speaker 1: let alone any possible allusions to her one time relationship
Speaker 1: with the Prince of Wales. This is where writer Andrew
Speaker 1: Rose makes his most stunning claim in his twenty book
Speaker 1: The Prince, The Princess and the Perfect Murder. Rose suggests,
Speaker 1: based on interviews and evidence he was able to uncover,
Speaker 1: in conjunction with the evidence that he found to be
Speaker 1: strategically missing from the record, that a covert arrangement was
Speaker 1: made between Marguerite Alibert and the royal family. The royal
Speaker 1: family's reputation at the beginning of the nineteen twenties was
Speaker 1: of the utmost importance for the preservation of the monarchy.
Speaker 1: Labor and populous movements were gaining popularity throughout Europe, and
Speaker 1: the murder of the Romanovs by the Bolsheviks in Russia
Speaker 1: sent shock waves throughout every royal family. After all, Zar
Speaker 1: Nicholas and the Serena Alicky we're both King George, the
Speaker 1: fifth first cousins, the young Prince of Wales, then was
Speaker 1: a key figure when it came to presenting the British
Speaker 1: royal family as likable. He was, in his twenties, attractive
Speaker 1: and the heir to the throne. The equivalent in the
Speaker 1: modern era to what a young Prince William once was,
Speaker 1: and here was a murderess on trial for her life,
Speaker 1: not only with the history of a relationship with the Prince,
Speaker 1: but with over a dozen incredibly incriminating letters from him,
Speaker 1: in which the Prince proves to be well, wildly irresponsible,
Speaker 1: with terrible judgment. Andrew Rose postulates that in exchange for
Speaker 1: the letters and the Prince's name never coming up in
Speaker 1: the trial, the royal family work behind the scenes to
Speaker 1: ensure Marguerite Alibert's acquittal. As it stands, all of the
Speaker 1: passages from the Prince of Wales wartime diaries referencing Maggie
Speaker 1: have been ripped out, and several important documents from the
Speaker 1: Metropolitan Police Special Branches report on Marguerite have either been
Speaker 1: destroyed or removed from the archives. It's clear that there
Speaker 1: has been a systemic attempt by those in power to
Speaker 1: remove evidence relating to the pair's relationship, unlike there was
Speaker 1: with the actual murder. There is no smoking gun to
Speaker 1: prove Andrew Rose's claims, although at least in my mind,
Speaker 1: it seems more than likely Marguerite had these tremendous bargaining
Speaker 1: pieces and her life was at risk. Whether it's beyond
Speaker 1: a reasonable doubt or not is up to you. But
Speaker 1: the evidence, at least as it stands to me, is
Speaker 1: that the royal family engineered one of the most notorious
Speaker 1: cover ups in history and permitted a vast miscarriage of justice.
Speaker 1: Whether it was the racism or external influence, the jury
Speaker 1: took less than one hour to reach the verdict of
Speaker 1: not guilty. It's a challenging situation to frame discussing whether
Speaker 1: or not Marguerite was actually guilty, especially when she raises
Speaker 1: the claims of domestic violence. But at least from my perspective,
Speaker 1: as it stands, the racism used in her defense was grotesque,
Speaker 1: and her claims were backed up not with any evidence,
Speaker 1: but with horrific stereotypes that played into the age old
Speaker 1: fear of protecting white women's bodies from men of color,
Speaker 1: even when in this situation the white woman was the
Speaker 1: one literally holding the smoking gun. That certainly was Andrew
Speaker 1: Rose's conclusion. He had an earlier piece of writing on
Speaker 1: the murder in which he characterized it as a crime
Speaker 1: of passion, but after completing his research for his twenty
Speaker 1: thirteen book, Rose concluded that in his opinion, it was
Speaker 1: a murder for gain an execution, a perfect crime that
Speaker 1: Marguerite Alibert got away with because she had blackmail over
Speaker 1: the heads of some of the most powerful people in
Speaker 1: the country. Marguerite would go on to sue the Fammy
Speaker 1: family for her late husband's fortune, which would be dismissed
Speaker 1: as the Egyptian court flatly rejected the verdict of the
Speaker 1: British court and determined that Fammy Bay's death was a murder.
Speaker 1: But as an acquitted woman, Marguerite lived the rest of
Speaker 1: her life in financial comfort, being looked after by at
Speaker 1: least four wealthy gentlemen in succession until her death at
Speaker 1: age eighty in nineteen seventy one. Her apartment, which faced
Speaker 1: the writs in Paris, still contained one or two of
Speaker 1: the Prince's letters, which she kept as an insurance policy.
Speaker 1: They were destroyed after her death. As for the Prince
Speaker 1: of Wales, he also eventually more or less disappeared from
Speaker 1: public life when King George the Fifth died in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, famously given a mixture of cocaine and morphine
Speaker 1: by his doctors to hasten his death so that it
Speaker 1: would make the morning papers as opposed to the less
Speaker 1: respectable evening papers. The Prince of Wales became King Edward
Speaker 1: the Eighth, but he abdicated even before his official coronation.
Speaker 1: He chose instead to marry Wallace Simpson, a woman with
Speaker 1: two living ex husbands, which is forbidden by the Church
Speaker 1: of England. Normally that wouldn't really matter, but the King
Speaker 1: of England is after all the head of the Church,
Speaker 1: and so Edward the eight abdicated, choosing to live the
Speaker 1: rest of his life as the Duke of Windsor. His
Speaker 1: younger brother became King George six, the father of the
Speaker 1: current Queen Elizabeth the Second. Edward the eighth life of
Speaker 1: scandal threatened to undermine the British monarchy when it was
Speaker 1: at its most fragile, and it also may have helped
Speaker 1: a murderer walk free. That's the strange story of the
Speaker 1: Prince of Wales affair with Marguerite. Alibert would keep listening
Speaker 1: after a brief sponsor break to hear a little more
Speaker 1: about the Prince and Princess Fammy Bay. The murder of
Speaker 1: Ali Fami Bay in London coincided with another major event
Speaker 1: with regards to the relationship between Egypt and Great Britain.
Speaker 1: Just the year before Fami Bay's death, two Englishmen discovered
Speaker 1: Tutton Common's tomb. It was one of the most thrilling
Speaker 1: archaeological discoveries of the twenty century, the first burial chamber
Speaker 1: unsealed in Egypt for Western eyes that hadn't been previously
Speaker 1: emptied by tomb robbers. According to People magazine at the time,
Speaker 1: within King Tut's tomb were quote treasures so rich and
Speaker 1: wonderful that the first to behold them uttered cries of amazement.
Speaker 1: But some say the tomb also carried with it a
Speaker 1: curse death upon anyone who entered or associated with it.
Speaker 1: Six weeks after the tomb's opening, one of its discoverers,
Speaker 1: Lord Carnavon, died from a mosquito bite. A number of famous,
Speaker 1: high profile tragedies have also been ascribed to the curse.
Speaker 1: King touched revenge on those who had disturbed him. Prince
Speaker 1: Ali famy Bay and Marguerite Alibert, as newlyweds, had visited
Speaker 1: the tomb in February of nineteen twenty three, immediately after
Speaker 1: its opening, just weeks after they were married. They also
Speaker 1: hosted Lord Carnavon and Howard carter On their yacht for lunch.
Speaker 1: If you're the superstitious type, you might consider it noteworthy
Speaker 1: as a data point that Ali Famy Bay was dead
Speaker 1: within the year. Noble Blood is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky. The
Speaker 1: show was written and hosted by Dana Schwartz. Executive producers
Speaker 1: include Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. The show
Speaker 1: is produced by rema Ill Kali and Trevor Young. Noble
Speaker 1: Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and
Speaker 1: you can learn more about the show over at Noble
Speaker 1: blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. M