Behind the Bastards - Part One: Beau Brummell: The First Celebrity and Inventor of the Suit and Tie

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

Robert sits down with Princess Weekes to talk about Beau Brummell, the first fashion influencer and modern celebrity, and discuss whether or not he was really a bastard.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What's got a functional sedative? My host of this podcast, this is Behind the Bastards, the podcast hosted by someone with PTSD who has not been sleeping well for the last like six months and finally got on a good sedative. I went out like a fucking zombie last night and I woke up actually feeling like I slept. So I'm unstoppable today. I'm unconquerable. I woke up at 11, 10 a.m.,

which is the earliest I've gotten up in months. Feeling great, everybody. Really feeling good. I can't mix these with alcohol, which is a bummer, unlike Benzos, which my doctor says are safe to mix with alcohol. No, don't do that, it'll kill you. It killed everybody in the 70s

That's why there's none of those people left I'm really I'm really glad that you've gotten some sleep mostly because that makes my life a lot easier But also good for you Speaking of not speaking of doing drugs in the 1970s, but speaking of being as cool as the 1970s our guest this week, Princess Weeks. Princess, you are a YouTuber, a comedian, and you are here today. How are you feeling?

I wish I had slept as well as you. Now I know what I need. I'm so hype. I'm so hype. I am a history nerd. I love this podcast. I wanna know who my bastard is so badly. All right, well we're gonna get into it.

I do wanna ask you one question first about the past. Because it's been going around this year. I think it was this year that this started. The whole, how often do you as a man think about the Roman Empire? And for most, at least for me and all of my social circle, my male social circle, it's a daily thing. But what I think is a more universal experience, at least among the people that I know and care for, male and female, is how often do you think about getting access to those good

height of the 70s quailudes? Because that's what I don't stop thinking about. Every day for me, it's thinking about lewds. Hourly. Hourly? Hourly? Okay, that's good. Yes, yeah.

Speaking of quailudes, that was the drug of the fashionable set in the height of Hollywood, I don't know, like grime and shit in the 70s, degeneracy, financial industry degeneracy. And when I think about degeneracy, when I think about fashion, one thing that comes to mind is the suit, right? The suit and tie, the uniform of the finance industry, the uniform of business, of class, of wealth,

and power in the Western world. And today, this week, we're going to talk about where the suit and tie came from, and we're going to talk about where the concept of a celebrity came from, because the modern suit and tie are conception of a celebrity, the fashion influencer. Everything that's going to become like the way influencing works on Instagram and TikTok,

all of it was created in the 1700s by one man. And his name was Beau Brummel. And that's what we're going to talk about this week, princess. Have you heard of Beau? I hate him already. I've never heard of Beau. I was really racking my brain. But every time he said suit and tie kept thinking about Justin Timberlake So like it was gonna be either way we were gonna get something

We all have Justin on the brain. This is interesting I kind of wonder how you're gonna if you're gonna wind up actually hating this guy But we'll we'll move to that after the cold open because we're done with the cold open. It's over We're ready to hit the fucking ground running. Hello and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premier podcast. I'm your host, Tereza. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week straight from the person who experienced it firsthand.

Some will be unsettling, some unnerving, some even downright terrifying, but all of them will be totally true. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1980, while El Salvador sat on the brink of war, one man held together the fragile peace, Archbishop Oscar Romero.

He was brutally assassinated in front of dozens of his loyal followers. His death marked the start of a civil war that left more than 75,000 people dead and a million more displaced around the world. My family includes both, those that fled and those that died. Listen to Sacred Scandal, Nation of Saints on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson-Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.

We're back. I am so excited. You had me at 1700s. Yes. We're back. I am so excited. You had me at 1700s. Yes, yes. And what's weird to me is how of the stuff that like, a lot of times you can see if you were like, yeah, this is the origin of this very modern thing. And you'd be like, well, I can see how it built from there.

When it comes to him, everything he's doing as a fashion influencer is exactly the way it works today for people using social media, but he's doing it person to person in very intriguing ways. He knows, this is the guy who learns how to make shit spread virally, but he's doing it all analog, and it's really interesting the way that he makes this work.

But I'm also, here's the thing, the admission I'm gonna make to you as we come back is, I don't know that he's actually a bastard. A lot of people are convinced that he was. This is gonna be an interesting one for us. I guess I should just get into it. Are you ready for me to start the script, Princess? I am so ready.

So you look great. I am not what you would call a fashionable man. I am wearing like a discount Chud hoodie that I got Stuff yeah, yeah, everybody loves good chud one of my one of my favorite things about When like Robert and I fly in for like a business meeting or go meet with someone for a business meeting Yeah, is like I'll come and I am business Barbie

and then there's Robert in his chud hoodie and it just works. It just really works. He's Knuff. Yeah, I look like someone, like I'm confident enough to say this about myself. I look like, I'm not, but I look like someone who might pull a gun on you

in the parking lot for taking the space for my F-250, which I park in four spaces, right? Like that's the vibe I give off. I'm very polite with my parking, but I don't dress well. I did used to, which I think is surprising because I haven't in a long time. Kind of the change for me was back in 2017, I had a near death experience and I was wearing uncomfortable pants and a belt.

And I was like, well, if I'm going to die and I am someday, I'm not going to die. And I'm going to die wearing like sweatpants, like some nice thin merino blend or something. Right. And that's all I've worn ever since. So I might be better primed than most people to accept that the inventor of the suit and tie Bo Brummel could be a bastard But before we you know go further. I need to clarify that like first off Bo did not invent. He's not a tailor He doesn't actually like make any of this stuff So he didn't actually he didn't literally invent the suit and tie like a bunch of different guys over a long period of time Invented the suit and tie

iterating but he is the one who first combined a series of fashion guys over a long period of time invented the suit and tie, iterating. But he is the one who first combined a series of fashion trends in the way that guaranteed the suit and tie would be the result, a couple of generations down the line. And he is most, it seems like broadly agreed by fashion historians that it's fair to credit him as being the father or at least the spiritual father

of the modern Western suit, right? Even though he did not literally make it. We'll walk through that whole process and I think that'll make it more understandable later. So I was excited when I started doing my research on him because I refused to wear a tie. I did just get fitted for a suit for the first time in like a decade because at my dad's funeral,

I looked like shit and my brother looked reasonably nice in a suit and I was like, I actually kind of feel bad that I looked like shit, you know? reasonably nice in a suit and I was like I actually kind of feel bad that I looked Like shit, you know Like my dad wouldn't have cared like he knows he knew the kind of trash person that I was But I'm gonna I'm trying to dress up a little bit more now that said, you know I'm not inherently sympathetic to a fashion influencer and I found a couple articles and I started doing this That's why I started reading about him, that made him sound like a sinister figure.

And the first of them was a piece in Esquire that describes him as a boring uptight villain by Alexandra Rowland. And she makes the case that he killed the era of like elaborate, creative, colorful men's fashion and is kind of responsible for the fact that men today, that's her argument, that men today are scared to express themselves through clothing, right, lest they feel effeminate. And I'm going to read a quote from her article.

Bo Brummel, who was the beginning of 200 years of death for men's fashion and the reason that many straight white heterosexual men today feel self-conscious about wearing color or textures or patterns or anything else that makes them stand out from the sea of dull blues and grays. Sure, there have always been flares of counterculture, almost all of which relied on styles appropriated from marginalized communities, but the prevailing baseline of appropriate and presentable menswear, the things worn by senators, CEOs, and lawyers, has not significantly changed in centuries." Now, and I think when she's, it comes to her overall analysis of like fashion, I don't think that's wrong.

I mean, it's obviously like it's a paragraph that's simplifying it a bit. But I think there's an argument to be made there. I think it's interesting because like every year during the Met Gala, that's always the conversation is that like the women, whether or not they're on theme or not, that's a whole different conversation. But the women will wear these extravagant outfits, like really live lavishly. But it feels like post Halloween middle grade. It just becomes like your Batman's your black suit.

Like, yeah, the Batman outfit is the suit and tie of Halloween menswear. So I I'm so intrigued about like why he decided to be so boring. Like, and I think this is where I disagree with Alexandra. And I think she's she's being unfair because I think this is where I disagree with Alexandra, and I think she's being unfair, because I think she wanted to find an easy way, a thing to blame for what is a much more complicated problem, which is men feeling like they'll be considered gay if they express themselves.

Because Beau was not boring, and I don't actually think it's fair to say that he made fashion boring. I think it's fair to say that because of some of the trends he started, other people made fashion boring, but he was a disruptor of fashion in a way that I think was actually, he deserves credit for being creative in. He was an artist in a lot of ways. And I think that the reason Roland comes down on him so hard and the reason a lot of like pop history writers do is that it's, it's, you're

always looking when you do kind of pop internet history, looking for traffic, you're searching for like algorithmic glory, right? You want to be able to make a quick case that seems to explain something frustrating about the world and everyone can get angry at a guy. And sometimes it's easy to do that. Sometimes there's good ways to do that, right? We do that a decent bit around here, but also I think when you do that, you can run into the trap of over extending a few facts about someone and ultimately losing the person's humanity and kind of exaggerating and missing where a lot of the harm actually came from.

I'm not trying to come down on Alexandra. I've done this myself. There's plenty of criticism from my body of work. But this whole subject is personal to me because I'm not just a guy who dresses like shit because it's comfortable. I'm also a guy, I've dealt with an eating disorder. I've spent a lot of my adult life insecure

about my appearance. It took me years to figure out who I was and I think that's the case for a lot of men, right? We're no different from anybody else in that regard. And I think that like the way Hollywood, I actually really appreciate it. Channing Tatum's talked a good amount about like the how, you know, being as gorgeous as he is,

but like how many weird body image issues he got, because if you were a leading man, you are basically, your job is to be professionally a disordered eater. Like, you're supposed to have body dysmorphia for money. Zach Airford said that too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

And I think it's good that they do say that, right? Like I, you know, you can argue there's, they contributed to the harm, but I think it's more like in the same way that, well, we all drive cars, right? Cause we've got to, you know? I think it's useful when people come out and acknowledge this stuff.

And I think that's kind of how I came in looking at Bo, right? And I think what I saw in him when I did a deeper dive and read some of the more, the actual, like not pop history, but like professional rigorous academic history about him is I saw a man who was not just dealing with his own insecurity, but who was living inside of one of the most viciously evil social systems that ever existed, which is the upper crust of the aristocracy in the

early British Empire is one of the most hideous and cruel cultures that ever existed. And I think he was a decent man who was desperate to find a way to survive and protect himself, and he kind of did the best that he could. And that's where I come down on Bo, actually. And I think there's still some, a lot of harmful aspects of his legacy, but I think it's a much more interesting story than just like he hated fashion and he made men afraid to dress well, right?

We'll see how you think when we get through this. Ultimately, I do want to note, I think a lot of the how you think when we get through this. Ultimately, I do wanna note, I think a lot of the conclusions from Alexandra's article are still valid. Bromel did inaugurate a sea change in male fashion that is dominant today. And this has had toxic knock-on effects. He's also the first modern celebrity.

He is a man who his life was very similar to modern professional fashion influencers today in ways that are like so direct, it's kind of boggling. But I don't know if I would call him a bastard. That said, by talking about his life, we're going to go into the deep sickness at the heart of the British Empire and its culture. So either way, we are gonna get behind some bastards.

I promise you we'll spit the name. Can't wait. 17th, 18th centuries British. Yeah. I was like, we're back. This is the Regency era. The worst people ever. We're back.

Bridgerton land. Yeah, come on Bastards baby, let's go. If you want the most, the biggest touchstone culturally for this era is Jane Austen. Jane Austen is a contemporary of Bo. She's born I think two and a half years before him But they live in London basically during the same time and she never references him directly I read a very detailed article by some some scholars with the Jane Austen fan club

Who I trust to know their shit who argue like she didn't reference him directly But most of the male characters in her novels were either based on him or reactions to him. Not entirely, right? But like, like Mr. Darcy has a lot of bow in him, right? So that's, that's an argument that people make, right? I'm not a Jane Austen scholar, but these Jane Austen scholars make that argument. So George Brian Rumbel was born on June 7 1778 in Downing Street, London, the house he was born and partly raised in was essentially a palace. Yeah, Downing Street. So that's like the heart of government. Yeah,

it was like, I was like, exactly. I was gonna say, like, I know that address. He is raised there. I mean, they were basically power. It's a palace for government employees at the highest level of British government. That's where he's raised and he spends most of his childhood, right? This is where the people who are running the empire live well for very little while they make the empire go.

His father is a guy named Billy, Billy Brummel, and he is private secretary to Lord North, the first Lord of the Treasury. So that's a big gig. Right. This is the guy who was running the purse for the entire British empire. Lord North. Lord North. Yes, he's a powerful man. Billy is no. Yeah, I know George's dad and George is going to become Bo.

Billy is notable because he's one of a small elite cadre of men who hold high positions in the British state but are not members of the aristocracy They are commoners, right? Technically they are commoners, but they are not common, you know, their families had been in living memory They are not of the nobility, but they are extremely wealthy and and and very privileged, right? Billy's dad the middle-chains essentially like Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly You might even look at them as like the Cheney's to be honest

So these are the people who they have a lot of money and a lot of power You know their dads generally made a lot of money and a lot of power and then before that the family lineage was a little more common. Billy's dad, Bo's grandpa, had made the family fortune because he owned a boarding house. And on paper, that makes him sound like he owned a motel. The reality is that he was a pimp, right? Because of where this and this is this is reading between the lines.

But historians seem to broadly agree, given where the boarding house was located, he made his money providing beds and employing women who stepped out with the men who ran the country. So this is not a tawdry boarding house. This is a guy who and this is not like some street pimp. This is a guy who provides escorts to the most powerful men in the up to kings, literally to the king. Yeah.

Bill official mistresses and all those kind of things. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. Billy's dad is gonna die within a state worth the modern equivalent of something like $15 million. Right, so he is not, he's not just like running a Motel 6, you know, this is a man who is doing, he's doing some pimping, right? Like, man, he's quite good at it.

And it ain't easy. It is not easy, no. But you could argue it's necessary, somewhat. He also had a private apartment in Hampton Court, which is a former royal palace, right? So it's one of those places where it's a fashion, it's, you don't, I don't think you pay to live there. I think if you are important and well-liked enough,

you basically get an invite from the aristocracy to like, you can have a subsidized apartment at Hampton Court, right? So again, not a, not just a guy running a boarding house, right? This is a man who is powerful. His son, Billy, Bo's dad, started out as a valet. And a valet, if you're technically common by blood, a lot of times you're gonna work as a valet.

That is, you could call it a working class gig, but it's basically this kind of class of people who do a lot of the administration of the empire, but who aren't nobility themselves. They start out as basically body servants for the aristocracy. Part of that job is making connections, becoming liked and trusted. Then eventually, as the young man that when you're both 19, 20, 21, you're squiring about to parties, you're holding his hair back as he pukes.

When he takes his positions in the empire, he'll give you positions below him, right? Because he knows he can trust you, you know? That is how a lot of the actual like business of the empire gets done. Billy does well enough to make himself indispensable to a number of powerful men, including Lord North. His son, George, the future Bo, is baptized on July 2nd

in the parish church for the House of Commons, right? So again, he's a commoner, but not common. He grows up, his child playmates are royal, right? They're members of the aristocracy, they're princes and princesses and the like. Most of the adult influences around young George are women because his dad's working all the time. So he is largely raised by his mom and his aunts.

Mm-hmm. And as a result, he's got to be really good with women. And I don't mean like, oh, he's a lethario. I mean that like he genuinely enjoys their company and is a good friend. And most of what we know about him is because- He respects women a little bit. A lot.

Like most of what we know about him is like a lot respects women a little bit. He, a lot, like most of what we know about him is like a lot of the women who were his friends or his mistresses wrote about him and they all tended to be like, yeah, he was fucking rad. Like he didn't suck. He would listen to what you had to say. He didn't hit you. He was like a nice guy.

I keep reminding myself that we're talking 1700s, 1800s, Great Britain, because I'm waiting for the bastard II There will be some there's a lot of bastardry in the social class but like well again one of the things you have to respect about this guy is we have a lot of women who wrote about Him and none of them were like and this is the time he was like an abusive prick to me, you know Um, and you really have to be pretty cool to not have stories like that about you in the 1700s as a man of means. Right.

Exactly. It's like when they're like, yeah, Hunter Biden, he does crack, but he's very nice while he does it. So yeah, it's it is if you've known people who use a lot of crack or cocaine, it's really hard to do that every 20 minutes and have someone be like, I felt safe with him. He just seemed like such a calming presence. Such a nice chill process. Like calming. Interesting. He did $11,000 worth of crack a day, but I felt like really calm around him. This is a centering presence. Yeah. Most of the adult influences for again, for young George or women, his aunts noted

later that he was a massive baby with a massive appetite. That is the number one thing to say about him as a baby is like, he was fucking huge. One of the stories we get about him is he was they had tarts one day and he was so into eating a tart that when he got full and he couldn't eat anymore, he started screaming because he wanted to eat more tart. Classic, relatable. Yeah, relatable. Wow. Yeah, same, homie.

My cat, she's like, she's like, I know you just fed me, but like, I can use another round. Yeah. Yeah, I feel I feel I feel that. So in 1780, Lord North and the party of men that George's dad had made his bed with were firmly on the downswing of their careers because, you know, 1780. What do we all know happened a couple of years earlier? The the Great Britain loses freedom. North America, right?

And freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom. The best parts of all the good parts. My God. You know, the Virginia, New York, probably other states, Delaware, Delaware, Delaware. Oh, my God. Can you imagine losing Delaware and all of the great? I feel like sheets. They've got sheets in Delaware. Maybe I'm wrong about who has sheets. They got a bank there. I think they've got a old. Oh, yeah. All the stuff is in Delaware

Yeah, a crushing blow to Lord North and the cadre of men who were running the Empire, right? And so George's dad and his friends, they're not gonna be out of power immediately But this is going to kind of their past and a dear of their power because they are he is like one of the guys who? Helps lose the United States. Yeah You're gonna take a hit for that. Yeah, and it's you know, that's not the only thing that happens They also are the men who like win a big war against France. So that part's good But Lord North makes some other mistakes. His biggest is that he doesn't really hate Catholics as much as most men in the UK do And that's that's gonna hurt him He clearly hate Catholics as much as most men in the UK do.

And that's gonna hurt him. Amateur mistake. Amateur mistake. Not being racist enough against the Irish, yeah. So the fact that he just doesn't hate Irish people quite enough culminates in June of 1780 in an angry mob attacking the Brummel home in London. George is not directly exposed to any violence, but he would have heard the shouting,

he would have seen the fear in his family's faces, and he would have heard volleys of gunfire from Royal troops who had to put down the rioters by shooting into crowds. It's pretty ugly. So his family, they spend most of their time out in the country after this, a lot of it, right? This is not an uncommon thing for people with means and wealth to do during this period.

We're in the lead up to the French Revolution, right? So things are not going to get a lot calmer in the near future. They also officially get given rooms at the Hampton Court Palace then, which is something of an upgrade from Downing Street. And during this period, George is going to have his first brush with fame because he and his brother are painted by a famous artist named Joshua Reynolds. And this is Bowen, his brother, as like four year olds. Oh, that's these kids?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's literally a very famous painting. First of all, very cherubic. Yeah, they look, you would say if you don't know much about like classic art, you would say, well, they look like little girls and they look like little girls because little boys wore dresses back then, right? It's elegant, it's cute, dresses are very convenient to put on a little kid. So I get it.

You can find, I think, photos of FDR in a dress as a baby. So this practice lasts a while. We just don't do it are for no good reason. I Remember we went to um we when I was in college we went to FDR's house In Poughkeepsie and his mother had like clipped out his baby curls and like kept them forever to like I guess harassed Eleanor with them Yeah, yeah, it would be off. She wasn't such a raging bitch, but like it's definitely Yeah, they're like I was a little, little baby FDR, his little curls. Yeah. Yeah. He was a gorgeous baby.

You can just tell that baby's gonna. Well, he's going to do some problematic things, but overall, one of the better presence. Yeah, it's a low. He's going to win some. He's going to lose some. Yeah. He's going to commit some crimes against humanity. He's going to stop some crimes against humanity. He's gonna stop some crimes against humanity, like net, like down to crimes against humanity, which is not bad for a president.

Not great for a president either. I don't know, I don't know, whatever, who cares? So while the painting's being made, a famous poet, Mary Robinson, lover of the Prince of Wales, is inspired to write a poem about Bo, who she describes as an infant cherub that's also famous. So he is like kind of a child star in his era, although he's largely not aware of it. Like he winds up in a lot of very famous arts because he's a really cute kid and he's around all of these artists who hang around the people running the country.

That was enlightening to me. Reading that was enlightening to me because it made a lot of the more pop history articles on his background read differently. I want to give you an idea of how he's normally written about in some of these kind of less nuanced takes. Here's a quote from a Nat Geo article by Ignacio Perro. Bo Brummel was not an aristocrat. He was a commoner admitted to the royal circle.

That's technically literally true, but it makes it sound like he snuck his way in as opposed to, well no, there's a class of people who are common but are part of the upper class, and his family was very, very solidly among that group of people. The Esquire article tries to portray his family as like economically anxious and social climbers, describing them as middle class Londoners with loftier aspirations who were desperate to climb that next rung on the social ladder. And that's not really right, because they were at the top. They were as high as you could go in the social ladder.

Bo's dad is the body man for the lord of the treasury. There's really not a higher place for them to have gone. Anyway, the Brummel family are not royalty, though. And as you can see, though, he was like he's not common as a child. In 1786, his father decided to leave governance behind. He had done very well for himself in Downing Street. And now that he was like in his 50s, he decided to spend his remaining years investing his wealth into property and entering a sort of working retirement. So he buys a country home for his family. It's a mansion. It's made in the style of older homes

that had never really existed. But this was people's idea of what older manors had been. Yeah. And it was built by like- It's like Greece. We're like, this is the 50s. Yeah, exactly, exactly. No one ever lived this way, right?

And the guy who builds it, it's kind of like a McMansion in some ways. It's like a super fancy house built by this aristocrat who bankrupts himself building it, and then Billy's able to get it for cheap, because he's just much smarter than a lot of these guys. Here's how Ian Kelly, Bo's biographer, describes the process of readying the home

for habitation. Donington Grove still bears the marks of the Brummel's social ambitions. Like all fashion-conscious Georgian landowners, they wanted to create an Arcadia without visible signs of the economy that supported their luxury. They had a paper mill demolished.

It spoiled the view and replaced with a medieval style fishing pavilion. See, this is like Jefferson's doing a lot of similar stuff where like you don't want anyone to see the servants, right? You only want to see, you just want it to look like it's magically nice. Clean. Yeah, like you want't want anyone to see the servants, right? You don't even want to see, you just want it to look like it's magically nice. Clean. Yeah, like you want it that like minimal,

like, oh yeah, just the black people just appear in the house and then they just vanish. Right, right, right. So we're gonna talk more about Bo's childhood and his attendance at a little school called Eaton. But first off, before we do that, why don't you eat in some of these ads? Greetings ghouls and girls, and welcome to Haunting,

Purgatory's premiere podcast for all things afterlife. I'm your host, Tereza. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling. When she was with her imaginary friend, she would turn and look at you and you felt like something else was looking at you too.

Some unnerving. The more I looked at it, I realized that the thumb looked more like a claw, like a demon. Some even downright terrifying. The things that I saw, heard, felt in that house were purely demonic. But all of them will be totally true. Listen to Haunting on the iHeart Radio app,

Apple podcasts, or wherever you live and get your podcasts. What's the hardest question you've ever asked your mom? Mom, what happened to your sister Margarita? For me, it's about a murder that's haunted my family for decades. They said that they took her, and the next day she was already dead. To find the answers, I went to the place where my family is from, El Salvador, and found

that the story starts with a priest who was killed on the altar and sparked a war. I'm Jasmine Romero, and on Sacred Scandal Nation of Saints, join me as we uncover an unholy war, one that includes government cover-ups and politicians turn death squad leaders. But I'll also tell you the story of one family, mine, because on this journey, I found out that we had more secrets than I knew. Listen to Sacred Scandal Nation of Saints as part of the MyCultura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It all started with two federal agents who heard a rumor. She mentions, well, there is this alleged murder to have taken place.

There was just one problem. They had no clue who the victim was. We have to do our job and we have to find out who did they kill. It had been 15 years since this alleged murder. Was it still possible to unearth the truth? I used to watch the Unsolved Mystery shows and I often thought about calling because I was like, this is not right. How can a person get killed and no one knows anything? I'm Jay Calpern and this is Deep Cover, The Nameless Man. Listen on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

We're back. So, as a boy, as like a young kid, pre-adolescent, George's idol, George is the future bow. His idol is his older neighbor, neighbor, who's a semi famous guy, Tom Sheridan. Tom is going to become like he's a, he's a celebrity of his day. He's a soldier. He writes plays. He's like a professional adulterer. He's one of these men who like part of his legacy

is how good he is at cheating on his different wives and mistresses, right? Classic kind of guy. And like most of those guys, he dies young of tuberculosis, right? And that's how you know it was big. You know, like this, like, yeah, he was prolific. Yeah, you're not really like a famous romantic,

like male influencer if you don't die of TB. That's like the capstone, you know? That's like winning an Oscar in this era, right? If Leonardo DiCaprio had been a Regency era like Dandy, he would have been looking to die of fucking tuberculosis by 40 as opposed to doing that bear movie where he won the Oscar, right? It's like you got to be out by 36 like Byron because then it's like what are we what are we even doing here?

Yeah, it's not gonna get better right after 36. You're pretty much washed in this period of time Anyway, so yeah Tom Sheridan The main thing that George is going to take from him is that Tom is a wit and that's what George is going to grow Up wanting to be. So I should digress here. One thing the story of Bo Brummel makes clear is that Twitter didn't invent anything new. It just gave us a way to do it online. People have always appreciated sharing funny bits like little lines by strangers and people

have always gotten famous. People have always in part gotten famous from dropping good one liners. Most of Regency era British culture that comes down to us is at least a huge amount of it is in the form of one liners and quips from people like Tom and Bo, who are more famous for like, like Tom writes plays and stuff. But he's mostly famous for like these little put downs and jokes, these epigrams than any play or novel, right? Tom is said to have originated this bit. When his father demanded he take a wife, he responded, yes sir, but who's?

And then his dad is like, look motherfucker, I'm not joking around, if you don't marry, I'm gonna cut you off with only a penny to your name. And Tom's response was, can I have the penny now then? Right? He's that kind of a wit, right? Yeah, these are the bits. No wonder he was sleeping with people's wives.

Exactly, of course he is, right? And this is, there's no difference between this and dunking on dudes on Twitter, right? Like it is the same thing, right? In ancient Rome, they're doing this too. A lot of like Roman graffiti is like dunks. It's little, and in fact, these British guys, all of them in school are studying the way Romans and Greeks used to dunk on each other in order to like

that's like the core of a lot of like the culture of humor in this time. We should teach that course before people get like podcaster mics. Like it should be a required course before you get a mic. Like it should be a required course before you get a mic. You have to be able to swear. Yes, exactly. Take a witticism class. Yeah, take a good class in dunking. People back then, you have to understand, being a poster isn't new.

We've always had posters. The ancient Romans were some of the best posters whoever lived. They would understand the internet in a second, you know? Now, the ancient Greeks, yeah, they were posters too. A lot of posters, most people in history were posters. That's the great lesson of humankind. I think the Greeks would have had like a sub stack.

Yeah, yeah, fucking oh my God. Aristotle would have loved sub stack. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, Aristotle, yeah, he would have had like, he would have been one of those things too where you would have gotten like 10 pages in and, he would have had like, it would have been one of those things too where you would have gotten like 10 pages in and then it would have had like the,

to read the rest of this, you gotta subscribe to Aristotle's Substack. Yeah. Right. And no one would have. So we just would have had like a bunch of half articles, which is kind of what we have with Aristotle now. So these little bits, stories about people giving these little bits about these japes made at parties would spread person to person through letters through like human gossip and through newspapers and magazines which reported on a lot of like the social gossip between the big figures of the day.

Novels were another major place where this kind of culture spread. Jane Austen is a big part of this, right? So, Bo grows up idolizing Tom Sheridan and specifically idolizing the fact that he earns a lot of respect because he's funny and kind of a dick. He's going to learn from Tom that like, that's sort of how you make a place in yourself in societies. You learn how to put people down in a way that's so funny, they don't really get angry at you, you know? That's the kind of the key to social success in his culture. In 1786, his dad sends him away to Eaton, the most famous and prestigious boarding school on the island. This is the school of the prince and you know, the future king, the Prince of Wales now attends. And it's not Eaton is it's still around today and it is a school

today. At this point in time, it's not a school in the way modern people mean when they talk about a school. You don't go to Eaton to learn a trade or a vocation. You don't go there because like, well, I'd like to be an English major or I would like to be an engineer or whatever. You do go there to prepare for your job. But as I talked about earlier, jobs for people in this social class at the top of the ladder in the British Empire are given out by aristocrats to the people they trust the most.

The way that you prepare to start your future career and to get a job is not learning how to do things, it's learning how to be good company. It's learning how to fit in at the parties, right? That will eventually secure you a gig. So, Eternians, they learn Greek, they read the classics, they study philosophy, but the purpose of most of this is so that they can like share references. And you should think about this not as,

today if somebody's dropping references to like Homer or Virgil in like conversation, like, oh, you want people to know you're smart, right? In this era, it's more like how if you're hanging out with like a bunch of 30 something comedians, everybody's like quoting old bits from the Simpsons, right? It helps you fit. Yeah. Yeah. That must be why Charles was so mad. Yeah, because because King Charles didn't go there. He was real mad about it and definitely sent his sons there. That makes a lot of sense. I think we lose a lot when we see these classical educations, learning Latin, learning Greek,

and all this stuff as like, well, because they were much smarter than us as opposed to like, this was kind of the meme culture of the day. Being able to throw a good Plato quote in when somebody said something or make a good reference to them. That was how people, that was how like you communicated, you know? Yeah. It's like fuck boy finishing school, but like, because they did it in Latin. It seems fancier to us, but it's not really any different from the way like the the internet

accultures us all to communicate now, right? In its early days, back in the 1500s, education to eat and had been largely religious, but as Britain had sucked in the world's wealth more and more of the focus had turned towards cultivating a social class who would wield obscure knowledge to separate themselves from commoners and gain a common identity that was kind of existed in exclusion to the rest of the country and the rest of the world. The people who did not have that education would almost speak a different language. At the end of the 18th century, the specific style of speaking that was taught in Eaton

was based on classic Greek and Roman epigrammatists. An epigram is a bit, right? That's what we would call a bit. It's a couple of good lines, usually satiric, that often played the role of like a rap battle, right? This is how a lot of like old-time Greek and Roman thinkers would like talk shit on each other in epigrams, right? It's also how ancient Greek and Roman graffiti took,

like that's the form it took. One surviving epigram from Pompeii reads, and this is like, this is graffiti on a wall in Pompeii. I'm astonished, wall, but you haven't collapsed into ruins since you're holding up the weary verse of so many poets. Right? Like I'm surprised that you haven't collapsed

into the weight of everybody trying to seem smart by like throwing out a good one-liner You know some Taylor Swift ass shit right there Yeah, exactly Dead to its department ass wall Yeah, it is kind of like that somebody bitching about everybody yeah trying to trying to put on airs seem smarter than they are So it's here that George Brummel is educated in the art of observing the world and then boiling his thoughts into a single razor sharp line.

He develops a reputation for cutting mockery and also for being the funniest kid in school, right? He is like the guy, he's the cut up, he's a charming joker. Now another major focus of Eaton culture are the uniforms. Boys are expected to own a dozen shirts and cravats plus numerous pairs of pants, waistcoats, breeches, hats and stockings for different occasions. And knowing what to wear and when is part of what is a big part of what you're learning

there because that's part of what separates you from the masses who have whatever set of clothes they have, right? And maybe a Sunday set of clothes and generally look like shit, right? Yeah. You have the wealth to have clothing and care about how you look. Forcing boys who are generally 12 or 13, that's when you start at Eaton, to fit into this social class is not a peaceful process. You don't just do it by teaching them Greek and making them dress up. You do it by beating the shit out of them, right? That is a major part of acculturating young men here. And I'm going to quote from an article by Austin Jensen.

For breaches of discipline, a boy would be flogged. Eton, specifically, used to be renowned for its use of corporal punishment, generally known as beating. Friday was set aside as flogging day until 1964, offending boys to be summoned to the headmaster or lower master as appropriate to receive a birching on the bare posterior in a semi-public ceremony held in the library.

So like every Friday, you all go to get the shit beat out of you and watch, like everybody's got to watch as your bare ass gets paddled in front of the school. And they wonder why these are not well people like. Yeah, why all of them grow up. I mean, I'm sure it's part of why guys like Bo's grandpa are able to make a good living as a pimp, right? Because there's probably a lot of money

for early dominatrixes in this culture, right? Right. Because you've got to develop a complex where it's like everything about you is like latched on to like this weird social like sadomasochist thing, but you got to be smart while you did it by like doing a whiff after like you get your ass beat. Yeah, you got to be able to make a good, there's a great movie called If that's set, it's actually the first Malcolm McDowell movie. Like it's his first starring role,

but it's set in the mid century, 20th century at one of these boarding schools. And they're still about this brutal into the late 20th century. But like one of the things that covers is the way in which it's almost ritualized and sexualized, this physical violence that all of the boys have to endure. And it's a pretty vicious system.

The prefects, who are the older boys, do a lot of the actual beatings. It was called a tunding, which was beating a disobedient student across the back of his waistcoat with a ground ash, the width of a finger. So it's like a finger width ash stick. Ash is a very hard wood.

And the art of it is to catch the edge of a shoulder blade, to hit someone in the back and catch them or like hit them over the shoulder and catch them in the back and hit the same spot every time, right? And you're kind of the goal is to cut their their vest, their waistcoat into strips by whipping them over time. Because then they have to pay to replace it to not only are you driving up welts on their back, but they have to replace their

clothes. God, it's the British are not a well people. I hate that they colonized my all of my groups. It's like you are whipping each other's clothes off and then you also had time to enslave so many people like pick a hobby. Go to therapy. Anytime you read about that's probably why they did it. They were like, it's good. This is our our therapy is doing a couple of genocides, right? Like, yeah, that's how we're going to starve 30 million people in Bengal, and that's really, it's good for the soul.

It is interesting every time you read about like, oh, the British encountered this barbarous practice in Kenya, or this horrible practice in India. And like, every culture has things that they do and have done that are not, certainly we don't consider to be moral in a modern sense that we're really ugly.

But they act as if like you guys are whipping each other bloody and you've ritualized it. And like some chunk of the boys are always sexually molesting each other because like that is partly how the system is built is to like enable these like systems of sexual abuse because you have younger boys are paired. It's called the fag fag master system. That is where the slur comes from And a fag is a younger boy who is paired with an older boy And he's basically that boy's servant and the older boy can in addition to whip him Basically is supposed to control him and it's not always sexual But a lot of these relationships are sexual

and they're deeply abusive. And this is like part of the culture of going to a private school is you are probably going to get molested. That's a very, especially in this period of very high odds, right? Like these are barbarous systems. Especially when they're like, right.

Especially when they're like fetishizing the Greeks that were like very much in that mentality of you, you rear a young boy for that same kind of like molestation, but also like you're supposed to be giving them access to your mind and that's going to grow up to be proud of, my education, my professional competence. And you're also chaining that to the abuse that they endure at the hands of adults, which is, I mean, it profoundly damages the Greeks, it profoundly damages the, the Brits, you know, we are still dealing with some of the consequences of this to this day. One thing that is interesting about this system is that in this school, I said at Eaton, the Prince of Wales goes here, most of the like high aristocracy go to Eaton. They are not immune to being punished.

They are not immune to being punished by people who are lower than them on the social hierarchy. They get the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York who go to the school a little before George does are noted by their sisters having been flogged like dogs for misbehavior. There's also an element of trauma bonding for the entire upper class in that they have this common experience. That's very important. Now, George, he goes through this system.

He is noted as being very well-liked. He is not somebody who ever is noted as having flogged anyone else. And he seems to have almost entirely escaped being physically abused himself in a way that is so unique. It was remarked upon by his peers at the time. Like somehow he always got out of it and nobody else did. Right. And part of how he got out of the bullshit is like everyone really liked him. We have numerous reports in his classmates of of he was the cool kid in school. He was the kid you wanted to be.

And nobody, even the upperclassmen, the school teachers, just didn't seem to want to fuck with him much because he was so funny. You wanted him to like you and think you were cool, right? Do we have any information? What books was he reading? Where is he getting his coolness from? Like why is he so fucking cool? He's he's reading a lot of natural risk.

Yeah, he's got it's kind of just natural risk. You know, he paid attention to Tom growing up. He pays attention to like how you craft a joke. He does really well in school. So he's good on his Greek and his Latin. He's good at his history. He's not the best. He avoids doing too well because he doesn't want to like, then people don't like you if you do too well. But he's like good enough to be noted as a good student, not so good that people are like, fuck with him for it. Right. He has this, he's one of

these people who seems to be born with an innate sense of social navigation. He always knows how to be most maximally appealing in any situation without crossing any kind of lines that like make you tiring to people. Yeah, it's it's Riz, you know, he's just, yeah, he's got, yeah. He's got it. Everything you said about him reminds me of what people said about Truman Capote, about how even when he was very toxic, but he was so funny, so charming, knew stuff about everybody that he always would have, for the most part, a circle of people around him because he was just so engrossing. It even kind of reminds me of Shakespeare with the idea of this person who's not of the right

class to some people, still like very charismatic, knows enough stuff that like it doesn't matter enough. Yeah, it doesn't matter and he seems to be, he seems to be so confident and he seems to know what he wants so well that you kind of line up behind him. Cause most people, even if you're at the top of the class, even if you're the fucking Prince of Wales, inside you're a ball of insecurity. And I actually think Beau was as well, I think everyone is, but he seemed to have a sense

of direction for himself that kind of makes everyone feel like you want him to like you because then you feel like maybe you know where you're going to. He's that kind of a person, right? He's a natural leader. I also think of Tom Cruise when I see this, not that Tom doesn't have his weird side, but like, if you notice how people point this out, you can look at like long shots of Tom when he's like, they're not actively filming, but like he's on set and you'll see him like walking and he's like a hundred yards back from the camera, but his face, he always instinctively is always turned in such a way that it's ideally framed in the camera.

He just has, he always knows in his brain how he's being looked at and how to present himself and as part of what makes him Tom Cruise, Bose got that, right? It's almost a supernatural sense for that sort of thing. And you know what else is supernatural? The quality of our sponsors, you'll see God. Greetings, ghouls and girls, and welcome to haunting Purgatory's premiere podcast for all things afterlife.

I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling. When she was with her imaginary friend, she would turn and look at you and you felt like something else was looking at you too. Some unnerving. The more I looked at it,

I realized that the thumb looked more like a claw, like a demon. Some even downright terrifying. The things that I saw, heard, felt in that house were purely demonic. But all of them will be totally true. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you live and get your podcasts. What's the hardest question you've ever asked your mom?

Mom, what happened to your sister Margarita? For me, it's about a murder that's haunted my family for decades. They said that they took her, and the next day she was already dead. To find the answers, I went to the place where my family's from, El Salvador, and found that the story starts with a priest who was killed on the altar and sparked a war.

I'm Jasmine Romero, and on Sacred Scandal Nation of Saints, join me as we uncover an unholy war, one that includes government cover-ups and politicians turned death squad leaders. But I'll also tell you the story of one family, mine, because on this journey, I found out that we had more secrets than I knew.

Listen to Sacred Scandal, Nation of Saints, as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It all started with two federal agents who heard a rumor. She mentions, well, there is this alleged murder to have taken place. There was just one problem.

They had no clue who the victim was. We have to do our job, and we have to find out who did they kill. It had been 15 years since this alleged murder. Was it still possible to unearth the truth? I used to watch the Unsolved Mystery shows, and I often thought about calling because I was like, this is not right. How can a person get killed and no one knows anything?

I'm Jay Calpern, and this is Deep Cover, The Nameless Man. Listen on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We're back and we're talking about Bo. I've talked about the system that he's in where you've got all the younger kids in Eaton are the job title they have is fags and then you have your older boy who's your master who is supposed to run you. We have a quote from the guy who was that for Bo. This is what he said about Bo while they were in school together.

No one at the school was so full of animation, fun and wit. He was a general favorite. Our dame, his tutor, and my tutor, and Dr. Goodall all petted him. You asked me whether he was pugnacious. I do not remember that he ever fought or quarreled with anyone. Indeed, it was impossible for anyone to be more good-n than he was. And again, like everyone fights at this school, everybody gets into scraps except for Beau. Nobody even wants to fight him. He's just that kind of naturally charming. And that's what I see in that is that like his, this is a defense mechanism. He is

someone who knows, and we get from the women who know him at the time, he doesn't like a lot of aspects of how brutal this system is. Nobody really does. He knows that the way to protect himself is by being defensively likable. Yeah. Now, Eaton is not a placid place. Boys are given a lot more freedom than we give adolescents today. One of the other things you learn at Eaton is how to drink, which you start learning as a young man in the British aristocracy at 13 or 14. So these boys outside of school, there's a town nearby that has a couple

of bars that cater specifically to Eaton boys. And part of what you're learning is how to drink like a man, right? Like you are getting wasted as a little kid because you need to be able to drink like a son of a bitch in order to exist in high society, right? How can you die of a liver problem if you don't start drinking right now? Yeah, yeah, if you don't really get a handle on this soon, you might live past 40 and we don't want that. Nobody wants to live, you've got to get

some tuberculosis guys, you know, come on. Right, amateur hour. Yeah, right? Like, what if you wind up not being sauced your entire adult life? That would be a real loss. So these kids are rich little shits. They wind up in fights with local boys a lot

because they can't even communicate with these boys. They are raised speaking effectively different languages, and often literally different languages, because they communicate a lot in Latin among each other, right? In French and Greek. This passage from a biography on Boe Brummel by Ian Kelly describes one instance of young Boe confronting the violence that resulted from this situation, this kind of discrepancy between the local common kids and the eaten boys. A boatman who had found himself at some altercation with the schoolboys was on the point

of being thrown over the bridge into the low waters of the Thames by a mob of over a hundred Etonians. Buck Brummel, perhaps 14 at the time, caught the attention and laughter of the Etonian and cad hooligans alike by shouting, my dear fellows, don't send him into the river. That man is obviously in a state of perspiration

and it almost amounts to a certainty that he will catch cold. Brumwell was rewarded with guffaws, perhaps some amusement in the face of such paradoxical whimsy, typical of his later style, and the boatman was released. So he comes upon a crowd,

because his schoolboys, they run around in big groups because they will get picked on by the locals otherwise. They start a fight with this random working class guy and they're about to throw him into the fucking river and Bo comes up and he makes fun of the guy. He's like, look at how sweaty he is. Like, you don't want to like, he's already wet enough. You don't need to throw him in the river. But he makes fun of this guy to disarm the situation and stop him from being further abused, which I think speaks to an

aspect of his character that's actually like complex and positive. Yeah. Cool guy. So it was learning this that made me think Bo was a more complicated figure than the first articles I read made him out to be. To quote again from that Esquire article attacking him, he made a habitual performance of wry cruelty, lifting himself up by putting other people down. And a lot of people, even to this day, think that kind of thing is funny. And the difference is, I think what Alexandra is doing there, she's looking at a lot of internet put down culture, which is deeply cruel and is focused around singling people out, often making uncharitable conclusions or often uncharitable interpretations of their words to get in a quick dump for social media engagement. That's a huge most of social media today.

And it's really ugly. It's very abusive. It's part of why harassment is such a problem online. And I kind of see a lot of what Bo's doing is kind of the opposite. And part of how you can get that, some of these are put downs. He says mean things to people.

They usually still like him. And the mean things are often to diffuse tense social situations with humor, right? By taking the piss out of people. As opposed to trying to like, I think he does that he can be a dick too. It's not the only thing he does, but we get examples of him that come down to us from 300 years ago of him stopping fights by by by this kind of thing, by like, you know, making a good joke at the right time. Yeah, I'm going to use my history minor cap on and say like he probably I don't I don't know who this guy is, but I'm guessing he probably pissed off

somebody that was high enough that they were able to sort of like reframe a narrative. Because right now he sounds great. I would love a blunt rotation with him. That sounds like I think he'd be really cool. But I definitely think that like there's going to be a mixture of like a class issue because people keep talking about him in these articles that you're referencing as if he's like a Kardashian almost as if like, yeah, where does he think he's coming from? What is fat ass, you know, like trying to take up space in our society.

So I can't wait to see who he pisses off. Because I know that I know it's coming. We are building to that because that is his fault. His his fall is he like he talks shit about the wrong guy. And that does like destroy his entire life eventually. Right. That'll do it. And the guy he talks shit about deserves it, you know? It's not fair on his part that he gets fucked for that.

But yeah, I think you have to look at his put-downs, the fact that this is the primary way that he communicates with the world, but within the context of this is how his social class communicates with each other. Having a sharp tongue is the key to popularity and the key to protecting yourself. And it says a lot that his old master describes him as like, nobody wanted to fight with this guy, which means all of the jokes he's making, none of them like culminate and someone demanding an honor duel with him. They were good natured. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, I think that's what we see with Bo is he enters, he's entering and he's aware that

he's entering a culture dominated by the cruel, wealthy fail sons of his era who are on the lookout for any signs of difference that they can attack and the people around them. And he makes himself their idol in the most popular boy at the school as a method of self defense because that's the only way to get by in this world. And I kind of see him in that as a little bit of a rebel, right? And it's from a desire to rebel at Eaton that the foundations of what would become the modern suit are going to present themselves to Beau for the first time. Every year Eaton Boys engaged in a festival called Montem. Montem is a mix of like how we see Halloween today and like a child riot.

Like it was a controlled riot of rich kids kind of mixed with Halloween. All of the eaten boys. Of course. Yeah, right, yeah. Of course, they get to some, that's just a fun little rich boy riot. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The kids need their little riot, you know. We gotta let them beat up the commoners, which is a lot of what happens during Monton. The boys will elect captains and the captains and the kids, the upperclassmen who get elected to positions almost. It's like a homecoming thing. They dress in these insanely elaborate, expensive uniforms. And the younger boys dress in these quasi military uniforms.

And they they form up in gangs on like the bridges and they will rob common people trying to cross the road basically. Hoodlums. Yeah hoodlums. It's kind of it's ritualized. So like they're not like they usually are not taking your actual stuff. You know at Montem you want to have like some treats and stuff for the boys who are like going to be pretending to be brigands like right give them some beer you know that's how they're getting the trick or treat it's like it's like we'll you or give us your food right and usually it's like a friendly yeah the kids are out tonight they're doing their monty and saying we'll give them some treats sometimes people fuck up or the kids are drunk and so they start shit or sometimes the locals are drunk and they start so things can get very violent.

Sometimes Montem turns into something that is like a really ugly riot, but it is supposed to be this like ritualized sort of blowing off of steam thing. And like every other aspect of Eaton, Montem has a rigorously enforced class system. So the higher up you get, the more insane your costume, which fits in, you know, the costumes at Montem

fit in with the fancy dress of the day, which emphasizes men are wearing these powdered wigs that we're all familiar with from like revolutionary war era media, right? And they wear these incredible multi-piece outfits that would be considered like a bit much at the Met Gala today. And to give a little more detail about this,

I wanna quote from an article I found published by the Jane Austen Society, written by Jeffrey Nigro and William Phillips. By 1775, yeah, this is good. We got a fun picture coming up for you. By 1775, it is still acceptable for men to wear silk, satin or velvet in bright or pastel colors with lace cravats and cuffs, powdered hair and perfume.

The most extreme fashion victims of the moment were the macaronis. These foppish men supposedly derived their fame from the Macaroni Club, an organization of fashionable young Englishmen who had returned from the grand tour with a love for continental fashions, culture and cuisine. The macaroni style was an extreme form of appearance, exaggerated in costumes, cosmetics and hairstyles. And these people I'm gonna show you so he's gonna pull up a picture to look at how this this is a this is a macaroni

Like a man dressed in this style and it's like What are you talking about? His leg is the size of his torso. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's got like Marge Simpson hair. I would describe the look on his face as like, what if there was a pedophile for pedophiles? Like, he has a creepy smile. He's got like a Joker smile. It's exacerbated by his insane makeup.

Oh my God. They should be thanking this man. Like it looks like his hair style's about to ejaculate. Like I really, it's gaping at me. It's really, it's very, so gross. I love it. But I'm glad it's gone. Yeah, yeah, I'm glad it died out.

I'm glad it existed and we can look at this picture now. And you can see how elaborate and heavy that dress is, right? And that hair piece is not a normal day-to-day wear for someone. That is masquerade wear that I just showed you, but it shows you like during festivals how outrageous the costumes were. And the normal social costumes are less insane, but they're still really elaborate. There's a lot of gold and gilding and silver on them, a lot of jewelry, a lot of makeup, a lot of powder. And the hair pieces people wore at the time are not light or comfortable.

Outfits like this, which are outfits that are more elaborate than this, are common among upperclassmen during Montem. But one group of boys who make up the majority of the Montem crowd, the younger boys, are Pullman. And they wear a simpler outfit because they're kind of the grunts, the soldiers of the older boys who are wearing these elaborate outfits and they wear dark blue jackets with two rows of buttons and pale tight writing breeches. George comes to prefer this outfit as a matter of daily wear as opposed to the more elaborate fancy dress of the time. And when he gets out of Eaton, he continues

to dress like a Pullman. Like this is like a costume. But it's one that he really digs and he just starts wearing it every day. And it's important to note this outfit, what he is wearing the Pullman's outfit that becomes he is going to eventually kind of streamline this into the precursor of the modern suit. This is a quasi military outfit. It is made in part in imitation of some of the military outfits of the day. It's also athleisure, right? Most popular dress clothing is very restrictive

both because of the weight and the materials used to make it. The outfits George favored take after the jackets and stuff and the waistcoats take after military uniforms, which you have to be able to move into some extent. And the breeches are writing pants. They're not quite modern trousers, but you're meant to be able to move in them, right? So what you're telling me is that not only was he

the precursor of the suit and tie, he was a precursor of wearing leggings as pants. Yes, yes, these are literally leggings. These are so tight. One of the jokes women of the day make is that once breeches start being like common and the more common fascial pants, one of the jokes men or women will make is that like,

oh, these are great. You can always tell what your man is thinking, right? Cause you can see, you can see his dick through the fucking, it's so tight, right? Like, cause these are skin tight pants. You're almost poured into them as a man. These are yoga pants. Yeah.

And older people will attack this outfit for the same reason that they attack yoga pants. Where it's like, it's obscene. The kids are dressing this way. These tight breeches, filthy. Yeah. They're just cutting off the circulation. They're gonna end the bloodline.

Right, right, right. So influenced by the central role of fashion at Eaton, by the time George Brummel left the school, he had developed a reputation for fastidiousness. He is noted to be almost obsessively focused on his personal hygiene and the fit of his clothes. He's already spending a significant time every day getting ready to dress. He's always focused on how he looks. And he might have had what we would describe as like dysmorphia or even some sort of, it's

impossible to know, but I'm going to read you a quote from Ian Kelly's biography. It may speak partly of an uncomfortable relationship with his body. This may be attributed to his position in the male gaze at Eaton, a supremely homosexualized environment, and may also be related to growing up in a highly sexualized society that it was at the same time, violently antipathetic to the direct outlet of adolescent male energy. Everyone is a lot, there's a lot of these boys are fucking each other, right? There's not a small amount of older men, particularly at the school, who are also abusing boys. Everyone's dressing, it's very common.

A lot of these dresses are especially like the outfits that he prefers. These tight leggings are extremely revealing. He's always conscious of how he looks because he's always conscious that he's being sexualized. That influences him a lot. The evidence that he suggests that we have, I think suggests that the fact that he adopts this outfit for himself, and he's going to make everyone else adopt it

as a result of how much they want to be like him, because he is the cool guy, everyone wants to be like Bo. I see this suit he starts to create as a suit of armor, to protect himself from his fellow men. And he's so good at this that they come to create as a suit of armor, right, to protect himself from his fellow men, right? And he's so good at this that they come to admire him. He is rare, if not singular, in this period for being a man of his social class who had a lot of close female friends. And one of the first is Julia Storer. This is his first love. He describes it as he falls

violently in love with her when he's like 14 or 15. But he ultimately loses out to the guy who wins her, you know, in the parlance at the time is they are both for he, Julie is 14 or 15, Bo is 14 or 15. The guy who, you know, she winds up going with is 30 years old and a Colonel. Yeah, yeah. Just twice her age, her age, you know? And he is a Colonel in the army, Colonel Cotton. Oh, that sounds racist. Yeah. Sorry, girl. I was like, villain, villain, villain.

Yeah. He is seen as being very handsome of his day, although Bo will repeatedly note as an adult that he's stank, he smelled terrible. Bo is obsessed with his hygiene. Bo is the, at least in this period, eventually he's going to make this, again, people will all follow him in this,

but he is like the first man of his social class to make daily hot baths a part of his life, right? Icon, honestly, yourself, Bo. I'm like, we love it. We love to see it. He's unique because like he doesn't wear perfume. He refuses to because he's like, you only wear perfume if you're fucking gross, right?

Like, because that's why people wear perfume in this period of time. I'm not going to just take a fucking bath and have your clothes washed every day, you know? And I think some of that is a reaction to this Colonel who he thinks is nasty and who also wins. Again, we are talking about a pedophilic relationship, but the way he looks at it in the time is this is another man who has won, you know,

who's beaten him in this contest, right? Right. I'm not saying that because I think that's a good way to look at it, but that's how it's looked at at the time. And you have to, you have to know that, right? You know, again, this is a 30 year old and a 14 year old or something. Julia and George are both teenagers. The Colonel is a creep. He is also married. So this is not, his 30 year olds can court 15 year olds in this period and there'd be a degree of legitimacy to it. This is not that kind of case.

He is married. He is not supposed to be doing this. His wife, to make this, this fucking Colonel Cotton, his wife has postpartum depression. And after she has like, I forget, I think it's the first or second kid. She's like, I'm never gonna sleep in the same bed with you again, because I don't want any more kids.

This is awful. And so he's like, well, I guess I'm gonna go fuck a child. Cool dish. There you go. I mean, rational decision. It's like, what, do you want me to leave you? Would you rather I not get blown? I don't understand the question.

Yeah, it's fine. I will ruin the life of a teenage girl, which he does. So he has extramarital sex with a child. This devastates young George, and it's much, much worse for Julia because she gets pregnant. Now, at that time, she is a high society woman. She is a member of the aristocracy

and having sex out of wedlock with a married man, it means you're worthless now. You can't get married. And that's all your future social capital, is your ability to get married. She is going to become an unperson because of this, right? Lacking better options thus, she hides her pregnancy

in the outlandish outfits of the upper class, which gives you an idea of how ridiculous the dress is during this period. No one, right, right. She is able to hide that she's pregnant until her water breaks during an audience with the queen, which is the worst time for this to happen. That's a shady ass baby.

That's a shady baby. I'd have been like, dude, what the fuck? That baby is your op. Yeah. Yeah. So like her water breaks at like a party, it's the queen and all of the queen's friends. And her whole family is almost wiped out

as like influential members of society because of the shame from this. Her brother challenges Colonel Cotton to a duel. Colonel Cotton, by the way, is fine. This is not the end of his social life. Of course. She gets thrown out of her home, and since she's married, she can't go to Colonel Cotton's

home, so she winds up sneaking into an empty room at the palace, because there are a lot of empty rooms, and she has to deliver her own baby at age 15 alone. No! In the bedroom. It's fucking- I hate everything. Now, George-

Let's kill Cotton. George stops talking to her for a while, not because of this, but because she breaks up with him, right? And he's brokenhearted. But we know at the time he writes about, because he's aware of what happens to her and he thinks it's awful He he's like upset about how cool this is like this fucking 30 year old

Molests her and now she's an unperson. That's like like fuck my culture, right? Like he's very much angry about this she's going to have four more kids with the Colonel because Basically, she winds up living in sin with him in a country house. Thankfully. She's going to have four more kids with the Colonel because basically she winds up living in sin with him in a country house. Thankfully, she is rich. She's a lot luckier than most women in this situation and that she does have family money. So she doesn't wind up desperate. She will eventually become one of the most famous courtesans of her era. She becomes a famous and successful high end sex worker for the aristocracy and actually kind of earns her way to a degree back into high society because if you are

a high-end courtesan, there are certain high society gatherings that you're allowed in. And she does eventually, it's part, she's a very powerful woman in that way. And we, it's from her memoirs that we know some of what we know about George, because as adults, they become friends and lovers again. And we don't know the full details of their relationship. It speaks well to Bo that like he does not care that she has a love child, which is how he describes it. That's the parlance of the times with this older.

He doesn't care that she's disgraced. He thinks the society is wrong. And he actually, one of the beautiful hints that we get about like what the kind of decency of his heart is that he writes a poem For her child for this baby because he he views what happens to this baby and his mom as an evil Right and he he again he does describe this as a love child. We think that's gross That's how people talked about this at the time, right? And here is here is the poem he writes for her child

Here is the poem he writes for her child. Unhappy child of indiscretion, poor slumberer on a breast forlorn, pledge in reproof of past transgression dear though unwelcome to be born. Unless the injurious world upbraid thee for mine or for thy mother's ill, a nameless father still shall aid thee, a hand unseen protect thee still. Meanwhile in these sequestered valleys, still thou shalt rest in calm content, for innocence may smile at malice, and thou, oh, thou art innocent." And this is because he like, he helps her out, he helps protect her and her kids as an adult. He's like, that's a decent man, aware of the evil of his time.

And that's actually a pretty good poem too, He's a good writer, you know? Yeah, he's a good man, Savannah. You know, like that's all very solid for him, yeah. Yeah, solid dude for the 1780s. I know, the Hunter Biden of his time, truly. The Hunter, absolutely. Strong Hunter vibes. The George Brummel who writes this would be at age 16 is going to make his first decision as an independent adult, which is going to be to purchase a commission as an officer

in the army, specifically in the very regiment where the disgraced Colonel Cotton had once held his command. He's going to choose to not just join the army. Again, he's obsessed with smelling good because this guy smells bad. He joins the same regiment that this guy had once helped to run. It was at this regiment that he's going to meet the man who's going to make him into a star, the future king and current Prince of Wales. We're going to talk about all that in part two.

Princess, how are you feeling about a bow so far hero or villain at this point I mean I'm really rooting for the guy I feel like he got out there by rich I feel like he got cut out there by rich white people which who has it so I really I'm waiting for something bad to happen so I can see why they hate him but I'm rooting for the guy yeah yeah there would be there's a couple of ways not a perfect man but so far I see a guy who's just trying to do his best in a really fucking dogshit society yeah and who amongst us doesn't feel like that sometimes so true and also I like there I like the Regency era men attire. I like those tight ass breeches. So shout out to him.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Our yoga pants entrepreneur. Yeah. All right, well, I'm gonna go put on some yoga pants. I'm actually gonna put on much looser pants and we'll be back. And well, for you and I, it'll be like seven minutes, but for the audience, it'll be like a day or so.

Princess, do you have anything you wanna plug at the end here? Yeah, I just, my YouTube channel is Princess Weeks. I have fun videos out. By the time this comes out, I should have some new fun stuff and I'm really excited to learn more about Bo. Yeah, that's me. Yeah, yeah. Check out Princess and I'm not going to tell you to go buy a suit because you know who can't afford to do that? A lot of people. But I don't know.

Get some yoga pants. Get some yoga pants. Janks! Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website CoolZoneMedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premier podcast. I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand.

Some will be unsettling, some unnerving, some even downright terrifying, but all of them will be totally true. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1980, while El Salvador sat on the brink of war, one man held together the fragile piece, Archbishop Oscar Romero.

He was brutally assassinated in front of dozens of his loyal followers. His death marked the start of a civil war that left more than 75,000 people dead and a million more displaced around the world. My family includes both, those that fled and those that died. Listen to Sacred Scandal, Nation of Saints

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson-Rosso

as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.