LOUISA BROUWER: It does seem obvious that there would be a

solution in wealthy American women marrying British

aristocratic men who were in need of a cash influx. This is a

theme that we see popping up in popular culture quite

frequently.

Shows like Downton Abbey, where the main female character, Cora

Crawley, marries Lord Grantham. She is a dollar princess. And I

suppose we know what's in it for the men, but it's interesting to

think about what was in it for the women, who in some instances

felt themselves like they were being sold off.

JAMES GRASBY : In the late 1800s and early 1900s, there were

about 450 of these marriages. And one of these marriages would

go on to create one of Britain's greatest ever statesmen, Winston

Churchill, half American. I'm heading to Rosetta Cottage on

the Isle Of Wight to the scene of his parents' proposal to find

out more about the Dollar Duchess phenomenon.

Have you ever imagined being a fly on the wall of history? Join

me for an inside view of the stories of people, places and

moments that made us.

I'm historian James Grasby. Lean in for a tale from time, Back

When.

A blue sea is lapping lazily onto this shingle beach. I'm

looking out over the Solent towards Portsmouth and

Southampton. To my right, a long way along Queen's Drive, is the

Royal Yacht Squadron.

But turning my back from the sea, across this shingle beach

is a very pretty cottage. I'm going to go over and have a look

at this. And I hope I'm going to find local historians Steve

Berden and Joe Thornton, who are going to unravel this yarn.

The year is 1873, it's Cowes Week, and the great and the good

have gathered to enjoy one of the greatest sailing regattas in

the world. This cottage, right on the seafront, has the most

fantastic views onto the water. It's a holiday cottage now. And

back in 1873, it was available to rent for Cowes Week. And it

has some very special guests this year, the Jerome family

from America.

JO THORNTON: They were quite a well-off family. Leonard Jerome,

he was a big financial stock market dealer, but

unfortunately, due to the Wall Street crash, he had to stay in

America, but his wife rented Rosetta Cottage to stay there

with their daughters so they could attend the regatta and the

Cowes Week.

JAMES GRASBY : The Jerome family consists of three daughters,

Jennie, Clarita, and Leonie. Jennie's the eldest, and

considered quite the catch.

LOUISA BROUWER: Jennie Jerome was a fascinating woman. She

came from a very wealthy family. She had an incredibly chic

upbringing between New York and Paris.

JAMES GRASBY : Louisa Brouwer is a cultural heritage curator

who's written about dollar duchesses.

LOUISA BROUWER: She was whip smart, she was a voracious

reader, and she was really attractive to men. She had a lot

of men who were quite interested in her, not just for her money,

but for her smarts and for her beguiling nature.

JAMES GRASBY : And so it may have been inevitable that she

might meet someone during a Cowes Week filled with glamorous

balls and parties.

STEVE BERDEN: So the yacht squadron always had balls. The

atmosphere was probably always very busy with parties and

people dressed up in, you know, their best to do clothing.

JO THORNTON: You could be with the royalty, you could dance

with the royalty, you could meet them. And that's what happened

in 1873.

JAMES GRASBY : The Jerome family receive an invitation to the

Royal Yacht, the HMS Ariadne, to meet the Prince and Princess of

Wales.

JO THORNTON: And as it happened, Lord Randolph Churchill also had

an invite to the same boat, to the same ball.

JAMES GRASBY : Randolph Churchill is the the younger son

of the Duke Of Marlborough, one of the most noble aristocrats of

the time, an aspiring MP whose home is the immense Blenheim

Palace in Oxfordshire.

JO THORNTON: He was quite a catch, but I don't think the

Jerome's necessarily thought he was as much of a catch as they

wanted for their daughter.

JAMES GRASBY : So set the scene, there's a ball on the Royal

Yacht, what happens next?

JO THORNTON: So Jennie was apparently dancing the waltz

along with her sisters and Randolph at that time walked in

and instantly spotted her. It was love at first sight. He was

with his friend, Lord Edgcumbe, and he said to Lord Edgcumbe,

who is this wonderful, beautiful woman?

Can you please introduce me to her? He was introduced to her

and they danced a quadrille together. Jennie must have

spoken to her mother and she got him an invite back to Rosetta

Cottage that evening to dine so that they could meet in a more

social, private atmosphere than on the yacht.

JAMES GRASBY : There seems to be a genuine affection between

Jennie and Randolph, but that isn't the case for all Dollar

Duchess marriages. Many could be referred to as marriages of

convenience, a marriage of wealth and title.

LOUISA BROUWER: The Dollar Duchess phenomenon, or Dollar

Princess as it's also referred to, was happening at quite a

rapid pace at this point in the late 19th to the early 20th

century. Some reports said that there were upward of 450 of

these marriages between wealthy American women and European

aristocrats across Europe. But it was a particular phenomenon

between American women and British aristocrats.

The term Dollar Princess refers to these daughters of super

wealthy American elites. So these are young women whose

parents are willing to pay top dollar dowries so that they

could marry into the British aristocracy. This is mostly new

money, nouveau riche, individuals who emerge at this

sort of critical point, just as Britain's aristocratic class is

beginning to crumble.

You might have heard of the term robber baron before. This refers

to Americans who had made an immense amount of wealth from

industrial success in things like mining, railroads, oil

extraction. It was a loaded sort of negative term that referred

to the sort of unfair business practices that often went on at

this time.

But it is names that you would be familiar with. It's family

names like the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, the Carnegies,

etc. It was really sort of a turning point in Britain. It was

when the British elite found that their fortunes were

beginning to erode, and erode quite rapidly.

For many, many centuries, riches in England had been held up in

lands and in agriculture. But several things happened.

Certainly social structures were changing. This was pre-war, but

England's food production was beginning to be outsourced to

places like the United States.

At the same time, rural populations were flocking to

cities, and the aristocracy found that they had these vast

land holdings, sometimes thousands and thousands of

acres, but they weren't worth what they were before.

And in addition to this, these vast estates, and especially

these big country houses, were hugely costly to maintain. Most

of these people did not work. They didn't have a traditional

job. They relied on this inherited wealth, which at this

point in time was really becoming quite unstable.

JAMES GRASBY : It's a phenomenon that works for British and

American fortunes and futures, but it also makes for a very

good storyline in film and TV.

LOUISA BROUWER: This is a very prevalent theme that runs

throughout many books, many films, many movies, and was

really quite a social catalyst at the time.

Shows like Downton Abbey, where the main female character, Cora

Crawley, marries Lord Grantham. She is a dollar princess. She

was actually based on a real figure, so she was based on Lady

Almina, who lived at the house where Downton Abbey was filmed.

She married the fifth Earl Of Carnarvon.

But thinking a bit more broadly, shows which are currently on

like the Gilded Age and even the film Titanic, that film is set

in this sort of social milieu. And even Princess Diana is

descended from a dollar princess. So this is a

phenomenon that has a huge impact on the social structures

that we know of today. It was quite pervasive at the time, but

has had a really lingering effect on British art, culture,

heritage, etc.

It does seem obvious that there would be a solution in wealthy

American women marrying British aristocratic men who were in

need of a cash influx. And I suppose we know what's in it for

the men. But it's interesting to think about what was in it for

the women who, in some instances, felt themselves like

they were being sold off as these dollar princesses.

And really, for them, it was status. So these were women who

were perhaps not grounded in the wealth of old America. There was

a lot of snobbery going on at the time about these sort of

nouveau riche individuals who had made their money quite

recently and didn't have ties to the founding fathers who had

come over on the Mayflower, etc.

And so instead of trying to sort of prove themselves within the

moneyed rich of America, they became noblewomen and inherited

a legacy in Britain that they would then be able to pass on to

their children. For some of them, it was a love match,

certainly, but for many, it was a marriage of convenience is how

we would describe it today.

JAMES GRASBY : On the Isle Of Wight in 1873, it doesn't just

make sense. Things are moving quickly. Jenny and Randolph are

now infatuated with one another.

We're on the sunny side of Rosetta Cottage, on this lovely

pristine lawn with a view of the sea. There our French doors are

opening into what looks like a very gracious dining room. Jo,

will you lead the way and take us inside?

Now going through here into what is a very nice and handsome

dining room. But I want to see more of this house. I'm going to

open this four-panel door opposite a very pretty drawing

room with sea views to die for. Jo and Steve, they've fallen in

love. There's a sparkle and a beating heart that has started.

Steve, it's a captivating place. They were sort of intoxicated

with each other.

STEVE BERDEN: You know, it's only day two. They then take

dinner in Rosetta House and it carries on flourishing from

there.

JO THORNTON: We can assume that they probably sat maybe in this

very drawing room or one of the chairs here looking out to sea

and talked about the Cowes Week that they'd been taking part in.

JAMES GRASBY : I have to say it is the most romantic setting

here, isn't it? With, again, French doors, neatly clipped

evergreen hedge and there is the Solent sparkling in the summer

sunshine.

JO THORNTON: Jennie persuades her mother to once again let

Randolph dine the next night again at Rosetta Cottage because

he was leaving the next day. And after dinner, they went and they

took a turn into the garden and if we go out into the garden, we

can discover what happened next.

JAMES GRASBY : Let's do that. So we're leaving behind that

unbelievable view of the sea. I want to come and stay here.

The garden is ahead.

JO THORNTON: The sun is shining right through the French doors

and opening up the doors into the garden. There's a beautiful

sea breeze, a beautiful setting.

So after dinner on that third night, Randolph took Jenny out

into the garden on their own. He took her into a nice little

private corner and he knelt down on one knee and he proposes to

her.

JAMES GRASBY : So a proposal here in this garden after only

three days.

But the deal isn't quite sealed just yet. There is one more

hurdle to overcome. Randolph's parents, John Winston Spencer

Churchill, 7th Duke Of Marlborough, and Lady Frances

Anne Emily Vane, the daughter of a Marquess.

LOUISA BROUWER: When Churchill presented Jennie to his parents,

they were horrified. They were horrified that he would want to

marry an American socialite instead of a British noblewoman.

Again, that kind of class snobbery went on both sides of

the Atlantic.

But when they realized that her dowry was enormous, it was

something like over $4 million in today's money just coming to

the family on the advent of the marriage, they did approve of

the marriage, begrudgingly approved of the marriage.

JAMES GRASBY : And so they marry, although they wait for

Randolph to become an MP, which appeases Jennie's family

somewhat. And then, not quite nine months later, in 1874, a

baby boy is born, Winston Churchill.

LOUISA BROUWER: I think it was something like seven months

after the wedding, so you can sort of do the math. And there

was certainly social scandal around that fact. It did dog him

for his life, but he obviously rose above it.

JAMES GRASBY : It's hard to imagine, isn't it, that little

toddler goes on to join a cavalry regiment, 21st Lancers

or something, fought in Sudan, fought in the Boer War, entered

politics, entered government, formed a government after the

resignation of Chamberlain, and led Great Britain through the

Second World War to victory.

LOUISA BROUWER: I think people sometimes don't appreciate that

Churchill was half American and this was certainly a fact that

probably helped with his success in negotiating during World War

II. Of course, he led England through the war and some have

said that his half American status probably helped garner

support from both sides of the Atlantic. So it's very critical

for British history.

JAMES GRASBY : A national figure, an international figure.

And it all started here, through a chance encounter at a party on

a yacht.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Back When. We'll be

back soon. But in the meantime, if a trip to the Isle Of Wight

is on the cards, why not check out Rosetta Cottage? There's a

plaque on the pavement outside. Or you can have a nose at the

interiors on our holidays page or even book a stay. I'll leave

a link in the show notes. I'll be back soon. See you next time.