Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Manky. Listener discretion is advised. If you had been alive in the early eighteen hundreds, you almost certainly would have been familiar with the cartoons of George Krukshank. In fact, if you're alive now, you're probably familiar with them, even if you don't know his name. Krukshank became most famous doing illustrations for the books of his friend Charles Dickens. He was the one who did the first edition of
Oliver Twist. But Krukshank initially rose to prominence with political cartoons he did for the satirical periodical The Scourge. He did one cartoon in eighteen sixteen that's particularly interesting, featuring Ernest Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland, after he requested an increased salary from Parliament and that request was rejected. Ernest was the fifth son of King George the Third, and you're trying to place him in the grand line of
British monarchy. He's also the uncle to Queen Victoria. In the Crookshank drawing called the Financial Survey of Cumberland, the Duke is being thrown out of the Parliament building with a firing cannon. The cannonball hits him square in the rear, ripping the seat of his pants. A little piece of parchment with his request for the six thousand extra pounds
flutters in the smoke. In the background of the cartoon, the Duke's new wife, Frederica, is wearing a skimpy yellow dress that struggles to contain her zaftig figure in polite society. The new Duchess was of shall we say, questionable morals. Ernest was her third husband. Her first husband had died, and then she became informally engaged to Ernest's brother, that is, until she got pregnant by someone else. She married the child's father, only for him to die conveniently just as
she was set to divorce him and marry Ernest. Rumors of husband number two poisoned had already made their way to British court. In the cartoon, Frederica gazes lustlily after three rather ugly soldiers while saying, ah, who could resist lovers such as these? But there's something else interesting in the cartoon, visible only if you look closely. You see the new Duchess and her three less than attractive lovers are standing on a hill, and that hill is painted
with a brown splotch. From far away, it looks like it could be mud. But when you look closer, through the brown paint, you can see the remnants of a ghostly figure someone Crookshank had drawn and then decided to cover over. Some restored versions of the cartoon reveal that the literally hidden figure is a man, but a man drawn grotesque, with big bulging fish eyes, wearing only a night shirt. A red gash marks his slit throat, and he holds a razor aloft still dripping blood. Is this
a raised her that I see before me? The figure says in a speech bubble, thou canst not say I did it? You see, the Duke of Cumberland's wife wasn't the only one with the specter of murder hanging over her. The figure is a man named sellis the Duke of Cumberland's former valet, who was found to have killed himself, but under more than mysterious circumstances. Why did Krookshank decide to self center the cartoon? Did he think that the implication that the Duke committed murder was a step too far.
The truth is he was most likely protecting himself from a libel lawsuit. The Duke had already proven himself litigious against people who suggest that Celis's death was anything other than a suicide. Krookshank would have wanted to avoid a lengthy and expensive trial and the possible subsequent prison sentence. But still, if you look closely at the cartoon, the figure is still visible, just barely, an internal finder of the gruesome death that occurred one May night at one
of the most prominent homes in London. The ghost of a figure at the heart of a murder mystery that to this day still remains unsolved. My name is Danis Schwartz, and this is noble blood. It was an unseasonably warm evening at the end of May in eighteen ten when Ernest, the Duke of Cumberland returned to his residence at Saint James Palace after an evening at an opera benefit for the Royal Society of Musicians. It had been an overall unpleasant evening. The room had felt stuffier than normal, and
his suits stuck to him in the heat. All in all, he was glad to be home to put on his night things and retire to his bedroom. All was quiet in Saint James's Palace, at least it was until after midnight. At twelve thirty a m. The Duke woke two blows
raining down on his head, two blunt blows, then frenzied cutting. Later, the Duke would say that, in the dreamy haze of semi sleep, his eyes still struggling to adjust to the darkness, he thought a bat had made it into his room, a leathery thing with sharp claws that had come down through the chimney and mistakenly attacked him. But he only thought that for a moment before the third blow. When the third blow came down, the Duke was able to make out the flash of a metal weapon, illuminated only
by the single dim lamp in the room. Dazed injured, the Duke pulled himself from the bed and tried to make it across the room. The assailant slashed him across the thighs. The Duke called out to the valet on duty that night. Neil, the Duke shouted, Neil, I am murdered, and the murderer is in my room, Cornelius. Neil flung himself into the room, branding a fire poker, prepared to do battle, but the assailant was gone out the opposite door.
The room was empty but for the Duke of Cumberland, still alive but bleeding on the floor, and a few feet away, still glinting in the dim light, the would be murder weapon, the Duke's old military saber, the saber he had used as a colonel commander of the military forces defending the southern regions of Great Britain against France. Though blood still gushed from the wound on the Duke's head, his life had been saved by the fact that the assassin seemingly had struck him with the flat side of
the saber and not its sharpened edge. Neil raised the alarm. Within minutes, the entire household was roused, summons that they could all get a handle on what exactly had just happened. Though everyone was still dazed from sleep, in various states of pajamas and whatever formal at fire could have been hastily thrown on, it still only took a few minutes for the household to realize that someone was missing. Neil was actually the Duke's second valet, his first valet was
a man named Joseph Sellis. Sellus had been off duty that night, but as a member of the household, he still lived at St. James Palace and should have heard Neil's alarm and come running. And yet there was no sign of Selus. With the Duke still lying on the floor, his thighs and head freshly bandaged, Neil and two other men set out to find the missing valet. They knocked at his door, no answer, sell Us. Neil said, at the door, sell Us, man, come out. This was unlike
Joseph Sellis. He was famously punctual and disciplined. Other staff members found themselves even slightly resenting him for the endless hours and devoted service he put in with the Duke, often for going his own breaks. Neil opped at the door again, sell As, I say, open up. The men tried the knob. To their utter surprise, they found it locked.
Kneel and the two men raced down the hallway through a second corridor, down into the kitchen, and then back up through another staircase that they ascended in order to get into Selus's room through a back entrance. Their breath caught in their throats as they tried that back door open. Selus was still in bed, but it soon became obvious why he had not joined them in assembling with the
rest of the staff. The body of the valet was sitting up in bed, propped up by pillows, as if he were moments away from pulling out a book to read, but his eyes were flat and colorless. Blood pooled beneath him a stain of red vast as a lake that blossomed from his neck all the way down his torso. Selus's neck was slashed a seemingly self in did wound.
Sell Us, it appeared, had been the mystery assailant, but his assassination attempt had been unsuccessful, and so he ran in retreat back into his own bedroom after abandoning the bloody murder weapon on the floor of the Duke's chamber.
Cellus himself had actually been the one to sharpen the blade of that saber for the Duke only a few days earlier, and so, in shame and disgrace after his supposed assassination attempt, knowing he would soon be discovered and arrested, or maybe just racked with guilt, sell Us then split his own throat at least, that was the story the men of the Duke's household slowly put together in their minds as they took in the scene, it's gruesome victim
and the overwhelming stench of warm salt and iron and death. But in the ensuing hours, as the sun rose over London and the details of the night crystallized as the night's fog evaporate, it, servants began to bite their lips and look at one another from the corners of their eyes. Certain wrong details stuck out, like sharp, poking feathers and a goose down pillow, tiny things that left an unpleasant prickle in the back of the mind of anyone who
thought about them for too long. Because even as the police ruled Sellus's death a suicide, things just didn't quite add up. For one, Sellus's throat hadn't just been split. The cut had been so deep that the man was nearly decapitated. The white of his spine was visible through the gore. The bone had been the only thing to stop the blade. The question that lingered on the tongue of everyone who had seen the body was what kind
of man could possibly do that to himself? But then the second more dangerous question was the one that had to be banished before it was even fully formed, because maybe Cellus hadn't taken his own life. Maybe the real question was what kind of man had done it to him. There were a few details that seemed to indicate foul play with Celus's death. For one thing, Celus had been left handed, and the physician who examined the body said that the wound had been inflicted with the right hand,
a slash from left to right. The setup of Celus's locked room also seemed strange. Celus's hands had no blood on them from either his attack on the Duke or his own supposed suicide, and a basin of water sat on a chest of drawers tinged pink with blood, supposedly
where Cellus had rinsed his hands. But the chest of drawers was on the opposite side of the room as the bed, and right next to that basin on the chest of drawers was the bloody straight razor that Cellus had supposed he used to kill himself, the only weapon in the room, And again they were both on the opposite side of the room as the bed, so Sellus would have had to race into the room locked the door behind him, slash his throat, then placed the razor
down neatly on the dresser, wash his hands, then get into bed, all while his head was all but dangling from his body. And there was another problem. Sellis had no motive. He had a wife and four children. He was a highly respected and well liked member of the staff, close to the Duke and the entire royal family. He was so trusted that he was one of only two people to have a key to Queen Charlotte's royal bedchambers,
the other person being Queen Charlotte herself. And the very next day after his death, Sellis was planning on accompanying the Duke to Windsor, and Sellus's wife said he had been looking forward to it. Sellis had been in the Duke's personal employee for five years, and according to his wife, Marianne, he enjoyed his job and felt nothing but respect and gratitude for the monarchy that permitted his livelihood. Why would he want to kill the man that gave him a job.
But over the course of the inquiry that followed his mysterious death, details about Sellus's past began to slowly emerge. Joseph Sellis had grown up in Corsica, the tiny French island in the Mediterranean, but he had traveled all over the world as he worked his way up in his career until he finally landed at the prestigious post working for the Duke of Cumberland. Before settling in England, he had worked in New York City for a man named Mr. Church.
Sellus was hard working and dedicated and quickly became one of Church's most trusted servants. But then Mr Church's desk was robbed. The thief had smashed open a chest and taken a gold watch, a diamond pen, and a large sum of cash. Church rounded up every member of his staff, interrogated them individually, and in the end he determined that
Sellus had been the thief. Not only did Sellus have free access to Mr Church's private study, but they also found in Cellus's possession a rather incriminating hammer, one that looked like it might have been used to smash open a certain chest of valuables. Sellis was immediately dismissed from his post, but because all the evidence was circumstantial, Mr Church didn't take legal action. Church also did something peculiar
for a man he was firing for thievery. He gave Sellus a large severance payment so he'd be able to find his footing elsewhere. After that, Sellis made his way to England, taking up a post with the Earl of mount Edgecombe. It was through his work there that he met the Duke of Cumberland and eventually began working for the royal family. The fact that Sellus had been a one time suspected thief was a major point brought up
in the inquest trial about his death. After all, what is petty thievery but one step away from violent murder. One more element of his time in New York working for Mr Church also came up. Supposedly, in his time in America, Sellus had been a revolutionary, a strong anti monarchist. According to a maid named Martha Perkins, who worked for Church at the time, Sellis had been heard to say, damn the King and all the royal family of England, and the man who throws a stone at the king
deserves a seat in the House of Commons. It's possible that those were just the words of a young man at the start of his career, caught up in revolutionary fervor, or maybe Cellis had been plotting the murder of a member of the royal family for years, slowly working himself up into their good graces, pretending for all the world that he was a supporter of the crown, never letting the mask drop, not even for his wife. Also that years later he could bungle an assassination attempt of someone
not actually even in line for the throne, Cornelius. Neil had his own theory for why Cellus would have wanted to attack the Duke. According to Neil, the entire thing had been an attempt by Sellus to frame him Neil, for the Duke's murder. At the inquest, Neil testified that Cellus had a very malicious disposition. My opinion, Neil said, a Cellis meant to murder the Duke, thinking the blame should be put on me. I have no more doubt he did it to cause me to be suspected than
I have of my own existence. Sellus did hate Neil. Neil was the one in charge of making purchases for the household, and Sellus thought that he was swindling the Duke. He had written in a letter to the groom, I have been told Sir that Mr Neil cheats his Royal Highness in everything he buys. The man is as great a villain as ever existed. Maybe sell Us wanted to checked the Duke so badly from Neil's wickedness that he was willing to attack the Duke if it meant Neil
getting framed. Another theory Celis was a secret Catholic. The Duke was a vehement anti Catholic, and so it was possible that Sellis might have wanted him dead to avenge his faith. Of course, Sellis never gave any indication in his life that he was Catholic. He baptized all four of his children in the Church of England, but remember he was born in Corsica, which seemed highly suspicious. But the trial also yielded suspicious details about the Duke and
his behavior in the aftermath of that eventful night. According to the Duke, the assailant had given him seventeen wounds and left him in a state of agony for somewhere between six weeks to two months. The attack had happened at the end of May, and according to the Duke, it wasn't until the beginning of August that he was able to leave the house. But that wasn't quite true. The Duke was out of bed three days after the attack, and he had made his first public appearance less than
two weeks after. Was he exaggerating the wounds to bolster public sympathy, or were they far more minor than anyone had been led to believe, Maybe because there wasn't an attack on him at all. Maybe the wounds were so minor because they were the results of the Duke, or the Duke and Neil as a team staging a cover up. The inquest was exhaustive. The foreman of the jury was a man named Francis Place, a well known radical politician who hated the monarchy and made his thoughts very clear
and very public. Even so, the verdict was unanimous. There was no proof to furnish any other explanation for that night other than that Sellis had committed suicide. The case was, as they say, closed, but that didn't mean people stopped talking. Two years after Sealus's death, a man named Henry White Jr. Was found guilty of libel for implying in his Radical Whig publication that Selus's death had been an elaborate cover up. He got fifteen months and of five hundred pound fine.
White believed that Selus had caught the Duke and Cornelius Neil in flagrante having a gay affair, and that Cellus seemed tempted to go public. His suicide then was really a murder to preserve the Duke's reputation. Another theory that Celis himself had actually rejected the Duke's advances, and that the Duke needed to have him killed out of a combination of shame, embarrassment, and the fear of him going
to the press. Even after the inquest had formally cleared the Duke's name, and even after the libel trials continued to protect his name, the public still believed deep down that somehow the Duke been involved, and most likely with something involving some sort of secret homosexual affair. But the most damning cloud of the Duke's guilt didn't emerge until eighteen twenty seven, nearly two decades after Sellis's death, when a man by the name of Captain Charles Jones wrote
a memoir. Jones had been the Duke's aide DeCamp during the Napoleonic Wars, and the two men met again on Christmas Eve eighteen fifteen, when the Duke couldn't sleep when he lit a fire and asked his friend to sit with him. In what Jones described as a gloomy frenzy, the Duke told Jones that he believed he had not one sincere friend in the whole world. Something dark and terrible flashed across the Duke's face then, and despite his closeness to the fireplace, Jones felt himself shutter. The Duke
looked into jones eyes. Swear to me, my dear Jones, that you will never devolte. What I'm going to say to you from my mind requires relief. It is more than I can bear, the Duke said, wanting to unbosom myself, but not knowing whom to trust. In his memoir, Jones wrote, had I known what was to follow, no power on earth could have induced me to have heard the dreadful confession. But heard it he did. According to Jones, the Duke spoke as follows. You know that miserable business of Selous's,
that wretch. I was forced to destroy him in self defense. The villain threatened to propagate a report, and I had no alternative. The Duke had continued to speak, but the confession knocked the wind out of Jones, and the Duke's words became nothing more than dizzy buzzing, and Jones recorded no more of the confession. Of course, the true details and reasons for Selus's death will now almost certainly never
come to light. They're buried with him in an unmarked grave somewhere between the bottom of Northumberland Street and the gateway to Scotland Yard. Sellus was buried with the Christian rituals of a suicide in the middle of the night, in the utmost secrecy, in order to prevent curious crafts. But they say his ghost still haunts Saint James Palace.
According to some, Cellus sometimes appears in the very room where he died, a specter drenched in blood, his throat slashed and his jaw unhinged and hanging in a silent, final, gruesome screen. People say on the anniversary of his death they can hear the sound of a ghostly struggle in the middle of the night between two men, and then the sound of a blade on flesh, and everyone reports the smell, the sickly sweet iron stench of warm blood
that's carried along with Celus's restless spirit. That's the tale of Selus's mysterious death. Noble Blood will be back with a new episode in two weeks, but stay tuned after these brief sponsor messages to hear how the story of the Duke of Cumberland ends. Ernest Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland, it seemed, carried the stain of scandal with him everywhere
for the rest of his life. There was that terrible affair with Selus, then his shocking marriage to a twice widowed woman, and then in eighteen thirty another mysterious suicide. In the early weeks of that year, gossip papers began circulating rumors that the Duke was having an affair with a woman named Lady Graves, a mother of fifteen and the husband of Lord Graves, the Duke's lord of the
bedchamber and a household comptroller. That February, Ward Graves left his wife a note saying that he never for a moment doubted her faithfulness, and then he split his throat. There was never any real proof that the Duke was a murderer, but that did nothing to diminish his black reputation. The Duke's own niece, Princess Charlotte, wrote that he was quote at the bottom of all evil. His family and the country wanted him out of England, and in eighteen
thirty seven they finally got their wish. You see, when King William the Fourth died, the crown of England and its holdings all went to William's niece, Queen Victoria, but the tiny Germanic kingdom of Hanover still operated under Salack law, which meant that women couldn't be in the line of succession, and so the throne went to the next male relative in line, the dead king's brother, Ernest Augustus. For all of his disgrace as in England, Ernest was a generally
successful well king of Hanover. He was the first ruler of Hanover to actually live there since George the First, and he reigned for fourteen years until he died at the age of a d There's a statue of King Ernest Augustus of Hanover in front of Hanover Central Station, with the king on a majestic horse wearing a majestic feathered cap. It's inscription reads in German to the father of the nation from his loyal people, Noble Blood is
a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Mankey. The show was written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noble blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H