In the early 1900s, Sir Arthur Vickers keeps the magnificent Irish Crown Jewels safe under lock and key at Dublin Castle. When the jewels disappear, the King rages, the police investigate, and even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gets involved. No one is ever charged and no jewels are ever recovered. Except, we have a very good idea of who took them, and why the truth has stayed buried.
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Further Reading
This episode relied on three books about the Irish Crown Jewels affair. The classic account, from 1965, is Vicious Circle: The Case of the Missing Irish Crown Jewels by Francis Bamford and Viola Bankes. More recently, contrasting theories on the case are presented in The stealing of the Irish Crown Jewels: an unsolved crime, by Myles Dungan, and Scandal and Betrayal: Shackleton and the Irish crown jewels, John Cafferky and Kevin Hannafin. Brian Lacey’s book, Terrible Queer Creatures: Homosexuality in Irish History, provided additional context.
Ari Adut introduced his theory of scandal in an American Journal of Sociology paper from 2005, A Theory of Scandal: Victorians, Homosexuality, and the Fall of Oscar Wilde, and expanded it in book form in On Scandal: Moral Disturbances in Society, Politics, and Art.
