Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. This is a topic I've
Speaker 1: had on my list forever, but I kept getting distracted,
Speaker 1: and a big reason was because at first glance, it
Speaker 1: just kind of seemed like there might not be enough
Speaker 1: information to really make it work. So whenever this topic
Speaker 1: would come back to the forefront, as I was figuring
Speaker 1: out what was going to come next, it was just
Speaker 1: very easy to get pulled onto something else instead. It
Speaker 1: turns out plenty of information did not need to be worried.
Speaker 1: I also thought this episode was mostly going to be
Speaker 1: about a fish, specifically the selacanth, which scientists in Europe
Speaker 1: and North America believed had gone extinct about sixty six
Speaker 1: million years ago until one was spotted in South Africa
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty eight. Naturalist and museum curator Marjorie Courtney
Speaker 1: Latimer played a key part in that, and I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna say I've heard people say her last name slightly
Speaker 1: different ways, depending on exactly where their accent is from. Uh.
Speaker 1: I always planned for this episode to be at least
Speaker 1: partially about Marjorie Courtney Latimer, because she's the person that
Speaker 1: you know spotted this fish. Uh. Turns out though, she
Speaker 1: became one of my favorite people to have researched on
Speaker 1: the show in a long time, so now it became
Speaker 1: her episode. Marjorie is a gift. Uh. Marjorie Eileen Doris
Speaker 1: Courtney Latimer was born on February twenty fourth, nineteen oh seven,
Speaker 1: in East London in what was at the time Cape Colony.
Speaker 1: As a child, friends and family called her Margie or
Speaker 1: my Genie, and after she grew up most people called
Speaker 1: her Marge. The family was white. Marjorie's father, Eric Courtney Latimer,
Speaker 1: was born in British India, and her mother, Willie Fulton Rait,
Speaker 1: was born in South Africa to British parents. Willie was
Speaker 1: a widow who had two daughters from her first marriage,
Speaker 1: and she and Eric had seven more together, although one
Speaker 1: of those children died as a baby. Marjorie was the
Speaker 1: oldest of Eric and Willie's daughters. Marjorie was born about
Speaker 1: two months premature after her mother experienced a serious fall
Speaker 1: during her pregnancy and was just very badly injured. They
Speaker 1: weren't sure she was going to survive. Today, babies born
Speaker 1: that early who have access to modern medical care often
Speaker 1: do really well, but baby Marjorie was not expected to survive.
Speaker 1: She had to be dressed in doll clothes and fed
Speaker 1: with an eye dropper because she was just so tiny.
Speaker 1: Even so, the whole family moved to Cape Town about
Speaker 1: a month later after Eric got a new job, and
Speaker 1: they moved a lot during Margie's early life. Eric worked
Speaker 1: at an assortment of jobs before inheriting some money that
Speaker 1: he used to try to start a diamond mine. That
Speaker 1: mine failed. He eventually got a job working for the railroad,
Speaker 1: and for the next couple of decades they all moved
Speaker 1: from one outpost to another as the job demanded it.
Speaker 1: These outposts often were kind of remote. Sometimes there wasn't
Speaker 1: a school in the place where they were living, or
Speaker 1: if there was a school, it didn't really offer a
Speaker 1: full curriculum. So Willie really tried to make sure her
Speaker 1: daughters always had something at home to interest them and
Speaker 1: learn from. She had been raised on an ant's farm
Speaker 1: without any other children around, and she'd spent most of
Speaker 1: her time as a kid exploring nature and befriending the
Speaker 1: African laborers who worked on her aunt's farm, so while
Speaker 1: Willie didn't have formal education beyond being tutored by a governess,
Speaker 1: she became something of an amateur naturalist and ethnographer, and
Speaker 1: these were often the things that she really focused on
Speaker 1: with her children. Family members described baby Margie as small
Speaker 1: and frail, and as she got older, she was sick
Speaker 1: a lot, including several serious illnesses like whooping cough, scarlet fever, diphtheria,
Speaker 1: and the nineteen eighteen pandemic flu. But she also took
Speaker 1: her first steps at the age of only seven months,
Speaker 1: and from there quickly grew into a very bright, relentlessly
Speaker 1: curious child with a deep and fearless love of the
Speaker 1: natural world. She was tomboyish, but she also loved to
Speaker 1: wear pretty dresses and was known to gather up ducklings
Speaker 1: and kittens in her pinafore to carry them home with her.
Speaker 1: From a very early age, she collected shells and rocks,
Speaker 1: and bird eggs and flowers, and she developed a thorough
Speaker 1: knowledge of all the plants that grew where they lived.
Speaker 1: Sometimes this fearlessness and curiosity could be dangerous. Family diaries
Speaker 1: and correspondents describe a number of pretty close calls, including
Speaker 1: when Margie was too an encounter with a cobra on
Speaker 1: the family's porch. Apparently, the family thought had that cobra
Speaker 1: not been separated from her by the porch rail, she
Speaker 1: probably would have been bitten. When she got a little older,
Speaker 1: she and one of her sisters accidentally poisoned another sister
Speaker 1: by feeding her mud pies that had been seasoned with
Speaker 1: seeds that turned out to be from a deadly nightshade.
Speaker 1: Margie also nearly died after climbing up a windmill, only
Speaker 1: for the windmill veins to start turning after a sudden
Speaker 1: gust of wind. But there were also times when young
Speaker 1: Margie's fascination with the natural world helped her family survive.
Speaker 1: This was a violent and uncertain time in Southern Africa,
Speaker 1: with the British South Africa Company and British colonists waging
Speaker 1: war against African peoples and against the Boors, who were
Speaker 1: people of Dutch, German and Huguenot ancestry. When Marchie was
Speaker 1: about seven, five was called a serve during a Boer
Speaker 1: uprising against the British government that would eventually grow into
Speaker 1: the Third Anglo Boer War. The family had no way
Speaker 1: of getting supplies after the boor sabotaged the railway lines,
Speaker 1: and Margie taught her sisters how to forage and which
Speaker 1: mushrooms were safe to eat. I would probably be hesitant
Speaker 1: to trust the mushroom gathering of a seven year old
Speaker 1: who also accidentally fed a sister deadly nightshade, but this
Speaker 1: worked out for everyone. When Margie was about fifteen, she
Speaker 1: and her three oldest sisters were sent to boarding school
Speaker 1: at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in East London,
Speaker 1: South Africa, and in spite of their erratic education up
Speaker 1: to that point, all four of them did really well there.
Speaker 1: Margie particularly excelled in biology. When she was sixteen, she
Speaker 1: caught the attention of naturalist doctor George Ratre, who was
Speaker 1: one of the examiners in her end of year tens.
Speaker 1: He thought that she would be well suited for a
Speaker 1: position working in a museum, and he really encouraged her
Speaker 1: parents to send her to college, but that was something
Speaker 1: that the family could not afford. It was also still
Speaker 1: fairly unusual for women to go to college. The assumption
Speaker 1: was that they would get married and become mothers after
Speaker 1: leaving the Convent of the Sacred heart. In nineteen twenty five,
Speaker 1: at the age of eighteen, Margie got a part time
Speaker 1: job at a grocery store so she could pay for
Speaker 1: art supplies, and she continued to live at home, spending
Speaker 1: a lot of free time building her collection of things
Speaker 1: like flowers and bird eggs, and carefully painting what she
Speaker 1: observed in the natural world. In June of nineteen twenty eight,
Speaker 1: Margie became engaged to Alfred Hill, known as Alfie, but
Speaker 1: it turned out Alfie didn't want a wife who went
Speaker 1: tromping through the woods picking up bird eggs. He wanted
Speaker 1: a wife who would stay home and keep house, so
Speaker 1: she eventually broke off their engagement, and then turned down
Speaker 1: her proposal from another suitor when it was clear from
Speaker 1: the very beginning that he was not looking for a
Speaker 1: naturalist wife. Eventually she started training as a nurse, but
Speaker 1: then in nineteen thirty one, she was invited to apply
Speaker 1: for the position of curator at the East London Museum.
Speaker 1: This natural and cultural history museum had been founded by
Speaker 1: the East London Museum Society, and its president was George Ratre.
Speaker 1: Although the museum had technically existed since nineteen twenty one,
Speaker 1: its first physical location was a one room shed rented
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty six. When Margie was approached about the position,
Speaker 1: it was preparing to move to a new purpose built location,
Speaker 1: which was the first purpose built museum in East London.
Speaker 1: George Rattray, of course, was the person who recommended that
Speaker 1: Marjorie Courtney Latimer apply for this role of curator. She
Speaker 1: was only twenty four and she hadn't gone to college.
Speaker 1: It's not even clear whether she took her matricula exams
Speaker 1: from the Convent of the Sacred Heart before leaving that school,
Speaker 1: but the hiring committee was really impressed by her thorough
Speaker 1: knowledge of the natural and cultural history of Southern Africa.
Speaker 1: She and her family had also visited a lot of
Speaker 1: museums all around as they had been moving through her
Speaker 1: father's work. She had very definite opinions about what museums
Speaker 1: should be like. She thought they should be fascinating and
Speaker 1: engaging to all of their visitors, not moldy and dusty
Speaker 1: and boring. The committee also liked her enthusiasm and her
Speaker 1: very obvious dedication to the idea of running the museum.
Speaker 1: After she was offered the job on July fifteenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one, she left her nursing training, although she kept
Speaker 1: wearing her homemade nurses uniforms because it just didn't make
Speaker 1: sense to her to throw them out. Repurposed nursing uniforms
Speaker 1: were a staple of her wardrobe for the next couple
Speaker 1: of years, and for the rest of her life. She
Speaker 1: often wore outfits that we're in a very similar style.
Speaker 1: She started work at the museum on August twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, which was a month before it opened
Speaker 1: at its new location. Although there had been other women
Speaker 1: applicants to the position in East London, this made her
Speaker 1: one of only two women in South Africa to be
Speaker 1: running a major museum. For the next twenty two years,
Speaker 1: she was the museum's only professional level employee. The other
Speaker 1: people who worked there were things like custodians and gardeners
Speaker 1: and a general assistant. More about the museum is coming,
Speaker 1: as well as the celycanth after we paused for a
Speaker 1: sponsor break. When Marjorie Courtney Latimer started working at the
Speaker 1: East London Museum in nineteen thirty one, it really did
Speaker 1: not have much of a collection, and some of the
Speaker 1: specimens that it did have had to be destroyed because
Speaker 1: they had been very badly damaged by a beetle infestation,
Speaker 1: so she supplemented what was already there with her own
Speaker 1: family's collections, like her collection of bird eggs, which was substantial,
Speaker 1: and her sister's collections of butterflies and pressed plants. Her mother, Willie,
Speaker 1: also had a collection of African cultural items that she
Speaker 1: had built well before Marjorie was born with the help
Speaker 1: of the African workers on the farm where she had
Speaker 1: grown up. These became the foundation of the museum's ethnographic collection.
Speaker 1: In addition to providing many of the items for the
Speaker 1: museum's displays, Courtney Latimer also reworked the displays themselves. In
Speaker 1: her opinion, some of the display cases were completely unusable.
Speaker 1: In one case, she got an axe and chopped out
Speaker 1: the central beams that were in the way and used
Speaker 1: evening dresses belonging to her and her sisters to make
Speaker 1: backdrops for a display of china and historical items that
Speaker 1: belonged to her mother. The museum's born was impressed with
Speaker 1: what she was doing, but also recognized that she needed
Speaker 1: some more training, so she was sent to other museums
Speaker 1: to get more experience in things like mounting and labeling specimens.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty four, Courtney Latimer was part of an
Speaker 1: expedition to excavate a fossil skeleton, which turned out to
Speaker 1: be a nearly complete Canemiria that's a large herbivore from
Speaker 1: the Triassic period. Excavating and mounting the skeleton was an
Speaker 1: extremely long process, and during that time she got to
Speaker 1: know Eric Wilson, whose father was a member of the
Speaker 1: museum board, and whose sister, Bess, she knew from school.
Speaker 1: This really seems to have been the only time that
Speaker 1: Marjorie was courted by somebody who truly shared her interests
Speaker 1: and encouraged her pursuits as a naturalist and a museum curator.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen thirty five, Eric was called up to
Speaker 1: the military, and while he was serving, he contracted pneumonia
Speaker 1: and died. Marjorie was heartbroken. In her words to an
Speaker 1: inter you were later on quote, he was the love
Speaker 1: of my life and I never fell in love again.
Speaker 1: To make things worse, Eric's mother was asking for her
Speaker 1: after his death, but she was too sick herself to travel.
Speaker 1: She had both bronchitis and the flu. Marjorie recovered and
Speaker 1: she kept on with her work at the museum. One
Speaker 1: day in July of nineteen thirty six, she saw a
Speaker 1: woman sitting out in the museum's garden with her head
Speaker 1: in her hands. She asked this woman what was wrong,
Speaker 1: and she said she had a terrible headache. So Courtney
Speaker 1: Latimer invited her into her office for a cup of
Speaker 1: tea and some aspirin. They had a very nice conversation
Speaker 1: about how much this woman liked museums. After she left,
Speaker 1: Courtney Latimer saw her name in the guest registry and
Speaker 1: it was Amelia Earhart, who was in East London refueling
Speaker 1: her plane after making an emergency landing nearby. By that point,
Speaker 1: Courtney Latimer had spent five years working almost entirely on
Speaker 1: the museum. Whenever she took time off, she spent it
Speaker 1: studying the natural world and gathering specimens for its collection.
Speaker 1: She never wore trousers to do this work, and she
Speaker 1: was also never bear legged, so she usually came home
Speaker 1: from all of these excursions with her stockings in shreds.
Speaker 1: This is like thing number four that made me go,
Speaker 1: I love you so much. In nineteen thirty six, the
Speaker 1: museum board insisted that she takes some actual leave and then,
Speaker 1: of course she spent that leave on her work as
Speaker 1: a naturalist. She arranged a trip to Bird Island in
Speaker 1: Algoa Bay. This is a place that had fascinated her
Speaker 1: since she was a child, and she could see the
Speaker 1: light from its lighthouse when visiting her grandparents, but Bird
Speaker 1: Island was not a place that women visited. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, the superintendent of the islands in the Union
Speaker 1: government literally told her that women were not allowed there. Finally,
Speaker 1: he said that if Courtney Latimer found another woman to
Speaker 1: accompany her, he would permit her to go. So she
Speaker 1: asked her mom. Willie agreed to make the trip, but
Speaker 1: then Marjorie's dad tried to put a stop to it, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: I do not approve of this escapade at all. Eventually
Speaker 1: he agreed, and then at the last minute decided that
Speaker 1: he would join them. Yeah. I read on all this
Speaker 1: is that the superintendent thought there was no possible way
Speaker 1: she would get another woman to agree on this to
Speaker 1: go on this trip, and that that would just mean
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have to allow it. But he got caught,
Speaker 1: and now he had so many women on bird Eyelid.
Speaker 1: Now there were twice as many women as before. This
Speaker 1: trip was an absolute dream come true for Marjorie. She
Speaker 1: gathered fifteen cases of specimens there, including birds and their
Speaker 1: eggs and nests, sea life and mammals, but her father
Speaker 1: quickly regretted his kind of last minute decision to also go.
Speaker 1: He found this whole trip incredibly boring. And then on
Speaker 1: top of that, while they were there, King Edward the
Speaker 1: Eighth abdicated the throne so he could marry Wallace Simpson.
Speaker 1: They were almost completely cut off from the news, so
Speaker 1: his dad was like, there's this drama happening and I
Speaker 1: can't even get it on the radio. I can't watch
Speaker 1: my programs. During this trip, Courtney Latimer met Hendrik Housen,
Speaker 1: captain of a supply ship who would stop at Bird
Speaker 1: Island to get rabbits so that his crew could have
Speaker 1: something to eat besides fish. He and Courtney Latimer developed
Speaker 1: a friendship, and he eventually helped her get those fifteen
Speaker 1: cases of specimens back to East London, carrying them one
Speaker 1: at a time when he stopped at port. Courtney Latimer
Speaker 1: wrote a paper based on her research from this trip
Speaker 1: called Observations of Turns on Bird Island, and one of
Speaker 1: the tools that she implemented in the research she did.
Speaker 1: There was banding, also called ringing, so that's just placing
Speaker 1: a small ring or band on a bird, usually on
Speaker 1: the leg, to identify it in later study. Courtney Latimer's
Speaker 1: notes from this trip describe her as doing this on
Speaker 1: Bird Island as early as December of nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: which was more than a decade before banding became a
Speaker 1: standard practice among ornithologists in South Africa. After she got
Speaker 1: back to East London, Courtney Latimer kept in touch with
Speaker 1: Hendrik Housen. She'd already developed a network of local birders
Speaker 1: and nature enthusiasts to keep her informed about their observations
Speaker 1: and to collect specimens for her. When Husin moved from
Speaker 1: the packet ship to a trawler called the Nereene, she
Speaker 1: asked him to keep an eye out for anything unusual
Speaker 1: in his nets. He even had a tank on board
Speaker 1: for keeping potential specimens until they got back to shore.
Speaker 1: On December twenty second, nineteen thirty eight, Courtney Latimer got
Speaker 1: a call at the museum letting her know that the
Speaker 1: Noreene was at the dock with a load of like
Speaker 1: one and a half tons of potential specimens. She really
Speaker 1: didn't want to go down there though, While she did
Speaker 1: really like looking for new fines for the museum, she
Speaker 1: had reached a point where the fishing boats were mostly
Speaker 1: bringing her things that she already had. It was also
Speaker 1: summer and it was particularly hot that day. She was
Speaker 1: trying to finish cleaning and mounting the Canemiria skeleton that
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, but she finally decided that this really
Speaker 1: might be her only chance to pass along holiday wishes
Speaker 1: to Housin and the crew. She considered all of them
Speaker 1: to be friends, so she stopped what she was doing
Speaker 1: and headed down to the docks. She took her assistant,
Speaker 1: Enoch with her. Some accounts give his family name as
Speaker 1: Thought and others as Elias. Enoch was Josa and his
Speaker 1: work at the museum involved whatever needed to be done,
Speaker 1: but he was also a big part of Courtney Latimer's
Speaker 1: work with the African cultural objects and ethnography. Biographer Mike
Speaker 1: Bruton describes Courtney Latimer as ahead of her time in
Speaker 1: developing respectful relationships with the local African population and recognizing
Speaker 1: that their lives and cultures were actively under threat from
Speaker 1: European colonial and military efforts. Brutin also cites her experiences
Speaker 1: with different African cultures as honing her instinct for storytelling
Speaker 1: and with a realization that every object she encountered had
Speaker 1: a story to tell. When they got to the dock,
Speaker 1: Courtney Latimer didn't initially see anything of interest among all
Speaker 1: of these fish, some of which were very large. But
Speaker 1: then she saw a beautifully colored fin sticking out from
Speaker 1: the pile, and at first she thought this might be
Speaker 1: a lungfish. But then, in her words, quote, I picked
Speaker 1: away in a layer of slime to reveal the most
Speaker 1: beautiful fish I had ever seen. It was a pale,
Speaker 1: movy blue with faint flecks of whitish spots. It had
Speaker 1: an iridescent silver blue green sheen all over. It was
Speaker 1: covered in hard scales, and it had four limb like
Speaker 1: fins and a strange puppy dog tail. This fish was
Speaker 1: very big, measuring roughly five feet or one and a
Speaker 1: half meters long and weighing about one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: seven pounds. It's roughly fifty seven kilograms, way too big
Speaker 1: for Husan's tank or for any kind of storage available
Speaker 1: at the museum, so she and Enoch wrapped it in
Speaker 1: the green sack that they had brought with them, and
Speaker 1: they loaded it into a taxi, something the taxi driver
Speaker 1: was understandably not especially happy about. They took it back
Speaker 1: to the museum while they figured out what to do
Speaker 1: with it. A lot of people they encountered with this
Speaker 1: fish were like, I'm not taking that stinking fish, and
Speaker 1: she was like, the fish does not stink like it
Speaker 1: was a live hours ago. At this moment, it is fine.
Speaker 1: Please chill out and let me put the fish in
Speaker 1: the trunk or the boot, as she would have called it.
Speaker 1: Uh as often happens when somebody is called to recount
Speaker 1: the same story for years and years after it happened.
Speaker 1: There are several somewhat different versions of what Courtney Latimer
Speaker 1: did when they got back to the museum with this fish.
Speaker 1: One is that she consulted some of their reference books
Speaker 1: and concluded that it might be somehow related to Sela Cants,
Speaker 1: but some later research suggests that the reference book that
Speaker 1: could have told her that was not one that was
Speaker 1: in the museum's collection. Another is that, in like thing
Speaker 1: number five that I love about her, she remembered some
Speaker 1: lines she had been made to copy as punishment in school.
Speaker 1: When she had been caught not paying attention, and that
Speaker 1: lesson was about fossil fish and the lines she had
Speaker 1: to write out where something like a fossil fish has
Speaker 1: ganoid scales, a fossil fish has limb like fins, and
Speaker 1: still other retellings. She really did not know what it was.
Speaker 1: She did bring up this fish to the head of
Speaker 1: the museum board, who said that he thought that it
Speaker 1: was just a rock cod, and then he left for
Speaker 1: the Christmas holiday. Courtney Latimer could not ignore the possibility
Speaker 1: that this fish might be important, though. She sent Enoch
Speaker 1: to borrow a hand cart and together they loaded the
Speaker 1: fish into it. First, they carted the fish to the
Speaker 1: morgue at the Hospital, one of only two places in
Speaker 1: East London that could keep something that big cold. After
Speaker 1: being turned away from the morgue, they went to the
Speaker 1: Cold Storage Commission, which also refused to store the fish.
Speaker 1: Then they took the fish to taxidermist Robert Center. He
Speaker 1: agreed to hold on to it if they could find
Speaker 1: some way to preserve it. So Courtney Latimer went home,
Speaker 1: where she got some old sheets from her mother. Then
Speaker 1: she went to a chemist to get some formalin, which
Speaker 1: is a preservative made of formaldehyde and methanol. She took
Speaker 1: all this back to where center was. They tore the
Speaker 1: sheets into strips and then wrapped the fish up in them.
Speaker 1: They soaked all of this in the formalin and then
Speaker 1: covered it up with newspaper, and then she went back
Speaker 1: to the museum where she tried to call James Leonard
Speaker 1: Brierley Smith at Rhodes University. Courtney Latimer and Smith had
Speaker 1: known each other since nineteen thirty three. He was a
Speaker 1: chemistry professor, but he had also become an expert in ethology.
Speaker 1: Smith was not in so she left a message, and
Speaker 1: when she had not heard back from him the next day,
Speaker 1: she sent a letter with a rough sketch of the
Speaker 1: fish asking what he thought. What followed was an incredibly
Speaker 1: frustrating and stressful series of delays and missed communications. Courtney
Speaker 1: Latimer would later describe it as the greatest trauma of
Speaker 1: her career, and we will get to it after a
Speaker 1: sponsor break. Rhodes University, where j LB Smith worked, was
Speaker 1: about one hundred and sixty kilometers or roughly one hundred
Speaker 1: miles from East London in but they were connected by rail.
Speaker 1: He and Marjorie Courtney Latimer even had an arrangement with
Speaker 1: the local railway superintendent to send marine specimens from the
Speaker 1: museum to the university at no charge. She was basically
Speaker 1: sending him duplicates of things that the museum already had
Speaker 1: when they came in on the fishing boats. Smith, though,
Speaker 1: was not actually at the university when Courtney Latimer tried
Speaker 1: to call about the fish she had found. He was
Speaker 1: in Nicna, which was much farther away, recovering from an illness.
Speaker 1: He and his wife had a second home in Nicsna,
Speaker 1: and this home had a laboratory for his research, but
Speaker 1: no phone. There was a phone at the museum, installed
Speaker 1: just about a month before all of this happened, but
Speaker 1: Courtney Latimer also did not have a phone at home.
Speaker 1: Even if they had both had phones, the long distance
Speaker 1: lines in South Africa at this point were such that
Speaker 1: it could take hours for calls to go through, and
Speaker 1: then long distance calls were also very expensive, and letters
Speaker 1: between East London and Nisnak could spend up to a
Speaker 1: week in transit. Courtney Latimer looked for a response from
Speaker 1: Smith and checked on the fish every day, since she
Speaker 1: didn't know he was away. When she hadn't heard from
Speaker 1: him by the twenty sixth, She thought he must not
Speaker 1: have thought the fish was important. By then, the fish
Speaker 1: was exuding large amounts of oil, which she thought was
Speaker 1: probably keeping the formulin from doing anything to preserve it,
Speaker 1: so she told Robert Center to go ahead and try
Speaker 1: to mount it with the hope of preserving its external parts.
Speaker 1: Center was self taught as a taxidermist, and he had
Speaker 1: very little experience mounting fish. Courtney Latimer directed him to
Speaker 1: make his incision through the fish's belly rather than down
Speaker 1: the side, as was typically done at this time when
Speaker 1: mounting fish, because she wanted to preserve as much of
Speaker 1: the skin and scales and like external identifying marks as possible.
Speaker 1: He started his work on the fish on the twenty seventh.
Speaker 1: Smith finally got Courtney Latimer's letter on January third, after
Speaker 1: a friend came to Nisna and brought the mail in.
Speaker 1: In Smith's words, when looking at the sketch she had drawn,
Speaker 1: quote a bomb seemed to burst in my brain. He
Speaker 1: did not think he would be able to get a
Speaker 1: long distance call through to the museum before it closed
Speaker 1: for the day, so he sent her a telegram reading quote,
Speaker 1: most important preserve skeleton and gillsfish described. Smith then sent
Speaker 1: a letter with some more detail, saying that this looked
Speaker 1: like a fish that had been extinct for quote many
Speaker 1: a long year, but that otherwise he had no idea
Speaker 1: what it could be. He said he hoped that she
Speaker 1: had retained the gills and the viscera to help him
Speaker 1: identify the fish. Then he got up early on January
Speaker 1: fourth to call her from a nearby shop, and this
Speaker 1: call took almost three hours to actually connect. When she
Speaker 1: told him that the viscera had been discarded because they
Speaker 1: were rotting. At that point, he offered to hire a
Speaker 1: plane and fly to East London himself so he could
Speaker 1: pick through the dump to look for them. She called
Speaker 1: him back on the fifth to let him know that
Speaker 1: she had learned East London's trash was disposed of at sea.
Speaker 1: That's its own issue, but that meant there would be
Speaker 1: no picking through trash looking for fish guts. It was
Speaker 1: days after this that Courtney Latimer finally received Smith's letter,
Speaker 1: meaning she got a letter saying he hoped she'd kept
Speaker 1: the fish's organs long after they'd been discarded, and after
Speaker 1: they had already had multiple phone calls about it. And
Speaker 1: this was really how their correspondence progressed over the next
Speaker 1: few weeks. She kept getting letters telling her not to
Speaker 1: do things she had already done, and suggesting that the
Speaker 1: things she'd already done, which of course Smith didn't know
Speaker 1: about yet, would be the wrong thing to do. Like
Speaker 1: Smith sent a letter on the ninth saying the fish
Speaker 1: must not be stuffed before it had been examined. That
Speaker 1: was a week and a half after the taxidermist had
Speaker 1: started work, and five days after she'd sent a letter
Speaker 1: that made it clear that the taxidermy work had started,
Speaker 1: but he had not received her letter yet when he
Speaker 1: wrote his on the ninth. Smith's own accounts of this
Speaker 1: time describe him making himself sick with worry over this specimen.
Speaker 1: I'm not judging him for this, I absolutely understand the feeling.
Speaker 1: But he was not shy at all about letting her
Speaker 1: know how anxious he was about it. And he also
Speaker 1: told her that the loss of the fish's organs was
Speaker 1: quote one of the greatest tragedies of zoology. This was
Speaker 1: something he said to her after she had already gotten
Speaker 1: a telegram and a letter and two phone calls about
Speaker 1: needing to retain the organs. Meanwhile, she was trying to
Speaker 1: deal with so many things that were totally outside her control,
Speaker 1: like the lack of refrigeration or a professionally trained taxidermist
Speaker 1: in East London, and the fact that the photographer who
Speaker 1: took pictures of this fish on the deck of the
Speaker 1: fishing boat had accidentally dropped the film into the mud
Speaker 1: and ruined it. Smith eventually decided to cut his trip
Speaker 1: to Niceness short by a week, leaving on February eighth,
Speaker 1: although he noted to Courtney Latimer that he didn't really
Speaker 1: think he needed to hurry since he wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to examine the fish's internal organs. He planned to go
Speaker 1: directly to East London, but torrential rains meant that he
Speaker 1: did not get there to see the fish until February sixteenth.
Speaker 1: By that point, based on Courtney Latimer's sketches, her very
Speaker 1: detailed descriptions of everything about the fish, and some scales
Speaker 1: she had sent to him, he had concluded that this
Speaker 1: fish must be some sort of sela canthd. This fish
Speaker 1: had first been described and named by Lewis Agassiz in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty nine, with a name coming from words that
Speaker 1: meant space and spine. Which referenced the hollow spines along
Speaker 1: the fish's backbone as we sat up at the top
Speaker 1: of the show. Though Western science had believed selacanthed fish
Speaker 1: to be extinct and to have gone extinct all the
Speaker 1: way back in the late Cretaceous period. After looking at
Speaker 1: the mounted fish in East London, Smith asked for it
Speaker 1: to be sent to the university so that he could
Speaker 1: spend more time studying that. But before that it was
Speaker 1: put on temporary display at the museum, and on February twentieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, more than fifteen hundred people came to
Speaker 1: see it. Local newspapers covered the event and published photos,
Speaker 1: something Smith was concerned about because he was afraid that
Speaker 1: someone else would try to claim credit for the fish's discovery.
Speaker 1: A LB. Smith published a letter in Nature on March eighteenth,
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty nine, titled a Living Fish of the Mesozoic Type.
Speaker 1: This described the fish as a close enough relative to
Speaker 1: the Mesozoic selacanthods as to be included in that family,
Speaker 1: and he named the fish Latimeria Chalumney after Marjorie Courtney
Speaker 1: Latimer and the Chelumna River, near where Hendrik Housen had
Speaker 1: caught it in his trawling nets. When Smith called Courtney
Speaker 1: Latimer to tell her he had named this fish for her,
Speaker 1: she said the credit should have gone to Housen, who
Speaker 1: was the person who actually found it. After spending some
Speaker 1: time studying the fish at Rhodes University, Smith sent it
Speaker 1: back to the East London Museum. By that point it
Speaker 1: had become clear that Robert Center had done his best
Speaker 1: on the taxi Derby, but that it really needed to
Speaker 1: be remounted by someone who had experience with fish, particularly
Speaker 1: very oily fish. So Courtney Latimer person escorted the selacanth
Speaker 1: to the South African Museum in Cape Town to be
Speaker 1: remounted by taxider Miss James Drury. Meanwhile, she was facing
Speaker 1: backlash from the scientific community about how she had handled
Speaker 1: the fish, as scientists and researchers jumped to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that she just hadn't known what she was doing, or
Speaker 1: had been inattentive or thoughtless or unaware of the specimen's
Speaker 1: potential importance. Smith acknowledged this criticism in a longer piece
Speaker 1: published in Nature on May sixth, writing quote, several letters
Speaker 1: from overseas have contained very harsh criticism about the loss
Speaker 1: of the carcass of this fish. Few persons outside South
Speaker 1: Africa have any knowledge of our conditions and the coastal belt.
Speaker 1: Only the South African Museum at Cape Town has a
Speaker 1: staff of scientific workers, among whom is an ichthyologist. The
Speaker 1: other six small museums serving the coastal area are in
Speaker 1: extremely poor circumstances and generally have only a director or
Speaker 1: curator who cannot possibly be an expert in all branches
Speaker 1: of natural history. There are not uncommon fishes in the
Speaker 1: sea which to any of the latter would appear as
Speaker 1: strange as, if not stranger than a cela canthid. It
Speaker 1: was the energy and determination of miss Latimer which saved
Speaker 1: so much, and scientific workers have good cause to be grateful.
Speaker 1: The genus Latimera stands as my tribute. This did not
Speaker 1: really quell all the criticism, though, and scientists kept taking
Speaker 1: potshots at Courtney Latimer in their papers. For example, on
Speaker 1: July thirteenth, nineteen forty, Arthur Smith Woodward published a paper
Speaker 1: in Nature which claimed the specimens quote scientific value was
Speaker 1: not appreciated, saying this was why only its external parts
Speaker 1: had been preserved. Woodward's name may sound familiar because he's
Speaker 1: come up on the show before he and Charles Dawson
Speaker 1: published work on a skull that came to be known
Speaker 1: as the Piltdown Man, which was revealed to be a
Speaker 1: hoax after both of their deaths. Courtney Latimer was deeply
Speaker 1: hurt by these criticisms. I mean, she had gone above
Speaker 1: and beyond trying to save as much of this fish
Speaker 1: as possible, but she also had other things to worry about.
Speaker 1: The United Kingdom and Germany declared war on one another
Speaker 1: the day she returned to East London after escorting the
Speaker 1: fish to Cape Town. She had helped establish a chapter
Speaker 1: of the Red Cross in East London, and she became
Speaker 1: actively involved in it during the war, including being elected
Speaker 1: chair of the East London Chapter. She eventually had to
Speaker 1: step back from a leadership role with the Red Cross
Speaker 1: to keep up with her work at the museum, but
Speaker 1: she remained active in it for the duration of the war.
Speaker 1: As the war was ongoing, the East London Museum received
Speaker 1: a grant from the Carnegie Trust which allowed a display
Speaker 1: to be made for the taxidermy fish, as well as
Speaker 1: a cast. Part of the money was used to compensate
Speaker 1: Who's in for his work in collecting the specimen. Smith
Speaker 1: desperately wanted to find another selacanth to study, but the
Speaker 1: war put a complete stop to his efforts to find one.
Speaker 1: After the war ended, he tried to establish the African
Speaker 1: Selacanth Marine Expedition or ACME to find another specimen, but
Speaker 1: he couldn't get funding for it. In nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 1: he started distributing pamphlets to fishers offering one hundred pound
Speaker 1: reward for a specimen, with very clear instructions not to
Speaker 1: cut or clean the fish, but to get the entire
Speaker 1: thing into cold storage right away. The East London Museum
Speaker 1: moved into a larger space in nineteen fifty, by which
Speaker 1: point Courtney Latimer's title had changed from curator to director.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen fifties, the museum also started hiring additional
Speaker 1: professional staff, so it was no longer just her and
Speaker 1: an assistant doing everything themselves. In nineteen fifty two, Achman
Speaker 1: Hussein caught a selacanth off of the Comoro Islands in
Speaker 1: the Indian Ocean. Captain Eric Hunt, who was one of
Speaker 1: the people who had distributed some of those pamphlets, contacted
Speaker 1: Smith about it. Smith was in a weird coincidence once
Speaker 1: again traveling. This time, he was away on a fish
Speaker 1: collecting expedition. Word reached him about the find four days
Speaker 1: after the selacanth was caught, basically the next time he
Speaker 1: came to shore. This is kind of like how when
Speaker 1: you're at a sporting event, your team will only score
Speaker 1: if you go to the bathroom. Yeah. Getting to the
Speaker 1: specimen was a challenge this time because there were no
Speaker 1: commercial flights connecting where he was on the eastern coast
Speaker 1: of South Africa to islands that were between the north
Speaker 1: parts of Madagascar and Mozambique. Smith convinced the Prime Minister
Speaker 1: of South Africa to deploy a military aircraft for this purpose,
Speaker 1: which then required negotiations with the government of Mozambique to
Speaker 1: explain why a military flight needed to cross its airspace
Speaker 1: and make a refueling stop there. It did not seem
Speaker 1: believable that all of this was to get a fish.
Speaker 1: Marjorie Courtney Latimer really was not involved in this effort
Speaker 1: to find another selacant specimen, but she was there on
Speaker 1: December thirty first, nineteen fifty two, when Smith arrived with
Speaker 1: it along with his wife Margaret, and their son William,
Speaker 1: on a South African air Force, Dakota. Marjorie Courtney Latimer
Speaker 1: was awarded an honorary doctorate from Rhodes University in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one. She retired from the East London Museum in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, at which point she moved to vittelsboth
Speaker 1: South Africa. She did a lot of hiking and bird
Speaker 1: watching and grew a garden full of indigenous plants and
Speaker 1: expanded the kitchen of her home herself, and she also
Speaker 1: worked with museums in the area. She had been kind
Speaker 1: of worried that if she stayed in East London she
Speaker 1: would never actually leave the museum and her successors wouldn't
Speaker 1: get to fully step into their roles. And the fact
Speaker 1: that she was soon doing museum work in her retirement,
Speaker 1: I think her impulse was correct. Yeah. She did move
Speaker 1: back to East London around nineteen eighty seven at the
Speaker 1: age of eighty, as her family members became concerned about
Speaker 1: her living in an area that was so much more
Speaker 1: remote and very far away from them. She had a
Speaker 1: heart attack in nineteen ninety five and experienced some other
Speaker 1: health issues afterward, including developing shingles. In two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: she had a pacemaker implanted. After having another heart attack,
Speaker 1: she was eventually diagnosed with osteoporosis, and after a fall,
Speaker 1: she was moved into Fairland's Frail care Home. Marjorie Courtney
Speaker 1: Latimer really wanted to go back home, but for a
Speaker 1: number of reasons, her pension was very small. Her stay
Speaker 1: at Fairland's Frail Care Home was subsidized, but she couldn't
Speaker 1: afford the care that she would need to live at home. Eventually,
Speaker 1: her friends worked out a plan to arrange for the
Speaker 1: care she would need to live safely and comfortably at home,
Speaker 1: and a plan to pay for it, but she died
Speaker 1: on May seventeenth, two thousand and four, at the age
Speaker 1: of ninety seven before she could be told about these arrangements.
Speaker 1: Speakers at her funeral included Nossimo Ballindela, Premiere of the
Speaker 1: Eastern Cape. Marjorie Courtney Latimer worked at the East London
Speaker 1: Museum for more than forty years, shaping it into one
Speaker 1: of the most respected museums in South Africa and developing
Speaker 1: our reputation both for its permanent collection and its temporary exhibits,
Speaker 1: which she always tried to make very lively and engaging.
Speaker 1: During her career, she also published forty two papers on ornithology,
Speaker 1: and she became known for her conservation advocacy. There is
Speaker 1: some irony here, since collecting all these specimens for the
Speaker 1: museum involved killing animals and removing plants and other objects
Speaker 1: from their environment, but she wrote extensively about clean water
Speaker 1: and air and habitat conservation and environmental protections. She also
Speaker 1: advocated for domestic cats to be licensed because of the
Speaker 1: impact they have on bird populations when they're kept outdoors.
Speaker 1: The June two thousand and four edition of the Selacanth,
Speaker 1: the Journal of the Border Historical Society, was dedicated to
Speaker 1: Marjorie Courtney Latimer, and Latimer's Landing Docks in East London
Speaker 1: are named after her. The East London Museum also still exists,
Speaker 1: and it has a seilacanth on its logo. Today there
Speaker 1: are two recognized species of selacanth. Latimia chelamney lives in
Speaker 1: the Indian Ocean near the coasts of southeastern Africa, Madagascar
Speaker 1: and the Comoro Islands, and Latimara mennaedoensis lives near northern
Speaker 1: Sulawesi in Indonesia. Although Western science had believed these fish
Speaker 1: to be extinct, they were known to people in the
Speaker 1: Comoro Islands and Sulawtan, Although since they usually live in
Speaker 1: deep water and they only feed at night, they were
Speaker 1: not fish that were just routinely seen all the time.
Speaker 1: They weren't caught or observed all that often. Because of
Speaker 1: their habitat and behavior. Not much is known about them,
Speaker 1: but Latimria Chelimnay is considered to be critically endangered and
Speaker 1: Latin Maria Menadonsis is considered vulnerable. As a way to
Speaker 1: sum it all up here is something Marjorie Courtney Latimer
Speaker 1: wrote in nineteen seventy nine, quote this story is one
Speaker 1: of the most astounding records of a woman's intuition. For
Speaker 1: had I never gone to Bird Island, had I never
Speaker 1: met doctor J. LB Smith, who, of all the scientists
Speaker 1: I meant as a young girl struggling with meager funds
Speaker 1: in a small museum, always gave encouragement and never criticism.
Speaker 1: And had I not gone to the wharf to wish
Speaker 1: the men a happy Christmas, there never would have been
Speaker 1: a Sela camp discovery in South Africa on twenty two
Speaker 1: December nineteen thirty eight. I love her, She's great. I
Speaker 1: also have some great listener mail. This is from Kelly
Speaker 1: and it was written after our episode in the London
Speaker 1: Frost Fairs, and Kelly wrote, Dear Holly and Tracy, I'm
Speaker 1: a high school history teacher for twenty seven years. Not
Speaker 1: sure how that happened, as I am as young as
Speaker 1: the day I started. I teach APUs history to sophomores
Speaker 1: and accelerated humanities to seniors. I started listening to the
Speaker 1: podcast during the pandemic. I listened in the many walks
Speaker 1: I took with my sweet dog Charlie, who has sadly
Speaker 1: passed away. I went all the way back to the
Speaker 1: really short episodes, and I will earn my PhD in
Speaker 1: stuff you miss in history class later this month or
Speaker 1: in early March. I am finally writing to you both
Speaker 1: to first of all, thank you for an amazing podcast.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I will do when I don't
Speaker 1: have a seemingly endless que to listen to. But I
Speaker 1: was recently listening to the episode on Frost Fairs and
Speaker 1: you mentioned that you were interested in frozen water stories.
Speaker 1: I live in Michigan, and the Jewel of up North,
Speaker 1: as we Michiganders call it, is Mackinaw Island. The island
Speaker 1: is in the Straits of Mackinaw, which is where Michigan's
Speaker 1: Upper and Lower peninsula are joined by the beautiful Mackinaw Bridge.
Speaker 1: Yet the spelling changes in case you are not familiar.
Speaker 1: The first Mackinaw I've been saying is m acki Nac.
Speaker 1: You're right, it doesn't match. And then the bridge is
Speaker 1: m acki Naw. Macinaw Island is a quaint place that
Speaker 1: does not allow motor vehicles except for emergency vehicles. All
Speaker 1: transport is done with horses and bicycles. It is also
Speaker 1: well known for its fudge, which comes in many varieties
Speaker 1: and are so delicious. The island is also well known
Speaker 1: for the Grand Hotel, which has served the rich and famous,
Speaker 1: and was the backdrop for the movie Somewhere in Time
Speaker 1: starring Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymour. Ferries run from the
Speaker 1: mainland in the late spring through fall, but historically in
Speaker 1: the winter, when the straits would over they would line
Speaker 1: an ice path from the mainland with the discarded Christmas
Speaker 1: trees from the holiday season. Macinaw has a rich history.
Speaker 1: It might be a great episode for the future. Thank
Speaker 1: you for all you do, Kelly ps attaches my pet tax.
Speaker 1: This is Quincy, my two year old pity mix. This
Speaker 1: dog is so cute. We have a dog sleeping on
Speaker 1: a little bed that's been made of what looks like
Speaker 1: a cushioned bed type thing of some sort and some blankets,
Speaker 1: sleeping in an almost catlike position there. And then we
Speaker 1: have puppy face looking in a window and looking over
Speaker 1: what I think is the arm of a chair. I
Speaker 1: love these dog pictures. I also love earing stuff about
Speaker 1: Mcinaw Island. As you probably noticed when I spelled the word,
Speaker 1: it is not spelled Mackinaw. And every time I'm listening
Speaker 1: to a podcast or the radio or whatever and I
Speaker 1: hear somebody say Mackinac, I'm like, oh no, your emails,
Speaker 1: your mansions, they're gonna be full of corrections. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of places that prompt that response for me
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of the time when I hear someone
Speaker 1: say them that one, I would probably never mess up
Speaker 1: because that is a place my mom and dad used
Speaker 1: to go a lot when they were recording. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is a place that if you live locally, you
Speaker 1: know how to say it, and if you live anywhere
Speaker 1: else and you sound it out as how it is spelled,
Speaker 1: it would be Mackinac. I think at some point, many
Speaker 1: many many years ago we might have even said it
Speaker 1: Mackinac on the podcast. Uh So, anyway, I love these
Speaker 1: dog pictures. I love hearing about making an ice path
Speaker 1: and lining it with the leftover like with the Christmas
Speaker 1: trees from the season. I love all of this. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much Kelly for this email. Uh if you
Speaker 1: would like to write to us about this any other
Speaker 1: podcast or a history podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com and
Speaker 1: we're all over social media on mist in History, and
Speaker 1: you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app
Speaker 1: or wherever you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you
Speaker 1: missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.