Speaker 1: Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Even if
Speaker 1: you are not a fan of Regency fiction, you're probably
Speaker 1: familiar with this whole idea of a woman who is
Speaker 1: in search of a husband, either because her family doesn't
Speaker 1: have any money, or because the money they do have
Speaker 1: is all settled on a male relative, leaving nothing for
Speaker 1: the families women. It's such a running theme in fiction
Speaker 1: that's either from or about the whole Regency era that
Speaker 1: it's easy to start imagining that every upper class woman's
Speaker 1: life worked that way. So today we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about a woman whose life defied that whole convention. Her
Speaker 1: name was Anne Lister, and she was not looking for
Speaker 1: a husband at all. She was looking for a wife.
Speaker 1: And Lister was also a prolific diarist. She wrote more
Speaker 1: than six thousand pages and four million words over her lifetime,
Speaker 1: and about a sixth of those words were written in code.
Speaker 1: And these coded sections she wrote about her relationships with
Speaker 1: other women so frankly and with so much detail that
Speaker 1: when these coded sections were first decoded, people wondered if
Speaker 1: they were a hoax. It probably didn't help. But in
Speaker 1: addition to all of the sexually explicit parts, the lives
Speaker 1: of Anne and her social and romantic circles are really
Speaker 1: really full of drama. It's like if Jane Austen met
Speaker 1: Sarah Waters. So we are not going to get into
Speaker 1: the details of Anne's sex life, but heads up that
Speaker 1: if this episode piques your interest and you decide to
Speaker 1: go read her diaries for yourself, you will learn a
Speaker 1: lot a lot about it. Also just a heads up
Speaker 1: that later on this episode we have a brief mention
Speaker 1: of a rape. And Lester was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire,
Speaker 1: on April third sev Her parents were Jared me Lister
Speaker 1: and Rebecca Battle. Ann's father had served with the British
Speaker 1: in the American Revolutionary War, and Anne was one of
Speaker 1: six children, four boys and two girls. The Listers are
Speaker 1: part of the Landed Gentry, and Jeremy's older brother, James,
Speaker 1: had inherited the estate of Shibden Hall. He was living
Speaker 1: there with his and Jeremy's sister, who was also named Anne.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of Ann's in this story. Shibden
Speaker 1: Hall had an income from rents on the cottages and
Speaker 1: the farms that were part of the estate, and this
Speaker 1: was large enough of an income that the family did
Speaker 1: not have to work, but not large enough to support
Speaker 1: a particularly lavish lifestyle. Apart from not having to work,
Speaker 1: An's immediate family didn't have much money of their own,
Speaker 1: and three brothers were next in line to inherit Shibden Hall,
Speaker 1: but Anne herself was not expecting any kind of inheritance
Speaker 1: When she left her boarding school in eighteen o four.
Speaker 1: It was her aunt Anne who was paying her way.
Speaker 1: And boarding school was the Mannor School in York, and
Speaker 1: that is where she had her first romantic relationship, which
Speaker 1: was with another student named Eliza Rain And and Eliza
Speaker 1: shared an attic room at the school that was nicknamed
Speaker 1: the Slope. The rest of the school's boarding students were
Speaker 1: housed in a dormitory, and the reason for Anne and
Speaker 1: Eliza being housed in the attic is not specifically documented,
Speaker 1: but there are some likely reasons. For Anne. It was
Speaker 1: probably because of money. The school's other boarding students were
Speaker 1: generally much wealthier than she was, and it's also possible
Speaker 1: that the school's staff wanted to keep Anne separate from
Speaker 1: the other girls because of her behavior. She was stubborn
Speaker 1: and rebellious and an unladylike tomboy. This whole making her
Speaker 1: live in the attic thing because she didn't have any
Speaker 1: money reminds me of a Little Princess starring Shirley Temple. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that one the shows up in various places. It's almost trophy. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think that that's part of the reason why were like,
Speaker 1: are these diaries real? In addition to women definitely wouldn't
Speaker 1: write about this stuff. There's the kids are living in
Speaker 1: the attic because they don't have any money. So meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Eliza was the daughter of an Indian woman and an
Speaker 1: English doctor who had served with the British East India Company.
Speaker 1: Her parents had gotten married in India, but their marriage
Speaker 1: wasn't registered back in Britain, so Eliza and her sister
Speaker 1: Jane were both considered to be illegitimate. Eliza was wealthy,
Speaker 1: so the money thing was not why she was in
Speaker 1: the attic. She was probably housed in the attic due
Speaker 1: to a combination of racism and concerns about her supposedly
Speaker 1: out of wedlock birth. Living together in the slope and
Speaker 1: and Eliza developed an intense friendship that evolved into a
Speaker 1: romantic relationship. After about six months, they had exchanged rings
Speaker 1: and promised to marry one another after they finished school.
Speaker 1: They also worked out a code that combined mathematical and
Speaker 1: zodiac symbols with Latin and Greek letters so that they
Speaker 1: could write each other love letters without being discovered. It
Speaker 1: was really probably Eliza, who already spoke multiple languages, that
Speaker 1: created the code itself, and would later use this code
Speaker 1: to write all the details, I mean really all of
Speaker 1: them about her relationships with other women in her diary.
Speaker 1: After Anne and Eliza had been together for about two years,
Speaker 1: someone intercepted a package that one of them sent to
Speaker 1: the other, and their relationship was at that point discovered.
Speaker 1: Anne was immediately asked to leave the school and told
Speaker 1: that she could only come back after Eliza had left.
Speaker 1: So Anne went back home to Halifax, where she was
Speaker 1: tutored by the Reverend Samuel Knight. But this physical separation
Speaker 1: didn't stop an Analyza's relationship. They kept writing each other letters,
Speaker 1: this time without raising anybody's suspicions. Eliza also came to
Speaker 1: stay with Anne for every school break and Ann's first
Speaker 1: entry in her first diary, which is stated August eleventh
Speaker 1: of eighteen oh six, is from the end of one
Speaker 1: of these visits that began simply Eliza left us. By
Speaker 1: the autumn of eighteen o eight, Anne was getting restless.
Speaker 1: She was seventeen at that point, and she had become
Speaker 1: a lot more flagrant and public in her stubborn tomboyishness.
Speaker 1: She had also started giving flute lessons to an unmarried
Speaker 1: woman named Maria Alexander, and this was a connection that
Speaker 1: her family did not think was appropriate. Maria was over
Speaker 1: thirty and her unmarried older brothers were also living at home.
Speaker 1: Anne was also openly flirtatious with Maria, including in front
Speaker 1: of Eliza when she took her along on one of
Speaker 1: these flute lesson visits. In addition to disregarding Eliza's feelings
Speaker 1: and all of this, and also started more and more
Speaker 1: wilfully disregarding social expectations about how girls should behave. She
Speaker 1: asked to go to Portsmouth with the Alexander's without a chaperone,
Speaker 1: on a trip that would also involve Maria's older, unmarried
Speaker 1: read brothers. She ignored her curfew and she visited the
Speaker 1: Alexander's even after her family had forbidden her to do so.
Speaker 1: When her family finally gave her permission to spend two
Speaker 1: nights with the Alexander's over New Year's Eve, she stayed
Speaker 1: there for two weeks. And it wasn't just with the
Speaker 1: Alexander's that Anne willfully defied what was expected of a
Speaker 1: young woman. She started a neighborhood scandal after she went
Speaker 1: with a Captain Burn to his chamber alone on more
Speaker 1: than one occasion to look at his pistols. AND's behavior
Speaker 1: had become so notorious that people in the neighborhood started
Speaker 1: calling her gentleman Jack. So through all of this, and
Speaker 1: was still having a relationship with Eliza, and her behavior
Speaker 1: was causing Eliza more and more distress. And this was
Speaker 1: particularly true after Anne told Eliza that twenty one was
Speaker 1: much too young for the two of them to live
Speaker 1: together and they should wait until they were more like seven.
Speaker 1: They were both seventeen at this point, so Anne was
Speaker 1: basically saying, we'll live together in a decade. Eliza's letters
Speaker 1: to Anne at this point became increasingly anxious and sorrowful,
Speaker 1: and by eighteen o nine, she was asking for reassurance
Speaker 1: that the two of them would ever be together at all.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ten, a tragedy struck the Lister family that
Speaker 1: changed Anne's life significantly. We're going to discuss that after
Speaker 1: we first paused for a little sponsor break. In January
Speaker 1: of eighteen ten, Anne Lister's oldest brother, John died during
Speaker 1: an influenza outbreak. John had been Anne's closest sibling, and
Speaker 1: they'd already lost two of their other brothers. So instead
Speaker 1: of being one of six siblings and was now one
Speaker 1: of three, with only her brother Samuel and her sister
Speaker 1: Marian still living. John's death meant that Anne was now
Speaker 1: second in line to inherit Shibden Hall, rather than third.
Speaker 1: She started to consider what it would mean if she
Speaker 1: inherited the estate and what she would need to be
Speaker 1: able to do to run it herself. To do so
Speaker 1: in the lifestyle she wanted, she would need more money
Speaker 1: than Shibden Hall could provide. The solution was to marry well,
Speaker 1: and for Anne that meant marrying a rich and ideally
Speaker 1: noble woman. Eliza finished her studies at the Manor School
Speaker 1: that same year, and she went to live with a
Speaker 1: cousin in Halifax to wait for the day that she
Speaker 1: and Anne could start a home together with Eliza no
Speaker 1: longer at the school, and went back. It's possible that
Speaker 1: Anne was still thinking that she could make Eliza her wife.
Speaker 1: After all, Eliza was an heiress. She really had a
Speaker 1: lot of money that was going to come to her
Speaker 1: when she turned twenty one. But not long after all
Speaker 1: of this, when Anne became second in line to inherit
Speaker 1: Shibden Hall, Eliza's family experienced its own tragedy. Eliza's sister
Speaker 1: Jane had gotten married to Lieutenant Henry Bolton and moved
Speaker 1: back to India with him, but he had abandoned her.
Speaker 1: Her inheritance had become his when they married, so she
Speaker 1: had nothing of her own. Arrangements were made for her
Speaker 1: to come back to Halifax, but she had to travel
Speaker 1: for months on a ship unaccompanied. She was imprisoned after
Speaker 1: arriving in France because she couldn't prove her British citizenship.
Speaker 1: After all of this, she arrived in England pregnant with
Speaker 1: a child that could not have been her husband's that
Speaker 1: was almost certainly the result of a rape. So now
Speaker 1: that she was second in lines to inherit shipd in Hall,
Speaker 1: and started to care a lot more about other people's
Speaker 1: opinions of her. This included the opinions of two of
Speaker 1: the day students at the Manor School. One was Isabella Northcliffe,
Speaker 1: who is referred to as Tib in Ann's journals. Isabella
Speaker 1: and Anne had started a relationship, but then Isabella had
Speaker 1: had introduced Anne to Marianna Belcomme. Of all of the
Speaker 1: women and was involved with during her lifetime, she was
Speaker 1: probably the most in love with Marianna and worried about
Speaker 1: how Eliza's so called fallen sister would affect Marianna and
Speaker 1: Isabella's opinions of her. Anne kept her engagement to Eliza
Speaker 1: secret from Marianna and Isabella, and she didn't tell Eliza
Speaker 1: about her romantic involvement with the two young women back
Speaker 1: at school, but it was obvious to Eliza that Anne
Speaker 1: was forming new relationships and that she was excluding her
Speaker 1: from them. When Anne visited Marianna or Isabella, Eliza was
Speaker 1: not invited. As Eliza approached her twenty first birthday, which
Speaker 1: was when she would actually receive her inheritance, she found
Speaker 1: herself with her own suitor. This was Captain John Alexander,
Speaker 1: who insisted that this had nothing to do with her money.
Speaker 1: At Whether that's true, I'm not really sure, but Eliza
Speaker 1: still considered herself to be Anne's wife. She was also
Speaker 1: increasingly worried, though, that Anne was never going to make
Speaker 1: good on her promise that they would live together one day,
Speaker 1: so she wrote to Anne to get reassurance about this
Speaker 1: their future together and didn't answer. Instead, Anne, who could
Speaker 1: be pretty manipulative in her relationships, sent letters to Eliza's guardian,
Speaker 1: William Duffin, as well as to Captain Alexander, and gave
Speaker 1: each of them a distorted version of what was going on.
Speaker 1: The result was that the Captain went to William Duffin
Speaker 1: to demand to marry Eliza, but Duffin refused. Even though
Speaker 1: none of this was any of her own doing, Eliza
Speaker 1: found herself branded as a temptress and she was ostracized.
Speaker 1: She was so distraught over everything that she took a
Speaker 1: trip to Bristol to try to recover. Meanwhile, Anne went
Speaker 1: on her own trip to Bath with Isabella and Marianna
Speaker 1: until it became clear that she just did not have
Speaker 1: the money or the social connections to keep up with
Speaker 1: two of them there. So Anne went back home on
Speaker 1: June nine thirteen, as twenty two year old Anne was
Speaker 1: on her way home she learned that her last surviving brothers,
Speaker 1: Sam Mule, had drowned. Anne was now the one who
Speaker 1: would inherit Shibden Hall, and it became even more important
Speaker 1: to her to have a respectable life and reputation. Although
Speaker 1: her brother had died during military service, he had drowned
Speaker 1: on a pleasure boat. It was not considered to be
Speaker 1: a very noble or distinguished death, and Anne thought that
Speaker 1: she needed to make the family respectable again and to
Speaker 1: conduct herself in a way that would bring honor to
Speaker 1: the estate of Shibden Hall, and started cutting ties with Eliza.
Speaker 1: She didn't invite Eliza to Sam's funeral or answer her
Speaker 1: repeated requests to return her letters and gifts and engagement ring,
Speaker 1: and eventually invited Eliza on a trip that she was
Speaker 1: taking with Isabella, but Eliza got really sick early into
Speaker 1: the journey and went home again once she was better.
Speaker 1: Eliza was distraught over Ann's rejection, and not long after
Speaker 1: she got home, she had an unexpected visit from her
Speaker 1: sister Jane, who by this time was struggling with both
Speaker 1: alcohol is um and tuberculosis and was supporting herself through
Speaker 1: sex work. Jane also seemed to be emotionally unstable, and
Speaker 1: when Eliza started to look for a place in London
Speaker 1: to have her committed, gossip began to spread that she
Speaker 1: was doing all of this for her own personal gain.
Speaker 1: Eliza went through cycles of depression and agitation until Marianna
Speaker 1: Belcome asked her father, who ran an asylum, to intervene.
Speaker 1: Eliza was temporarily committed, and from that point she was
Speaker 1: in and out of asylums until eighteen sixteen, when she
Speaker 1: was declared insane. Eliza spent the rest of her life
Speaker 1: in Marianna Belcolm's father's asylum, and she died there in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty at the age of sixty eight. She had
Speaker 1: a will. Originally she had left everything to Anne, but
Speaker 1: she had rewritten it to leave everything to her former suitor,
Speaker 1: Captain Alexander, who she eventually seemed to regret not having married.
Speaker 1: But this new will was ruled invalid and so what
Speaker 1: was left of her fortune was claimed by the Crown.
Speaker 1: As for Eliza's sister, her son died in eighteen seventeen
Speaker 1: at the age of six, and in eighteen nineteen her
Speaker 1: husband was killed in action, even though he had abandoned her.
Speaker 1: Jane was still legally his wife, so what was left
Speaker 1: of her fortune reverted back to her. This was unfortunately
Speaker 1: not in time to help her, however. James tuberculosis was
Speaker 1: quite advanced at that time, and she died in November
Speaker 1: of eighteen nineteen, only a few months after her husband's death.
Speaker 1: As all of this was happening with Eliza being committed,
Speaker 1: she obviously lived much longer after that. Anne suffered a
Speaker 1: rejection of her own. Although she had never stopped having
Speaker 1: physical relationships with other women, she was still passionately in
Speaker 1: love with Marianna Belcolm. She had been making plans for
Speaker 1: the two of them to have a life together, but
Speaker 1: in March of eighteen sixteen, Marianna's family found a suitor
Speaker 1: for her. They arranged things so that Anne, who was visiting,
Speaker 1: would be staying with neighbors instead of at their house,
Speaker 1: and then they greeted Marianna away to get married to
Speaker 1: Charles Lawton. Anne was devastated. She made Marianna promise that
Speaker 1: they would still live together once Charles died, and since
Speaker 1: he was twenty years older than Marianna was, she hoped
Speaker 1: that that was going to happen. Soon. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: the two women did not stop seeing each other, and
Speaker 1: Anne even lived with Marianna and Charles for the first
Speaker 1: six months of their marriage. When Charles realized that Marianna
Speaker 1: and Anne were physically involved, he banished Anne from the house,
Speaker 1: but eventually he did allow the two women to see
Speaker 1: one another again. This didn't work out so well for
Speaker 1: Anne though. Later on in her life, she contracted a
Speaker 1: sexually transmitted infection for Marianna and then passed it on
Speaker 1: to at least one other partner. She eventually went to
Speaker 1: Paris to try to seek medical treatment for this infection,
Speaker 1: but there was not really a cure for whatever it
Speaker 1: was at this point, so she probably carried it for
Speaker 1: the rest of her life. After all of this drama,
Speaker 1: Anne's life started to settle down a little. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk more about that after we have another little
Speaker 1: sponsor break. And Lister never completely forgave herself for betraying Eliza,
Speaker 1: and she visited her in the asylum from time to
Speaker 1: time until her death. After her own heartbreak with Marianna,
Speaker 1: and started to take a more practical approach to finding
Speaker 1: a wife. She started looking for somebody who would have
Speaker 1: enough money to support the lifestyle that she wanted, but
Speaker 1: not necessarily someone who provoked that same all consuming love
Speaker 1: that she had had for Marianna. She also became more
Speaker 1: practical in the rest of her affairs. By eighteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: she had moved into Shibdon Hall with her aunt Anne
Speaker 1: and uncle James, and she wanted to prove to them
Speaker 1: that she was capable of managing the estate herself. Even
Speaker 1: though she was the heir. There were other branches of
Speaker 1: the Lister family, and she wanted to rule out any
Speaker 1: possibility that the estate would wind up settled on them instead.
Speaker 1: Anne had been keeping her diaries on a messy collection
Speaker 1: of paper scraps until this point, but she abandoned that
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventeen and started writing in large bound journals,
Speaker 1: meticulously dating her entries and recording all of her daily
Speaker 1: habits AND's daily writing included the weather, how she had slept,
Speaker 1: what she was learning. She was determined to continue her education,
Speaker 1: and so she got up at five am every day
Speaker 1: to study, and then she kept records of all of
Speaker 1: her progress in her diary. She also used these diaries
Speaker 1: to keep up with what was going on at Shibdon
Speaker 1: Hall in the surrounding neighborhood. She kept track of all
Speaker 1: her purchases and her interactions with tenants and workers. She
Speaker 1: made notes about local gossip and quarrels among the gentry.
Speaker 1: She also noted what was going on in the rest
Speaker 1: of the world, the same way that Samuel Peep's diary
Speaker 1: created an important record of life in London and major
Speaker 1: world events from sixteen sixty to sixteen sixty nine, and
Speaker 1: Lister's diary really created a record of Halifax in the
Speaker 1: greater world from eighteen seventeen to eighteen party. She also
Speaker 1: became a lot more reserved in her behavior and her
Speaker 1: habits while continuing to defy gender expectations. She dressed in black,
Speaker 1: which wasn't a color that women typically wore unless they
Speaker 1: were in mourning, but it was a color that men
Speaker 1: often wore while traveling, and was sort of patterning her
Speaker 1: wardrobe around the idea of a distinguished conservative gentleman traveler.
Speaker 1: She didn't wear trousers, though these were black dresses that
Speaker 1: had a somewhat more masculine air. She also made it
Speaker 1: a point not to gossip about people anymore, so like
Speaker 1: that business where she was writing misleading letters to people
Speaker 1: to try to get away like that really cut a
Speaker 1: lot back. I'm so good, I'm so delighted to hear it. Uh.
Speaker 1: When she was about twenty six and attracted the attentions
Speaker 1: of a Mr Montague, but she did not reciprocate. On
Speaker 1: January nine one, she wrote in her diary that she
Speaker 1: had burned all of his farewell verse is so that
Speaker 1: quote no trace of any man's admiration may remain. She
Speaker 1: went on to say, quote I love and only love
Speaker 1: the fairer sex, and thus beloved by them. In turn,
Speaker 1: my heart revolts from any other love than theirs. In
Speaker 1: July of eighteen twenty two, and and her aunt took
Speaker 1: a tour of North Wales and they visited past podcast
Speaker 1: subjects Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the Ladies of Longcothland.
Speaker 1: On the twenty three she met Sarah Ponsonby at Plasknewid,
Speaker 1: which was their home. Eleanor was ill that day and
Speaker 1: was asleep during aunt's visit. She exchanged some letters with
Speaker 1: the Ladies of Longcothlind later on after she returned home.
Speaker 1: In January of eighteen twenty six, as uncle James died
Speaker 1: and an inherited Shibden Hall under the condition that her
Speaker 1: aunt Anne and her father could still live on the
Speaker 1: property and collect portions of the rent, and Anne continued
Speaker 1: to manage the domestic world of the household. While Anne
Speaker 1: was responsible for the day to day matters of managing
Speaker 1: the estate, which she did with the help of a
Speaker 1: steward for the agricultural work and an agent for the
Speaker 1: industrial work, she also got to work trying to improve
Speaker 1: the estate. She had two goals in mind, to provide
Speaker 1: the family with an ongoing comfortable income and to situate
Speaker 1: the estate so that it would be worth more when
Speaker 1: it was passed on to another air. Her extensive self
Speaker 1: education over the past decade or so really paid off
Speaker 1: in this She had developed a working knowledge of science, engineering,
Speaker 1: and business, as well as the industries that were growing
Speaker 1: up in the area, including cold timber and stone. She
Speaker 1: also began traveling extensively all over Europe as she continued
Speaker 1: to look for a suitable wife. She had no trouble
Speaker 1: finding love interests. When she met someone she thought might
Speaker 1: return her interest, she would bring up a book or
Speaker 1: a play that had subtle or overt themes of love
Speaker 1: between women and see how the other woman responded, and
Speaker 1: this led to a lot of flings, but not really
Speaker 1: to any long term attachment. It was back home in
Speaker 1: Halifax that Ane Lister finally found a woman to spend
Speaker 1: the rest of her life with, and that woman was
Speaker 1: Ann Walker, an heiress who lived on a nearby estate.
Speaker 1: Her method of finding potential love interests is like the
Speaker 1: modern equivalent would be walking up to somebody and and
Speaker 1: asking them whether they like Teaket and Sarah like. This
Speaker 1: is sort of the regency equivalent of gator conversation. In
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty two, and Lester had started working with an
Speaker 1: architect named John Harper to try to improve Shipton Hall's
Speaker 1: architecture and its grounds. She was a really avid walker,
Speaker 1: so she had added a wilderness garden complete with waterfalls
Speaker 1: and a small chamiere which is a that ryf hut,
Speaker 1: and this hut became her retreat while she can while
Speaker 1: she courted and Walker. And Walker, for her part, was
Speaker 1: wary of a Lister, and Lister made no secret of
Speaker 1: the fact that she was interested in and Walker's money.
Speaker 1: And Anne Walker knew and Lister was not in love
Speaker 1: with her. But by eighteen thirty four, both of the
Speaker 1: ants were living at Shibden Hall, and on Easter Sunday
Speaker 1: of that year they exchanged rings with one another and
Speaker 1: then took communion together at Holy Trinity Church in good
Speaker 1: ram Gate in York. They lived from that point on
Speaker 1: as a married couple, including renting a pew together in
Speaker 1: the front row of their parish church. And Walker's money
Speaker 1: funded a lot of the work that Anne Lister was
Speaker 1: planning at Shibden Hall over the next few years. Improvements
Speaker 1: included a Norman tower to house the library, a grand
Speaker 1: staircase in the entryway, and a set of tunnels so
Speaker 1: that the household staff could get from place to place
Speaker 1: without being seen. And Lister also decided to try her
Speaker 1: hand managing a coal mining operation rather than leasing the
Speaker 1: rights to someone else and earning money that way, and
Speaker 1: Walker's money funded the sinking of two coal pits on
Speaker 1: Shipden Hall's property. The two ants also continued travel as
Speaker 1: much as their time and Anne Walker's money allowed, and
Speaker 1: Lister was really the one driving these trips. She had
Speaker 1: way more wonder less than Anne Walker did. These weren't
Speaker 1: laid back pleasure trips either. Their travels were daring and unconventional,
Speaker 1: and Lister was an avid mountaineer, and she summitted multiple
Speaker 1: peaks in the Pyrenees. They took horseback journeys into territory
Speaker 1: that was really more often home to military units than
Speaker 1: two unescorted ladies. In eighteen thirty six, and Lister's father died.
Speaker 1: She was at that point in control of ship in Hall.
Speaker 1: I think this means that her aunt Anne had also died,
Speaker 1: but I could not find confirmation of when that happened.
Speaker 1: In eighteen thirty seven, the two hands wrote out wills
Speaker 1: to each other, and each of them left the other
Speaker 1: one all of her possessions and wealth, on the condition
Speaker 1: that the surviving and never married. In eighteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: they left on a two year trip through Scandinavia, the
Speaker 1: Low Countries and Russia. The following year, and Lester contracted
Speaker 1: some kind of fever while touring the Caucusus. In her
Speaker 1: last diary entry, dated August thirteenth, eighteen forty, she doesn't
Speaker 1: mention anything odd about her health, but on September twenty
Speaker 1: she died at the age of forty nine. She had
Speaker 1: apparently requested to be buried at home in Halifax, so
Speaker 1: Anne Walker had her body embalmed and accompanied it on
Speaker 1: a six month journey home, and Lester was finally buried
Speaker 1: at Halifax Parish Church. Their relationship had not always been
Speaker 1: particularly happy, right I just I imagine Ann Walker just
Speaker 1: kind of gritting her teeth through some of this travel
Speaker 1: when she really wanted to be at home with their
Speaker 1: nice garden and the waterfall in the library at Shipton Hall.
Speaker 1: But Lester's death and this long journey home with her
Speaker 1: body really took a toll on Ann Walker's health. In
Speaker 1: eighteen forty two, her sister and a doctor conspired to
Speaker 1: have her declared insane and admitted to an asylum so
Speaker 1: that they could take over her fortune, including Shipton Hall.
Speaker 1: This was temporary in terms of the ownership of Shipton Hall.
Speaker 1: When Anne Walker died in eighteen fifty four, the estate
Speaker 1: reverted back to the Lister family. An Lister's diaries stayed
Speaker 1: in the family library until the late nineteenth century. John
Speaker 1: Lister's parents had inherited the estate when he was eight,
Speaker 1: and he had been publishing transcriptions of the plain language
Speaker 1: portions of Anne's diaries in the Halifax Guardian. With the
Speaker 1: help of Arthur Barrell, he cracked the code and discovered
Speaker 1: what Anne had been writing about all that time. John
Speaker 1: Lister was horrified. I mean, I can't stress that they
Speaker 1: are really explicit. Uh. And apart from there being really explicit,
Speaker 1: homosexuality between men was illegal in Britain at the time,
Speaker 1: and although homosexuality between women wasn't specifically outlawed, it was
Speaker 1: highly stigmatized. So John M. Lister thought about burning these
Speaker 1: diaries when he realized what was in them. Ultimately, I
Speaker 1: think fortunately he locked them away again. It's been speculated
Speaker 1: that John Lister also had relationships as other men, and
Speaker 1: that this desire to keep the diaries hidden was partly
Speaker 1: by motivated by self preservation and basically being afraid of
Speaker 1: outing himself. Until the mid twentieth century, most of the
Speaker 1: archivists and historians who examined Anne Lister's diaries stayed away
Speaker 1: from their explicit content in their published work. Dr Phillis
Speaker 1: Ramsden worked with the journals in the nineteen sixties and
Speaker 1: wound up mostly establishing a chronology and focusing on Anne's travels.
Speaker 1: A graduate student named Vivian Ingham was part of this
Speaker 1: work as well, and was working on a PhD dissertation,
Speaker 1: but she died before that work was complete. By the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, at least some of the stigma surrounding lesbian
Speaker 1: relationships was starting to fade, and in historian Helena Whitbread
Speaker 1: published I Know My Own Heart The Diaries of En
Speaker 1: Lister eighteen forty. This volume included both decoded and transcribed
Speaker 1: material from the diaries. She published a second collection in
Speaker 1: so these two volumes obviously do not cover the entire
Speaker 1: diary that is thousands and thousands of pages, but they
Speaker 1: did make some of the decoded material widely available for
Speaker 1: the first time, and really parts of the rest of
Speaker 1: it as well. Even when she was not writing in code.
Speaker 1: An Lister's handwriting is really hard to read. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of scans of pages from the diary on
Speaker 1: the internet. It is very difficult. And on top of
Speaker 1: the very difficult to read parts, she used a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot a lot of made up abbreviations, so
Speaker 1: it could be hard even when you could read what
Speaker 1: she was saying to figure out exactly what she was
Speaker 1: talking about. The thing too, to consider, right when you're
Speaker 1: looking at someone's diaries and we've established that she really
Speaker 1: notated everything, is that a lot of it is probably
Speaker 1: very boring weather and had like transaction talk, so why
Speaker 1: probably most people would not want to read a list
Speaker 1: of the temperatures in Halifax, of course, so several years.
Speaker 1: Uh an Lister's diaries are one of the longest in
Speaker 1: the English language, and they demonstrate how she really was
Speaker 1: ahead of her time. She successfully managed and improved on
Speaker 1: Shibdon Hall at a time when it was not common
Speaker 1: at all for a woman to be the head of
Speaker 1: a household. In this way, she held her own and
Speaker 1: the overwhelmingly male dominated and cut throat coal industry, she
Speaker 1: found a way to live with a lot more independence
Speaker 1: and autonomy than many women, even other wealthy white women,
Speaker 1: were able to do at this time. The diaries also
Speaker 1: show how she was ahead of her time in terms
Speaker 1: of her relationships with other women, to the point that
Speaker 1: she's sometimes described as the first modern lesbian. There have
Speaker 1: obviously been same sex relationships throughout recorded history, but the
Speaker 1: idea of a lesbian identity, or the more general idea
Speaker 1: that having relationships with someone of the same sex is
Speaker 1: intrinsically connected to who you are as a person, is
Speaker 1: way more recent in the Western world. According to the
Speaker 1: Oxford English Dictionary, the word lesbianism was first used in
Speaker 1: writing to describe homosexual attraction between women in eighteen seventy,
Speaker 1: with lesbian first used in the same way twenty years later,
Speaker 1: and using the word lesbian to describe a person instead
Speaker 1: of an attraction or a sex act is even later
Speaker 1: than that that's first used in writing in nine five,
Speaker 1: and that same thing is true for most of the synonyms.
Speaker 1: So sapphis um meaning homosexual relations between women dates back
Speaker 1: to eighteen ninety, but sapphist didn't arrive until the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: and even then it indicated a dysfunction more than an identity.
Speaker 1: All of this was decades after Anne Lister's death in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty, even though she was living before language real
Speaker 1: existed to describe herself, and Lister did seem to have
Speaker 1: a sense that her attraction to other women was an
Speaker 1: intransic part of herself. Her diaries document a lot of
Speaker 1: self reflection and introspection about why she was attracted to
Speaker 1: women and what that meant about her, and is also
Speaker 1: completely accepting of who she is and these diaries, although
Speaker 1: she does document some incidents of being harassed for what
Speaker 1: she was wearing or how she lived her life, this
Speaker 1: is really different from a lot of other early lesbian literature,
Speaker 1: Like if you read The Well of Loneliness, which is
Speaker 1: generally marked as the first lesbian novel in English, it
Speaker 1: is tragic and sad and full of just a lot
Speaker 1: of self doubt and shame, and there is none of
Speaker 1: that and and Lister's life, Uh, probably because she lived
Speaker 1: before lesbian was really an identity, because like the coalescence
Speaker 1: of that identity was happening at the same time as
Speaker 1: a lot of criminalization was happening in stigma, and when
Speaker 1: those two things like came about in parallel with each other,
Speaker 1: that meant you can see it's affect on people's um
Speaker 1: like sense of themselves and mental health and all of
Speaker 1: that in early lesbian literature. This sets and and her
Speaker 1: diaries apart from some of the other women that we've
Speaker 1: talked about on the show who definitely had long term
Speaker 1: and loving relationships with other women but lived before the
Speaker 1: idea of a lesbian identity really existed in Western culture.
Speaker 1: So examples would be the aforementioned Ladies of Lang Laugham
Speaker 1: and Jane Adams. Yeah, Jane adams life overlapped the evolution
Speaker 1: of lesbian identity, but this isn't something that she wrote
Speaker 1: about in any of her surviving journals or papers or anything.
Speaker 1: So we know a lot less about how she conceived
Speaker 1: of herself. It's easy to assume what she would have
Speaker 1: thought about herself. But we also have other examples of
Speaker 1: people we do know about who lived at a time
Speaker 1: when an identity was evolving and we're like, I don't
Speaker 1: feel like that word applies to me. Like we that
Speaker 1: with Sylvia Rivera and the word transgender. She was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's me. I have another person on
Speaker 1: my short list for a future episode maybe who was
Speaker 1: a vaudeville female impersonator that similarly lived at a time
Speaker 1: when gay became like more coalesced into an identity for men,
Speaker 1: and was similarly like, I don't think that's me, even
Speaker 1: though he exclusively had relationships with their men for his
Speaker 1: whole life. So anyway, because of all this, Inleven, the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom formally recognized the historical and cultural value of
Speaker 1: Anlister's diaries and they were added to the UNESCO Memory
Speaker 1: of the World Register. Their entry on the UK Memory
Speaker 1: of the World Register page reads, in part quote, the
Speaker 1: diaries include a wealth of information about politics, business, estate management, religion, education,
Speaker 1: and reading, science, medicine, travel, and local and national events,
Speaker 1: as this important area of Yorkshire experienced the rapid effects
Speaker 1: of the Industrial Revolution and seen from the viewpoint of
Speaker 1: an extremely well educated and pioneering should probably say woman here,
Speaker 1: but there seems to be a word missing. It is
Speaker 1: her comprehensive and painfully honest account of lesbian life and
Speaker 1: reflections on her nature, however, which have made these diaries unique.
Speaker 1: They have shaped and continued to shape the direction of
Speaker 1: UK gender studies and women's history. Her story reminds me
Speaker 1: a lot of the same exact kinds of um squabbles
Speaker 1: and pettyback biting that I lived through in middle school,
Speaker 1: but with much higher stakes we were We were not
Speaker 1: having people confined two asylums in middle school when we
Speaker 1: were sending snipy backbiting, mean girl letters to each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think where I I have a moment where I
Speaker 1: turn on analystic is the letter where she kind of
Speaker 1: contrives some some poor things to happen to Eliza by
Speaker 1: sort of betraying her and making stuff up. Yeah she could. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I also have some listener mail. I'm so delighted. Can
Speaker 1: you share it? Sure? Can? This email comes from Liz
Speaker 1: and it follows our Unearthed and twenty seventeen episodes and
Speaker 1: the part where we mentioned a privy at Paul Revere House. Uh,
Speaker 1: and she writes, Uh. The real version of events is
Speaker 1: actually cooler, in my opinion than the story the media
Speaker 1: picked up and misreported. This is another correction about that
Speaker 1: the privy we found actually dates to the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: at least a hundred years prior to Paul Revere's residence
Speaker 1: at nineteen North Square in Boston's North End. It's also
Speaker 1: associated not with the building Paul Revere inhabited, but the
Speaker 1: neighboring house now called the Pierce Hitchborne House. The City
Speaker 1: of Boston Archaeology program was originally contacted about doing an
Speaker 1: archaeological assessment of the side yard next to the house,
Speaker 1: as they will be doing some construction in future years.
Speaker 1: We initially we're just looking to see what was on there,
Speaker 1: expecting to find only eighteenth century deposits associated with Paul
Speaker 1: Revere's cousin Nathaniel Hitchborne, who occupied the house from s
Speaker 1: eighty one, and later nineteenth century deposits from its later owners.
Speaker 1: Imagine our surprise when we found the first intact seventeenth
Speaker 1: century deposit in Boston found for several decades. Because Boston
Speaker 1: has such a long occupation and therefore an equally long
Speaker 1: history of construction, that is not very common to find
Speaker 1: undisturbed seventeenth century sites. Every time a building has renovated,
Speaker 1: a trench's duck, a privy moved, etcetera, there's disturbance and
Speaker 1: earlier deposits usually resulting in mixed fills that can't really
Speaker 1: tell us too much definitive information about the people who
Speaker 1: lived there. So any intact seventeenth century deposit in Boston
Speaker 1: is a reason for excitement. This particular site may be
Speaker 1: associated with Moses Pierce, a glazier who bought the original house,
Speaker 1: and may also be associated with John Jeff's who built
Speaker 1: the Paul Revere House in sixteen eighty UM. She sent
Speaker 1: some pictures UH from the dig. So basically, the thing
Speaker 1: that we described as the privy at the Paul Revere
Speaker 1: House UH is not actually at the Paul Revere's house,
Speaker 1: but Paul Revere's house is older than Paul Revere UH
Speaker 1: living in the area, and also explains why I didn't
Speaker 1: find any of this when I was doing that episode.
Speaker 1: So The way that our unearthed episodes work is that
Speaker 1: I keep up with news about um all kinds of
Speaker 1: unearthed things throughout the year, and then when I can't
Speaker 1: find when there's not a lot of clear information or
Speaker 1: a link to an original paper in the original news reporting,
Speaker 1: I try to find other stuff. But when I tried
Speaker 1: to find other stuff about the Paul Revere Privy, I
Speaker 1: was searching for Paul Revere Privy, which is not who's
Speaker 1: privy it was. So I basically found a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of inaccurate news articles, all confirming this idea that it
Speaker 1: was the Paul Revere Privy and saying nothing else substantive
Speaker 1: about it. So thank you Liz for sending us all
Speaker 1: kinds of information and pictures about that. If you would
Speaker 1: like to write to us about this or any other
Speaker 1: podcast or history podcast with how Stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: We're also on Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash missed
Speaker 1: in History, on Twitter at miss in History, our pinterest
Speaker 1: in our Instagram names miss in History all those places.
Speaker 1: Our website is missed in History dot com, where you
Speaker 1: can find show notes about all the episodes Holly and
Speaker 1: I have done together, and you will find an archive
Speaker 1: of every episode we have ever done. So you can
Speaker 1: do all that and so much more at our website,
Speaker 1: which is missed in history dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, is it how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com