Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Uh. Since
Speaker 1: we are all still theoretically in isolation, which means if
Speaker 1: you're not doing it and you're not considered an essential
Speaker 1: person who has to do their job to keep society running,
Speaker 1: please get into isolation. Uh. But since we are all
Speaker 1: theoretically in isolation, I thought it might be nice to
Speaker 1: talk about somebody who traveled the world, which is Annie
Speaker 1: London Dairy. She gained fame for being the first woman
Speaker 1: cyclist to circumnavigate the globe on her bike sort of,
Speaker 1: which is also why I think it's a fun one
Speaker 1: for this time where a lot of serious things are happening,
Speaker 1: because her trip is a little uh you'll hear specious
Speaker 1: it is, and it's it's fun. It's a fun episode,
Speaker 1: which I think is always good. Everybody needs a break. Uh.
Speaker 1: So in the eighteen nineties, she set off from Boston
Speaker 1: on a trip to do exactly that, to travel the world, uh,
Speaker 1: circumnavigate the globe on a bike, and she did circle
Speaker 1: the globe. But there are a lot of inconsistencies in
Speaker 1: the details of her story, including why she did it
Speaker 1: in the first place. So she was born in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy or eighteen seventy one in Latvia, and her name
Speaker 1: when she was born was Annie Cohen. Her parents, Levy
Speaker 1: and Beatrice Cohen, moved to the US when Annie was
Speaker 1: still very young, that was in eighteen seventy five. They
Speaker 1: also brought her siblings, Sarah and Bennett, and the family
Speaker 1: lived pretty modestly in a tenement in Boston's West End,
Speaker 1: which at the time was one of the most ethnically
Speaker 1: mixed neighborhoods in the country. Annie's father, Levy died when
Speaker 1: she was just a teenager in eighteen eighty seven, and
Speaker 1: her mother, Beatrice died two months after that, and this
Speaker 1: left Annie and her brother Bennett to care for the
Speaker 1: two siblings that had been born after the family moved
Speaker 1: to the United States, Acob and Rosa. Annie's sister Sarah
Speaker 1: had already married and moved to Maine and was starting
Speaker 1: a family of her own. Annie married a young peddler
Speaker 1: named Max Katchovsky one year later. In the first four
Speaker 1: years of their marriage were really productive. They had three children,
Speaker 1: Bertha Malki who they called Molly, Libby and Simon. Annie
Speaker 1: also works. She sold advertising space for several of the
Speaker 1: papers around Boston, and she was really good at this job.
Speaker 1: She had a gift for conversation, so she was really
Speaker 1: able to build relationships and rapport with advertisers and sell
Speaker 1: all this ad space. Yeah, keep in mind, this is
Speaker 1: not a time where it would have been that out
Speaker 1: of character for an immigrant family to have both parents working.
Speaker 1: Annie was not that unusual in being a mother that
Speaker 1: also worked. Annie claimed in the two businessmen had made
Speaker 1: a huge wager involving twenty dollars that a woman couldn't
Speaker 1: bicycle around the globe in fifteen months, and that she
Speaker 1: was chosen as the one to attempt it, and if
Speaker 1: she did manage to do this, she would also get
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars, and in addition to that requirement that
Speaker 1: she had to circle the globe on a bike in
Speaker 1: fifteen months, she also had to make a living for
Speaker 1: herself along the way, with a target total of five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. On June fifteenth, and he was ready to
Speaker 1: set out on this journey. She had a big send
Speaker 1: off in Boston. People who knew her personally were on
Speaker 1: hand to say goodbye, but so were a lot of
Speaker 1: curious onlookers, as well as a number of suffragettes. They
Speaker 1: were all there to see what seemed like it would
Speaker 1: be history in the making. The head of Pope Manufacturing,
Speaker 1: which produced Columbia brand bicycles, was on hand as well,
Speaker 1: and he had the bicycle that the company was giving
Speaker 1: her for this journey. A woman taking on a challenge
Speaker 1: like this was of course big news, so this really
Speaker 1: was a huge event. There were speeches given, it was
Speaker 1: covered by the press. These farewell speeches marked what a
Speaker 1: momentous thing they were all witnessing, which would be a
Speaker 1: huge help in the fight for equality for women. And
Speaker 1: Annie made her own speech, explaining the whole story that
Speaker 1: the trip was the result of a wager and declaring
Speaker 1: that quote, I am to go around the Earth in
Speaker 1: fifteen months, returning with five thousand dollars and starting only
Speaker 1: with the clothes on my back. I cannot accept anything
Speaker 1: gratuitously from anyone. One of her friends offered her a
Speaker 1: penny for luck, which Annie said she could not take,
Speaker 1: and then the woman Mrs Tubbs told her that she
Speaker 1: could take it as payment for wearing the white ribbon
Speaker 1: of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, which Mrs Tubbs placed
Speaker 1: on Annie's lapo. In a similarly ceremonious act, she was
Speaker 1: given a hundred dollars from the London Dairy Lithia Spring
Speaker 1: Water Company. Having made that investment, the company got to
Speaker 1: put a sign on the rear wheel skirt guard on
Speaker 1: this Columbia bike and Annie would take on the name
Speaker 1: London Dairy for this journey. So this is like a
Speaker 1: very interesting ad deal on her own bike. In person, Yes,
Speaker 1: when you look at for example, like professional race cars
Speaker 1: now and they have stuff all over their cars and
Speaker 1: all over their persons, like their jumpsuits. Annie was a
Speaker 1: big starting point of all of this. That name change
Speaker 1: that she made to London Dairy offered her some pretty
Speaker 1: key additional benefits. For one, it meant that she was
Speaker 1: not going to be a woman traveling alone with a
Speaker 1: Jewish last name. That was something that would have added
Speaker 1: a significant layer of danger in the eighteen nineties. Additionally,
Speaker 1: for this excursion, Annie had made the decision to keep
Speaker 1: her personal life very private. She never mentioned that she
Speaker 1: was a married woman with children, and that was something
Speaker 1: that allowed her to sort of craft her own narrative
Speaker 1: around her identity as she went, and finally, it was
Speaker 1: just easier for most English speaking people and particularly the
Speaker 1: US covering this, to say and remember the name London Dairy,
Speaker 1: then Katchovsky and Annie was nothing if not savvy about
Speaker 1: public image and the power of word of mouth. She
Speaker 1: also never seemed to have any difficult feelings about leaving
Speaker 1: her family behind while she made this trip. She was
Speaker 1: later quoted on several different occasions saying, quote, I didn't
Speaker 1: want to spend my life at home with a baby
Speaker 1: under my apron every year. Max's feelings on his wife's
Speaker 1: trip are not really known, although reportedly he really adored
Speaker 1: his wife probably wanted her to do whatever would make
Speaker 1: her happy. Annie told the papers that Max was quote
Speaker 1: perfectly willing that she go, or that she wouldn't have
Speaker 1: done it. Incidentally, Max, who was also an immigrant, was
Speaker 1: petitioning to become a US citizen, and he was actually
Speaker 1: sworn in while she was on the road. Yeah there was.
Speaker 1: In the main biography I read of her, Max has
Speaker 1: described as basically worshiping her. And incidentally, Annie did not
Speaker 1: leave Boston on the day of that big send off event.
Speaker 1: She stayed there for two more days, getting photos taken
Speaker 1: of her with her bike to be printed in bulk
Speaker 1: so that she could sell them as souvenirs along the way,
Speaker 1: and she also printed out handbills that told her whole
Speaker 1: story and that she could kind of let people circulate
Speaker 1: throughout town so they need to look for her. On June,
Speaker 1: she said her true goodbyes to a much more intimate
Speaker 1: gathering of close friends and family, and then she finally
Speaker 1: left and headed to New York. So she was starting
Speaker 1: this trip in the summer of four and that was
Speaker 1: around the same time that our previous podcast subject, Frank Lens,
Speaker 1: disappeared on his cycling trip around the world. If you
Speaker 1: may recall if you've heard that episode or if you haven't,
Speaker 1: Lens was really eager to finish this journey as quickly
Speaker 1: as possible, and he decided to take a more dangerous
Speaker 1: route through Turkey to get to Europe instead of taking
Speaker 1: the safer but longer route through Russia. He vanished along
Speaker 1: the way. Annie, as you'll see, did not uh do
Speaker 1: things like that now, unlike Lens and other cyclists who
Speaker 1: had tried and some succeeded to circumnavigate the globe Annie
Speaker 1: was not really experienced at riding bicycles, and the bike
Speaker 1: that she had to start with wasn't actually great for
Speaker 1: what lay ahead. It was quite heavy, and it was lumbering,
Speaker 1: and on sandy surfaces or rocky substrate, she often just
Speaker 1: had to get off and push it rather than ride it.
Speaker 1: So the first leg of her trip from Boston to
Speaker 1: New York was really arduous, and maybe because of that,
Speaker 1: Annie stayed in New York for several weeks afterward. That
Speaker 1: made some people worried she was never going to be
Speaker 1: able to make her deadline. One of the ways that
Speaker 1: she spent those weeks was revising her outfit. She'd initially
Speaker 1: started with a day suit that included full skirts, but
Speaker 1: she decided by the time she got to New York
Speaker 1: that that was just not practical. I can't imagine the
Speaker 1: difficulty of trying to just ride a bike a long
Speaker 1: way in full skirts all the time. Here's my thing,
Speaker 1: as a modern person who is very accustomed to the
Speaker 1: benefit of a lot of textile advancements and who has
Speaker 1: run a lot, I am whimpy if I get the
Speaker 1: mildest chafe on, like a twenty mile run, which I
Speaker 1: haven't done in a long time, Like, I can't imagine
Speaker 1: how chafy and uncomfortable a suit that was not made
Speaker 1: for sporting. There's a lot layers of difficulty with this, yes,
Speaker 1: so she adopted instead. While she was in New York,
Speaker 1: she switched it out for a suit with a pair
Speaker 1: of bloomers. She still wore a skirt over it, but
Speaker 1: it was a little bit shorter. It was only ankle length,
Speaker 1: and that new skirt could be pinned up if she
Speaker 1: needed to. While writing. She abandoned corsets at this point,
Speaker 1: which I think is a wise move, and wore rubber
Speaker 1: sold boots for added comfort. And she also started carrying
Speaker 1: a revolver in case she was going to need to
Speaker 1: defend herself. Though she also, just as she had no
Speaker 1: bicycling experience, didn't really have any firearms experience either. Just
Speaker 1: in case folks are visualizing this. When we say bloomers,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the like blousy divided pants or you know,
Speaker 1: bifurcated pant where that was advocated by dress reformers. We're
Speaker 1: not talking about underwear, just in case. After all that
Speaker 1: time in New York, Annie continued with her journey, and
Speaker 1: we will talk about that after we pause for a
Speaker 1: sponsor break. So when Annie London Darry finally left New
Speaker 1: York at the end of July, a crowd of several
Speaker 1: hundred people waved her goodbye. Justice had been the case
Speaker 1: in Boston. En route to Chicago. From there, Annie quickly
Speaker 1: learned that the road was just not going to be
Speaker 1: kind to her. She rarely found places to wash her clothes,
Speaker 1: which became oppressively smelly in the summer heat as she
Speaker 1: was sweating. And when she did manage to stay in
Speaker 1: a hotel or a boarding house and wash her clothes
Speaker 1: in the sink, they were never dry by the time
Speaker 1: she left in the morning. So off she went in
Speaker 1: wet clothes, which sounds miserable. That also means that if
Speaker 1: it rained, she just had to gut it out in
Speaker 1: sopping wet layers. And even without corsets and without her
Speaker 1: full length skirt layers, this became very heavy and very arduous,
Speaker 1: because remember this was all wool. This all sounds just
Speaker 1: so incredibly stinky and chafy and awful. She made her
Speaker 1: way to Rochester and then Buffalo, and then slowly on
Speaker 1: to Cleveland before trying to make up the time by
Speaker 1: hurrying to Chicago, where she finally arrived on September twenty four,
Speaker 1: That was a full three months after she had left Boston.
Speaker 1: She weighed twenty pounds less than she had at the
Speaker 1: start of the trip. She was still really struggling with
Speaker 1: issues regarding her clothing just being too cumbersome, and at
Speaker 1: this point she was very well aware that she only
Speaker 1: had twelve months left on her claim that she could
Speaker 1: go around the entire world in fifteen months not not
Speaker 1: divided very evenly at this point. No, it's it seems
Speaker 1: like she maybe made some foolish time management decisions right
Speaker 1: out of the gate. So the intent had been that
Speaker 1: she would continue to travel in a westerly direction, but
Speaker 1: because of her rough start, owing to her lack of
Speaker 1: experience and maybe a little bit of doddling, by the
Speaker 1: time she arrived in Chicago, it was too late in
Speaker 1: the year to keep going west. She tried to continue
Speaker 1: in the direction that she was going, starting that late
Speaker 1: in the year, she was going to have to cross
Speaker 1: North America in the winter. It was not realistic. She
Speaker 1: publicly said she was done at this point. The New
Speaker 1: York Times ran a piece on October eleven that Annie
Speaker 1: wasn't going to complete her trip. She turned around headed
Speaker 1: to New York, retracing her route in reverse, but this
Speaker 1: time she was going for a speed record. But before
Speaker 1: she even started that um and though she had announced
Speaker 1: that she was turning her on a going to New York,
Speaker 1: while she was still in Chicago, recovering from those three
Speaker 1: months on the road and planning for this speed run
Speaker 1: to New York, Annie visited the Sterling Cycle works and
Speaker 1: they offered her a new bicycle that was about twenty
Speaker 1: to twenty one pounds that was less than half of
Speaker 1: the weight of the bike that she had been riding
Speaker 1: up to that point. And they also offered her a
Speaker 1: sponsorship deal if she would put their sign on her
Speaker 1: bicycle instead of riding the Columbia and having them as
Speaker 1: a sponsor. Morgan and Right tire company, which also worked
Speaker 1: with Sterling, also joined on as a sponsor. So this
Speaker 1: whole change really lifted her spirits and she changed her
Speaker 1: mind again. She thought she could actually circle the globe.
Speaker 1: The new plan was to go to New York as
Speaker 1: planned and then go east from there. In addition to
Speaker 1: the new bicycle, her choice of clothing changed again. This
Speaker 1: was sort of a double necessity. Even though her starting
Speaker 1: skirt had been switched out to something more practical. The
Speaker 1: new was sterling was a men's bike that was built differently.
Speaker 1: She just couldn't ride it with her skirt fabric bunching
Speaker 1: up in front of her was pretty hazardous. So she
Speaker 1: finally did the thing that she had been too demure
Speaker 1: to do when her trips started, and that was to
Speaker 1: get rid of that skirt and to just use the Bloomers. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. The men's bicycle was built with a segment
Speaker 1: that went directly from the handlebars back to the seat,
Speaker 1: whereas the ladies bike she had been riding before that
Speaker 1: did not have that. It kind of had a dip,
Speaker 1: like a curved metal section where like her skirts could
Speaker 1: settle in front of her instead of wadding up. And
Speaker 1: so that was what caused that change. And well, this
Speaker 1: was all very freeing to switch to Bloomers, only there
Speaker 1: were definitely people who found this whole idea utterly scandalous. Uh. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: some of her sponsors sent her additional outfits so that
Speaker 1: she would have a change of clothes and she could
Speaker 1: wear comfortable gear while riding, but also dressed appropriately for
Speaker 1: appearing his or social engagements on the road. So with
Speaker 1: this new clothing and a much lighter bike, it was
Speaker 1: a lot easier for Annie to go back to New York.
Speaker 1: She continued to be a draw for the press. The
Speaker 1: Buffalo Express ran a piece on her on November one,
Speaker 1: four that noted that she had many sponsorships. Quote, the
Speaker 1: young woman is a sort of writing advertising agency. She
Speaker 1: wears ribbons advertising various goods, and we'll receive four hundred
Speaker 1: dollars for one firm's ad that graces her left breast
Speaker 1: on her right bloomer leg. She carries a hundred dollars
Speaker 1: worth of advertisements, and she has just closed a contract
Speaker 1: to cover her left arm. She says her back is
Speaker 1: for rent yet, and she hopes to get three hundred
Speaker 1: dollars for it. She must not beg a cent, and
Speaker 1: she makes enough money to pay for her board by
Speaker 1: selling little souvenir brownie pins and other souvenirs of the trip.
Speaker 1: That same article incidentally includes some other fascinating tidbits about
Speaker 1: Annie that were total fabrications, including saying that she had
Speaker 1: attended Harvard and studied medicine. Yeah, she u she had
Speaker 1: started ambellishing her story at that point. Uh, that article
Speaker 1: with embellishments included was no outlier, and it actually gets
Speaker 1: a little bit tricky to separate the actual events of
Speaker 1: her ride from the stories that she told at her
Speaker 1: various speaking engagements and two reporters. Annie was a spectacular
Speaker 1: storyteller and she was very, very comfortable adding a little
Speaker 1: bit of flourish to her story to wow crowds. So
Speaker 1: while some elements of her story and what happened on
Speaker 1: this trip are documented through the papers of the day,
Speaker 1: even those are not always trustworthy. Obviously, she couldn't just
Speaker 1: bike across the ocean, so she took a steamer to
Speaker 1: Europe France, specifically sailing to have and on a steamer
Speaker 1: called Latraine. That steamer trip was not to be her last,
Speaker 1: not by a long shot. But that's all well before
Speaker 1: she reached the Pacific Ocean, where she need to take
Speaker 1: a boat by necessity. Yeah. Uh, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: steamer travel coming up. So once she got to France,
Speaker 1: she biked from Paris to Marseilles, and that was a
Speaker 1: well publicized trip and it was followed by both the
Speaker 1: French and the global papers. She was escorted the whole
Speaker 1: way by guides that have been arranged by France's various
Speaker 1: cycling clubs. French journalists tended to criticize her appearance. The
Speaker 1: nicest thing that they said about her was that she
Speaker 1: seemed energetic. One paper in Lyon described her as a
Speaker 1: neutered being because they couldn't describe her as having feminine
Speaker 1: or masculine traits. Uh, And that was definitely in a
Speaker 1: derogatory way. They weren't saying, oh, she's androgynou, isn't cool.
Speaker 1: They were like, we don't know what to do with her.
Speaker 1: But the public was fascinated by her and completely embraced her.
Speaker 1: So it seems like once Annie was outside the US,
Speaker 1: she felt totally free to tell all kinds of lies
Speaker 1: about her background. She told France's reporters that she was
Speaker 1: an orphan, a medical student, a law student, and an heiress,
Speaker 1: among a lot of other things. It's unclear whether she
Speaker 1: was just kind of having some fun goating reporters into
Speaker 1: filing false stories, or if she maybe just wanted to
Speaker 1: play fast and loose with the truth. While in Valanche, France,
Speaker 1: her achilles tendon in one leg became in flame, so
Speaker 1: she rested there, and while she was doing that, her
Speaker 1: bike was put on display in a shop window so
Speaker 1: she could have time to convalesce and I think also
Speaker 1: make a little money from that placement. By the time
Speaker 1: she reached Marseilles, after she recovered she continued on, she
Speaker 1: was quite enjoying herself, despite feeling that her initial reception
Speaker 1: in France had kind of treated her poorly. At Marseilles,
Speaker 1: she boarded the steamer Sydney on January and then the
Speaker 1: story gets really fuzzy because just seven weeks later, on
Speaker 1: March nine, she boarded another ship that was leaving Japan.
Speaker 1: That means that the same woman who spent three entire
Speaker 1: months getting from Boston to Chicago somehow covered the entire
Speaker 1: Asian continent, where she did not speak any of the languages,
Speaker 1: in half that time. That seems real fishy. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: seems like when, uh, like when the marathon is happening
Speaker 1: and somebody crosses the starting line with the marathon and
Speaker 1: then like like they get in a cab. It's exactly
Speaker 1: like that. Uh So, if you heard Annie Londonderry speak
Speaker 1: of her travels or read her account, it was a
Speaker 1: very full seven weeks. According to her, that time was
Speaker 1: filled with bike rides through Jerusalem and tiger hunts and
Speaker 1: visits with royalty, and being mistaken for an evil spirit
Speaker 1: in some lands, and having to disguise herself in local
Speaker 1: garb to not be chased, and even traveling to the
Speaker 1: front lines of the First Sino Japanese War. We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about that part in a minute. But none of
Speaker 1: this was true. Uh. The slides that she would later
Speaker 1: show during lectures of her travels were professional photographs that
Speaker 1: have been taken of those places and that she had purchased.
Speaker 1: They were not photos she had taken herself. So what
Speaker 1: it seems really happened was she got on the Sydney
Speaker 1: and then it made port in Alexandria, and then port
Speaker 1: said in Egypt, and then Colombo and Sri Lanka. Annie
Speaker 1: and two other lady cyclists from the ship raised some
Speaker 1: eyebrows when they went out for a ride at that stop.
Speaker 1: And then after that quick stop in Sri Lanka, the
Speaker 1: Sydney sailed on to Singapore with Annie Londonderry's still on board. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just for the historical record, Sri Lanka would have been
Speaker 1: called Ceylon at this time. Uh. Annie's arrival in Singapore
Speaker 1: did not go exactly as she might have hoped, and
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about that after we have a
Speaker 1: word from our sponsors. So when Annie arrived in Singapore,
Speaker 1: the press there noticed that she had made shockingly good
Speaker 1: time crossing Asia and actually called her out on it.
Speaker 1: On February fourteen, article in the Singapore Straits ran that
Speaker 1: was titled a Woman on Wheels fifty thousand Fools at Marseille,
Speaker 1: which made the case that Annie was a charlatan on
Speaker 1: a trip to gain money and fame, and that she
Speaker 1: had duped the French. It pointed out how the French
Speaker 1: public had fallen over her and bought her photographs and
Speaker 1: paid her to endorse their products, and then cheered her
Speaker 1: as she left port, and then it compared her journey
Speaker 1: to that of French mail, sailing safely aboard the steamships Adney.
Speaker 1: The next stop was Saigon, and things were a little
Speaker 1: better there, in part because a French periodical called Courier
Speaker 1: was eagerly awaiting her with some pre arranged appearances. But
Speaker 1: even as this reception was an improvement her write ups
Speaker 1: back home, we're starting to sour a little bit. Uh
Speaker 1: The U. S press was wondering how Annie had made
Speaker 1: such good time crossing Asia. She next hit Hong Kong
Speaker 1: for a couple of days, and then Shanghai, where she
Speaker 1: invited the editor of the newspaper Celestial m Player to
Speaker 1: call on her at her hotel so that she could
Speaker 1: do an interview and give him a full account of
Speaker 1: her travels. But what she actually did was explained to
Speaker 1: him how well she had been greeted in other cities.
Speaker 1: A lot of that was lies that she made up,
Speaker 1: and to make clear to him that she expected the
Speaker 1: same in Shanghai, kind of hinting that he should help
Speaker 1: arrange that that editor left the hotel. It was from
Speaker 1: Shanghai that she said she had traveled to the front
Speaker 1: of the Sino Japanese War, later writing quote, I was
Speaker 1: warned to get out of the country as quickly as possible,
Speaker 1: But my American spirit was up and I was determined
Speaker 1: to see the fun. So I determined to go to
Speaker 1: the front, and I went. I knew that I could
Speaker 1: fill any hall in the United States with the announcement
Speaker 1: that I was an eyewitness to the battles in China.
Speaker 1: She continues a paragraph later, I was an eyewitness to
Speaker 1: the Battle of Ghassan. It was the first I had
Speaker 1: seen and I don't want to see another. All of
Speaker 1: that again not true, No, totally made it up. Annie
Speaker 1: arrived in Yokohoma, Japan in early March. There she had
Speaker 1: some conflict with the American consule, John McLean, because she
Speaker 1: asked him if he could help her raise funds for
Speaker 1: her passage across the Pacific. He was not particularly interested
Speaker 1: in assisting her in this way. She actually kind of
Speaker 1: had him smeared in the press for it as not
Speaker 1: caring about any American citizens. She did manage to wrangle
Speaker 1: some assistance and some cash from the French console, however,
Speaker 1: and booked passage aboard the Beljik which took her to
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and he arrived in California ready to start
Speaker 1: booking speaking engagements and telling her tales of life abroad
Speaker 1: on her bicycle, and she did. She also met with
Speaker 1: a lot of suspicion and criticism. One of the big
Speaker 1: issues right out of the gate was the psychometer on
Speaker 1: her bicycle, which indicated that the bike had been ridden
Speaker 1: a total of about seven thousand, two hundred eighty miles.
Speaker 1: That did not add up to what one should have
Speaker 1: expected on a trip around the world, even including the
Speaker 1: necessary segments that had to be covered by ship, like
Speaker 1: across the entire Pacific Ocean. Additionally, the amount of money
Speaker 1: that she earned along the way did not quite add up.
Speaker 1: While Annie claimed that she would have to make about
Speaker 1: three thousand, five hundred dollars of the five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: required by that bet on her way from San Francisco
Speaker 1: across the USA on her final leg, people that were
Speaker 1: kind of keeping track of her her travels and keeping
Speaker 1: a tally noted that she had already earned a lot
Speaker 1: more than she was reporting, and her war stories from
Speaker 1: China did not really line up with the calendar timeline
Speaker 1: of what had been playing out in that conflict, so
Speaker 1: more and more of her story seemed shady as people
Speaker 1: started to compare notes. A newspaper editor from Indiana met
Speaker 1: with Annie in California and wrote rather scathingly of her quote,
Speaker 1: Miss Londonderry's trip has been a remarkable one. From the
Speaker 1: fact that she went entirely around the world on steamboats,
Speaker 1: according to her own story, excepting ride from Have to Marseilles,
Speaker 1: France on her wheel. Miss Anna is a hustler for sure.
Speaker 1: Andy's story had been refined as she tried to adjust
Speaker 1: to accommodate that psychometer reading and to include the fact
Speaker 1: that a lot of her travel was by steamer and
Speaker 1: a lot of segments in the press. She quickly went
Speaker 1: from being lauded as the epitome of the new Woman
Speaker 1: to being criticized as a fraud and huckster. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was kind of one of those things where I was like, oh, no, well,
Speaker 1: I did take the steamer from here to there, but
Speaker 1: then I got off and I ran up here and
Speaker 1: I did this, and it was like, then there was
Speaker 1: calendar math that just didn't add up. It's like, you
Speaker 1: couldn't have done that in that period of time before
Speaker 1: the Sydney took off at the next port for a
Speaker 1: lot of problems. But after spending almost two months in California,
Speaker 1: during which she managed to stage a photo of herself
Speaker 1: being robbed by alleged bandits, which she then used that
Speaker 1: photo on her lecture tour, she finally continued east to
Speaker 1: finish her trip. And if that seems like a long
Speaker 1: time to stay there when the clock was ticking on
Speaker 1: this bet it she was there is the possibility that
Speaker 1: she may have had a romance during this time with
Speaker 1: a fellow cyclist, a gentleman named Mark Johnson from San
Speaker 1: Francisco's Olympic Cycling Club, who insisted on making the ride
Speaker 1: from San Francisco to Los Angeles with her. That ride
Speaker 1: took five weeks, so it meant that they averaged less
Speaker 1: than ten miles a day on their bikes, even accounting
Speaker 1: for an accident that happened early on. This seemed pretty
Speaker 1: slow to a lot of people, and some folks started
Speaker 1: pointing out that they actually might have done better on foot.
Speaker 1: People were even dubious about her trip across North America.
Speaker 1: There were rumors that if you asked railroad men if
Speaker 1: they had seen her, they would say nothing but kind
Speaker 1: of give you a knowing wink. Finally, after lecturing and
Speaker 1: riding her way across the continent, she made her way
Speaker 1: home and then the following brief article appeared in the
Speaker 1: New York Times on September. It was titled Miss London
Speaker 1: Dairy's Trip ended, and it is tag Boston, Massachusetts. Miss
Speaker 1: Annie London Dairy arrived in the city this morning after
Speaker 1: a trip around the world on a bicycle. Miss Londonderry
Speaker 1: is nursing a broken arm, the result of a bad
Speaker 1: fall sustained in one of the western towns. On June
Speaker 1: she started her trip around the world. She was given
Speaker 1: a good send off by several hundred friends who were
Speaker 1: at the State House where the start was made. Her trip,
Speaker 1: she says, was made upon a wager she was to
Speaker 1: receive ten thousand dollars if she finished the journey in
Speaker 1: fifteen months, and she feels proud of the record she
Speaker 1: has made. On Thursday, September twelve, the journey came to
Speaker 1: an end in Chicago, fourteen days ahead of the time allowed.
Speaker 1: In addition to the purse of ten thousand dollars, which
Speaker 1: she says was handed over by the parties making the wager,
Speaker 1: Miss Londonderry also accumulated five thousand dollars from lectures given
Speaker 1: in the several countries and also by participating in exhibitions
Speaker 1: of bicycle riding. This announcement was featured in The New
Speaker 1: York Times over an article collecting more general cycling news
Speaker 1: the day, including in the announcement that previous podcast subject
Speaker 1: Heavy Green, the richest woman in America, had also started
Speaker 1: riding a bicycle. So we've already said a lot of
Speaker 1: this is is FIBs on her part. Outright lies. So
Speaker 1: how much of Annie's story was true probably not much
Speaker 1: of it at all. Uh. In fact, it's entirely possible
Speaker 1: that even the wager that was supposed to have set
Speaker 1: this whole trip in motion never existed. The story of
Speaker 1: the wager between two men, the ten thousand prize to
Speaker 1: her if she accomplished this goal, and the five thousand
Speaker 1: dollar earnings requirement was one that Annie told everywhere she went,
Speaker 1: and it seemed to shift and grow and change along
Speaker 1: the way. At some stops she told people that she
Speaker 1: was forbidden, as part of this bet, from speaking any
Speaker 1: language but English, and in other places she claimed that
Speaker 1: she had to forego taking any work as a journalist,
Speaker 1: since that was already her profession, and that using that
Speaker 1: to make the five thousand dollar requirement would be considered cheating.
Speaker 1: The first appearance of the story in a newspaper was
Speaker 1: in February of eight nine four, with the headline that
Speaker 1: read a woman to rival Paul Jones. Paul Jones was
Speaker 1: a fake name adopted by a young man named E. C.
Speaker 1: Peiffer was someone who had claimed that just a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks earlier, that on a wager he would walk
Speaker 1: around the world in a year. That enterprise had already
Speaker 1: fallen apart and had been revealed as fake when this
Speaker 1: second story hit the news. The article in the Boston
Speaker 1: Daily Globe didn't mention Annie by name, but described a
Speaker 1: young woman who, like her, was in her twenties, worked
Speaker 1: for the papers, and was going to make a trip
Speaker 1: by bicycle around the world in fifteen months on a wager. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where because she did work
Speaker 1: in the newspaper industry, it's entirely possible that she finagled
Speaker 1: some connections to have this story place. The two businessmen
Speaker 1: that were allegedly backing this wager were never clearly identified.
Speaker 1: Sheep spat out a couple of names here and there,
Speaker 1: and sometimes names appeared in various a articles, but no
Speaker 1: one ever took responsibility for this huge bet, And even
Speaker 1: when the story was breaking and Annie was wildly popular,
Speaker 1: there were already articles that questioned the veracity of this
Speaker 1: whole thing. Still, Annie ignored all of this and carried
Speaker 1: on with her plan, although it seems like it was
Speaker 1: maybe a plan entirely her own and no one else
Speaker 1: was ever involved. She never, for example, gave any proof
Speaker 1: of receipt of that ten thousand dollar payment, she just
Speaker 1: stated to the press that she had received it in
Speaker 1: the payment had been made. Also, Annie Kopchovsky had been
Speaker 1: living a pretty mundane life at the time this whole
Speaker 1: thing started. With plenty of high profile members of the
Speaker 1: women's movement at hand in Boston at the time. It
Speaker 1: would have been really random for Annie, who wasn't particularly
Speaker 1: active in that movement in any sort of official capacity,
Speaker 1: to somehow find herself at the middle of this high
Speaker 1: stakes wager over the matter of women's equality. But all
Speaker 1: the various aspects of her story were really enticing to
Speaker 1: the press and to the readers. The wager, the additional
Speaker 1: earnings requirement, the time limit, and everything suggests that this
Speaker 1: was really very carefully crafted. In October, so after her
Speaker 1: trip was over, a story ran in the New York
Speaker 1: Sunday World detailing Annie's entire adventure, and the byeline read
Speaker 1: Nellie Blig Jr. Borrowing the name of the real journalist
Speaker 1: Nellie Bligh, who became famous for her asylum expos a
Speaker 1: Ten Days in a Madhouse in the eighteen eighties, and
Speaker 1: who also had taken a trip around the world, But
Speaker 1: in this case, Nellie Bly Jr. Was Annie, further stoking
Speaker 1: the fires of her own story. When Annie's trip around
Speaker 1: the world ended and the press about it died down,
Speaker 1: she settled into a less adventurous life again sort of.
Speaker 1: She had a brief foray in the fall of eighteen
Speaker 1: where she helped to capture a so called wild man
Speaker 1: who had been terrorizing the town of Royalston, Massachusetts. Her
Speaker 1: work on the case was, of course, very embellished in
Speaker 1: her own telling, and then she moved her family to
Speaker 1: New York, where she started writing under the nomda plume
Speaker 1: the New Woman for a while for the papers there.
Speaker 1: She and Max added to their family with another baby
Speaker 1: in eight but Annie had a hard time adjusting to
Speaker 1: her post travel life. She was most likely restless, and
Speaker 1: she was the frequent recipient of correspondents from friends and
Speaker 1: family who, believing that she had come into this great
Speaker 1: sum of money at the end of her journey, wanted
Speaker 1: financial help. Eventually, Annie left her family again for a while.
Speaker 1: She traveled to northern California to work as a saleswoman
Speaker 1: in a town called Yukaiah. The details of what led
Speaker 1: her there are pretty mysterious, but in the early nineteen
Speaker 1: hundreds she went back home to Max, and the family
Speaker 1: opened a retail clothing store in the Bronx. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: kind of settled into this retail life. After that. There
Speaker 1: was a fire in the nineteen twenties that destroyed the
Speaker 1: family business, so it really went on for quite some time.
Speaker 1: But even after that, soon Annie opened another retail business.
Speaker 1: This time she used the insurance money from that fire.
Speaker 1: But she also had a business partner. Uh. This was
Speaker 1: a gentleman whose name was Feldman, and apparently it was
Speaker 1: just a stranger that she had struck up a conversation
Speaker 1: with in a restaurant, and the two of them hit
Speaker 1: it off and decided to go into business together. Annie's husband,
Speaker 1: Max died in nineteen forty six. They've been married for
Speaker 1: fifty eight years. Annie continued on with life and work
Speaker 1: for the next year, and then she died after a
Speaker 1: stroke on November eleven nine. Even today, Annie's true motivations
Speaker 1: for what seemed like a stunt remain a matter of speculation.
Speaker 1: She does seem to have been interested in clothing reform
Speaker 1: for women, but as we said just a moment ago,
Speaker 1: she hadn't been active in the women's movement in general.
Speaker 1: Even taking into account her easier travels by boat and train,
Speaker 1: Traveling the world alone was a difficult undertaking, so she
Speaker 1: may have had myriad other reasons to go out into
Speaker 1: the world and leave her family. Be mind, it could
Speaker 1: have been just as simple as wanting to shake off
Speaker 1: her expected role of wife and mother and have an adventure,
Speaker 1: which she surely did, and some people still categorize her
Speaker 1: as you know, making this incredibly feminist move in doing so,
Speaker 1: even if this whole thing was a force in terms
Speaker 1: of setup, and there is no doubt that she was
Speaker 1: searching for notoriety and money as part of her drive
Speaker 1: in all of this. It is one of those things
Speaker 1: where unfortunately her correspondence does not survive, Like she was
Speaker 1: writing letters home, but none of it has been found.
Speaker 1: Any letters that she received on the road do not
Speaker 1: seem to have been maintained in any sort of way.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of elements of guesswork in
Speaker 1: terms of of what was really going on in her
Speaker 1: head during all of this. Oh Annie, Yeah, she's sort
Speaker 1: of a marvelous fiber um. It's a fun story, but
Speaker 1: only part of it happened, Very little of it actually happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, she went on a cruise around the world,
Speaker 1: which sounds pretty great, but yeah, she didn't. She didn't
Speaker 1: do all the things she claimed to do. There is
Speaker 1: you can find online, and there is a book written
Speaker 1: about her, which is written by I believe her What
Speaker 1: would be her Great Nephew, which is a pretty fabulous
Speaker 1: biography and and one of my primary sources for this.
Speaker 1: And you can see that photograph that she staged of
Speaker 1: being robbed five bandits, and there's the whole moment of like,
Speaker 1: here's this woman. There are two men holding her at gunpoint,
Speaker 1: like one has a shotgun, I think, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: who's taking the picture instead of helping you, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna take this photograph. This lady looks like she's in
Speaker 1: peril um but she's certainly she's a little bit of
Speaker 1: you know, a Baron Munchausen in that way in the
Speaker 1: in the film thing not related to the disease after
Speaker 1: or the syndrome. Rather, uh yeah, who wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: have a fun adventure. You don't have to fib about it.
Speaker 1: Cruise around the world sounds great. Um. I have listener
Speaker 1: mail that actually just came in while we were recording.
Speaker 1: But it's so perfectly dovetails on this that I thought
Speaker 1: we might as well use it. It's from our listener Jessica,
Speaker 1: and she says, how do you ladies just listen to
Speaker 1: your trans Atlantic cruising podcasts? See it ties In and
Speaker 1: Herd a mention of my current company, hot Bag. I
Speaker 1: hear we are still offering cruises specifically in Europe, but
Speaker 1: I work in the shipping cargo portion now called hapag Lloyd.
Speaker 1: I wanted to send a quick note and say thanks
Speaker 1: for making my drives to see clients always interesting and
Speaker 1: keep up the great work. Um. That was just too
Speaker 1: good in terms of fortuitous timing to have a company
Speaker 1: that we have talked about related to cruising on the
Speaker 1: show at the time when we were talking about Annie
Speaker 1: Steamer cruise around the world, and also by total coincidence
Speaker 1: at a time when many of the major I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's all of them at this point, but
Speaker 1: like all the major cruise lines operating from US ports
Speaker 1: have stopped and we will see when when we are
Speaker 1: back to cruising. If you would like to write to us,
Speaker 1: you can do so in History Podcast at I Heart
Speaker 1: radio dot com. You can also find us on social
Speaker 1: media as missed in History. If you'd like to subscribe
Speaker 1: to the podcast that sounds Grant, you can do that
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Speaker 1: Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more
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