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 Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. It's time
Speaker 1: for us six Impossible Episodes. If you are new to
Speaker 1: the show. Every once in a while, we do an
Speaker 1: episode where we cover six topics that, for one reason
Speaker 1: or another, we can't really do in a full length episode.
Speaker 1: This ums to happen about every six months. But I
Speaker 1: just didn't have six things it's conveniently as simpled um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes this is because there's not enough information for a
Speaker 1: whole episode for a particular topic, or maybe because taken together,
Speaker 1: all the topics as a group kind of tell a story.
Speaker 1: We've done a few of these in which the subjects
Speaker 1: are just so similar to other episodes that we've already
Speaker 1: done that it almost feels like historical deja vu. So
Speaker 1: there's lots of different reasons that we go with this format.
Speaker 1: Some times we are calling today's episode six Impossible Episodes.
Speaker 1: There's a book about that, because these are episodes that
Speaker 1: we would love to do as a full length episode.
Speaker 1: And in some cases we've gotten listener requests and sometimes
Speaker 1: a lot of listener requests, but there's a book, like
Speaker 1: one book that is so central to the subject that
Speaker 1: the book is really the place to go for the
Speaker 1: information rather than our podcast. Yeah, Tracy and I have
Speaker 1: talked about these before, and it's like, at that point,
Speaker 1: aren't we just doing a book report? Yeah? Yeah, uh So,
Speaker 1: first we're going to kick off with William Dorsey Swan
Speaker 1: and before we get to the topic that inspired today's episode,
Speaker 1: we also wanted to quickly recap how we research and
Speaker 1: write the show. Typically, we record two episodes a week,
Speaker 1: with each of us researching and writing one of them.
Speaker 1: Our research processes are similar, but not identical. We have
Speaker 1: each figured out what works best for us over the years,
Speaker 1: and it's a little different for Tracy versus me. But
Speaker 1: regardless of which of us is researching or what topic
Speaker 1: we're doing, we are drawing in information from multiple sources
Speaker 1: and we're synthesizing that into an outline that we have
Speaker 1: written ourselves. So even if there's one source that's doing
Speaker 1: some heavy lifting in that process, there are also lots
Speaker 1: of other ones that we're using to fill in gaps
Speaker 1: and confirm details and provide multiple perspectives on the subject.
Speaker 1: But for the topics that we're talking about today. As
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, there's just really one book that would
Speaker 1: provide almost all of the end depth research. The basics
Speaker 1: might be out there in the world through multiple sources,
Speaker 1: but not the deeper details. So either the author did
Speaker 1: all the research to write the first ever book on
Speaker 1: a subject, or maybe they translated a work into English
Speaker 1: for the first time, or like did some analysis that's
Speaker 1: just become an irreplaceable part of our understanding of the topic.
Speaker 1: Number One, those authors and historians really deserve the focus
Speaker 1: and the credit for having done all of that work,
Speaker 1: because if you are the one person researching a book,
Speaker 1: you're doing so much footwork, uh, if it is not
Speaker 1: previously established research. And number two, if we try to
Speaker 1: just summarize that one work into an episode, well, as
Speaker 1: we just said, that's that's a book report, or that's
Speaker 1: the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is that
Speaker 1: it kind of verges on plagiarism in some cases. Um
Speaker 1: trying to distill a unique original work down to a
Speaker 1: thirty or forty minute episode, it just feels a little
Speaker 1: bit incongruous with what our processes and kind of our
Speaker 1: our mission for the show. Yes. Sometimes when we say
Speaker 1: that to folks, they say, we'll just have the author on.
Speaker 1: We do have authors and historians on the show to
Speaker 1: talk about their books, but most of the time those
Speaker 1: books are newly released, and so they're coming onto the
Speaker 1: show as part of their publicity work for the book.
Speaker 1: Usually we have either met the author before, or we've
Speaker 1: gotten some kind of publicity email from the publisher, or
Speaker 1: maybe we have a contact with the publisher that we
Speaker 1: can ask. Um. I'm not saying it's impossible to get
Speaker 1: an author on the show without any of that, but
Speaker 1: I have for sure gone down some real and very
Speaker 1: unsuccessful rabbit holes trying to track folks down. This is
Speaker 1: not a solicitation for advice on how to do it. Here.
Speaker 1: If you're about to say, why don't you just tweet
Speaker 1: at them, well, that's the thing that we've tried before
Speaker 1: hasn't necessarily worked out. Yeah, I promise we do know
Speaker 1: how to reach out to people. Sometimes it is not fruitful. Um.
Speaker 1: And this brings us to the topic that inspired today's episode,
Speaker 1: which is actually a forthcoming book, but it's one that
Speaker 1: we have gotten so many requests for over the last
Speaker 1: few months. Thanks to some post that have gone viral,
Speaker 1: and as I mentioned earlier, it is William Dorsey Swan.
Speaker 1: So fifteen years ago Channing Gerard Joseph was taking a
Speaker 1: class in investigative reporting at Columbia University and stumbled over
Speaker 1: the name William Dorsey Swan in an old Washington Post
Speaker 1: article when we say old. This article was dated April
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight, and the headline read quote negro dive
Speaker 1: rated thirteen black men dressed as women surprised at supper
Speaker 1: and arrested. William Dorsey Swan, who called himself a queen
Speaker 1: of drag and was known as just the Queen, was
Speaker 1: among them. Joseph wrote an article about Swan that was
Speaker 1: published in the Nation in January of which seems to
Speaker 1: have been the information source for various viral posts that
Speaker 1: have circulated since then, catching listeners attention and leading to
Speaker 1: a lot of episode requests. And yes, Swan absolutely seems
Speaker 1: up our alley. He sounds fascinating. He was enslaved from
Speaker 1: birth and then went on to be a huge part
Speaker 1: of the drag scene in Washington, d C. After the
Speaker 1: US Civil War, he tried to get a pardon from
Speaker 1: President Grover Cleveland in the first documented legal action to
Speaker 1: protect lgbt Q rights in the United States. SWA story
Speaker 1: really touches on so many things, including the history of
Speaker 1: drag balls, gender, race, cross dressing, and trans history. But
Speaker 1: the book does not exist yet. Once it does, we
Speaker 1: are hoping folks go to read it. We are for
Speaker 1: sure looking forward to doing that. That forthcoming book, based
Speaker 1: on Joseph's original research into William Dorsey Swan is titled
Speaker 1: House of Swan Where Slaves Became Queens And at present
Speaker 1: it is expected from Crown that's a subsidiary of Penguin
Speaker 1: Random House, UH, to publish in the US in one
Speaker 1: and from Piccadore that's McMillan in the UK. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would say it might. I don't know if it's optimistic
Speaker 1: or not that it will be out in I know
Speaker 1: the pandemic has totally shifted a lot of public publishing schedules.
Speaker 1: And I also know um that I have had this
Speaker 1: one particular book on my list to try to to
Speaker 1: get in touch with the author. Uh, and it's like
Speaker 1: noted in my little list, And it originally said forthcoming
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, and then it said forthcoming in and
Speaker 1: now it's hiss forth coming in, so book deadlines and
Speaker 1: timelines can shift around sometimes. Just so folks know we've
Speaker 1: gotten so many requests about him. Yes, he does sound
Speaker 1: completely fascinating um and hopefully in the future a book
Speaker 1: to read. Next up is the one topic that we're
Speaker 1: talking about today that I don't actually think we have
Speaker 1: gotten a specific requests from listeners about, and this is
Speaker 1: Ethiopian st well a lot of petros So, as we
Speaker 1: talked about in our episode on the rock hewn churches
Speaker 1: of Lollibella, Christianity was established and what's now Ethiopia during
Speaker 1: the time of the Oxymite Empire. Christianity was really widely
Speaker 1: practiced there by about the sixth century, and this was
Speaker 1: a lot earlier than Christianity was established in many other
Speaker 1: parts of Africa for centuries. People living in the Horn
Speaker 1: of Africa also didn't have that much content act with
Speaker 1: other Christian communities, So the Orthodox Christianity that developed there
Speaker 1: was unique in a lot of ways, with beliefs and
Speaker 1: practices that could be more similar to Judaism than to
Speaker 1: what would become the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches.
Speaker 1: But in the sixteen hundreds, Ethiopian Emperor Lebna Danel asked
Speaker 1: Portugal for help in fighting off an invasion. In the aftermath,
Speaker 1: Portuguese Jesuits arrived and started trying to convert Ethiopian Orthodox
Speaker 1: Christians to Roman Catholicism. And that brings us back to
Speaker 1: Aletta Petros Well. A lot of Petros lived in Ethiopia
Speaker 1: in the early seventeenth century and was married to one
Speaker 1: of the emperor's counselors. All three of their children died
Speaker 1: in their infancy, and while a lot of Petro's decided
Speaker 1: to become a nun, she sort of felt like she
Speaker 1: was she was done with the more material world after
Speaker 1: all that. After the king was convinced to make Roman
Speaker 1: Catholicism the state religion, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Toahadow Church
Speaker 1: was banned. She's are did a nonviolent resistance movement, even
Speaker 1: as the king exiled her and threatened to kill her family.
Speaker 1: She also founded her own religious community and developed a
Speaker 1: reputation for being a very skilled preacher. This also touches
Speaker 1: on so many things that we love. This is the
Speaker 1: earliest known book length biography of an African woman, and
Speaker 1: it's one of the earliest written documents detailing African resistance
Speaker 1: against European influence. It also details will Letta Petro's lifelong
Speaker 1: partnership with another woman that was another nun named ahead
Speaker 1: of Christos. It's one of only a few hagiographies of
Speaker 1: Ethiopian women's saints, and it is a huge source of
Speaker 1: information just about what daily life was like in seventeenth
Speaker 1: century Ethiopia. So the book about her is the life
Speaker 1: and struggles of our mother a lot of Petros, and
Speaker 1: it was written by a disciple in sixteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: that was about thirty years after her death. Often something
Speaker 1: that old is something we would just refer to about
Speaker 1: a lot of uh concerns, because you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a classic document in the public domain. But this
Speaker 1: was translated into English for the first time ever by
Speaker 1: Wendy Laura Belcher and Michael Kleiner. Belcher is a professor
Speaker 1: of comparative early Modern African and European literatures and grew
Speaker 1: up in Ethiopia and Ghana, and Kleiner is a translator
Speaker 1: who specializes in, among other things, Yeaz, which is the
Speaker 1: language that this work was originally written in. This translation
Speaker 1: earned multiple awards, including the Best Scholarly Edition in translation
Speaker 1: from the Society for Early Modern Women. It is also
Speaker 1: fairly long. It's more than five hundred pages for the
Speaker 1: full version, although there's also a concise edition that is
Speaker 1: just over a hundred and sixty pages. Let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break before we get to a particularly popular one
Speaker 1: of these. Now, next up, we have another very frequent
Speaker 1: listener request. I would say this is one of the
Speaker 1: topics we have gotten almost the largest number of requests
Speaker 1: for over the years. Yeah, if I were placing bets,
Speaker 1: I would say this has the most requests. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: definitely in the top five, if not the most. And
Speaker 1: this is also something that we alluded to in our
Speaker 1: listener Q and a episode that we did earlier this summer.
Speaker 1: It is Henrietta Lacks. And we've gotten so many requests
Speaker 1: to talk about Henrietta Lax over the years, and we
Speaker 1: haven't for two reasons. One is that a big part
Speaker 1: of her story is that her body and her privacy
Speaker 1: were violated without her consent, and in some ways, are
Speaker 1: doing an episode on her felt like a continuation of
Speaker 1: that invasion. That is compounded by our second reason, we
Speaker 1: would really just be distilling down a book by someone
Speaker 1: who actually did work with the Lax family. That is.
Speaker 1: Rebecca Sclute, author of the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,
Speaker 1: spent years researching Henrietta LAX's story in her life and
Speaker 1: the impact of her cells on medical science, as well
Speaker 1: as earning the trust of the Lax family before publishing
Speaker 1: the book, and in her acknowledgements, Scalout describes Henrietta's daughter
Speaker 1: Deborah as the soul of the book and her thanks
Speaker 1: to the other Lax family members and friends. It goes
Speaker 1: on for paragraphs after that. So here are the basics.
Speaker 1: Henrietta Lax was a black woman who was diagnosed with
Speaker 1: cervical cancer in nineteen fifty one. She had five children.
Speaker 1: The family was poor. They were working as tobacco farmers
Speaker 1: in Virginia. Lax was treated at Johns Hopkins, which was
Speaker 1: a segregated hospital at the time, but also one of
Speaker 1: the very few leading hospitals that actually treated black patients.
Speaker 1: Lax died less than a year after being diagnosed, on
Speaker 1: October fourth, ninety one, at the age of just thirty one.
Speaker 1: While Lax was being treated, a doctor named George Gay
Speaker 1: collected cells from her cervix. He did not tell her
Speaker 1: he was doing this, he did not ask her permission.
Speaker 1: This really wasn't unusual at the time, since the ideas
Speaker 1: of informed consent and patient privacy didn't really exist in
Speaker 1: the same way that they do today. What was really
Speaker 1: unusual where the cells themselves. At that point, researchers had
Speaker 1: not been able to keep cells alive outside the human
Speaker 1: body for very long, but the cells from LAX's body
Speaker 1: kept on living and multiplying. They doubled almost every twenty
Speaker 1: four hours. This was the first immortal cell line ever
Speaker 1: to be discovered. They were named HeLa cells, after the
Speaker 1: first letters of Henrietta LAX's first and last name. These
Speaker 1: cells became a fundamental part of medical and pharmaceutical research.
Speaker 1: The polio vaccine was developed using HeLa cells, so were
Speaker 1: drugs to treat leukemia, Parkinson's disease, and influenza. Researchers used
Speaker 1: HeLa cells to isolate the human immuno deficiency virus. In
Speaker 1: the early years of the space program, they were into
Speaker 1: orbit to study the effects of low gravity. They have
Speaker 1: also been used to study the effects of radiation and poisons.
Speaker 1: More than seventy thousand published studies have relied on HeLa cells,
Speaker 1: and at least two Nobel Prizes have been awarded to
Speaker 1: research that used them. This list goes on and on
Speaker 1: and on. Johns Hopkins offered these cells to other researchers
Speaker 1: and institutions freely. It didn't make money from them, but
Speaker 1: that is not true of the companies that used them
Speaker 1: to develop things like pharmaceuticals. As Debra Lax clearly spells
Speaker 1: out Insclutes book, HeLa cells were part of all this research,
Speaker 1: and some companies turned huge profits from their use, and
Speaker 1: yet members of the Lax family couldn't afford to see
Speaker 1: a doctor. Henrietta LAX's story is a lot better known
Speaker 1: now than it was when we first made the decision
Speaker 1: to direct listeners to Rebecca Sclutes book rather than do
Speaker 1: an episode ourselves in the interim. There was even an
Speaker 1: HBO movie about it that came out in Since the
Speaker 1: publication of the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Johns Hopkins
Speaker 1: and other hospitals and organizations have also started to take
Speaker 1: a more critical look at issues involving racism, medical ethics,
Speaker 1: and informed consent, and that is work that is definitely
Speaker 1: still ongoing. Henrietta Lacks's descendants have also talked about how
Speaker 1: they want people to know about her story and about
Speaker 1: how much her cells have contributed to medical science. So
Speaker 1: talking about her on the show feels like way less
Speaker 1: of an invasion of her privacy now than it did
Speaker 1: back when we first made that call. But Rebecca sclutes groundbreaking, original,
Speaker 1: and deeply influential work continues to be the best source
Speaker 1: for all of this. I know a lot of people
Speaker 1: who love to listen to podcasts want to listen to
Speaker 1: other things and audio format, and this is also available
Speaker 1: as an audiobook. Also, this year is the hundredth anniversary
Speaker 1: of Henrietta A. LAX's birth and there is a year
Speaker 1: long centennial seller ration ongoing. You can find more at
Speaker 1: HELO one hundred dot org. That is h E. L
Speaker 1: A one hundred zero zero dot org. Okay, moving on.
Speaker 1: Martha Moore was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, in seventeen thirty five.
Speaker 1: When she was about nineteen, she married from Ballard. Later
Speaker 1: they moved to Hollowell, Maine, where Martha Ballard became a midwife.
Speaker 1: On January one, five, when she was fifty, Ballard started
Speaker 1: keeping a diary of her daily life and work. That
Speaker 1: was something that she kept up for the next twenty
Speaker 1: seven years, ending on May twelve, eighteen twelve, and that
Speaker 1: diary ended up totaling up with ten thousand entries. We've
Speaker 1: talked about other diaries on the show, like the ones
Speaker 1: kept by Anne Lister and Samuel Peeps, and how they
Speaker 1: give us a look not only at the diarist, but
Speaker 1: also at the time and place that they were living,
Speaker 1: and this is true for Ballard's diary too. It details
Speaker 1: her work as a midwife and a healer. She documented
Speaker 1: more than eight hundred birth she attended over those twenty
Speaker 1: seven years. She also documents what life was like in
Speaker 1: the Keunebec River Valley region in the late eighteenth and
Speaker 1: early nineteenth centuries. So this diary is a unique and
Speaker 1: important document. It's full of information about the medicine and
Speaker 1: midwiffery at the time, written in an era when many
Speaker 1: white women could read at least a little, but often
Speaker 1: could not write at all. It also includes a wealth
Speaker 1: of information about people who are never mentioned in a
Speaker 1: lot of other primary sources, including tax and census records
Speaker 1: that would typically be used for that kind of information.
Speaker 1: Ballard kept her diary in this collection of little booklets
Speaker 1: that she made herself, and then those booklets were passed
Speaker 1: down through her family, ultimately being given to great great
Speaker 1: granddaughter Mary Hobart. Hobart was a doctor and she was
Speaker 1: given these diaries as a gift when she graduated from
Speaker 1: medical school. Hobart put them together in order. They had
Speaker 1: been sort of in disarray, not really chronological anymore, so
Speaker 1: she put them in order and bound them together in
Speaker 1: this handmade linen cover and then donated that to the
Speaker 1: main State Library in n There are a few ways
Speaker 1: to get a look at Martha Ballard's diary today. One
Speaker 1: is the website do history dot org, which has a browsable,
Speaker 1: searchable scan of the document. As is the case with
Speaker 1: most historical diaries, it's tricky to read, both because of
Speaker 1: Ballard's handwriting, which is rather cramped, and because her system
Speaker 1: of abbreviations and marks for keeping up with midwiffery work.
Speaker 1: And she also had phonetic spellings for words, so it's
Speaker 1: not a natural flowing read for your casual researcher. I
Speaker 1: often have a really challenging time deciphering handwritten documents from
Speaker 1: long in the past, or even my own handwritten documents
Speaker 1: from yesterday. Fortunately, do history dot org also includes text
Speaker 1: transcriptions of the scanned pages of handwritten diary. These were
Speaker 1: done i husband and wife team, Robert R. Mccosland and
Speaker 1: Cynthia mcalmond mccosland. They spent about ten years on this project.
Speaker 1: There is a print version of their transcription that is
Speaker 1: almost a thousand pages long. It seems to be out
Speaker 1: of print now, but it's still available in a lot
Speaker 1: of libraries, particularly university libraries. The third is the reason
Speaker 1: Martha Ballard is in the category of there's a book
Speaker 1: about it. It's a Midwife's Tale, the Life of Martha Ballard,
Speaker 1: based on her diary, which was written by Laurel Thatcher
Speaker 1: all Rich. That name sounds familiar. It maybe because we
Speaker 1: mentioned her in our episode about the women of Gettysburg,
Speaker 1: which we titled Fearless, Feisty and unflagging. All Rich as
Speaker 1: a person who coined the phrase well behaved women seldom
Speaker 1: make history. She also wrote the introduction to the mccaslin's
Speaker 1: transcription of the diary. In a Midwife's Tale, she follows
Speaker 1: selections from the diary with context and analysis. There are
Speaker 1: these brief notes about your Ballard went and who she
Speaker 1: saw on a particular day become a narrative about her life,
Speaker 1: along with just a wealth of context about gender, medicine, religion,
Speaker 1: domestic life, and crime, including a mass murder and a
Speaker 1: trial for rape. This is rich and fascinating, and it
Speaker 1: earned All Rich the Pulitzer Prize in History in and
Speaker 1: it is also an audio book, and it was made
Speaker 1: into a PBS American Experience film called A Midwife's Tale
Speaker 1: in that doesn't seem to be streaming anywhere at the moment,
Speaker 1: but it is available on DVD. And now we're going
Speaker 1: to take another quick sponsor break. Over the past year
Speaker 1: or so, I have tried several times to figure out
Speaker 1: how to approach an episode on Trauta of Salerno or
Speaker 1: the Trotula, which is a medieval compendium on women's medicine
Speaker 1: and cosmetics. A lot of sources conflate Trata and the Trotula,
Speaker 1: creating this impression that the compendium is the work of
Speaker 1: only one author who was either named Trata or Trachula. Well,
Speaker 1: of course it's gotta be the same thing that there
Speaker 1: are no duplicate words in history. Um. But the reality
Speaker 1: is that the Trotula is really a compilation of three
Speaker 1: texts by three different people, one of them being an
Speaker 1: Italian medical practitioner known as Trata or Tracta. These three
Speaker 1: separate works were copied, revised, and shuffled around over centuries
Speaker 1: until an editor rearranged them into one volume in four
Speaker 1: and that addition became the dominant version for the next
Speaker 1: four hundred years. But the manuscripts really date back to
Speaker 1: about the twelfth century. I kept running into trouble with
Speaker 1: this research because there's just virtually no biographical information that
Speaker 1: has survived about Trata, and the wide spread had trot
Speaker 1: to slash Trachola confusion just through a ranch into my
Speaker 1: research process. Every time I found a document that seemed
Speaker 1: promising that then made it seem like those were the
Speaker 1: same thing, I was like, well, now I don't trust
Speaker 1: this at all, um. And then also as I kept
Speaker 1: picking away at it, I realized that the sources that
Speaker 1: were the clearest about this distinction between the person and
Speaker 1: the work we're all by the same author. Dr Monica H. Green.
Speaker 1: It's not unusual for us to use more than one
Speaker 1: article or book by the same historian as research for
Speaker 1: an episode of our show, but in this case, it
Speaker 1: would feel like the entire source list was stuff by
Speaker 1: Dr Green. Dr Green has been working with the Trachella
Speaker 1: for many years, including separating out those three different manuscripts.
Speaker 1: Those are on the Condition of Women, On the Treatments
Speaker 1: for Women, and on Women's Cosmetics and Dr Green determined
Speaker 1: that On Treatments for Women was by a real historical
Speaker 1: woman named Trata, and this brings up something really cool
Speaker 1: about the Trotula. It's likely that the other two works
Speaker 1: were written by men whose names have been lost, so
Speaker 1: a woman was ultimately the one credited for this work.
Speaker 1: It so often goes the opposite way. In addition to
Speaker 1: publishing numerous papers and articles about this subject, Green has
Speaker 1: also edited and translated an addition of the Trachula that
Speaker 1: came out in two thousand one, and that includes an introduction,
Speaker 1: the Latin text and an English translation, and then an
Speaker 1: appendix that details all the medicines that are referenced in
Speaker 1: the text. This is the first English translation of the
Speaker 1: work that has used medieval texts as the starting point
Speaker 1: rather than later versions. In the words of the Medieval
Speaker 1: Review quote, this is the definitive Trochula, a new edition
Speaker 1: of which will not be necessary. This book will be
Speaker 1: useful to history of medicine of women's studies of medieval
Speaker 1: culture and of southern Italy, and to graduate and even
Speaker 1: undergraduate students interested in grappling with the actual practice of
Speaker 1: medieval medicine. I really feel like that's the most glowing
Speaker 1: review of any historical source I have read in seven
Speaker 1: years of working on this podcast. Also, if all of
Speaker 1: that talk about different versions seemed a little confusing, it's
Speaker 1: enough of a tangle, but it's actually broken down in
Speaker 1: Green's edition of The Trocolo with a chart. There are
Speaker 1: so many different versions. So this last thing that we're
Speaker 1: going to touch on has a lot going on. There
Speaker 1: is a gruesome mass murder, suicide, possible incests, so we
Speaker 1: have left it for last. If that is not folks bag.
Speaker 1: If any of that sounds like you're just not down
Speaker 1: for it, now is your time to say you have
Speaker 1: learned about five things and go up um. In Germanton,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, on Christmas Day nine twenty nine, a tobacco
Speaker 1: farmer named Charlie Lawson killed his wife and six of
Speaker 1: their seven children. The seventh child, His oldest son, Arthur,
Speaker 1: had left home on an errand, and he was the
Speaker 1: only member of the family to survive. Sometime after killing
Speaker 1: the rest of his family, But before Arthur had gotten back,
Speaker 1: Charlie Lawson took his own life in the woods outside
Speaker 1: their home, and by that point other people had already
Speaker 1: stopped by the house to wish the family married Christmas,
Speaker 1: and they had discovered the crime. They actually heard Lawson's
Speaker 1: final shot in the distance while they were there. The
Speaker 1: crime scene itself was bizarre, with the exception of the
Speaker 1: youngest children. Lawson had shot and then bludgeoned each member
Speaker 1: of the family. The youngest three, including the baby, he
Speaker 1: bludgeoned to death, and then he had arranged their bodies.
Speaker 1: For his wife and the children that Lawson killed inside
Speaker 1: the house, he put their heads on pillows from their beds,
Speaker 1: folded their arms over their chests, and closed their eyes.
Speaker 1: For the two daughters that he killed while they were
Speaker 1: outside near the tobacco barn, he arranged their bodies but
Speaker 1: used rocks in place of pillows. When Charlie Lawson's body
Speaker 1: was found, there were two notes in a pocket written
Speaker 1: on receipts, neither of which contained a complete sentence. After
Speaker 1: all of this, Lawson's brother Marion turned the home into
Speaker 1: kind of a tourist attraction, which sounds a little callous,
Speaker 1: but huge crowds were flocking to the crime scene anyway.
Speaker 1: They were doing things like picking the raisins off the
Speaker 1: cake that the oldest daughter, Marie, had made that day
Speaker 1: for their Christmas treat, So Marian Lawson was basically trying
Speaker 1: to keep things under some kind of control and also
Speaker 1: provide an income for Arthur Lawson so that he didn't
Speaker 1: lose the family farm. The crime also became the subject
Speaker 1: of a murder ballad called Murder of the Lawson Family. So,
Speaker 1: of course there are questions that are natural. Why did
Speaker 1: Lawson murder his family? Why did he so carefully arrange
Speaker 1: their bodies? Why did he wait until his son, Arthur
Speaker 1: was away from home to carry out this crime. Was
Speaker 1: it just because Arthur and the friend he was with
Speaker 1: that day were big enough to try to stop him,
Speaker 1: or did Charlie have some other reason that he wanted
Speaker 1: his son to survive? And why had the whole family
Speaker 1: gone into Winston Salem a couple of weeks before that
Speaker 1: to buy all new store bought clothes and have their
Speaker 1: portrait taken. That would have been a huge and unusual
Speaker 1: expense for a poor farming family at the start of
Speaker 1: the Great depression, so we don't really have answers to
Speaker 1: any of that, but there is a lot of speculation.
Speaker 1: One is that Charlie Lawson wasn't actually the culprit, that
Speaker 1: he had witnessed some other crime, and that perpetrator had
Speaker 1: then killed them all in retaliation. Another theory blames a
Speaker 1: head injury that Charlie Lawson had experienced some time before,
Speaker 1: which reportedly caused severe headaches and changes to his behavior.
Speaker 1: And the last theory was first publicized in the book
Speaker 1: about this that is White Christmas, Bloody Christmas, written by M.
Speaker 1: Bruce Jones and True D. J. Smiths. In nine just
Speaker 1: before the book was going to print, Stella Lawson Bowles,
Speaker 1: Marian Lawson's daughter, contacted the authors and told them that
Speaker 1: she had heard rumors that seventeen year old Marie was
Speaker 1: pregnant at the time of the murders and that the
Speaker 1: baby was her father's. So in terms of this book, M.
Speaker 1: Bruce Jones and Trudy J. Smith were father and daughter.
Speaker 1: Jones had a lifelong fascination with this crime. He was
Speaker 1: a child living in the area when it happened, and
Speaker 1: he had compiled a wealth of research over his lifetime.
Speaker 1: The two of them collaborated on the book, which they
Speaker 1: self published in nine It is really hard to find now,
Speaker 1: although there's a twenty five anniversary hardcover that came out
Speaker 1: in Smith also published a follow up called The Meaning
Speaker 1: of Our Tears, which is available as an e book.
Speaker 1: The Meaning of Our Tears isn't focused only on this
Speaker 1: crime and it's aftermath um. It's also focused on the
Speaker 1: years of hardship and grief that this family had lived
Speaker 1: through in the years before the murders. It's like halfway
Speaker 1: into the book when the murders actually happened. This particular
Speaker 1: instance is also an example of how other podcasts with
Speaker 1: different styles and resources can approach material that probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: work as well for us. These murders are, for example,
Speaker 1: covered in an episode of the podcast Criminal, hosted by
Speaker 1: Phoebe Judge, and the Criminal team goes on the road
Speaker 1: and interviews people who have some kind of connection to
Speaker 1: a crime, whether they're the perpetrators, the victims, or the investigators,
Speaker 1: and they describe it as quote stories of people who
Speaker 1: have done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in
Speaker 1: the middle. So in this case, they actually went to
Speaker 1: Stokes County, North Carolina, and they talked directly to local
Speaker 1: residents and to Trudy Smith. They weren't talking to people
Speaker 1: who knew Charlie Lawson or his victims personally, but to
Speaker 1: people who have some kind of connection to this story.
Speaker 1: All of this comes together in Criminal episode number twenty five,
Speaker 1: which is called The Portrait. There is also a limited
Speaker 1: series podcast from w g HP Fox eight in high Point,
Speaker 1: North Carolina that tells the story, including archival interviews with
Speaker 1: relatives and others with more firsthand knowledge, that is called
Speaker 1: Deadly Secrets, The Laws and Family Murder. In both cases,
Speaker 1: they went out and did legwork and talked directly to people,
Speaker 1: where we would be just summarizing someone else's book. Yes,
Speaker 1: since our show is not a show where we go
Speaker 1: out and do field work. UM, something like that is
Speaker 1: just not really accessible when everything is speculative. As awesome
Speaker 1: as it would be to go out and do field work,
Speaker 1: it is not something that's conducive to a show that
Speaker 1: puts out two new episodes a week every week. It
Speaker 1: takes more time than is is existing for our episodes.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that is six things, five of which we've
Speaker 1: gotten lots of our us for uh, where a book
Speaker 1: is just the number one place to go to learn
Speaker 1: more about that. Do you have listener mail, Tracy? I
Speaker 1: knew it is from Katie, and Katie says, Hello, Holly
Speaker 1: and Tracy. I'm one of those wacky people who listened
Speaker 1: to the whole archive from the beginning, and I'm finally
Speaker 1: caught up on the latest podcast. I'm almost sad that
Speaker 1: I don't have a ton of new episodes waiting for
Speaker 1: me to jump into. I wanted to thank you for
Speaker 1: making such a great podcast. I so admire your commitment
Speaker 1: to kindness and justice and how will you research each subject?
Speaker 1: I've learned so much from you guys, and laughed and
Speaker 1: grab my teeth the log with you and all the
Speaker 1: things we've covered. I have a question and then a
Speaker 1: podcast recommendation and some possible pandemic reading. The question is
Speaker 1: who is the person on the cover art? Is it
Speaker 1: a historical painting or drawing or done by someone connected
Speaker 1: to stuff you miss the history class. I've been wondering
Speaker 1: this for months. I feel so happy when I see
Speaker 1: this French question mark face pop up on my phone.
Speaker 1: Um my podcast recommendation for your extremely long recommendations list
Speaker 1: is Thomas Downing Um, I'm gonna go right Thomas Downing
Speaker 1: on the list, which is very long. Uh, and so
Speaker 1: I'm going to skip ahead to the synopsis of some
Speaker 1: Thomas Downing stuff. And then Katie goes on to say,
Speaker 1: this is a throwback, but when you talked about Lolli
Speaker 1: Bellah in the history of Ethiopian Christianity, I remembered a
Speaker 1: history rabbit hole I fell down a while back. The
Speaker 1: Sign and the Seal is a very interesting, if slightly
Speaker 1: wild book on the ark of the Covenant and the
Speaker 1: Ethiopian tradition of it traveling to Lake Tana. It's by
Speaker 1: Graham Hancock, who eventually went completely off the rails, but
Speaker 1: during this time I think he was doing some pretty interesting,
Speaker 1: if slightly dubious work. To be clear, I don't mean
Speaker 1: that the tradition itself is dubious. I'm in no position
Speaker 1: to judge another culture, but it definitely has been incorporated
Speaker 1: into some wild Holy Grail type stuff. I read it
Speaker 1: several years ago, so I can't remember many details beyond
Speaker 1: it being a fascinating ride. If you're looking for some
Speaker 1: pandemic reading about important traditions conducted by a pretty eccentric
Speaker 1: and passionate white guy from out side the culture. I
Speaker 1: definitely recommend it. Thank you again, Holly and Tracy for
Speaker 1: all your great work, even when the podcast topics are difficult.
Speaker 1: I feel a level of comfort when I listened to
Speaker 1: you because of the respect, compassion, and intellect you bring.
Speaker 1: And then we can talk about cheese or something else
Speaker 1: delightful before you too long, Sincerely, Katie UM. I snagged
Speaker 1: this one in part because of the reference to Alabella
Speaker 1: and Ethiopian Christianity, which came up again on today's episode. UM.
Speaker 1: I have never read our possibly even heard of the
Speaker 1: book that Katie has mentioned, so I cannot speak to
Speaker 1: um its quality or anything like that, but I found
Speaker 1: the connection interesting. And to answer the question, who is
Speaker 1: a person on the cover art, it's Marie Antoinette as
Speaker 1: drawn from like a cameo jewelry piece that uh, somebody
Speaker 1: who worked with our show many years ago put together
Speaker 1: for us, almost a correct guest with French yes, technically Austria, right. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We were trying to come up with a new logo
Speaker 1: at that time, and we wanted something that suggested history
Speaker 1: and suggested, uh, some of the things that we talked
Speaker 1: about on the show like, for example, including women, but
Speaker 1: we also wanted one that didn't feel like we were
Speaker 1: appropriating something just for the sake of making a podcast logo,
Speaker 1: and Marie Antoinette seemed to fit that bill. Plus, as
Speaker 1: we've talked about, I think we both enjoy reading, slash
Speaker 1: learning and talking about various things related to Marie Antoinette.
Speaker 1: So thank you again, Katie for that email. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to write to us about this anither podcast, we're
Speaker 1: at History Podcast at i heart radio dot com, and
Speaker 1: we're all over social media at Missed in History. You
Speaker 1: can also subscribe to our show on Apple podcast and
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, and anywhere else you like
Speaker 1: to get podcasts. M Stuff You Missed in History Class
Speaker 1: is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: H