Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Uh. We talked about
Speaker 1: Charles chapin All Week, Get Accidental two Part Part two Accidental. Yes,
Speaker 1: sometimes it happens. He was one that I kept trying
Speaker 1: to pare down his story, but there's too much stuff well,
Speaker 1: and so much of it, like so many of the
Speaker 1: news stories that came up in the episodes. We have
Speaker 1: episodes of the podcast on just over and over and over.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, I mean it's um. It's interesting because
Speaker 1: in so many ways we talked about how bias he
Speaker 1: could be in his coverage at times, but in so
Speaker 1: many ways, what we know of huge historical events are
Speaker 1: because he published them. Like I immediately when I we
Speaker 1: were um, when we were talking about the Titanic and
Speaker 1: I was reading the story of him getting that and
Speaker 1: what that original press story was, like that is the
Speaker 1: one where all of the touchstone moments that we now
Speaker 1: come to see and that appeared in the Titanic movie,
Speaker 1: that is where they came from, Like the story of
Speaker 1: John Astor's wife, like refusing to go on the boats
Speaker 1: and they were going to stay together, like the band
Speaker 1: playing on the deck as the ship went down. That
Speaker 1: came from that new story, Like all of those things
Speaker 1: were in that first report that was on the docks
Speaker 1: when the survivors were coming off of the the ship
Speaker 1: that rescued them, which is just mind boggling. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: most of my thoughts about him are not positive because
Speaker 1: I mean, he clearly developed an importance, monumental career. A
Speaker 1: lot of his reporting that some of this is the
Speaker 1: standards at the time, right journalistic standards, and are late
Speaker 1: nineteenth early twentieth century, very different from what we expect now.
Speaker 1: But even with that in mind, some of the stuff
Speaker 1: he's doing is really unethical, Oh, completely super unethical. And
Speaker 1: then he made his own financial problems. I have empathy
Speaker 1: for the part where he made investments that fell through,
Speaker 1: Like that's that, that's unfortunately he then he was also
Speaker 1: buying yachts and horses and just living beyond his means.
Speaker 1: He made a financial problem himself and then decided his
Speaker 1: only way out of it was to murder his life.
Speaker 1: And I'm just like, I don't like you. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: what's really interesting, um, is that one of the biographies
Speaker 1: I read of him, which is called The Roseman of
Speaker 1: Sing Sing, and it's quite good. Oh, it's by James McGrath.
Speaker 1: Morris Um he mentioned that to him, to that writer one,
Speaker 1: he's an interesting case because he also, you know, had
Speaker 1: been a journalist, and so when he read Chapin's autobiography,
Speaker 1: his first instinct was to fact check it, and he
Speaker 1: was surprised by how much most of it was accurate. Um.
Speaker 1: The main problems were things like timeline, things that are
Speaker 1: pretty normal for someone working from memory, Like he said
Speaker 1: he worked in one job like X number of months
Speaker 1: and it was really a slightly different number, and things
Speaker 1: like that. But none of the real like meat and potatoes,
Speaker 1: was incorrect. But he mentioned it to him sort of
Speaker 1: the greatest tragedy is we don't really have a lot
Speaker 1: of information about Nellie. We don't know a lot about
Speaker 1: her childhood or her youth. She seems like she was
Speaker 1: not the least bit concerned about living a wealthy lifestyle.
Speaker 1: When he was like it's all falling apart, She's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's figure this out. It's gonna be fine. We'll be fine.
Speaker 1: And Chapin, by all accounts, really was very devoted to her,
Speaker 1: like he was very like he became a different person
Speaker 1: around her. The people that knew him from his newsroom persona,
Speaker 1: which was very hard nosed jerk ery, would be kind
Speaker 1: of amazed at how gentle he was and and loving
Speaker 1: with his wife. But I also think you see it
Speaker 1: play out in his subsequent relationships with his pen pound romances.
Speaker 1: He was a control freak, and Nelly never challenged that control,
Speaker 1: and so it was easy for him to dote on her,
Speaker 1: Whereas when he even perceived that anyone else was challenging
Speaker 1: that control, he would fly into like a complete fit
Speaker 1: of rage. And It's like, is that really love and devotion?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's not the healthiest flavor of it. No,
Speaker 1: he clearly also had some mental health stuff going on,
Speaker 1: absolutely from the beginning, from the beginning, like the some
Speaker 1: of the very earliest things that we talked about in
Speaker 1: his life, which I'm not saying that does not excuse
Speaker 1: then murdering his wife. I'm not saying that at all.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, like, clearly he had untreated stuff going on, yes, well,
Speaker 1: and he even was pretty cognizant of the fact that
Speaker 1: the way he ran his newsroom and the way he
Speaker 1: was as a boss was unhealthy for everyone. Like he
Speaker 1: kind of acknowledged that a lot of reporters died young
Speaker 1: and that it was probably because bosses like him worked
Speaker 1: them to the bone in incredibly stressful environments, and that
Speaker 1: was also playing out for him. I in a lighter tone,
Speaker 1: which is not to make light of any of this.
Speaker 1: I kept finding myself thinking the same thing about Shapen's
Speaker 1: world of journalism as I feel when I watched Star
Speaker 1: Wars about people who work for the Empire, which is,
Speaker 1: why would you want that job? But? Um, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: But I guess if you love it, you love it, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's and he loved it, um. One of the there's.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of interesting things about the way
Speaker 1: he viewed his job in news. One, he hated the
Speaker 1: word journalism. He thought it was like to fancy. He's like,
Speaker 1: I'm a newsman. I'm a newspaperman, that's all I am. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know to take that however, you will, um.
Speaker 1: But the other thing that was interesting was that he
Speaker 1: recognized that for most people at the time in journalism,
Speaker 1: that job being a reporter for a paper was kind
Speaker 1: of a stepping stone in a career to later become
Speaker 1: a lawyer, a politician, a railroad man. Whereas to him,
Speaker 1: he was like, no, for me, this is the destination,
Speaker 1: like this is all I want to do. Ever, which
Speaker 1: is interesting. He there are so many pieces that I
Speaker 1: didn't get to include in his story as long as
Speaker 1: it got Um. He actually did run into his father
Speaker 1: during that brief foray where he was working as a
Speaker 1: m a campaign manager for that Utah politician. He ran
Speaker 1: into his father in a jewelry shop, and he never
Speaker 1: told his family about it. Um, like just completely by accident,
Speaker 1: he ran into him, and it was one of those
Speaker 1: weird things. I feel like that relationship colored his opinions
Speaker 1: and feelings about a great many things, more than he
Speaker 1: ever really recognized. There is an interesting story that's a
Speaker 1: little more fun about what was going on between Hearst's
Speaker 1: papers and Pulitzer's papers when they were really like in
Speaker 1: the thick of their competition, which is that they were
Speaker 1: stealing stories from each other. As we mentioned, like literally
Speaker 1: a reporter would read papers, the story from one paper,
Speaker 1: kind of rewrite it as his own, and their paper
Speaker 1: would publish it. And at one point Hearst. One of
Speaker 1: his reporters, apparently under Hearst's orders, wrote this article about
Speaker 1: an event in which they quoted a witness named Colonel
Speaker 1: Reflip W. Sinus, And when Pulitzer's reporters regurgitated that entire thing,
Speaker 1: then Hurst was like, that's a made up person. It's
Speaker 1: an anagram of we pilfer the news. You're all idiots, um,
Speaker 1: which is an interesting way to catch somebody doing that,
Speaker 1: but shapen um. It's interesting reading his biography because he
Speaker 1: does seem so you know, during his time in prison,
Speaker 1: he comes off as such a gentle I don't know
Speaker 1: if sweet is the right word, but a very gentle,
Speaker 1: you know, like reformed person, and then you read how
Speaker 1: quickly he got angry at Constance Nelson for having done nothing,
Speaker 1: and he held that grudge for the rest of his life,
Speaker 1: like he would literally, you know, he had poured his
Speaker 1: heart out to this person and seemed so devoted and
Speaker 1: then it was like, well, you wronged me over and
Speaker 1: over and even later, as he had stopped really writing
Speaker 1: her regularly, he would occasionally write her these letters that
Speaker 1: were like you didn't even try to come and see me,
Speaker 1: and like these weird, just poisonous. That's why I'm like,
Speaker 1: you're a control freak. No thanks, no thanks. His prison
Speaker 1: set up sounds um pretty lovely by many accounts, like
Speaker 1: he was sent so much like food and groceries from
Speaker 1: wealthy friends that he had an assistant assigned to him
Speaker 1: to cook his own meals. Come on, now, right, Like
Speaker 1: that's not really serving time. It doesn't seem when everybody
Speaker 1: else is having to eat prison kitchen food. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: definitely seems like his treatment there was disparity between his
Speaker 1: treatment and everybody else for sure. Yeah, and we should
Speaker 1: know this is at a time when laws as a
Speaker 1: figure at Sing Sing is interesting because he was trying
Speaker 1: to really reform the criminal justice system and find ways
Speaker 1: that he could give the men who were incarcerated in
Speaker 1: his prison opportunities to like follow their desires, etcetera. In
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways. But clearly Chapin was treated
Speaker 1: like he was an equal to the people that were
Speaker 1: running the place in many ways, and that he did
Speaker 1: not have to live by the rule strange um he was.
Speaker 1: He was allowed to bring his own clothes, he didn't
Speaker 1: have to wear the prison uniform. Now, many many people
Speaker 1: that were incarcerated there had that option, but most of
Speaker 1: them did not have nice clothes to bring with them,
Speaker 1: whereas he was, like, you know, in his tailored shirts
Speaker 1: and ties. It's the weirdest thing. It's such a disparity
Speaker 1: and like a weird meant old break of how it
Speaker 1: all works. Let's get into one of those things of
Speaker 1: like not necessarily saying Chapin should have been subjected to
Speaker 1: the more dehumanizing thing, but now that everyone should have
Speaker 1: had access to the less dehumanizing thing, exactly like it
Speaker 1: just was. He was very clearly apart from the rest
Speaker 1: of the population there and allowed to you know, said
Speaker 1: he never did hard labor, even though that was part
Speaker 1: of his sentence. Here's a very interesting thing. After he died,
Speaker 1: of course, much of the press coverage of his death,
Speaker 1: once again written by reporters in the New York Journalism
Speaker 1: seen called out what a jerk he was, and how
Speaker 1: hard he was to work for and how he, you know,
Speaker 1: would fire people if someone in their family became terminally ill,
Speaker 1: because he was like, you're not gonna be able to
Speaker 1: do this job anymore. Get out, just really unkind horrible things.
Speaker 1: And Constance Nelson, his second prison Romance was so upset
Speaker 1: by this, and she's like, that's not the man I know,
Speaker 1: even though he had been really cruel to her. At
Speaker 1: the end, she wanted to publish all of his letters
Speaker 1: to her as a book, and it did get picked
Speaker 1: up and made into a book. Cooper also published a
Speaker 1: similar book because she wanted to show what a loving
Speaker 1: and kind person he had become. And it's like, he
Speaker 1: was so mean to you, Why would you do this? Why? Why? However,
Speaker 1: both of those books got published, nobody bought them, apparently.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find a copy of either. I had hoped,
Speaker 1: but um, neither of them did very well, and they
Speaker 1: kind of vanished pretty quickly. Maybe nobody wanted to read
Speaker 1: their empathy, right, I think probably that's part. It's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I really reformed. I don't want to read his weird
Speaker 1: romantic overtures to you. Knowing that he shot his wife
Speaker 1: was cruel to everyone who ever worked for him. There
Speaker 1: are lots of stories too, of journalists and reporters that
Speaker 1: worked under him who presumed he hated them because he
Speaker 1: was so mean all the time, and some of them
Speaker 1: would say something along those lines of like, listen, I
Speaker 1: know you don't like people, blah bla, and he would
Speaker 1: be like, what are you talking about it? You're one
Speaker 1: of my favorites. And it's like, are you just that
Speaker 1: broken that you don't know how to treat people well?
Speaker 1: Or are you playing with them? And we don't know
Speaker 1: the answer to that. Humans are complex. Yeah. Um, again,
Speaker 1: not the job for me, No, no. Uh. There is
Speaker 1: one more funny story, which is that one of his
Speaker 1: reporters got a very strange flavor of revenge because this
Speaker 1: reporter was also writing pulp fiction on the side to
Speaker 1: make extra money, and in one of their books, they
Speaker 1: named a poison after him, called Shape a Night. That's
Speaker 1: great and I'm like, that seems well deserved. All right,
Speaker 1: that's Charles Chapin. Maybe later we can do Charles V.
Speaker 1: Chape and the doctor who tried to make people not
Speaker 1: get exposed to as many germs and microbes, and that
Speaker 1: will feel like a bomb. The person you are actually
Speaker 1: going to find information on when you found this, he's
Speaker 1: still on the list. Listen. This is a good on
Speaker 1: ramp for our Halloween coverage. It's a little darker. We'll
Speaker 1: have Halloween fun in the coming weeks, and then then
Speaker 1: we'll get back to all of these people in the meantime.
Speaker 1: If this is your time off in the next coming days,
Speaker 1: I hope that it is absolutely wonderful and relaxing and
Speaker 1: not fraught in the least, and maybe you have roses
Speaker 1: without any baggage to enjoy. Um. If you do not
Speaker 1: have time off, I hope that you still get to
Speaker 1: enjoy some some things and maybe some quiet time to yourself. Uh.
Speaker 1: We will be right back here again tomorrow with a
Speaker 1: Saturday Classic, and then on Monday there will be more
Speaker 1: new episodes. Stuff you missed in History Class is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
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