Speaker 1: Hey guys, exciting news. I'm really really stoked about this.
Speaker 1: On March seventh, at noon Pacific Standard time, Team Sideways
Speaker 1: is going to host an a m A on the
Speaker 1: Unresolved Mysteries subreddit on Reddit. Pretty exciting. Hell yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So the mods will post an announcement a week prior,
Speaker 1: so if you can't join us at that time, at
Speaker 1: that date, you can post your questions there. Um, please
Speaker 1: don't email us questions will lose them and forget them.
Speaker 1: Let's try and contain this just to Reddit. But we're
Speaker 1: super excited and uh yeah, so if you can join us. Sorry,
Speaker 1: just in case somebody you know, five years from now
Speaker 1: I was listening to this episode, not two thousand seventeen.
Speaker 1: This is not true yourself two thousand seventeen. Sorry, thinking Sideways.
Speaker 1: I don't under to say you never know stories of
Speaker 1: things we simply don't know the answer to. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: what's up sinking side With the podcast? I'm Devin hosting
Speaker 1: super Well, joined by my co hosts and Steve Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's one for you. In eighteen thirty six, five boys
Speaker 1: were hunting rabbits in the northeast area of Arthur c Edinburgh.
Speaker 1: Pro tip if you are boys hunting and you find
Speaker 1: something even remotely weird, just just walk away, just walk away.
Speaker 1: The number of cases that we cover that start out
Speaker 1: in this way is mind boggling to me. It's boys,
Speaker 1: specifically young boys groups as young boys find something and
Speaker 1: then think, oh, I know, let's go investigate that. Why why?
Speaker 1: Because they're boys. The ten year old boy in me
Speaker 1: come completely identifies with the boys in this story absolutely.
Speaker 1: You know, if you if you have the potential to
Speaker 1: kick off a really cool unsolved mystery, and then you
Speaker 1: should should not turn your back on that as long
Speaker 1: as it doesn't involve you getting killed. No, it's mostly
Speaker 1: just playing with stuff, yeah, throwing stuff. I just think
Speaker 1: we should start keeping a counter. These kids were kind
Speaker 1: of jerks, but we'll get into that later. Yeah. So, okay,
Speaker 1: the boys were hunting wabbits. Wabbits kill the wabbitibbit, kill
Speaker 1: the labbit, and they came across the cave. Zwinks they
Speaker 1: better check that out, so they did. Inside they found
Speaker 1: seventeen small caskets and a pile. And by the way,
Speaker 1: this wasn't really a cave. It was kind of like
Speaker 1: kind of like a hole inside on the side of
Speaker 1: the hillside. My story is so much better. Cave is cool.
Speaker 1: Cave is cool. No, it was found a torch, an
Speaker 1: old torch, and they lit the torch and they walked
Speaker 1: into the cave. But it didn't really happen that way,
Speaker 1: and it didn't happen that it kind of an alcove area.
Speaker 1: Three pieces of slate covering. I don't know. There were
Speaker 1: seventeen small caskets and a pile, eight on the bottom,
Speaker 1: eight in the middle, and one on top. And upon
Speaker 1: further investigation, guys so smart, they found that the caskets
Speaker 1: contained a small wooden doll in each one, carved to
Speaker 1: look like a human, clothed and small handmade garments. The
Speaker 1: dolls were said to be about the size of an
Speaker 1: adult finger, so three or four inches long. The doll,
Speaker 1: not the cast. Yeah, the doll, okay, yeah, just making
Speaker 1: sure being boys, dumb, stupid boys. Hey, Instead of running
Speaker 1: to the police or the adult with this fine, they decided, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, it would be awesome, Let's just throw all
Speaker 1: these things at each other. This is the equivalent of
Speaker 1: a dirt wad fight. You find something and you throw
Speaker 1: it at your friend to make them run. And screened
Speaker 1: this is why the ten year old boy loves this story. Somebody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's like, you know, at that age, I
Speaker 1: probably would have done the same thing. I would be
Speaker 1: because of this. Only eight of these dolls remained. They
Speaker 1: were destroyed. Most of them were destroyed. Yeah, and before
Speaker 1: we go much further, this is the Arthur Seat murder dolls.
Speaker 1: And it was listener suggestion about a million years ago
Speaker 1: from Thomas all right, ready to keep going. Yeah, creeping
Speaker 1: me out, kind of creepy boys throwing caskets and each
Speaker 1: other creeps you out a little, tiny caskets. It gets
Speaker 1: a little creepier, a little creepier maybe. Anyhow, it's not
Speaker 1: clear how the eight remaining caskets that did make it
Speaker 1: made it back to civilization, well, in any kind of sense.
Speaker 1: The boys were never questioned, they never gave any statements.
Speaker 1: It's unclear if they told their school teacher or he
Speaker 1: overheard them talking about how much fun it was that
Speaker 1: they were throwing coffins at each other. Was it the
Speaker 1: school teacher or their head master head I thought it
Speaker 1: was the head master. Somebody involved in school, okay, who
Speaker 1: happened to also be an amateur archaeologist. Because that's what
Speaker 1: you did in those days, right, So he heard the
Speaker 1: boys or the boys told him or something. Maybe one
Speaker 1: of the boys had a black guy, and he was like, wow,
Speaker 1: that happened. He was like this dude through and he
Speaker 1: was like, okay, we'll tell me more. Either way, somehow
Speaker 1: the dolls made it back. And again it's not clear
Speaker 1: even if it was only the eight dolls or all
Speaker 1: of the dolls or what happened, but only eight of
Speaker 1: them really survived. Yeah, thanks have a way sort of
Speaker 1: like disappearing. Yeah, let's talk about the dolls for a
Speaker 1: seconds more. I guess a little more. We've talked about
Speaker 1: them little bit already. There are some reports that there
Speaker 1: are both male and female dolls, but I don't actually
Speaker 1: think that's the case. I would agree with this, And
Speaker 1: like I said, only eight of the dolls survived, but
Speaker 1: none of them, as far as I can tell, were
Speaker 1: dressed as women. And let's be fair, if you're going
Speaker 1: to make tiny little doll clothes, it's way easier to
Speaker 1: make a skirt than it is to make little trousers.
Speaker 1: But they all had little trousers on the ones that
Speaker 1: weren't decayed, didn't didn't They weren't where the trousers so
Speaker 1: right with legs, because I mean these things didn't have
Speaker 1: individual legs. They they did, did they had? Yeah? They had,
Speaker 1: they had, and they had a pair of legs. They
Speaker 1: weren't just like a stub that had some kind of
Speaker 1: feature carved into them to give the appearance there were
Speaker 1: two individual legs and little pants on them, little pants
Speaker 1: on them. The dolls in the bottom coffin seemed to
Speaker 1: have been older and more deteriorated. Some of the garments
Speaker 1: were rotting away or totally rotted away, you can see
Speaker 1: in some of the pictures this. The middle tier seemed
Speaker 1: to have looked more recent, and the top one apparently
Speaker 1: looked almost brand new. And again, in fairness, this is
Speaker 1: I'm not it's not clear how this information was relayed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the kids probably upset the site quite a bit when
Speaker 1: they pillaged it so they could throw stuff at each other.
Speaker 1: So these were found in Arthur's Seats, which is in Edinburgh,
Speaker 1: scott Scotland. Is that right? Yeah? Did you do any
Speaker 1: research on that site by chance? Like pertaining to what? Well?
Speaker 1: I just I pulled a Joe and I went Google mapping,
Speaker 1: and then I started researching it. Did you know that
Speaker 1: that's actually an old volcano, which is really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's also only about two miles away from the ocean,
Speaker 1: the North Sea, right, not the ocean. It's it's really weird,
Speaker 1: raised out raised chunk of earth in the middle of
Speaker 1: a town. So it's just it was really interesting to me,
Speaker 1: and that's why I was just asking. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty cool all spot. It's one of the only fully
Speaker 1: green spots on Google in Edinburgh because the rest is
Speaker 1: a town. Back to the dolls, there were two different
Speaker 1: kinds of coffins, one carved more rounded, one a little
Speaker 1: more square. The different kinds of coffins, however, don't seem
Speaker 1: to have been exclusive by tier. They were all inter
Speaker 1: mingled when and and this is I saw this in
Speaker 1: the photos of people might not understand this when you
Speaker 1: say rounded versus square. The square was really more just
Speaker 1: a rectangle, just simple straight pieces of wood, and the
Speaker 1: rounded it only looked like somebody had basically carved off
Speaker 1: the corners to smooth it out a little bit. So
Speaker 1: that was the only style difference I saw. That was
Speaker 1: my impression too, Okay, not that some of them were
Speaker 1: circles and some of them Yeah, that would be super weird.
Speaker 1: It also seems that the dolls were not actually made
Speaker 1: for this purpose. Men any of the dolls were missing
Speaker 1: limbs arms. Specifically, they all had their legs, I think,
Speaker 1: so that they would fit inside the coffins. And in fact,
Speaker 1: it's a bit odd that the coffins weren't made to
Speaker 1: the size of the dolls. That's one of the things
Speaker 1: that sort of made me wonder too. Yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like maybe they were always meant to be together,
Speaker 1: but the dolls do seem to have been from the
Speaker 1: same set. They all seemed to be almost identical. The
Speaker 1: theory is that they were a set of soldiers, toy soldiers.
Speaker 1: There were markings around the feet that looked like they
Speaker 1: had once been painted, like they were little booties, black booties.
Speaker 1: Were they painted or were they blackened? I got the
Speaker 1: impression that they were black and almost with soot or
Speaker 1: a candle or something. It's a cheaper way to do it.
Speaker 1: You just grab a chunk charcoal out of the fire,
Speaker 1: you know. Well, yeah, I know, And this is why
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't. I never saw anything said specifically.
Speaker 1: Some said they were black and some said they were
Speaker 1: black and that was my too, so I just said painted.
Speaker 1: But you're probably right. It probably was something more like
Speaker 1: charcoal or something like that, which wouldn't last as long,
Speaker 1: but who cares. They were worried about that. The legs
Speaker 1: were carved in a way that seemed to note kind
Speaker 1: of a rigid, upward standing post, like standing at attention
Speaker 1: if you're a toy soldier. Yeah, And in fact, upon
Speaker 1: further inspection, it was discovered that they would stand straight
Speaker 1: on their own if a small amount of weight was
Speaker 1: added to the front of them, like a musket. The
Speaker 1: arms that were missing would have held a musket. It
Speaker 1: would have been on like a bandolier across their chest
Speaker 1: or something tripod kind of like long across their chest,
Speaker 1: just like hanging there. So it wasn't actually going to
Speaker 1: touch the ground, Okay, I got I got the impression
Speaker 1: that it was that you see soldiers, you know, let's yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, holding their gun against the ground, so they
Speaker 1: make a tripod. That wasn't my sense. It was that
Speaker 1: they would have had something else lashed them. I will
Speaker 1: believe you, because I'm not positive I didn't go as
Speaker 1: far down in this one. Yeah, that's probably true. It
Speaker 1: was like I said, they were probably toy soldiers, and
Speaker 1: they probably had muskets or something like that, so they
Speaker 1: would stand upright in that situation and quickly. I want
Speaker 1: to address the rotting because the different It was initially
Speaker 1: suggested that perhaps they were of three different ages, that
Speaker 1: the bottom ones had been placed much earlier than the
Speaker 1: middle ones, and the middle ones placed much earlier than
Speaker 1: the top one, or that perhaps the top tier was
Speaker 1: in a work in progress or whatever. But I do
Speaker 1: want to just mention anybody who's ever had like a
Speaker 1: woodpile may know that things rot from the bottom because
Speaker 1: that's where the moistures end. So those would have, even
Speaker 1: if they've all been placed at the same time, would
Speaker 1: have absolutely rotted much quicker and would have looked as
Speaker 1: though they were much older than the middle and top ones.
Speaker 1: Tears tears, will call them tears, Yeah, tears good, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're gonna have fungus and bugs and just plain
Speaker 1: water damage in general to that would yeah, it makes
Speaker 1: total sense. Yeah. So, like I said, there was the
Speaker 1: original thought that they had been placed at different times.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's true. I think it was probably
Speaker 1: at the same time, maybe a short period of time
Speaker 1: but definitely no more than twelve years, which I guess
Speaker 1: is kind of a long period of time that has
Speaker 1: got a long period of time. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: definitely if it was me doing this, I would have
Speaker 1: done all at once, just to save myself a lot
Speaker 1: of trips up the mountainside. Yeah. Well, but that's that's
Speaker 1: inferring that if somebody's putting their these in that location
Speaker 1: for specific reason, that it's one reason and not a
Speaker 1: reason that reoccurs over a period of time, because I
Speaker 1: know some of the reasons that they would happen we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about in the theory section. So that's
Speaker 1: that's a big presumption. I have to say, I'm going
Speaker 1: to do it just this way because it's easiest. No, Actually,
Speaker 1: what I really would have done pitched him out in
Speaker 1: the trash, but yeah, not broken. I would have got
Speaker 1: to the hassle of making them little coffins. I would
Speaker 1: have just like tossed them but given them too. Obviously, Yeah,
Speaker 1: obviously I've got I've got different motivations than whoever with
Speaker 1: these things there. And here's where I get to actually
Speaker 1: nerd out a little bit to help justify my no
Speaker 1: longer than twelve years things, because I'm really excited about this.
Speaker 1: I am a bit of a historical fashion buff you
Speaker 1: as you to know sitting in this room with me,
Speaker 1: and this is where don't talk anymore. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of analysis of the textiles and notions. And notions
Speaker 1: are like thread and buttons and the other miscellaneous things
Speaker 1: other than just the cloth that you would use to
Speaker 1: create something in case you didn't know what those things were. Anyways,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of analysis happening on that aspect
Speaker 1: of the dolls. Since it was it's pretty well recognized
Speaker 1: that they probably were tour soldiers and they came from
Speaker 1: the same set. It's hard to glean a date from
Speaker 1: that because they could have been years old by the
Speaker 1: time they were placed in the coffin. So they thought, well,
Speaker 1: let's look at the fabric, which I think is great.
Speaker 1: If you look at the pictures of the dolls, it's
Speaker 1: fairly clear to say that they're not really clothed for burial.
Speaker 1: That is to say, they're not in the traditional burial
Speaker 1: clothes of the time. It's more of a garments kind
Speaker 1: of representing clothes every day where, or maybe not garments
Speaker 1: at all, just to cover basically chunks of cloth that
Speaker 1: they just put over the top of them, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: except that they weren't actually just placed on top of
Speaker 1: them like a blanket. They were actually sewn into sleeves
Speaker 1: and pants. In fact, some of the dolls that were
Speaker 1: missing arms also there are not armholes where an arm
Speaker 1: would have been. The seam is sewn up over that
Speaker 1: missing arm. So they were clothed for the purpose of
Speaker 1: going into those coffins once the coffins were made to size,
Speaker 1: which is fairly interesting. No, you guys are looking at
Speaker 1: me like this is boring. Well just I just this
Speaker 1: is this fashion with thread count and notions are I
Speaker 1: don't get it? Yeah, so this is the this is
Speaker 1: actually the bit. I'll just get to the bit that
Speaker 1: excites me a lot. The curator of European Textiles at
Speaker 1: the National Museum of Scotland looked at these garments and
Speaker 1: she noticed that the thread that had been used in
Speaker 1: some of the garments with three ply cotton thread. This, okay,
Speaker 1: three ply though cotton threats. So you know applies are
Speaker 1: because you buy toilet paper. Yeah right. The reply is
Speaker 1: there's three layers. Yes, two ply is two layers and
Speaker 1: single ply is one layer. Never used single ply, right,
Speaker 1: Why would you ever do that to yourself? It's awful.
Speaker 1: But the same thing goes for thread. You can make
Speaker 1: thread with just one strand, or you can make it
Speaker 1: with multiple strands. It's stronger. So it's three strands wound
Speaker 1: around each other pretty much. Yeah, okay, I've got it.
Speaker 1: This is significant because the kind of thread, this three
Speaker 1: ply cotton thread wasn't even remotely available prior to eighteen twelve,
Speaker 1: and didn't become readily available and used until the eighteen thirties.
Speaker 1: So that can help us give a bit of a
Speaker 1: timeline for these garments. And it is fair to say
Speaker 1: that the some of the other garments were sewn with
Speaker 1: two or one ply thread, so they could have been
Speaker 1: sewn earlier at the same time. You know, people don't
Speaker 1: just pitch stuff out right. I mean, I've got I've
Speaker 1: actually got sewing thread that I inherited from my mother,
Speaker 1: and you know who knows she might have inherited from
Speaker 1: her grand because why throw it out? Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: couple of loops that you hang onto him for a
Speaker 1: quick stitch job. Yeah, So this allows us to date
Speaker 1: the dolls as having likely been interred between the eighteen twenties,
Speaker 1: mid eighteen twenties to mid eighteen thirties, likely eight eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty five, just for convenience sake, I would say it's
Speaker 1: a pretty good time frame on cotton thread. So at first,
Speaker 1: the suspicion was that these dolls were related to witchcraft.
Speaker 1: That's what which I mean, this is kind of late
Speaker 1: for the witchcraft bandwagon. It's not the sixteen hundreds. Probably
Speaker 1: at that time, probably still a lot of people are
Speaker 1: kind of believing in that stuff. Well, it turns out
Speaker 1: as recently as some women in Russia were murdered because
Speaker 1: they used folk magic on some people. They were burned
Speaker 1: at the stake. No, I mean even in the even
Speaker 1: in the twenty one century. I mean, there have been rumors,
Speaker 1: rumors of witchcraft started in some countries in Africa, and
Speaker 1: next thing you know, people are getting killed because of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's still going on. Yeah, people thought maybe because
Speaker 1: they were mixing voodoo and witchcraft. Up, I'm not totally sure.
Speaker 1: I'm not up on my witchcraft stuff. I guess I
Speaker 1: should go back and do some learning. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that they used dolls, but I guess the theory was
Speaker 1: that maybe the dolls were used to symbolically confined victims
Speaker 1: to their tombs forever. Well, the dolls could be there.
Speaker 1: An effigy and effigies have a pretty long history and
Speaker 1: they've been used for lots of things, traditional burial things
Speaker 1: when a sarcophagus is not the right thing. But if
Speaker 1: you see the old stone carvings of kings that sit
Speaker 1: on top of their their caskets, that's an effigy. But
Speaker 1: effigies have been used in all scales for all kinds
Speaker 1: of practices through time, so an effigy can easily be
Speaker 1: linked to it. And I don't think it has to
Speaker 1: just be a voodoo saying fair. Yeah, and I guess
Speaker 1: we're in Theories's just keep talking about theories. Another primary
Speaker 1: early theory was that these dolls were meant to represent
Speaker 1: an effigy a bit sailors who had been lost at sea,
Speaker 1: to give them a sort of ceremonial burial. And like
Speaker 1: we said earlier, Arthur's seat is just about two miles
Speaker 1: away from the coast of the North Sea. It does
Speaker 1: overlook the sea. It's pretty It's the kind of place
Speaker 1: you might bury somebody you cared about, even if only
Speaker 1: in a four inch long doll. That makes sense, But
Speaker 1: you would think that would be some sort of memorial marker.
Speaker 1: You would think that you would also think that there
Speaker 1: would have been some sort of record of the loss
Speaker 1: of seventeen souls. I don't think they bothered again, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to point out a fallacy in that that,
Speaker 1: which is you're presuming that all seventeen died at the
Speaker 1: same time. We're we're giving a ten year range for
Speaker 1: these things to have been interred, which means that even
Speaker 1: if it wasn't over that ten year time span, there
Speaker 1: could have been time between them being put in there.
Speaker 1: So it could be I knew Steve and Joe went
Speaker 1: on this ship, and then that whaling ship sank, so
Speaker 1: I made effigy so I could bury them at home,
Speaker 1: and then of course, and then the next is the
Speaker 1: next ship that you know a couple of guys are on,
Speaker 1: and so it could have built up that way. So
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got to be careful of saying they
Speaker 1: were all interred at the same time with that idea.
Speaker 1: That's fair, That's totally fair. I guess I just think
Speaker 1: there's a cooler theory out there. I hate I hate
Speaker 1: this one. Why do you want to talk about that
Speaker 1: first or do you want to talk about it after?
Speaker 1: Let's wait till after. No, let's talk about your feelings.
Speaker 1: Let's not you know, I'm not a big talking about
Speaker 1: my feelings guy. Podcast therapy session. This is not that podcast.
Speaker 1: Are you guys ready? Are you guys up on your
Speaker 1: early nineteenth century murders in Scotland? Yeah, some listeners maybe
Speaker 1: as well, So you might know these guys, William Burke
Speaker 1: and William Hair. Yeah. Burke and Hair were Irish born
Speaker 1: immigrants to Scotland. They are so famous, in fact, that
Speaker 1: there's apparently a British term called Burking, which is derived
Speaker 1: from Burke's name. So why are they famous? You may
Speaker 1: be asking if you don't know, if you're not up
Speaker 1: like we are on our early nineteenth century murders in Scotland.
Speaker 1: Well for killing people, of course at the killings. They
Speaker 1: are the guys behind what's known as the Westport murders,
Speaker 1: and they killed sixteen people in ten months. But Devin,
Speaker 1: you're yelling undoubtedly at your iPod in the car and
Speaker 1: people think you're crazy. There were seventeen calls. Well, kind listener,
Speaker 1: that's interesting because Burke and hair were killing folks to
Speaker 1: sell to a doctor to dissect, and they actually sold
Speaker 1: seventeen bodies. The first one died of natural causes. That
Speaker 1: was there, like introductory, that was their inspiration. It's like, hey, wow,
Speaker 1: they thought, oh, let's sell him. And then they're waiting
Speaker 1: for somebody else to die natural causes, and they thought,
Speaker 1: let's just rush the process a little bit. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: first so he expired of natural causes, and they they yeah,
Speaker 1: they basically realized how much money they could make and said, hey,
Speaker 1: why don't we just kill some people sell their bodies.
Speaker 1: What did they get? They sold it to a professor,
Speaker 1: a doctor named Dr Knox, who is using him for lectures.
Speaker 1: That's what it was. Okay, so they actually sold the
Speaker 1: first body for a hefty seven pounds ten shillings, which
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like much now, but is about the equivalent
Speaker 1: of one thousand, two hundred and six dollars and cents
Speaker 1: or about eight dred and six pounds in two thousand fifteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you that that really wouldn't be enough
Speaker 1: to incent about a murder somebody. In fairness, it's not
Speaker 1: nothing for just finding a body talking about murdering bucks,
Speaker 1: I might be tempted. That's a good point. It gets better.
Speaker 1: Doctor Knox offered any bodies that they bring him further,
Speaker 1: particularly if they were mostly healthy and just died of like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, asphixiation or something. He would pay them
Speaker 1: ten pounds a body, and I'll do some quick I
Speaker 1: did some quick math, and that meant that they in
Speaker 1: ten months they would have made a handy twelve thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred and ninety six dollars in today's But there's
Speaker 1: actually a better calculation for what it is actually equivalent
Speaker 1: to with the cost of living. Blah blah blah, blah blah.
Speaker 1: If you want to find out how I got this number,
Speaker 1: you can email me. I will tell you all about it.
Speaker 1: I don't know for everybody, but it actually is about
Speaker 1: the equivalent of two hundred and ten two dollars in
Speaker 1: ten months by selling seventeen bodies and murdering sixteen people.
Speaker 1: Murdering I don't know for two hundred and eleven. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like Hardy got him drunk and suffocated them. Anyways,
Speaker 1: The murders were okay. The murders and the one death
Speaker 1: were hugely sensationalized and Harren Burke were caught and tried.
Speaker 1: This is super cliff notes version of this story because
Speaker 1: this is not what the story is about. But essentially,
Speaker 1: the prosecutors were under the impression that Harron Burke would
Speaker 1: just say no, he didn't, no, he didn't know, he
Speaker 1: did he did, and the jury would get confused because
Speaker 1: people were dumb then, apparently, and they wouldn't convict either
Speaker 1: one of them. You know what, I think the jury
Speaker 1: probably would have convicted both. I agree, I think they
Speaker 1: probably would have too. But because of this, the prosecutors said, oh, well, actually,
Speaker 1: you know what, Hair is kind of the dummy of
Speaker 1: the two, so they offered to allow him to become
Speaker 1: what's do what's known as becoming King's evidence, which basically
Speaker 1: means for immunity rats out. He said, yes, I will
Speaker 1: do that, and it worked, and in eighteen twenty nine
Speaker 1: Burke was convicted and hanged. Actually he was convicted Christmas
Speaker 1: Eve and executed a month later. You gotta love it, because,
Speaker 1: I mean, that doesn't happen in this kind. It takes
Speaker 1: it takes thirty years at least. But here's the best
Speaker 1: part is that the judge and his sentencing said yeah,
Speaker 1: you're going to be executed, and also, uh, also the
Speaker 1: day after you're executed, you're going to be dissected in public.
Speaker 1: And he was dissected in public and correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong. They then took his skeleton and that is
Speaker 1: still in the Royal College. I think at least the
Speaker 1: skull is. I'm not sure if it's entire. I know
Speaker 1: it goes a step further than that. They actually sold
Speaker 1: his skin as like pocket person They used it as
Speaker 1: leather goods basically and sold it. It was yeah, one one,
Speaker 1: like I don't know if it was, I can't remember.
Speaker 1: It's like a card purse or something like that, a
Speaker 1: little small purse that was made from the skin of
Speaker 1: his hand, and that's sold as recently I don't remember,
Speaker 1: like two thousand and eight or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was. I mean that's the grossest part. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's I I don't want to own anything
Speaker 1: that would made out of somebody's skin, especially not a murderer.
Speaker 1: Who knows what kind of bad ju do that. Yeah, anyways,
Speaker 1: you can look up the story. You should definitely look
Speaker 1: The hair is a horrifying story, horrifying and super fascinating,
Speaker 1: great story. Now, can we get to my I don't
Speaker 1: like the story? No? Why? Oh no, I'm sorry. Do
Speaker 1: you have more on it? I do? Let's have that
Speaker 1: lots more. So. It's again it's theorized that there were
Speaker 1: seventeen victims kind of so it could have been similar
Speaker 1: to the burial for the sailors, kind of in an effigy.
Speaker 1: What's referred to as a mimic burial is I think
Speaker 1: probably the term you were looking for. It's because since
Speaker 1: the bodies were dissected for science or reasons, they they
Speaker 1: never got a burial, so it was supposed to represent
Speaker 1: them so that their souls could be laid to rest.
Speaker 1: There is a huge problem, one huge problem at least,
Speaker 1: and that is that of the seventeen victims of Burke
Speaker 1: and Hair, twelve war women, and all of the effigies
Speaker 1: look male or don't have any feminine Not only do
Speaker 1: they look man, that's fine, that's fine, there's no feminine
Speaker 1: features at all, so that's pretty big. Additionally, the there's
Speaker 1: the problem of who would have created the dolls that
Speaker 1: comes into play here because Burke and Hair there was
Speaker 1: a thought that they one of them did it because
Speaker 1: they felt bad, but Burke and Hair were apprehended directly
Speaker 1: after their seventeenth murder. Well, and also they were sociopaths,
Speaker 1: so they probably didn't feel bad. Well, I don't know
Speaker 1: if they're sociopaths, but they don't strike me as the
Speaker 1: kind of guys who would go to any huge I
Speaker 1: think Hair seems like, well he he lived up the
Speaker 1: rest of his life and misery again, or you should
Speaker 1: read the story. It was not a popular guy. It
Speaker 1: was not a popular guy, and people recognized him everywhere
Speaker 1: he went. Anyways, some people have suggested that there was
Speaker 1: an accomplice, because there were lots of accomplices, perhaps that
Speaker 1: weren't ever actually convicted of anything um in regards to
Speaker 1: the Birken Hair story, But it seems like those people
Speaker 1: would want to keep a low profile, and maybe carting
Speaker 1: seventeen coffins, no matter how small, into the wilderness would
Speaker 1: be kind of a high profile thing. Well, but there
Speaker 1: are four or five inch coffins. You can fit those
Speaker 1: into a bag very easily. But even there's you're carrying
Speaker 1: a bag of stuff. I think that they would have
Speaker 1: not done anything even anything even kind of suspicious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think so either, but you know, it's also possible,
Speaker 1: and I don't think I'll just say this, I don't
Speaker 1: think that the dolls are committed, are connected to the
Speaker 1: murder and anyone, but it's but it is conceivable that
Speaker 1: maybe somebody, having heard about these seventeen people haven't been
Speaker 1: died and sent off to be dissected and then basically
Speaker 1: tossed into the dumpster, maybe somebody got the idea to
Speaker 1: create these epigees and bury them. Well. I guess it's
Speaker 1: also probably worth noting that the theory that the dolls
Speaker 1: were connected to the burke Hair murders the Westport murders
Speaker 1: wasn't even positive and tell them the nineteen nineties, that
Speaker 1: was an issue made and somebody looked back and thought, oh,
Speaker 1: there's seventeen victims, and I know that the only thing
Speaker 1: they have in common is another. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: that's you know, I know Steve has a bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff to talk about this, but I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the big ones, right, Yeah, Well, yes, it's so
Speaker 1: romantic to assign these dolls to this case. It's a
Speaker 1: romantic notion. We've found this connection between in the two
Speaker 1: and so somebody had remorse. That's to me why people
Speaker 1: go to it. Okay, well too, maybe direct who might
Speaker 1: have been And I again, I'm not on the stand
Speaker 1: of saying that is connected these murders, but I know
Speaker 1: that the wives and children and the woman who owned
Speaker 1: the boarding house that they were in, they all got
Speaker 1: out relatively unscaped, but they all had to leave town,
Speaker 1: but they didn't have to leave town immediately. So if
Speaker 1: we're gonna say this is correct, there is a possibility
Speaker 1: that they had some bit of remorse or guilt or
Speaker 1: felt like they needed to do some kind of penance
Speaker 1: for it. So that's why they would have gone ahead
Speaker 1: and done this. Okay, that's the easy answer. I did
Speaker 1: a bunch of digging into the time frame and looking
Speaker 1: at as we talked about a little bit earlier, is
Speaker 1: that the use of effigies was something that had been
Speaker 1: going on in Europe for years and years and years,
Speaker 1: And because we talked about the sailors thing, but you know,
Speaker 1: something else that was going on at the time and
Speaker 1: very close to when the dolls were found, cholera, typhus
Speaker 1: and influenza. You're rampant in the area. If you look
Speaker 1: at the news prints of the time, all kinds of
Speaker 1: alerts about this, and it's killing people like mad If
Speaker 1: your family member dies of cholera at the hospital, they're
Speaker 1: not giving you that. Boy, No, you're not going to
Speaker 1: get the body back. So what do you do? You say,
Speaker 1: uncle Jay and Janey died. Uncle Janey maybe, but and
Speaker 1: Janie most likely, and Janey died, and we can't do anything.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna do this little ceremonial thing here and
Speaker 1: then oops, well, now uncle Bob just got typhoid or
Speaker 1: died of typhoid, and then somebody else of influenza. All
Speaker 1: these deaths, it may have just been pure happistant. So
Speaker 1: the reason that that's why I think they're there is
Speaker 1: either as the sailors or somebody who knew as everybody did,
Speaker 1: a bunch of people who died from some ailment that
Speaker 1: was just running like wildfire through the population. That's a
Speaker 1: that's very very true. Another possibility, even though I don't
Speaker 1: think they would have gone to the bother, is that
Speaker 1: maybe either Hair or Burke built up a little collection
Speaker 1: of these little dolls. I say, and it wasn't because
Speaker 1: they felt remorse, but because you know, they had time
Speaker 1: in their hands and everything, like the accounting system Basically,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, you know, you know, every time
Speaker 1: you shoot down an enemy fighter, you put a little
Speaker 1: you put a little Japanese zero on the side of
Speaker 1: the nose of you're playing. Oh yeah, well two fighters today, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So every time you do it, you create a you
Speaker 1: can grab one of these dolls and make a little
Speaker 1: coffin for it and put it in, and put it
Speaker 1: in the coffin, and then perhaps one of their one
Speaker 1: of their wives are supposed alleged accomplices, realize that, holy crap,
Speaker 1: this is kind of incriminating. I got rid of it,
Speaker 1: although I think that probably more likely want to shoot
Speaker 1: all of my own theory, just would have burned them,
Speaker 1: you know, that's much simpler. Yeah, yeah, I just that
Speaker 1: just popped into my head out there, just to fill
Speaker 1: up a little air time. Yeah, I guess in fairness
Speaker 1: to poke another hole in that. Like I said, Verk
Speaker 1: and Hair were apprehended within I think an hour or
Speaker 1: two of their for their last murder. They wouldn't have
Speaker 1: had time to complete the seventeenth doll. Well actually, though
Speaker 1: maybe maybe they completed the dolls before the murders. I
Speaker 1: don't think they were that pre planned. I doubt I
Speaker 1: doubt that they be crimes of opportunity. Yeah, and I mean, well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing is you can say, well, the wife
Speaker 1: or the mistress could have done it, but then again,
Speaker 1: why was she doing it? And at what point why
Speaker 1: wouldn't she have just chucked him in the fire rather
Speaker 1: than hiking up the hill and then putting them into
Speaker 1: a hole. That I think that the simpler answer of
Speaker 1: somebody did it for something other than the Burke Hair murders.
Speaker 1: I just I don't. I don't have any good theories
Speaker 1: about what else, which is why I went through all
Speaker 1: the historical documentation to try to find some explanation that
Speaker 1: was a little more rooted in fact. That's fair, I guess.
Speaker 1: The only thing is that seventeen people is a lot
Speaker 1: of people. But well, but your sphere of influence and
Speaker 1: close relations. It could be if there was a big
Speaker 1: scholar epidemic or something like that then, and people had
Speaker 1: a lot of kids back then, many of whom died young.
Speaker 1: So it could be family members. Uh got brother and
Speaker 1: a sister, and Aunton and Knuckle, maybe one of your parents,
Speaker 1: and then maybe a whole bunch of other people, you know,
Speaker 1: like schoolmates, or whatever, and so maybe that was There's
Speaker 1: a host of reasons, and I think it's not going
Speaker 1: to do with any benefit to beat him into the ground,
Speaker 1: but not a bunch of them. Yeah, there is. There
Speaker 1: really is no mystery here, I think, but I don't
Speaker 1: want to say that. I do want to say that
Speaker 1: it is interesting though. There was a little a lot
Speaker 1: of approbrium directed a lot of people, like especially Hair
Speaker 1: of course, and the doctor Knox who dissected all these bodies.
Speaker 1: And it's like people keep bringing to these dead bodies
Speaker 1: and you and you pay them for them, and pay
Speaker 1: these guys for these bodies, and you never say where
Speaker 1: are you getting all these bodies from? And he just
Speaker 1: dissected them. And so he had mobs showing up outside
Speaker 1: his house and throwing rocks through his windows. All of
Speaker 1: the all of the family that the mistress, the wife,
Speaker 1: and children, they all had to get out of town.
Speaker 1: Oh hell yeah, that was a bad scene. But the dolls,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know, I'm sorry I did a dangerous
Speaker 1: thing where I brought up a really interesting case that
Speaker 1: wasn't unsolved. That's super interesting. Yeah, I think it is solved,
Speaker 1: but I'm sorry ment isn't unsolved, but there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of points. Yeah, we're back on topic, Devin. Where are
Speaker 1: we going now? We're going nowhere? Yeah, we're there. Sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's all we've got. Yeah, okay, that's the
Speaker 1: whole like, that's all the theories. And Steve came up
Speaker 1: with a pretty good one. Yeah. I think. I think
Speaker 1: the lesson is that if you've lost a lot of
Speaker 1: loved ones and you want to make little effigies in
Speaker 1: their honor, do a better job of hiding themselves some
Speaker 1: little some little jerk kids and like really each other.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Yeah yeah, So I mean that's it.
Speaker 1: I guess I like Steve sory the question. That's a
Speaker 1: good one. Yeah, okay one, although it doesn't explain why
Speaker 1: they were all a dressed like little dudes were little
Speaker 1: soldiers there, little dudes to start with. But you put them,
Speaker 1: you can put them in little skirts and stuff. If
Speaker 1: it's Aunt Jane, you're imaginative, you can. If you're not,
Speaker 1: you just dress what you have. I guess that's fair.
Speaker 1: Pants are really hard to make, though, just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say it's score to be easier, way easier.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying I understand just saying, especially at that size,
Speaker 1: I worked with a bunch of non creatives. Trust me,
Speaker 1: things where Okay, So, yeah, do you guys have favorite theories?
Speaker 1: I know yours. I'm still gonna go with the troop
Speaker 1: of Oh yeah, I know, I know. Um No, I
Speaker 1: have no favorite theories in this one. I have no
Speaker 1: opinion whatsoever. Yeah, I don't really, I don't care about
Speaker 1: this car at all. Well, sorry it's a little short this,
Speaker 1: but now I guess I do have one opinion, which
Speaker 1: is that the typical name that is given to this
Speaker 1: mystery is the Arthur Seat murder Dolls. And I think
Speaker 1: that's a really cool name. It is. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's true, so cool. But the yeah, the name is,
Speaker 1: and that's the tie to the Burke and Hairy situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: murder dolls. There's just something so cool and creepy about that.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, I mean, there's there's really no tie
Speaker 1: and other than the number seventeen. So if you want
Speaker 1: to find out how I came up with that weird
Speaker 1: giant number, I do you will, we'll talk about it afterwards.
Speaker 1: Or you have a theory about what the Arthur Seat
Speaker 1: murder Dolls might be or just the Arthur seat dolls
Speaker 1: or whatever. You can email us Thinking Sideways Podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. Uh, you are probably not listening to
Speaker 1: us on the website, but you can listen to us
Speaker 1: on the website. That website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: There are some of my research links up there as well,
Speaker 1: and on that as well, you can find the link
Speaker 1: to buy merch if you want. We got it. You
Speaker 1: guys were asking for it, so we did it because
Speaker 1: we love you. Finally, finally we have phasers and what
Speaker 1: else do we Yeah? We have rocket launchers. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a couple of airplanes. I don't know what kind they are.
Speaker 1: You guys know that they're expensive, but if you want
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Speaker 1: and leave us a comment in a rating. Those are awesome.
Speaker 1: It's how other people find us, and I know you
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Speaker 1: has been uber busy yep, like us, friend us, friend us,
Speaker 1: find us, find us, friend us, like us, and then
Speaker 1: tweet us, and then and then tweet us thinking sideways,
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Speaker 1: Actually we use that Twitter thing every once in a while,
Speaker 1: and I think that's it. Usually we do the email
Speaker 1: at the end. That's why I'm confused about it. If
Speaker 1: I told you or not, Sorry, I missed that one up.
Speaker 1: They know where to find us. Ever, you guys know
Speaker 1: where to find us. You're doing good at finding us.
Speaker 1: So that is everything about dolls. Yeah, creepy dolls. This
Speaker 1: is why I never liked the movie Chucky, because dolls
Speaker 1: are creepy. They are. No, No, I didn't watch them,
Speaker 1: but do go watch Breaking Hair. It's fun. It's a
Speaker 1: fun movie. It's Simon Peg. It's totally fun. I gotta say,
Speaker 1: if you can, if you can make a comedy out
Speaker 1: of murder, that's awesome. Oh, it's totally funny and weird,
Speaker 1: Simon Peg. Yeah, okay, I gotta see it. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: by the way, speaking to Simon Peg, if you have
Speaker 1: not seen Sean of the Dead, well, you better go
Speaker 1: see it. Any of the Cornetto trilogy all right by.
Speaker 1: You know what's funny is if anybody knows this story.
Speaker 1: Every time I read about Broken Hair, I have a
Speaker 1: really hard time not visualizing Simon Peg, because there's that
Speaker 1: that movies five years old. Five years ago, they made
Speaker 1: a Broken Hair and he was in it. And every
Speaker 1: time I read this, I see his face. I cannot
Speaker 1: help it sounds like a personal problem. I did not
Speaker 1: see that movie. They actually made a movie about Broken Hair.
Speaker 1: It's a bit of a comedy. I didn't make a
Speaker 1: comedy out of this story, and it's Simon Peg.