Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. For any parents, the happiness and well being
Speaker 1: of their child is the most important thing in the world.
Speaker 1: Making sure they grow up to be kind and respectable
Speaker 1: members of society is one of the key goals of
Speaker 1: being a good mom or dad, and sometimes that means
Speaker 1: being the bad guy. When a child wants to test
Speaker 1: the limits of their independence, maybe they want to stay
Speaker 1: out past their curfew or try and illicit substance for
Speaker 1: the first time. Sure, it's important to let kids fail
Speaker 1: and learn, but there are certain occasions where allowing the
Speaker 1: child too much freedom can be dangerous, even deadly. Take
Speaker 1: d D for example. Born Deirdre in nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 1: D D was no stranger. It's a luxury. Her parents
Speaker 1: were celebrities who were often out of the house, so
Speaker 1: she and her brother would hang around their Malibu mansion
Speaker 1: looking for ways to keep themselves busy. For d D.
Speaker 1: That meant drugs, quickly escalating to heroin and other harder substances,
Speaker 1: often pushed by her group of questionable friends. By the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, teenage d D had firmly entrenched herself within
Speaker 1: the growing counterculture on the West Coast, hanging out with
Speaker 1: free loving, anti establishment hippies and using her family's money
Speaker 1: and fame to help them. D D was enthralled with
Speaker 1: her new group of friends, especially their leader, Charlie. She
Speaker 1: would introduce other people that she knew to him at
Speaker 1: his request, so that he could gain access to the
Speaker 1: inner circles of their famous parents and maybe get a
Speaker 1: record deal for Charlie. D D was a means to
Speaker 1: an end, and in order to get her to help him,
Speaker 1: he supplied her with drugs and a sense of family.
Speaker 1: He was a handsome manipulator who would find young women
Speaker 1: estranged from their parents and offered them a sense of family.
Speaker 1: He'd then isolate them and make them dependent on him
Speaker 1: for everything. In other words, he was their cult leader.
Speaker 1: But Deed hadn't just found herself embedded within a group
Speaker 1: of countercultural misfits. She had inadvertently joined up with a
Speaker 1: man who would eventually get the fame that he craved,
Speaker 1: but not for his musical talents. He'd eventually be held
Speaker 1: responsible for instigating one of the most heinous crimes ever
Speaker 1: committed in American history. His name Charles Manson. Indeed, he
Speaker 1: was firmly within his clutches thanks to the drugs that
Speaker 1: he was providing. In exchange, she would buy him food
Speaker 1: and clothes using her mother's credit cards. When Deed's mother
Speaker 1: saw the state that she was in and the group
Speaker 1: of friends that she was hanging out with, she stepped
Speaker 1: in immediately. Deed's mother was an actress, one who had
Speaker 1: started in numerous films and plays starting in the nineteen forties.
Speaker 1: She was wildly successful and beloved on both the stage
Speaker 1: and the screen, but none of that meant half as
Speaker 1: much as the safety of her daughter. So in order
Speaker 1: to get her clean, Deed's mother moved the whole family
Speaker 1: out of California and across the ocean to Ireland. They
Speaker 1: settled in County Cork, about three hundred miles south of
Speaker 1: where Dedi's grandmother had been born. It was a fresh
Speaker 1: start for everyone, with Deed's mother putting her own career
Speaker 1: on hold for over a year as she fought the
Speaker 1: addictions of both of her children. They eventually got clean
Speaker 1: thanks to the simple life that they led, far from
Speaker 1: the glitz and glamor of Hollywood. Deed's mother even learned
Speaker 1: how to garden and cook while she was there. After
Speaker 1: the children got sober and things calmed down, they all
Speaker 1: returned to California so that Deeed's mother could resume her career.
Speaker 1: And what a career it was. From the late sixties
Speaker 1: all the way until the early Deed's mother played everything
Speaker 1: from a murderous pie cook to a crime solving mystery
Speaker 1: writer to a singing teapot. She was a versatile comedic
Speaker 1: and dramatic actress and beloved by fans all over the world.
Speaker 1: But her greatest role was that of mother to her children,
Speaker 1: especially when they needed her the most. Because of Angela
Speaker 1: Lansbury's commitment to her family, her daughter, Deared Rashaw, was
Speaker 1: able to escape the clutches of a murderous cult leader
Speaker 1: named Charles Manson. Not exactly a tale as old as time,
Speaker 1: but a heck of a story, nonetheless. Queen Elizabeth, the
Speaker 1: first reign during the sixteenth century brought turmoil to the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom's Catholic community. The fear was that the Pope
Speaker 1: would try to usurp power from the crown, which wasn't
Speaker 1: entirely unfounded. Pope Pious the Fifth did exactly that when
Speaker 1: he excommunicated the Queen in fifteen seventy and publicly denounced her.
Speaker 1: According to Pious, Queen Elizabeth was no longer in charge
Speaker 1: of any one. But that wasn't really the case, and
Speaker 1: the Queen intended on proving it, so she began in
Speaker 1: prisoning and executing Catholics, as well as Jesuits who supported them. However,
Speaker 1: one of the men she had arrested and incarcerated for
Speaker 1: the crime of being Catholic refused to bend to her will.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't give up his faith, and he demonstrated his
Speaker 1: loyalty to the Catholic Church in a very unique way.
Speaker 1: His name was Sir Thomas Tresham and he was born
Speaker 1: in fifteen forty three to a rich Catholic family. His
Speaker 1: father died when Thomas was only three years old, so
Speaker 1: he was raised by another Catholic family, the Throckmorton's. He
Speaker 1: grew up to become an academic and an upstanding citizen,
Speaker 1: with high ranking connections. He studied at the finest schools
Speaker 1: and exchanged letters with the Queen's Secretary of State, William Cecil.
Speaker 1: In fifteen seventy three he served as High Sheriff of Northamptonshire,
Speaker 1: putting him in charge of law enforcement for the county.
Speaker 1: Two years later he was knighted by the Queen. Tresham
Speaker 1: was also something of a bibliophile. He spent most of
Speaker 1: his life adding books to his ever expanding collection, and
Speaker 1: he read voraciously. But his keen political mind and his
Speaker 1: divisive opinions on states rights also made him a target.
Speaker 1: He was often fined and even put in jail for
Speaker 1: his beliefs, as well as his connections to the Jesuits.
Speaker 1: The Queen was worried about a Catholic uprising, possibly involving
Speaker 1: her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, and so she considered
Speaker 1: Sir Thomas a threat. Over the course of almost twenty
Speaker 1: five years, Tresham was forced to pay roughly eight thousand
Speaker 1: pounds in fines that amounts to nearly two million pounds today,
Speaker 1: and it was during this time that Sir Thomas got
Speaker 1: the idea to stick it to the Crown in a
Speaker 1: not so subtle way, he began work on a construction
Speaker 1: project after spending fifteen years locked up in part for
Speaker 1: refusing to give up Catholicism for Protestantism. The structure was
Speaker 1: erected along the edge of his Rushton Estates, about ninety
Speaker 1: miles north of London, as a testament to his unwavering faith.
Speaker 1: It was triangular in shape, with three thirty three foot
Speaker 1: long walls. Three sets of three windows adorned each wall,
Speaker 1: many triangular shaped while others were circular and carved around
Speaker 1: a cruciform. Each side also had three gables, each with
Speaker 1: their own gargoyle perched beneath that looked down on visitors
Speaker 1: from above. On top of each gable, Tresham placed an obelisk,
Speaker 1: giving the roof a crown like shape, not unlike the
Speaker 1: crown of thorns worn by Jesus at his crucifixion, and
Speaker 1: just below the roof, around the perimeter of the building
Speaker 1: were three separate Latin texts, each one no longer than
Speaker 1: thirty three letters. And finally, inside the lodge, Tresham constructed
Speaker 1: a basement and two additional floors on top of it,
Speaker 1: making it a three story building. Triangles Christian iconography and
Speaker 1: other religious nods were sculpted and placed all over the lodge,
Speaker 1: turning the building into one giant puzzle for theologians and
Speaker 1: scholars to solve later. It sounds like something out of
Speaker 1: a National Treasure sequel or a Dan Brown novel. However,
Speaker 1: one thing stands out above all else, the number three.
Speaker 1: Three walls at thirty three ft long, three gables and
Speaker 1: three sets of three windows on each side, three internal floors,
Speaker 1: and bigger numbers that all had the number three at
Speaker 1: their roots. But why the Holy Trinity? Of course, the Father,
Speaker 1: the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The number thirty five
Speaker 1: oh nine and thirty eight ninety eight were engraved into
Speaker 1: the gables on the roof and were said to correspond
Speaker 1: to the years of creation and when Abraham was called
Speaker 1: by God to leave his home and travel to Canaan.
Speaker 1: Other years, such as fifteen eighty, denoted when Tresham officially
Speaker 1: converted to Catholicism, and he included future dates as well,
Speaker 1: such as sixteen twenty six and sixteen forty one, but
Speaker 1: not because he expected to live that long, nor did
Speaker 1: he have any grand plans. Following his eventual death in
Speaker 1: sixteen o five. He was believed that the numbers were
Speaker 1: significant for two reasons. First, they were each divisible why three. Second,
Speaker 1: when they had the number fifteen ninety three subtracted from
Speaker 1: them the year that Tresham was least from prison, they
Speaker 1: totaled thirty three and forty eight, respectively, numbers that were
Speaker 1: said to connect to the deaths of Jesus and his
Speaker 1: mother Mary. Tresham stayed devouts his entire life, despite the
Speaker 1: constant threats from Queen Elizabeth hanging over his head, and
Speaker 1: he saw no better way to rub his faith in
Speaker 1: her face than to build a monument to his pettiness.
Speaker 1: And I have to say he sure did make his point.
Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
Speaker 1: World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Speaker 1: One