Speaker 1: Also media. Ah, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the
Speaker 1: only podcast around. If you're listening to another podcast, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but you have lost your mind and are are hallucinating
Speaker 1: whatever crazy characters. There's no such thing as Joe Rogan,
Speaker 1: not a one in the real world. Just me and
Speaker 1: of course Sophie, My producer and our guest for today.
Speaker 1: Ed zitron Ed is a tech industry journalist and columnist
Speaker 1: with the newsletter Where's Your ed At? One of my
Speaker 1: favorite people to read on the internet. Ed, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show for the first time.
Speaker 2: What's up? Happy to be here. Yeah, now, Ed.
Speaker 1: Have you ever hallucinated a podcast?
Speaker 2: I mean I've recorded quite a few and forgotten them
Speaker 2: almost the imediately, So that's just called a podcast that's
Speaker 2: broadcasting just experience amnesia in real time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Fact, we'll have a We'll have people come on our
Speaker 1: subreddit sometimes and be like you should do this guy,
Speaker 1: and I'll be like, oh, yeah, that'd be a great topic.
Speaker 1: And then someone will post like, no, they covered in
Speaker 1: three years ago, and I'll go, oh, yeah, I remembered
Speaker 1: that for sure.
Speaker 2: That's generous. Sometimes it's like, hey, remember that thing you
Speaker 2: said in the podcast that you recorded yesterday.
Speaker 1: It's like, absolutely not.
Speaker 2: I will read my work back sometimes in like laugh
Speaker 2: at my own jokes. That's one of my favorite tricks,
Speaker 2: just because I'm like, this guy's great. That. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't remember writing these words.
Speaker 1: Much funnier than me. Geez got to get him on
Speaker 1: the show Ed Elephant in the Room. You live in Vegas,
Speaker 1: but but you come from a little island across the sea.
Speaker 2: That that that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you feel about the British aristocracy?
Speaker 1: I feel terrible about them. I do not like them.
Speaker 1: I think we give them more than one pounds, so
Speaker 1: that's too many.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I do not see what they do other than
Speaker 2: take up press and get away with dressing up like Nazis. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and also being related to them in some cases. And
Speaker 2: I find them a frustrating group, and I find the
Speaker 2: lionization of them disgusting.
Speaker 1: Oh, although you're gonna be your opinions, you're gonna love
Speaker 1: this episode. Then this is going to be a slow burn.
Speaker 1: The first episode is largely going to be setting stuff
Speaker 1: up for our listeners, not going to be as much
Speaker 1: bastardury until we really hit episode two, in which case
Speaker 1: it's going to come out hard and fast. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot you have to establish in this episode because
Speaker 1: we're talking about have you ever heard of a guy
Speaker 1: named Lord John Aspinall I've not. Have you heard of
Speaker 1: his close friend, the lucky Lord Luken I have? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a big story, right and like.
Speaker 2: The well, my parents in their house they have this
Speaker 2: weird space above their washing machine and for years we've
Speaker 2: referred to it as Lord Lucan's house because in England
Speaker 2: it's like held Lord Lucan go spoiled the episode, Yeah,
Speaker 2: ruined the whole episode, given it a way, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's a beautiful piece of dry humor. No
Speaker 1: we can. I mean we'll say up front, right like
Speaker 1: Lord Lucan is a guy who committed a terrible murder
Speaker 1: as he's lord obviously and then disappeared, and we will
Speaker 1: be talking about what happened and how it relates to
Speaker 1: our subject today. Who is his buddy and the guy
Speaker 1: who kind of robbed like the the generation of the
Speaker 1: British aristocracy who came of age in like the forties,
Speaker 1: robbed them all blind because he was a casino maven.
Speaker 1: That's Lord Aspinall. And he also helped invent the modern
Speaker 1: zoo in a pretty irresponsible way but still zoo's. So
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a fun episode. But uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like we can get started now. He's not
Speaker 1: a dude. I think most Americans will have heard of.
Speaker 1: So a lot of what we'll be doing is kind
Speaker 1: of setting stuff up, which means we get to talk
Speaker 1: about the public school system in the UK, which will
Speaker 1: be fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also, all these people are fascists, like straight up Hitler
Speaker 1: loving Nazis, as you alluded to at the very start
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but most of England. That's the thing that I
Speaker 2: think that people don't realize about. I say, this is
Speaker 2: a British Jew. I think people don't realize around like
Speaker 2: the horrors of the Holocaust and such. It wasn't like
Speaker 2: it was great being Jewish anywhere. Yeah, it's And so
Speaker 2: it's like when you find out, oh, someone in British
Speaker 2: history was a fascists, you need to go the other
Speaker 2: way around, Like who wasn't he has like nine people who.
Speaker 1: Was on the right side of that, certainly not John
Speaker 1: Victor Aspinall, who was born in Delhi then part of
Speaker 1: the British Raj. On June eleventh, nineteen twenty six. His
Speaker 1: mother was a lady named Mary Grace Horn. She was
Speaker 1: the daughter of a highly regarded colonial official named Clement Horn.
Speaker 1: Clement built bridges in India, right, like that was his job.
Speaker 1: So they're not aristocrats, right, but they are like upper
Speaker 1: middle class kind of verging on rich, and within sort
Speaker 1: of the colonial system. They have a lot of clout.
Speaker 1: Now that's not the same as sort of being somebody
Speaker 1: who's considered in like the ruling class back home, right,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, a pretty significant position over in India.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Mary's father was the kind of dude who was pretty
Speaker 1: openly disappointed in her for being born a girl, not
Speaker 1: an uncommon situation in this time. And she grew up
Speaker 1: knowing that she was going to be basically a child
Speaker 1: in her father's control her whole life until she married.
Speaker 1: So as soon as she gets a chance, she jumps
Speaker 1: out of home and she marries this guy, Robert Aspinall,
Speaker 1: who is a surgeon who joined the Foreign service to
Speaker 1: see the world. Their marriage wasn't great. They don't actually
Speaker 1: really like each other, but they have a kid together
Speaker 1: named Chip, and after having Chip, Mary starts cheating on
Speaker 1: him straight away. She meets a young military officer, a lieutenant,
Speaker 1: and the two of them conceive their second child. Are
Speaker 1: subject for today, John aspinall underneath the shade of a
Speaker 1: tamarind tree, which is kind of romantic. That's a romantic
Speaker 1: tree to have sex under. I feel like a tamarind
Speaker 1: tree makes.
Speaker 2: A nice romantic tree to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, redwood is probably top of it.
Speaker 2: I would say the smells are great, mmm, but no
Speaker 2: fruit anyway, no fruit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, John's a tamarind baby.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I got two big sources for this series one both
Speaker 1: of them are biographies of John. One of them is
Speaker 1: this fawning nineteen eighty eight book by Brian Masters that's
Speaker 1: literally titled The Passion of John Aspinall.
Speaker 2: What it's like the eighties as well. So like very
Speaker 2: history has already described this guy as a monster.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing yeah, yeah, well yeah, he's a monster. And
Speaker 1: literally the only he did two things. One of them
Speaker 1: was run a zoo that killed a shitload of people,
Speaker 1: and the other of them was run a massive gambling hall.
Speaker 1: Like one thing I'll give the us and I won't
Speaker 1: give us much, But when when we have people who
Speaker 1: build casino empires, we're pretty open about like, yeah, he
Speaker 1: was just a gangster, Like, yeah, that dude was a
Speaker 1: fucking gangster.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. But also we lionize pieces of ship all
Speaker 2: the time. We just don't shure it as directly as
Speaker 2: we do back home.
Speaker 1: No, we'll lionize. Yeah, we lionized them for being gangsters,
Speaker 1: you know, Alex Jones being like Trump is mobbed up
Speaker 1: and then you should definitely vote for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, God. I do think that England makes a
Speaker 2: special kind of bastard though, because you look in American
Speaker 2: history you've got tons of monsters, and as this podcast
Speaker 2: that's told, I'm sure, but England makes a certain piece
Speaker 2: of shit. Yeah, really, we brew them special. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: not just enough to defraud people and kill people. It's
Speaker 2: we need to do so with a little bit of
Speaker 2: mustard on it. And what better way than a fucking zoo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that is zoo. And that's it I've been
Speaker 1: wanting to talk about. There's there's an Adam Curtis documentary
Speaker 1: called The Mayfair Set that covers a number of the
Speaker 1: people will be talking about. It's kind of going in
Speaker 1: some different directions because it's it's a lot broader in
Speaker 1: its purview. But there's a lot of these because these
Speaker 1: the guys who are like John Aspinall's friends who will
Speaker 1: talk about are like sponsoring coups in a bunch of
Speaker 1: different countries, and I want to be able to talk
Speaker 1: about more of them, but like, you have to get
Speaker 1: this grounding in sort of the social society that they
Speaker 1: come from before you can you can explain much about
Speaker 1: like why they got to do the things that they
Speaker 1: got to do. So Aspinall is kind of the center
Speaker 1: of all that, and that's why we're starting with him
Speaker 1: this week. The other biography I read about him, it's
Speaker 1: a two thousand and seven book called The Gamblers by
Speaker 1: John Pearson, and yeah, the it's a lot better. Pearson
Speaker 1: wrote a biography of Ian Fleming. He's like as a
Speaker 1: professional like journalist as well as a biographer, and he
Speaker 1: does a lot better job of being kind of critical
Speaker 1: to the subject. But yeah, Masters' book doesn't mention the
Speaker 1: fact that Mary had her son sort of out of wedlock,
Speaker 1: because that wasn't really known at the time. But by
Speaker 1: the time that Pearson writes his book, the evidence we
Speaker 1: have suggests that, you know, doctor Aspinall learned pretty quickly
Speaker 1: that John is not his biological son, and to his credit,
Speaker 1: I guess he doesn't tell him or seem to have
Speaker 1: taken it out on him in any way. But that's
Speaker 1: not really a grand gesture because the Aspinall family follows
Speaker 1: this kind of fine upper class tradition of not raising
Speaker 1: their kid, right Like, he doesn't disown his son for
Speaker 1: not being technically his son. But he also has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the raising of either of these kids
Speaker 1: because from their earliest days, John and Ship are raised
Speaker 1: by a local Indian nanny and they actually kids considered
Speaker 1: themselves Indian as their mother did. Their early contact with
Speaker 1: with the UK was was pretty much non existent.
Speaker 2: Just because they were raised in India.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in India, born in Delhi, raised, yes, yes, and
Speaker 1: there their first language is Hindi, right, like that's what
Speaker 1: they're they're speaking that before they really get fluent in English.
Speaker 1: So it's not like necessarily and this is you read
Speaker 1: biographies of like British kids born in India in this
Speaker 1: time and that's like a pretty common experience. So Master
Speaker 1: says this about John as a young child. Quote, he
Speaker 1: said whatever came into his head, even as an infant,
Speaker 1: he was agreeable company lively and affectionate and very attractive
Speaker 1: with the shock of blonde hair. There grew between Miss
Speaker 1: Aspinall and her son a powerful bond, uncommonly close and confidential,
Speaker 1: which was never to be impaired in any fraternal quarrel,
Speaker 1: no matter how mild an. Irrespective of the justice of
Speaker 1: the case, Mary always took John's side. And this is probably,
Speaker 1: i mean, it's theory by some of the people writing
Speaker 1: about them, this is because she hated her husband, so
Speaker 1: she's going to like prefer the kid that she didn't
Speaker 1: have with him. But yeah, she was something of a
Speaker 1: wild woman at her time, very independent. She was also
Speaker 1: an inveterate gambler. So when John spent time with his mom,
Speaker 1: some of the first experiences he would have had as
Speaker 1: his mom playing poker or other games of chance with
Speaker 1: her friends, wagering money on them. Childhood was also characterized
Speaker 1: by regular close contact with exotic animals. He's got a
Speaker 1: great uncle over there. Like you know, if you're part
Speaker 1: of the ruling colonial class in India, you get to
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time with elephants. And so he
Speaker 1: had an uncle who would hold these garden parties and
Speaker 1: just bring out his elephants and the kids would like
Speaker 1: feed them sugarcane and get lifted into the air by
Speaker 1: them by their trunks. And one of John's first experiences
Speaker 1: would be being awed by what he called the power
Speaker 1: and gentleness of these elephants, which sounds pretty cool, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's a dope childhood experiences to have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, she compared to the average British childhood. Yeah
Speaker 2: time where it was just like being hit with a cane. Yeah,
Speaker 2: being hit with a cane, learning to be racist the
Speaker 2: British way, Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And don't forget dying in a coal mine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dying three, which was considered old. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So another of his mom's his mom has some boyfriends
Speaker 1: during this period of time. I don't think John knows
Speaker 1: that they're her boyfriends. They're just like friends of hers.
Speaker 1: But one of these guys who he comes to like idolize,
Speaker 1: has two pet tigers, which is why John idolizes this
Speaker 1: guy because got pet tigers. So he gets to like
Speaker 1: play with these guys tigers. Now, this idyllic childhood doesn't
Speaker 1: last long because, as I noted, parents don't raise their kids.
Speaker 1: And when John was six and Chip was I think
Speaker 1: like a year or so older, the Aspittalls decide it's
Speaker 1: time for their kids to get out of India and
Speaker 1: go off to a boarding school. This was the fashion
Speaker 1: at the time. It was also a social necessity. Again,
Speaker 1: they're not aristocrats, but they're wealthy and they want to
Speaker 1: be in the aristocracy. And if you're going to do that,
Speaker 1: if you want to fit in with those people, you
Speaker 1: have to go to the same schools they do, which
Speaker 1: are our public schools.
Speaker 2: But ideally your child is put aside so that you
Speaker 2: can focus on being rich. Yeah, you also don't want
Speaker 2: to deal with them. Yeah, you want to have a child,
Speaker 2: but you don't want to have a child, yeah at
Speaker 2: that time in history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you want to know them when they're a cute baby,
Speaker 1: and then when they're eighteen and have graduated, Yeah, just
Speaker 1: in time for you to hate them. Yeah, yeah, for
Speaker 1: you to really grow to resent them. We are talking
Speaker 1: about like very fancy boarding schools here like that. That's
Speaker 1: like we're talking about Eton, which is where the basically
Speaker 1: the ruling class has sent their boys for forever.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I think he's going to go to John's
Speaker 1: going to go to a school called Rugby, which is
Speaker 1: named that because that's where rugby comes from, Like it's
Speaker 1: the it was where Yeah, rugby got sort of started off,
Speaker 1: I guess, which I hadn't realized came from an institution initially,
Speaker 1: but yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: That doesn't surprise me. Yeah, yeah, I mean the country.
Speaker 1: I like rugby, though I don't know. I wouldn't play it,
Speaker 1: but I feel like it's more more honest than football, Like,
Speaker 1: let's get those pads on.
Speaker 2: Out of there. Are you talking about American football? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was going to say, yeah, I was. I was
Speaker 2: a large boy in a British private school known for
Speaker 2: sports and drama, and let me tell you, that's the
Speaker 2: worst place in the world to be overweight. And that
Speaker 2: was pretty how I was like three hundred and fifty pounds.
Speaker 2: And had I grown up in America, I always think
Speaker 2: I would have made an offensive lineman, a deeply offensive person.
Speaker 2: I'm very hard to move, would have been great. But no,
Speaker 2: I was in England where I was just called various
Speaker 2: insults around my size and the speed I moved at
Speaker 2: it wasn't enjoyable at all. Ah. Nevertheless, I'm I've learned
Speaker 2: absolutely nothing from that, so just other than that the
Speaker 2: self loathing, but that's what being British is. That's the
Speaker 2: core of it. I mean, yes, that's the British identity
Speaker 2: is hating oneself.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's uh. I guess the American identity is loving
Speaker 1: oneself and then hating everybody who's similar to you.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, exactly, or having no loyalty to anyone, including
Speaker 2: yourself somehow.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, deeply deeply betraying your past self in
Speaker 1: the hope that it will benefit your future self something
Speaker 1: like exactly, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, there we go. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he goes to this fancy this fancy like boarding school,
Speaker 1: and this is this is the this is like the
Speaker 1: tradition for kind of the ruling class. Like if you
Speaker 1: are like, part of why you go to a school
Speaker 1: like eton is so that you can learn how to talk.
Speaker 1: There's like accents that are kind of associated with the
Speaker 1: very oldest of these schools and how to fit in
Speaker 1: with the people who are kind of ruling the empire.
Speaker 1: And part of the way in which kids, these children
Speaker 1: who go to these schools are molded into that tradition
Speaker 1: is by basically a system of hazing, right, Like that's
Speaker 1: a huge and how you makes these kids and this
Speaker 1: brings us to a difficult topic to discuss. That's going
Speaker 1: it's going to sound like I'm using a slur here.
Speaker 1: I'm probably not. We'll deal with that because the kind
Speaker 1: of tradition that rules both the school that John Aspinall
Speaker 1: is going to go to and eaten all of these
Speaker 1: schools that like produce upper class you know, ruling types,
Speaker 1: is called fagging. Now I have to again go in
Speaker 1: to explain where this comes from, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote from the online Etymology Dictionary here. Hey everyone, Robert here,
Speaker 1: I didn't make this clear. The definition I'm quoting from
Speaker 1: is the definition of the slur, because that relates to
Speaker 1: what we're about to talk about. American English slang probably
Speaker 1: from earlier contemptuous term for women fifteen nineties, especially an
Speaker 1: old and unpleasant one, and reference to faggot a bundle
Speaker 1: of sticks as something awkward to be carried compare baggage
Speaker 1: worthless women fifteen nineties. It may also be reinforced by
Speaker 1: Yiddish fagel homosexual literally little bird. It may also have
Speaker 1: roots in British public school slang, which is the term
Speaker 1: that we're talking about here, a junior who does certain
Speaker 1: duties for a senior. So the term fagging is to
Speaker 1: refer to this relationship in these public schools where junior
Speaker 1: students are made to act as servants for senior students,
Speaker 1: and the use of the actual word they use both
Speaker 1: comes from the fact that because the original word means
Speaker 1: a bundle of sticks, especially like in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: part of what these these younger kids are doing for
Speaker 1: older kids is like stoking the fires in their rooms
Speaker 1: and stuff. And it also comes from these kind of
Speaker 1: derogatory terms for women, and it may come from this
Speaker 1: Yiddish term for homosexual as well. And there's a couple
Speaker 1: of reasons for this. One of them is that there's
Speaker 1: not uncommonly sexual relationships often with a lot of coercion
Speaker 1: between seniors and juniors. So you know, this is a
Speaker 1: messy tradition. Americans will be familiar with the bones of
Speaker 1: this if they've read the Harry Potter books, because the
Speaker 1: system of like prefects and head boys and shit and
Speaker 1: like the Magic School in that book series is a
Speaker 1: sanitized version of how culture works in these like boarding schools,
Speaker 1: right like that is like rallying kind of adds girls
Speaker 1: to the mix and removes the hazing and the sex abuse.
Speaker 1: But she's writing about the same kind of system which
Speaker 1: I had only started to realize like a year or
Speaker 1: so ago when I started reading about how some of
Speaker 1: these schools worked. It's pretty wild. I don't think most
Speaker 1: people are kind of aware of how this stuff started.
Speaker 2: Outing is like a big part of school in England,
Speaker 2: and teachers do not And really, I finished two thousand
Speaker 2: and four, Christ wonder if when I graduate secondary school
Speaker 2: bullying has always been a big deal. It's always fucking happened,
Speaker 2: And the teacher's like, well, you know it's bad, but
Speaker 2: what are we meant to do about it? Stop the child? Now?
Speaker 2: Absolutely not. Then you're like and eventually, just there was
Speaker 2: a period of time where I was bullied so consistently
Speaker 2: I just stopped showing up to school and they called
Speaker 2: my parents and my parents are just like, is he
Speaker 2: still being bullied?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: And then and that actually stopped it for a little bit.
Speaker 2: But it's just I genuinely think England to its bones
Speaker 2: is just they think abuse is good. I think England
Speaker 2: British school systems like we have prefects so that we
Speaker 2: have miniature fucking police walking around the school. It's just
Speaker 2: an insane system. And thank god we actually have gun
Speaker 2: control in England because the anger and resentment in young
Speaker 2: kids in England is brewing constantly because teachers are fucking
Speaker 2: useless and so if they create little monsters in England,
Speaker 2: that's why. It's because it's part of British blood. You
Speaker 2: must be subject to abuse from school. That is, they
Speaker 2: genuinely think that, they believe that to this day.
Speaker 1: I mean that is actually literally what I'm about to
Speaker 1: read from this and this is from like a nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one study, because like the system arises that part
Speaker 1: of the idea is that we are we are molding
Speaker 1: the minds who are going to run the empire, right,
Speaker 1: and if you're going to lead, you need to learn
Speaker 1: how to follow. So that's why we set these kids
Speaker 1: underneath each other, right, so they can learn how to
Speaker 1: exist within this hierarchy. There is this belief that putting
Speaker 1: them in this system will make them more compassionate because
Speaker 1: they'll have been sort of governed cruelly by kids who
Speaker 1: are older, which is insane. The idea that like, well,
Speaker 1: if we let kids abuse each other, it'll make them
Speaker 1: kinder adults. Why would you think that?
Speaker 2: But that is.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read this quote. This is from a
Speaker 1: n A nineteen sixty one study by Paul Nash in
Speaker 1: a History of Education Quarterly, and he's writing about again,
Speaker 1: it's hard to read this sometimes because the name of
Speaker 1: this system that I've described is called the prefect fagging system.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There's like a little dash between the two of them,
Speaker 1: which I know, guys, but like this is what it's called, right.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: Under the prefect fagging system, senior boys are given a
Speaker 1: major role in governing the school, wielding discipline and carrying
Speaker 1: out responsibility. They are called variously prefects, monitors, or prey posters,
Speaker 1: chosen according to many criteria, including physical and intellectual prowess.
Speaker 1: The principal consideration in their selection, apart from seniority, has
Speaker 1: traditionally been character Usually the prefects are members of the
Speaker 1: sixth form, and while in some schools all members of
Speaker 1: the six they're granted privileged status. The two bodies are
Speaker 1: not customarily identical. At the other end of the scale,
Speaker 1: new boys entering the school begin by serving as fags
Speaker 1: for senior boys. Their duties consist of almost anything the
Speaker 1: fag master cares to impose, from cooking and running errands
Speaker 1: to blacking shoes and kindling fires. And since public school
Speaker 1: kids these are like the future ruling class. This is
Speaker 1: like you're training these kids to follow and part of
Speaker 1: the goal here, there's this real system, especially in the
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, there's this particular
Speaker 1: understanding that smaller boys are weaker and less valuable, right,
Speaker 1: and they need to get used to the idea that
Speaker 1: they should be subservient to larger and better bred boys. Right.
Speaker 1: There's some flexu if you're a small boy whose dad
Speaker 1: is a really highly placed member of the aristocracy, you
Speaker 1: can get some sort of like wiggle room there. But
Speaker 1: that is how it works a lot of the time,
Speaker 1: quote with teacher authority unable or unwilling to protect the
Speaker 1: rights of the weaker. Life for the small boy in
Speaker 1: the early nineteenth century public school was frequently one of
Speaker 1: servitude and fear. The Westminster Review complained that the experience
Speaker 1: of starting off as a fag and graduating without any
Speaker 1: reference to merit to a point of having fags of
Speaker 1: his own, courage the public school boy to see life
Speaker 1: in terms of tyrants and slaves. Fag masters often treated
Speaker 1: their fags with great cruelty and imposed unreasonable tasks upon them.
Speaker 1: When James Gaskell was a fag at Eton, he was
Speaker 1: sent by his fag master out of bounds on errands.
Speaker 1: If seen by a master, he was reported to Doctor
Speaker 1: Keat the headmaster and flogged. One sixth form boy at
Speaker 1: Eton in Coleridge's time ordered his fag to eat a
Speaker 1: tallow sandwich by way of acquiring an extra relish for
Speaker 1: his own cold mutton at the sixth form supper table.
Speaker 1: And what that means is that like they had mutton sandwiches, right, yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he just pulled all the fat off of his took
Speaker 1: the other boy's meat and gave him a sandwich that's
Speaker 1: just like stringy bits of fat in a Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: this is hazing, this abuse, right.
Speaker 2: It's disgraceful because there are people to this day who
Speaker 2: would hear the system and be like other than the name,
Speaker 2: which is of course we can't say anymore. Yeah, which
Speaker 2: we stopped saying that in twenty eleven. Yeah, it's going
Speaker 2: like being in a British private school. I'm not saying
Speaker 2: that you had like institutional abuse, but also you had
Speaker 2: a great deal of ignorance from it. Toward it even
Speaker 2: and there was genuinely I still believe to this day
Speaker 2: there is still this instinct within British schooling, private and public,
Speaker 2: but especially private, that boys must be made to learn
Speaker 2: about the real world by giving them this very bizarre
Speaker 2: prison system that they will never participate in again. But
Speaker 2: the other thing you say about, like compassion, Back when
Speaker 2: I was bullied in school, that was kind of the thing. Oh,
Speaker 2: it would make you a stronger person. And when we
Speaker 2: tell them, when we tell them you talk to the teacher,
Speaker 2: which I never wanted to happen, they will feel bad
Speaker 2: and be more compatterent. No, they will be angry they
Speaker 2: got in trouble and bully you more. It's just the
Speaker 2: actual way to deal with it is just to kick
Speaker 2: the little fuckers out of school. By the way, you'll
Speaker 2: be a bully. You don't go to school anymore. But
Speaker 2: this is back in the time when England did not
Speaker 2: care about this stuff. Yeah, this is back when England
Speaker 2: was like, this is just how we make a little
Speaker 2: army of fascists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this is like this is both if you
Speaker 1: kind of are reading through the height of the empire
Speaker 1: and then sort of its dissolution and you come across
Speaker 1: these stories of some of these really crazy decisions people
Speaker 1: will make about what to do had to crack down
Speaker 1: on things. Well, it's being made by kids who went
Speaker 1: to these schools and who were brought up in this system.
Speaker 1: This does explain a lot, yes, And while this school,
Speaker 1: this system was very much supported by the men who
Speaker 1: controlled the government at the time, the system we're talking about,
Speaker 1: this prefect fagging system is not certainly, not nearly to
Speaker 1: the same extent. This has largely been dismantled, which doesn't
Speaker 1: mean there's not still abuse and bullying. It's just not
Speaker 1: set up in the exact way that it used to be.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: But you know, while this is kind of supported by
Speaker 1: the people in power at the time, there are regular controversies.
Speaker 1: By the time that John is going through it, right,
Speaker 1: it's one hundred and fifty or so something like that
Speaker 1: years old by the time he is in school. This
Speaker 1: kind of starts in the early eighteen hundreds, and there
Speaker 1: are some controversies because obviously, not every kid is going
Speaker 1: to survive a system like this, right, and it's there's
Speaker 1: also difficulty because since these prefects are being relied upon
Speaker 1: to manage large chunks of how these schools work. These
Speaker 1: kids who are made prefects actually have a lot of power,
Speaker 1: and they often clash with the headmaster and with the
Speaker 1: school administration because like you actually can't force them to
Speaker 1: do some things, because you're reliant upon them to run
Speaker 1: the school, and because not just that, the other dynamic
Speaker 1: is that you may want to punish some of these kids,
Speaker 1: but if their dad is like the prime Minister, you're
Speaker 1: going to have some trouble.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't do anything. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So obviously, as I noted, bullying and abuse is extreme
Speaker 1: in the system, and often sexual. Now, some of this,
Speaker 1: to be fair, is just boys who are close in
Speaker 1: age who are like engaging in consensual relationships. But that's
Speaker 1: not the only thing that happens. And because these boarding
Speaker 1: schools are also so oh like locked down socially, boys
Speaker 1: are trained not to complain, not to respond to abuse
Speaker 1: with anything, but like you know, going along with it.
Speaker 1: It presents an opportunity for some of the adults in
Speaker 1: this system who are pedophiles, and pederaste is very common
Speaker 1: in this system. Suicides are not unknown. In nineteen thirty,
Speaker 1: Charles Fairhurst, a fourteen year old boy, killed himself during
Speaker 1: break because he decided he couldn't run, and I think
Speaker 1: he's an Etonian. He just couldn't return to the school,
Speaker 1: and his dad said that he had done it because
Speaker 1: of the fagging system. Right that nineteen sixty one article.
Speaker 1: I think it is a pretty good overview, but it
Speaker 1: also avoids discussing some of the more prurient details, which
Speaker 1: is like the rampant molestation of kids under this system.
Speaker 1: Masters and Pierson both avoid this topic while talking about Aspenall.
Speaker 1: But I found a good twenty fourteen article by a
Speaker 1: survivor of abuse in these schools, Alex Rinton, who discusses
Speaker 1: his experience in the sixties and seventies. One of us
Speaker 1: new boys I still don't know who had complained about
Speaker 1: the regime and dormitory five to his parents. This was
Speaker 1: the cardinal sin. What happened in school stayed in school.
Speaker 1: Billy punished us all we didn't tell tales again. Some
Speaker 1: of the key locations have shrunk absurdly small. The brick
Speaker 1: Chapel where Billy gripped the Bible and harangued us with
Speaker 1: the backing of his three trusteest prefects, Jesus, the Holy
Speaker 1: Ghost and God just as tiny now as the assembly room,
Speaker 1: where daily one hundred and twenty boys aged seven to
Speaker 1: thirteen were ranked on wooden benches. Here the diatribes, the
Speaker 1: mass punishments and the public humiliations happened. This is where
Speaker 1: he would detail who had cried under the cane the
Speaker 1: previous night. Jones and Smith took it like gentlemen, but
Speaker 1: Rinton blubbed like a baby. Rinton recalled vividly how he
Speaker 1: used to look at the picture of the Queen in
Speaker 1: their playroom and beg in his mind for her to
Speaker 1: visit and save them all from this horrible system. As
Speaker 1: per usual, the Queen did nothing. Rinton would go on
Speaker 1: to experience as well sexual abuse at the hands of
Speaker 1: a teacher, and yeah, it's a pretty awful story. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things you will encounter stories like this
Speaker 1: from some pretty famous people. Over in Britain. Richard Dawkins
Speaker 1: has talked, and it's often kind of odd. He's talked
Speaker 1: obliquely about the sexual abuse he encountered, calling it mild
Speaker 1: pedophilia and saying I am very conscious that you can't
Speaker 1: condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours,
Speaker 1: which I think she can.
Speaker 2: In this tis done right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the physical abuse is also something that some people
Speaker 1: will talk about. Eddie Izzard specifically has talked about this
Speaker 1: quite a lot. Quick update as of June of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, Eddie Izzard has made it clear that she
Speaker 1: prefers to go by Susie, although she says you can't
Speaker 1: go wrong by still calling her Eddie or using other pronouns,
Speaker 1: but I'm still going to re record this bit. Izard
Speaker 1: has spoken about how she was sent to a boarding
Speaker 1: school at age seven, shortly after her mother's death. She
Speaker 1: cried relentlessly for about a year. Quote my housemaster help
Speaker 1: me along with beatings when he could fit them in.
Speaker 1: And because John Aspinall is I think one of the
Speaker 1: people who grows up sort of taking a weird degree
Speaker 1: of pride and going through this system, he doesn't complain
Speaker 1: about this experience, and there's certainly not complaints baked in
Speaker 1: Like his biographers don't talk about this as abusive, but
Speaker 1: they do talk about the abuse that Aspinall suffers in
Speaker 1: this system. It's just sort of normalized. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: this is just part of what you go through here.
Speaker 1: This paragraph from the master's book is typical John's first
Speaker 1: year was spent in Cottonhouse, where he shared rooms with
Speaker 1: John Straddling Thomas, later to be a Tory MP, a knight,
Speaker 1: and a government whip. Within days, he was almost constantly
Speaker 1: being whacked by Head of House Hardy for minor but
Speaker 1: regular infringement of rules. Far from being abashed, John would
Speaker 1: show off the strokes he had received, throwing Hardy into
Speaker 1: a fury of indignation, eventually announcing that he would whack
Speaker 1: aspinall no longer, Hardy sent him to the butler Ellsworthy,
Speaker 1: who devised devilish schemes for punishment, such as moving hundred
Speaker 1: weeks of coke, cleaning the floor beneath it, and moving
Speaker 1: the coke back again. Anyway, I guess we'll go to
Speaker 1: ads right now and we're back. Yeah, and you'll hear
Speaker 1: A lot of the punishments are like weirdly collective, Like
Speaker 1: all of the kids have to paddle you like you
Speaker 1: run down a gauntlet or like down a staircase as
Speaker 1: they hit you and stuff. It's a yeah, A lot
Speaker 1: of thought goes into how to hit kids.
Speaker 2: Deep sadism runs through a lot of what a lot
Speaker 2: of British history, a lot of the world's evils come
Speaker 2: from England, and a lot of what England taught was
Speaker 2: a form of punishment driven success that you could It
Speaker 2: was very much a freedom through work. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: eugenics comes from England. The Eugenics Club was formed in England. Yeah,
Speaker 2: England has and to this day, i'd argue I realized
Speaker 2: my experience with the school system in England. It still
Speaker 2: as they can't physically abuse you anymore. They certainly can't
Speaker 2: sexually abuse you apparently, but they can certainly mentally abuse you.
Speaker 2: That is very fucking common. And what infuriates me about
Speaker 2: this is hearing this stuff and this is horrifying and
Speaker 2: it's terrible. But England has not advanced as far beyond
Speaker 2: this as they really would love to pretend. I am
Speaker 2: still scarred from my time in the British private school system. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like I have friends who are still fucking mentally scarred
Speaker 2: from it. And it wasn't anything physical. It was the
Speaker 2: aiding and a betting of abuse by teachers. Teachers helped
Speaker 2: teachers would join in. And it's funny because they'll now
Speaker 2: claim England's like this progressive nation, and to an extent
Speaker 2: we are, But then you really look at long and
Speaker 2: hard at what we do in our school system here.
Speaker 2: If bullying happens, but parents are litigious, parents will do
Speaker 2: Like there is genuinely a sense of oh that you
Speaker 2: don't really want that smoke. As a school in England,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, boys will be born boys? You have
Speaker 2: any idea? How many fucking times about that? Upon must
Speaker 2: sudden rant this subject? No, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: I mean that's the that's the point of it, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's this is stuff.
Speaker 2: I don't think.
Speaker 1: It's certainly not widely known over here about like the
Speaker 1: way that because there's I think part of it is
Speaker 1: because when most Americans encounter information about these schools, it's
Speaker 1: through like fiction. And I'm not just talking about Ralling here,
Speaker 1: but like her books are based on the fact that
Speaker 1: like for generations there have been a lot of like
Speaker 1: fictional stories about British boarding schools that have been very
Speaker 1: popular reading around the world, right, Like it's a genre.
Speaker 2: If Harry Potter was an accurate telling, Harry would have
Speaker 2: been a mass murderer.
Speaker 3: He was a.
Speaker 2: Viciously bullied kid at a boarding school constantly and the
Speaker 2: institution did nothing. He'd have fucking killed someone. He had
Speaker 2: magic like, yeah, that'sd by his professors. Yeah, he's professor
Speaker 2: physically abused him and it's like like any of them
Speaker 2: and he and he loved it and he was, oh,
Speaker 2: it's this lovely kid. No, he would have been a
Speaker 2: violent like he would have been made violent by a
Speaker 2: violent system, like a lot of school boys in England.
Speaker 2: And it's just I remember reading it while I was
Speaker 2: in school and being like, this is fucking stupid. I
Speaker 2: don't even mean the magic. I mean the fact that
Speaker 2: he's just like, oh I can shoot, my one can shoot.
Speaker 2: We all have guns and we're not using them. Not
Speaker 2: a single truly violent child in there. Yeah, and no,
Speaker 2: it would have been horrifying. It's just it's so stupid
Speaker 2: because England could actually deal with this by having laws
Speaker 2: and regulations that stop this sneak, could have punishments for
Speaker 2: teachers to aid in the bet in this instead you
Speaker 2: get the occasional limp piece in the newspaper with another
Speaker 2: school does not stop bullying, and nothing goddamn happens. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: this this sounds awful. They have improved the physical side
Speaker 2: in the Yeah, Pederasti's side kind of Yeah, disgusting country.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad I left. Yeah, now I live in America,
Speaker 2: a normal country. Finally. Yeah, good news about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, this is John's experience here. He's one
Speaker 1: of these kids he has targeted a lot early on
Speaker 1: his attitude. He's kind of this naturally rebellious person. And
Speaker 1: I will say, to his credit, John is one of
Speaker 1: these kids who, despite what he goes through, doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be like mentally or physically aggressive to others. One
Speaker 1: of his classmates later said he was never cruel throughout
Speaker 1: his time there, and there are very few people about
Speaker 1: whom one can truthfully say that. So like most kids
Speaker 1: who go through this turn out worse than he did.
Speaker 1: So I'll give him credit for that.
Speaker 2: That takes something. And yeah that's something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's for sure something. So John Aspinall's mother
Speaker 1: is again usually noted as sort of like favoring him,
Speaker 1: but if this is true, she still didn't prefer him
Speaker 1: to not having a kid around, because once he and
Speaker 1: Chip are off in these boarding schools, they don't really
Speaker 1: see their mom or their dad very much during summer break.
Speaker 1: He doesn't live with his parents. He lives with this
Speaker 1: like family of farmers that his parents pay to take
Speaker 1: them in.
Speaker 2: Which is very common during that time. They just like
Speaker 2: ship the fucking kid off, ship one way or the
Speaker 2: other way, right, Yeah, yeah, you don't have a kid,
Speaker 2: so you raise it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anywhere but here. And this is good for John actually,
Speaker 1: because he loves animals, so he spends a lot of
Speaker 1: time on this farm getting to take care of and
Speaker 1: raise animals. He kind of idolizes this farmer who helps
Speaker 1: to raise him because he's really good with animals, and
Speaker 1: this is just kind of John's passion from an early age.
Speaker 1: He also spends a lot of time with his grandparents,
Speaker 1: who are are pretty strict authoritarians. And yeah, he basically
Speaker 1: just does not see his parents, and he kind of
Speaker 1: grows up very independent and notably unwilling to take any
Speaker 1: shit from adults. Like that's a thing that people will
Speaker 1: notice about John from a pretty young age. He has
Speaker 1: his own ideas about the world and he's not really
Speaker 1: willing to bend on them. As a teenager, he is
Speaker 1: a member of it's like the Cadet Training program or
Speaker 1: something at his at his boarding school, it's basically an ROTC. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: although they do I was a ROTC and we didn't
Speaker 1: like do anything like we marched around and shit. But
Speaker 1: like apparently his ROTC equivalent, they like do wargames and
Speaker 1: stuff where they will like do fake attacks on like
Speaker 1: houses and buildings and stuff. John recognized this as kind
Speaker 1: of like LARPing and refuse to participate during these actions.
Speaker 1: He would like go to sleep nearby. He'd just be
Speaker 1: like napping with his other boys, because he was like,
Speaker 1: this is pointless, I'm not going to do it, which
Speaker 1: you have to spec.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, yeah, but also was that not a time
Speaker 2: when that might actually have happened. Conscription was a real
Speaker 2: threat at those times. It's it's just very weird that
Speaker 2: like the one time, like he wasn't actually correct in that.
Speaker 1: No, you were right because a lot of his his
Speaker 1: well they're all a little old because he's going to
Speaker 1: join the military, like in forty five is when he's
Speaker 1: going to start.
Speaker 2: Yes, but they could have, like they they very were
Speaker 2: in England, loved wars.
Speaker 1: We were going to have a few rules one, yeah,
Speaker 1: they he very well could have, but he doesn't. He
Speaker 1: was kind of indifferent in athletics. He was not particularly
Speaker 1: interested in dating. From what I can see, he probably
Speaker 1: would have been considered kind of a nerd for his day.
Speaker 1: Now there's not a lot of great, you know outlets
Speaker 1: for that as there are today. So the kind of
Speaker 1: nerd he is is he he spends all of his
Speaker 1: time reading colonial adventure stories by guys like h writer Haggard.
Speaker 1: John's face book by Haggard was called Naa the Lily,
Speaker 1: And it's this book about the Zulu king Shaka, who
Speaker 1: was this like very good military commander who leads this
Speaker 1: kind of uprising war against the British Empire in Africa,
Speaker 1: kind of his winning for a while before you know,
Speaker 1: tragically loses, and it's one of these things that happens
Speaker 1: a lot in the history of the Empire. Well, they'll
Speaker 1: they'll have this local like leader who fights against them,
Speaker 1: kind of comes close to winning and then gets massacred
Speaker 1: along with all of his people and then has turned
Speaker 1: to a hero. Right like afterwards, like people like within
Speaker 1: the empire will be like, oh, what a noble man
Speaker 1: that we kill. That's a real shame that we had
Speaker 1: to wipe that dude.
Speaker 2: Out only had been born somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, quote Aspinall, and this is from a masters' book.
Speaker 1: Aspinall continued this tradition and throughout his school days, enthralled
Speaker 1: other boys so much with Zulu lore and accounts of
Speaker 1: battles and personalities that even the those who can remember
Speaker 1: nothing else about him recalled the Zulu obsession. He even
Speaker 1: went so far as to claim his mother was a
Speaker 1: Zulu princess, and some of the younger boys, perhaps unaware
Speaker 1: that his blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin were
Speaker 1: inconvenient evidence, believed him.
Speaker 2: So there we go.
Speaker 1: That's good. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean it's kids stuff too.
Speaker 1: I guess lying about who your family is so that
Speaker 1: you sound cooler. It's this weird mix of like.
Speaker 2: Back then, you could probably make up anything. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a lot easier. It wasn't really an Internet for some much.
Speaker 2: To know, check just have to be a complete fantasist.
Speaker 1: You'd have to go to the library to prove that
Speaker 1: this kid's life in Scott's time.
Speaker 2: For that, I will not be doing that. No hazing
Speaker 2: to see too. Yeah, I've got kids to hit. As
Speaker 2: they grew nearer to adulthood, John started to show an
Speaker 2: aptitude for making money as well. He and his brother
Speaker 2: started dealing guns. While they are like teenagers and Jesus Christ,
Speaker 2: it's easier back then, right, I don't think there's like
Speaker 2: laws really about it. So they're just like buying old
Speaker 2: these are hunting weapons. They're buying old hunting weapons and
Speaker 2: like fixing them up and selling them for a profit.
Speaker 2: They're also like doing hunting and stuff and kind of
Speaker 2: basically selling the game. They get to rich people who
Speaker 2: don't want to be arced to do it themselves. But
Speaker 2: when I have like a trophy and kind of in
Speaker 2: the middle of doing all this, the two boys basically
Speaker 2: invent the entire modern industry of internet scams and analog
Speaker 2: form And this is fascinating. I think you're going to
Speaker 2: enjoy this. Chips was the more resourceful entrepreneur of the
Speaker 2: two at this stage. It was he who made the money,
Speaker 2: John who did his bidding. John was too dreamy and idealistic,
Speaker 2: too much the romantic to grasp the practical steps towards profits.
Speaker 2: One of chips ruses was to advertise in The Times
Speaker 2: inviting interested parties to send in one pound in return
Speaker 2: for which they would receive enlightenment on the mysteries of
Speaker 2: how to make soap. Hundreds of letters arrived at prep school.
Speaker 2: They were answered with a page copied from the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Speaker 2: That's like he's running like a kind of a chat
Speaker 2: GPT scam, right, they're just copying directly from the encyclopedia.
Speaker 2: I I approve all like British scams in that era
Speaker 2: because it was such a rotten country, such an inherently
Speaker 2: corrupt institution. It was such a Britain was such a
Speaker 2: natural scammer. The things they did, the things the British
Speaker 2: Empire did in every other country were so disgusting that I,
Speaker 2: of course we can have this happen. Of course we
Speaker 2: invented that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. It is a weirdly modern scam though,
Speaker 1: like it's it's just like this is you know, they
Speaker 1: would have they could have gotten so much further with
Speaker 1: it if they'd had the internet, you know, chat GPT
Speaker 1: would have really been a wonder to these Kidsins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: early Crassensteins. So after graduating, yeah Krassenstein, Yeah, Crassen's Steen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably right.
Speaker 2: So after graduation.
Speaker 1: Stems he joins the Royal Marines. He's got to do
Speaker 1: his time in service, which I think is about three years.
Speaker 2: He gets really lucky.
Speaker 1: He comes in right at the end of World War two,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't have to do any of the war part,
Speaker 1: which is great. You would prefer to avoid that if
Speaker 1: at all possible. Not a great war to have to
Speaker 1: fight in. So he demobilizes in forty eight and then
Speaker 1: applies to Jesus College, Oxford and was accepted. And again
Speaker 1: for Americans, Oxford I think is like actually five universities
Speaker 1: when people refer to Auxford's a couple of different schools there,
Speaker 1: and they're all nice, right, They're all like side of pristigeous, no,
Speaker 1: but Jesus is like sort of the least of the
Speaker 1: prestigious of them, at least at this time.
Speaker 2: I don't know where it stands today, maybe that time,
Speaker 2: but it's still everywhere is good.
Speaker 1: Now, everywhere's yeah, these are all very good, right, And
Speaker 1: so he goes there, but he doesn't fall in love
Speaker 1: with it, right. He kind of is is disillusioned very
Speaker 1: early on part of it because he doesn't know what
Speaker 1: he wants to do. At this point. He thought he
Speaker 1: wanted to be a writer, and then he thought he
Speaker 1: wanted to be a journalist, but he doesn't actually like
Speaker 1: to write, and he's like, wow, this is a hard
Speaker 1: job and it doesn't make much money.
Speaker 2: So he would be a perfect modern journalist. Then, yeah,
Speaker 2: he'd be a perfect modern journalist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he drops that ambition pretty quick, and he
Speaker 1: just decides to dress like Oscar Wilde for a while
Speaker 1: and try to build a reputation as a poet.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got this like purple velvet suit he wears everywhere.
Speaker 2: Just a dandy now, uh huh, andandy pilt.
Speaker 1: And he gets away with that for a while, but
Speaker 1: he like doesn't actually like writing poems or making art
Speaker 1: in any way. And you know, you can only kind
Speaker 1: of keep up that lie so long before you get
Speaker 1: kind of bored of it. And while this is going on,
Speaker 1: well he's kind of finding himself in Oxford. His mother
Speaker 1: was off partying and eventually she hooks up with another
Speaker 1: army officer. His luck would have it, this guy, Colonel Osborne.
Speaker 1: Like they marry, she becomes lady or she becomes you know,
Speaker 1: missus Osborne, and then he inherits a baronetcy, which which
Speaker 1: is like I believe that's kind of on the lower
Speaker 1: end of the aristocracy, like a baron.
Speaker 2: It's baron.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe the middle class of the aristocracy.
Speaker 2: I don't know, any kind of aristocracy. We have to
Speaker 2: explain why it's good. Is not great?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, But this works out great for John
Speaker 1: because he inherits a baronetcy. His mom is now the
Speaker 1: Lady Osborne, and this kind of lifts them all up, right,
Speaker 1: so he gets to be on more of an even
Speaker 1: footing with the other with the kids at Oxford who
Speaker 1: are like members of the of the nobility. And this
Speaker 1: is why he's as an adult, is going to be
Speaker 1: Lord aspinall right, because he this baronetcy goes to him eventually.
Speaker 1: That makes socialization at Oxford a lot easier. And he
Speaker 1: falls in with a crowd of wealthy young men who
Speaker 1: are real aristocrats with family fortunes that gave them basically
Speaker 1: endless trust funds. They are all his friends at school
Speaker 1: or all these rich boys. None of them have ever
Speaker 1: had to do anything on their own, and their whole youth,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about, was this mix of like psycho privates,
Speaker 1: school bullying and these you know, outside of that when
Speaker 1: they're with their families, these kind of interminable rituals that
Speaker 1: you have to carry out as members of the aristocracy.
Speaker 1: So these are rich kids, they are kids who have
Speaker 1: suffered some psychic damage as a result of their education,
Speaker 1: and they are permanently bored, right, and so the only
Speaker 1: thing in their life that lends them excitement is gambling.
Speaker 1: That is the joy that these kids have is to gamble.
Speaker 2: Yeah, beautiful, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Great situation and this is yeah, so John learns to
Speaker 1: play poker with them, and he does not have He's
Speaker 1: one of these kids, not the only one. This is
Speaker 1: a period where kind of the upper crust is opening
Speaker 1: up a little bit and there's some room for these
Speaker 1: kids who are born to just rich families to kind
Speaker 1: of move in and out of it. And John is
Speaker 1: one of these kids who is kind of welcome in
Speaker 1: these circles, even though he doesn't really have a family fortune.
Speaker 1: But the fact that he's not rich. He's rich compared
Speaker 1: to like a normal person, right, but he's not rich
Speaker 1: by the standards of these guys. He's certainly not rich
Speaker 1: enough to gamble like they do.
Speaker 2: Right. So we actually this is like the beginning of
Speaker 2: new money.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. He is one of the first new money
Speaker 1: people to really like ascend, right. But he doesn't have
Speaker 1: that money at this point, which means he has to
Speaker 1: actually be good at gambling, right. He can't just waste.
Speaker 2: Money for simple weeks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and this is from Pearson's book The Gamblers.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: He said later, from the first time I settled down
Speaker 1: to play, I felt at home as I never had before.
Speaker 1: The excitement invigorated him, the risk challenged him, and he
Speaker 1: relished the company of gamblers, which came as a relief
Speaker 1: from those earnest Welshmen back in college. Later he used
Speaker 1: to claim that gamblers formed a superior race to passive,
Speaker 1: tedious humanity, and he rather shocked the journalist Compton Miller
Speaker 1: by telling him he regarded people who don't gamble as
Speaker 1: emotional cripples. To be able to count himself among the
Speaker 1: emotionally elect must have been more satisfying than dressing up
Speaker 1: his Oscar wild or studying Beowulf for Chaucer, and nobody
Speaker 1: could doubt his dedication to his chosen field of studies.
Speaker 1: Soon most of his waking hours were spent gambling in
Speaker 1: one way or another. The stakes rose, some of his
Speaker 1: early partners, like John Lawrence, the future Lord Oaksy, became
Speaker 1: worried and dropped out. It was getting too hot for
Speaker 1: me to handle, and it was obvious that John was
Speaker 1: heading for the dangerous world of big time gambling.
Speaker 2: I just think it's marvelous. You found another kind of
Speaker 2: British eugenics. Yeah, yeah, gambling, superio. They found another way
Speaker 2: to be xenophobic. Yeah, innovats us.
Speaker 1: It is really innovative. And you know, I mentioned that
Speaker 1: Adam curtis documentary The Mayfair Set, which is about Aspinall
Speaker 1: and his friends. Curtis will draw a direct line with that
Speaker 1: between a lot of these guys who are sponsoring coups right,
Speaker 1: who are doing shit, who are like behind a lot
Speaker 1: of like the military actions in the Suez Crisis, These
Speaker 1: guys who build private armies and use them to like
Speaker 1: change the nature power and at they're all gamblers. They
Speaker 1: all gamble with Aspinall, and He's like, gambling is crucial
Speaker 1: to understanding why the people who are running a lot
Speaker 1: of foreign policy for the Empire in the like latter
Speaker 1: half of the twentieth century do the shit that they do, right,
Speaker 1: because they're gamblers like that, they're willing to kind of
Speaker 1: take these big wild risks of chance.
Speaker 2: They don't fear losing, Yeah, or at least they the
Speaker 2: idea of risk for them is a little more valuable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they fear losing less than they fear not rolling
Speaker 1: the dice. Yes, I think is probably an accurate way
Speaker 1: to see it. So aspinall is a pretty good gambler naturally, right,
Speaker 1: And when he does lose, you know, because these games
Speaker 1: are all between very rich people, there's like IOU systems, right,
Speaker 1: so you can kind of float for a while if
Speaker 1: you have a couple of bad nights by kind of
Speaker 1: like rolling those IOUs forward until you win some So
Speaker 1: he's able to kind of hang on. There's some like
Speaker 1: tight moments there, but he's he's able to hang on.
Speaker 1: But he realizes, like, I don't want to just be
Speaker 1: gambling like this and potentially lose eventually. The real way
Speaker 1: to like get ahead and to kind of build a
Speaker 1: place for myself in the society is to start hosting games. Right,
Speaker 1: So he starts to draw a network of close friends
Speaker 1: to him who he uses as almost like this is
Speaker 1: almost like a corporate enterprise, except for it's just purely
Speaker 1: bonds of friendship here, right, friendship and sort of like
Speaker 1: mutual need. The first guy that he kind of attracts
Speaker 1: to him as this fellow Lord Maxwell Scott, and I say, Lord,
Speaker 1: he is the Lord Maxwell Scott he's also like eighteen
Speaker 1: at this point, right, these are all still kids, and
Speaker 1: Maxwell Scott is so addicted to gambling. He's one of
Speaker 1: these guys who he's got perfect noble credentials. Right, so
Speaker 1: he's really good at making friends. He can make all
Speaker 1: of these connections to other members of the aristocracy. He's
Speaker 1: inherently welcome at every party. Right, There's no event that's
Speaker 1: closed to this guy because of how highly placed he
Speaker 1: is within the system. But he is a god awful
Speaker 1: gambler who is terribly addicted to it. Not only does
Speaker 1: he play games of chance, he said to gamble, Like
Speaker 1: people will see like a crow flying in the air,
Speaker 1: and he'll bet on them as to whether or not
Speaker 1: it's going to like land in which tree it's gonna
Speaker 1: land on. He'll put money on this shit, or like
Speaker 1: which drop of rain is going to make it to
Speaker 1: the bottom of a window first. Like he's that kind
Speaker 1: of like there's nothing going on in this man's soul
Speaker 1: other than the momentary thrill of placing a wager.
Speaker 2: It's like a cartoon character. Yeah, it is really. I
Speaker 2: love that love I love that there are guys like
Speaker 2: this that existed in history. Just just completely insane dibshits.
Speaker 3: Yeah, guys like living versions at the success memes that
Speaker 3: you find on Instagram posted exclusively from like India and
Speaker 3: the Philippines.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, India gets a huge version of the
Speaker 1: of these, like this boarding school system with like kind
Speaker 1: of carbon copied over to it. That's a British another story.
Speaker 2: Disgusting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so between the two kingdom Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Hey,
Speaker 1: it's we all come from horrible countries here. You know,
Speaker 1: this is a this is a safe place to work
Speaker 1: through it. I come from Oklahoma, boy, Like I can
Speaker 1: tell you some stories. Speaking of Oklahoma. This show was
Speaker 1: sponsored by the state of Oklahoma. Oklahoma, we banned something
Speaker 1: else completely an a dye today.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm angry about the law. That was
Speaker 2: not a good one, not a good one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But you know what's illegal in Oklahoma right now?
Speaker 2: Not much abortion? Yeah. Well, oh no, a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff is illegal. It's just not the kind of stuff
Speaker 2: that should be illegal. Books.
Speaker 1: Yeah, books, Yes, we have definitely been banning some books
Speaker 1: back in my old home state.
Speaker 2: Come to Oklahoma, you can also leave.
Speaker 1: Yeah, come to Oklahoma a great place to exit.
Speaker 2: Anyway. Here's some other ads we're back.
Speaker 1: So the second friend that he draws that Maspinal draws
Speaker 1: to him is this guy Dominic Elways. Elways is a
Speaker 1: mediocre gambler, but he's incredibly handsome and charming with the ladies. Right,
Speaker 1: So between Maxwell Scott and Elways, aspinall can get all
Speaker 1: of like the really rich kids to his parties, and
Speaker 1: he can get women to his parties, right, which is
Speaker 1: sort of like the two ingredients in this social set
Speaker 1: for being able to have a good gambling party.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I should also note, as a fun aside, this is
Speaker 1: just like in Pearson's book, which is Pearson as a
Speaker 1: journalist is very much kind of close to this community.
Speaker 1: So while he's sort of critical about them, you get
Speaker 1: these lines from him where it's like, oh, you just
Speaker 1: come from a different world. And as like a fun aside,
Speaker 1: Pearson's like Elways's friends had a term for him NSIT,
Speaker 1: which means not safe in taxis, and this is like
Speaker 1: portrayed as a funny anecdote. What that means is that
Speaker 1: like you can't put Elways in a taxi with a
Speaker 1: young woman or he will just assault her, right, Like
Speaker 1: that's that's what that's what that means, Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: not just English, I'll give you that, but yeah, that
Speaker 1: is particularly this kind of guy, Like that's what it
Speaker 1: means to be a ladies man at this period of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's cool. John seems to have decided that the
Speaker 1: life of a gentleman gambler was the life that he
Speaker 1: wanted to live. So he drops out of Oxford. He
Speaker 1: actually on the day of his exams, like he's so
Speaker 1: close to graduating that it's like exam day, and instead
Speaker 1: of going to take them, he fakes an illness so
Speaker 1: he can gamble on horse races, which I do respect
Speaker 1: to be honest, like that Bridge British man.
Speaker 2: That's commitment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the boys start, you'll learn more at the
Speaker 1: horse trap.
Speaker 2: He doesn't understand.
Speaker 1: So the boys start renting rooms at the Ritz Hotel
Speaker 1: and hosting poker parties. These are very popular parties, but
Speaker 1: they're also expensive because like aspinall, he gets a little
Speaker 1: bit of a cut from like each pot, but he's
Speaker 1: also he has to pay for food, and he has
Speaker 1: to pay for alcohol, and like these are very rich people.
Speaker 1: So that's not cheap food and alcohol, right, You're not
Speaker 1: throwing together some ham sandwich isn't beat you know.
Speaker 2: Like appealing to the upp across you actually had to
Speaker 2: like make an effoot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they have trouble breaking even Aspinall is often
Speaker 1: reliant upon his rich friends in order to like keep
Speaker 1: floating the games to the next week. And he's like,
Speaker 1: this is not gonna wor I'm not gonna get rich
Speaker 1: doing this shit, right, And so while he's kind of
Speaker 1: trying to puzzle this out, he comes upon a new
Speaker 1: game of chance that is going to open the world
Speaker 1: up to him. And this game is called Shamanda Fair.
Speaker 1: Have you have you heard of Shamanda Fair.
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I learned about it from a Warren Zevon song. But
Speaker 1: it's remarkable. It's the heroine of games of chance. That's
Speaker 1: how it's described by some people who were both heroin
Speaker 1: addicts and gambling addicts. Right, And I'm gonna explain this
Speaker 1: because I don't think it's widely known anymore. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the way he finds out about shamand A Fair is
Speaker 1: his friend Elwiz kind of wangles him in invitation to
Speaker 1: this regular game held by the vicar, who's this guy
Speaker 1: who pretends to be a vicar but is really just
Speaker 1: a degenerate gambler, dressing like a religious figure in order
Speaker 1: to make people trust him so he can take their money.
Speaker 1: And aspinall has known this guy for a while, but
Speaker 1: he comes to his house to this shamand a Fair game,
Speaker 1: and he's like, your house is much nicer than it
Speaker 1: should be. Where are you getting all this money? And
Speaker 1: the Vicar's like, well, there's this new game that's blowing up,
Speaker 1: and if you're the dude running the house that night,
Speaker 1: you make crazy money off. And it's called shamand a fair. So,
Speaker 1: as I noted earlier, the guys who are gambling in
Speaker 1: this right are these rich kids, most of whom inherited
Speaker 1: huge fortunes from their parents who died during the war years.
Speaker 1: And in this period of time, this is like the
Speaker 1: early fifties the English aristocracy, there are historic levels of
Speaker 1: cash on hand, what's called ready cash. So you've got
Speaker 1: all these young people who have not really been seasoned
Speaker 1: by the world, who are very naive, and who have
Speaker 1: what seemed to them to be endless piles of liquid assets, right,
Speaker 1: and they have this kind of equally historic desire to
Speaker 1: throw this money away to feel alive for a second.
Speaker 1: And so The most popular games among the aristocracy are
Speaker 1: not things like poker where there's skill involved, right, where
Speaker 1: you're actually you're competing, right, You can be good at
Speaker 1: poker and it matters, you know, Yeah, there isn't.
Speaker 2: Exactly You're not losing because you were bad.
Speaker 1: You're losing just the roll of the dice whatever, and
Speaker 1: because that's more thrilling, right, you want to hear chance? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the games that are like popular among these kind
Speaker 1: of self destructive rich kids are are the ones that
Speaker 1: have the purest amount of chance in them. And Shamanda
Speaker 1: Fair it's beloved and its addictive because it's the most
Speaker 1: random game around and it's very fast. Now I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go through the rules of Shamanda Fair here
Speaker 1: because silly, and also I don't really I'm not a
Speaker 1: game of chance guy, but the point about how it
Speaker 1: works is that it's very fast and it's very random.
Speaker 1: Within these games, the standard bet is one thousand pounds,
Speaker 1: which is about twenty five thousand dollars in modern money,
Speaker 1: and these games are played every thirty seconds. So these
Speaker 1: people are putting down twenty five grand in modern money
Speaker 1: every thirty seconds, or so, right it is they are
Speaker 1: they love this because it is the fastest way to
Speaker 1: light money on fire. Like that's why shimand affair is beloved, right,
Speaker 1: just another.
Speaker 2: Form of doing drugs.
Speaker 1: It is, it is, And in fact, one of the
Speaker 1: people that Pierson cites is like a member of the
Speaker 1: aristocracy who was a heroin addict who is like describes
Speaker 1: it as the heroin of gambling. And another guy says, famously,
Speaker 1: you don't give up on Shemy, which is kind of
Speaker 1: the nickname for this game. Shemy gives up on you, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you never quit this game, you just run out of
Speaker 1: money because it's so addictive. So aspinall. The best thing
Speaker 1: about this from his perspective is that if you are
Speaker 1: the house, the house gets paid twenty percent of the
Speaker 1: pot in each game. Right. That was just sort of
Speaker 1: the cultural sort of understanding about how this was going
Speaker 1: to work. And the idea is this compensates the host
Speaker 1: for running the game. But because every member, everyone who's
Speaker 1: putting into a pot is putting the equivalent of twenty
Speaker 1: five grand and you make a fucking fortune running chimney game.
Speaker 2: So wait, is the So does the person running the
Speaker 2: game get a is they like a vig?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the vig right, that's like you get twenty
Speaker 1: percent of the pot automatically goes to the house.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, I gotta run one of these. Yeah, yeah, right.
Speaker 1: It's actually explicitly illegal in UK law to do this
Speaker 1: now air where it's extremely illegal to run any kind
Speaker 1: of gambling yourself. Yeah, that's a shame. Thank god, we
Speaker 1: can go to Caesar's palace and anyway. I don't know,
Speaker 1: at least it's democratized, right, They're they're robbing everybody here.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I guess it's better the way that.
Speaker 1: He's doing it because the only people in these games
Speaker 1: are rich, right, I will say Aspinall's version of running
Speaker 1: a casino is much more ethical than any other version.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the only time where that's the case, where
Speaker 1: like excluding people is fine because the people you're excluding
Speaker 1: are poor and can't afford to gamble like this. So
Speaker 1: I'll give him that. So Aspinall he brings in his
Speaker 1: you know, they start making money with these games. He
Speaker 1: brings in his mom to curate the meals because she's
Speaker 1: you know, knows some great cooks. Maxwell Scott, being this
Speaker 1: kind of impeccably mannered guy, picks the wine and John
Speaker 1: sort of in order to dress this up, they're going
Speaker 1: they're running it out of different houses each week. But
Speaker 1: he has to like make it look nice. So he
Speaker 1: needs some fine art. These pieces like originals by like
Speaker 1: guys like Panini and Cantiletto. And he's able to get
Speaker 1: fine art by sort of going to different art dealers
Speaker 1: and saying, I'm totally gonna buy this piece, but I
Speaker 1: need to take it home and try it out for
Speaker 1: a couple of days. Right, And because he's a lord
Speaker 1: and you know, in good with the aristocracy, all of
Speaker 1: these places are like, well, of course.
Speaker 2: Well you need to try a piece of artwork at home.
Speaker 2: That's how that works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, take it for a spin, Jesus Christ. So his
Speaker 1: first few games are hits and he just starts making
Speaker 1: piles of money. Right now, none of this is strict.
Speaker 1: This is a legal gray area at the time. Right,
Speaker 1: England's gambling laws make it a crime to run a
Speaker 1: casino or gambling house. You can't do that legally, But
Speaker 1: private homes are allowed to host gambling games, right you can't.
Speaker 1: I think it's if you do it more than two
Speaker 1: or three nights in a row it becomes illegal. So
Speaker 1: basically every week they switch locations, right, and that way
Speaker 1: they're not running a gambling hall. Right, these are independent games.
Speaker 1: Well this is this man's game this week. But they're
Speaker 1: all run by Aspinall right, and he's using kind of
Speaker 1: his buddy Maxwell Scott, who is this guy that any
Speaker 1: anybody who's rich in fan knows Maxwell Scott. So he
Speaker 1: can just go to all these other people with mansions
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, you want to host a game
Speaker 1: this week? You know, I think they're usually kicking them
Speaker 1: a little bit of the Big Two, but the money
Speaker 1: is crazy.
Speaker 2: They are making.
Speaker 1: Aspinall's generally making something like thirty pounds a night off
Speaker 1: of these games, which is this period of time an
Speaker 1: insane amount of money. Now his expenses are high too,
Speaker 1: but he's still making a lot of money, and in
Speaker 1: very short time he is rich. And the best thing
Speaker 1: about being rich is you can get totally devoted to
Speaker 1: insane hobbies that poor people cannot afford. In John's case
Speaker 1: being this kind of lifelong animal lover, the insane hobby
Speaker 1: he chooses to get into is adopting exotic animals and yeah, perfect,
Speaker 1: Oh it's going to be good gets so British, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that is legal at this point. It's like not
Speaker 1: till seventy six that the UK makes it illegal to
Speaker 1: just like buy lions or whatever. Like, yeah, in part
Speaker 1: because of this guy. But I'm going to read another
Speaker 1: quote from the gamblers here. Aspinall never said what took
Speaker 1: him to mister Palmer's pet shop in North London in
Speaker 1: early nineteen fifty seven, Still less, what made him buy
Speaker 1: a small capuchin monkey. If you live in Eaton Place
Speaker 1: and want an unusual pet to amuse your guests, you
Speaker 1: could do worse than a capuchin monkey. They're small and
Speaker 1: affectionate and have a zany sense of humor all their own,
Speaker 1: Livelier than a Pekinese and more affectionate than a Siamese.
Speaker 1: They take their name from the monklike hood around their head.
Speaker 1: This particular monkey was a great success with gambling friends
Speaker 1: who visited the house. One of them christened him Dead Loss. Thereafter,
Speaker 1: he was always known as Debdi Deddy's popularity turned Aspinall's
Speaker 1: thoughts to other animals. Like many people with childhood memories
Speaker 1: of Teddy bears, he seems to have regarded bears as
Speaker 1: friendly creatures, and from mister Palmer bought a pair of
Speaker 1: young Himalayan bears he called them Esau and Ayesha, took
Speaker 1: them home to eat in place, and for a while
Speaker 1: did his best to make them socialize among his guests.
Speaker 1: Legend has it that a shortsighted peer once mistook Esau
Speaker 1: for another member of the House of Lords. But Himalayan
Speaker 1: bears are not as sociable as they appear, and before
Speaker 1: long Aspinall reluctantly confined them to a cage that he
Speaker 1: constructed in the garden. This did nothing to deterear him
Speaker 1: from trying to make friends with other wild animals. Rather
Speaker 1: the reverse, and his problems with Esau and Ayisha seem
Speaker 1: to have convinced him that if only he had bought
Speaker 1: the two bears young enough and brought them up to
Speaker 1: have no fear of him, this would have been quite possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's the problem, mat that's the problem. You
Speaker 2: didn't get those bears. Yeah, I got the pet. He
Speaker 2: tried to bring it back, got pet shown it. Told
Speaker 2: you need to get early.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is his his his. The only thing he
Speaker 1: learns out of any time, like the reason why he
Speaker 1: has to cage them is that they attack people, and
Speaker 1: the only lesson he learns from this is like, these
Speaker 1: bears would be my friend if I'd gotten them younger, right.
Speaker 2: Of course, that would That is the that's the lesson
Speaker 2: I've learned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's from this. Pearson will kind of note
Speaker 1: that if you are running a gambling operation like this,
Speaker 1: if you're sort of the master of the casino, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like being a cult leader, right, in part
Speaker 1: because people are really reliant upon you, especially the ones
Speaker 1: who are gambling too much, and that sort of deranges John.
Speaker 1: Like he's already grown up in this very rarefied, strange
Speaker 1: world of high society. He's become more deranged by being
Speaker 1: this kind of gambling maven, and something strange starts to
Speaker 1: happen to him as he starts get it. Taking on
Speaker 1: these exotic pets, he becomes so fascinated by them that
Speaker 1: he starts to grow irritated and enraged by the pedestrian
Speaker 1: pets that middle class people have. It makes him angry
Speaker 1: to see someone with a dog or a cat, right,
Speaker 1: and he starts to hate people who have less and
Speaker 1: extends this to their pets. He hates animals that aren't exotic, right.
Speaker 1: He thinks it's disgusting, which is fascinating. Mentally, what's going
Speaker 1: on there is fascinating. I don't know how else to
Speaker 1: describe it.
Speaker 2: Love that this is such a British story. We hate
Speaker 2: in a completely different way, so that the average person, our
Speaker 2: brains are capable of loathing someone for the petsiest threes
Speaker 2: they yeah, you piece of shit I have. I can't
Speaker 2: go to three rooms in my house due to the
Speaker 2: pumas plural. Yeah, I get bitten by a bear every
Speaker 2: single day. You cowered. There are eighteen timer and monkeys
Speaker 2: in my garden. I can account for eleven, but I
Speaker 2: see seven evidence of another seven. One is pregnant. I
Speaker 2: don't know how they're all male.
Speaker 1: So, because he's so angry at the idea of normal pets,
Speaker 1: in order to like both trump all of the cat
Speaker 1: and dog owners in the world, he buys a tiger
Speaker 1: cup named Tara, and he raises her like a kitten.
Speaker 1: She sleeps with him in his bed. He'll take her
Speaker 1: on walks at night, and one evening a family's dog
Speaker 1: attacks Tara, or perhaps he says that the dog attacked Tara.
Speaker 1: We don't know that, we have no idea who attacked.
Speaker 1: To trust him, yeah, perhaps Tara attacked him, but whatever
Speaker 1: the case, says, his cat kills this dog with a
Speaker 1: single bite. Obviously it's a tiger, Like, of course, this
Speaker 1: is how it goes. Sure, So aspinall this, I think
Speaker 1: this dog is like gotten out of someone's yard, right,
Speaker 1: So aspinall it finds himself in the dead of night
Speaker 1: with his tiger and this like mauled corpse of a
Speaker 1: family's dog, and he just hurls it down the basement
Speaker 1: stairs of a stranger's house.
Speaker 2: That's like, that's how I'm gonna deal with this problem.
Speaker 2: Where this shit goes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's just quite an amazing guy.
Speaker 2: Trust me, how animals work.
Speaker 1: This is what you do, this is where you put them.
Speaker 1: So in short order, it becomes obvious to him that, like,
Speaker 1: I want more wild animals than he's living in London, right,
Speaker 1: he already has. He has a tiger and two bears
Speaker 1: and several monkeys. That's too many animals for a house
Speaker 1: in the middle of London. Yeah, that's fine. It's getting
Speaker 1: a bit crowded. So he buys this kind of decrepit
Speaker 1: country mansion on a bunch of acreage called Howlits, and
Speaker 1: he pays a lot of money. He has rebuilt and refurbished,
Speaker 1: and he starts setting up habitats for his bears and
Speaker 1: for Tara, and soon more animals will join them. And
Speaker 1: we're going to tell that story and what happens next
Speaker 1: in part two. But before we kind of move on,
Speaker 1: I want to tell another story that kind of sets
Speaker 1: up and explains a bit what's happening with his gambling
Speaker 1: halls in this period of time. And to do that,
Speaker 1: we've got to pull back a century or so to
Speaker 1: the early eighteen hundreds and discuss John Aspinall's predecessor, right,
Speaker 1: the gambling maven, who comes a generation before him and
Speaker 1: kind of sets up the board for him. So, after
Speaker 1: kind of in the early eighteen hundreds, after eighteen twelve,
Speaker 1: you've got this situation that's a lot like the UK
Speaker 1: after nineteen forty five, and that you've had this long
Speaker 1: series of wars. They've devastated the whole country, right, But
Speaker 1: the aristocracy, a lot of the sons of the aristocracy
Speaker 1: have died in this war, and suddenly there's this period
Speaker 1: of peace, and so you have this generation of aristocratocrats
Speaker 1: come of age. A lot of them have lost their
Speaker 1: parents in these conflicts, which means they have all of
Speaker 1: this money and there's no war to fight, right, so
Speaker 1: they're all bored as fucking hell. And that creates the
Speaker 1: situation about a century before Aspinalls rise, where gambling is
Speaker 1: going to flourish, right, because there's all these rich kids
Speaker 1: with ready money looking for an adrenaline fix. John is
Speaker 1: going to be the guy to take advantage of this
Speaker 1: in the late forties and fifties and a century earlier.
Speaker 1: His predecessor is this dude named William Crockford. One thing
Speaker 1: they have, they have a couple of things in common.
Speaker 1: One is that, you know, John is the son of
Speaker 1: a doctor and the daughter of a colonial officer. They're comfortable,
Speaker 1: they have money, but they're not the ruling class. Crockford
Speaker 1: is like a fishmonger by trade, right, which is he's
Speaker 1: a business owner.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He comes from like he inherits this business, I think
Speaker 1: from his dad, which means he's kind of solidly middle class,
Speaker 1: maybe upper middle class.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So these are both guys who come from this position
Speaker 1: of like they have a degree of economic privilege, but
Speaker 1: they're not. They're not inherently, like naturally going to ascend
Speaker 1: to the ruling class. They have to work for that, right,
Speaker 1: and they both pick gambling as their way to get there.
Speaker 1: Like John Crockford discovers as a teenager he can calculate
Speaker 1: odds in his head, making him a good gambler, and
Speaker 1: he starts out just sort of gambling, but by the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds he's made enough money that he buys this
Speaker 1: sort of facility in an upscale neighborhood and he starts
Speaker 1: catering just to the rich. And he's kind of the
Speaker 1: first guy to do this. Prior to Crockford, most gambling
Speaker 1: halls had been disreputable places where violence was common. Crockford
Speaker 1: locks doesn't allow the poor in doesn't even allow you know,
Speaker 1: people who aren't aristocrats with money in other than himself generally,
Speaker 1: because he wants to create a safe place where the
Speaker 1: very rich can throw away their fortunes and splendor. And
Speaker 1: there's differences between the periods. The gamblers of Crockford's day
Speaker 1: like stuff like poker, where there's an element of skill involved,
Speaker 1: right because and he recognizes that this is not because
Speaker 1: there's a big difference in odds, but they want this
Speaker 1: illusion of control, which I guess shows a difference between
Speaker 1: these two generations of of the ruling class that I
Speaker 1: think is kind of interesting, and Crockford kind of culminates
Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty eight, starting this place called Crockford's, which
Speaker 1: is frequented. Lord Wellington, the guy who defeats Napoleon is
Speaker 1: a regular there. Lord Byron is a regular there. Like,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of people who are sort of yeah,
Speaker 1: very much so, and yeah, it's one of those things.
Speaker 1: A big part of why Crockford he makes a decision
Speaker 1: early on. I don't want to host small businessmen or entrepreneurs,
Speaker 1: common people who have fortunes because they're smart, right, I
Speaker 1: just want to host idiots who inherited all of their
Speaker 1: money because they will gamble it all away. We don't
Speaker 1: know how much money Crockford ultimately fleeced out of the
Speaker 1: rulers of the British Empire, but it's generally agreed upon
Speaker 1: that he helped kind of clear out a generation of wealth,
Speaker 1: bankrupted a number of families, and altered the map of
Speaker 1: British power.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The aristocrats who like become wealthy and powerful after this
Speaker 1: point are sort of the people who weren't gambling it
Speaker 1: all away at Crockford's, Right, that's going to be the
Speaker 1: case with Aspinall, Right, he's kind of clearing the way
Speaker 1: for a new generation of people. And in the folks
Speaker 1: that kind of get rich and take the reins of
Speaker 1: power often don't come from the same sort of like
Speaker 1: rarefied noble house backgrounds right before. This is new money, right,
Speaker 1: That's what Aspinall is going to clear. I think it's
Speaker 1: just interesting to talk about Crockford because this is apparently
Speaker 1: kind of a pattern. Right, every one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: years or so, you'll have this gambling freeze that kills
Speaker 1: a chunk of the old aristocracy's wealth and kind of
Speaker 1: facilitates the transfer of that wealth to new men, to
Speaker 1: these business moguls and stuff in the gamblers Pearson Wrights quote.
Speaker 1: More and more people were becoming vastly richer in that
Speaker 1: prosperous decade. As city institutions like the Stock Exchange and
Speaker 1: Lloyd's opened their boardrooms previously reserved for members of the
Speaker 1: upper classes to the sharper offspring of the growing meritocracy,
Speaker 1: takeover bids and property speculation offered others golden opportunities for
Speaker 1: acquiring a moderate amounts of wealth. A new class of
Speaker 1: moneymen was now appearing, and the richer they became, the
Speaker 1: more of them attempted to assume the habits and pretensions
Speaker 1: of the vanishing ancient aristocracy. In the early forties, George
Speaker 1: Orwell wrote that no country under the sun is more
Speaker 1: obsessed by class than England.
Speaker 2: It still was.
Speaker 1: Class obsession had been endemic among the English for so
Speaker 1: long that it wouldn't go away, And in the sixties
Speaker 1: the very rich appeared, if anything, to be more class
Speaker 1: obsessed than ever, as they infiltrated one by one the
Speaker 1: former strongholds of the old nobility. And that's who John
Speaker 1: is going to be, right, He is a new money
Speaker 1: guy who is not just infiltrating but going to shape
Speaker 1: kind of the next generation of power brokers, right in
Speaker 1: part by like who his casino robs and who it
Speaker 1: transfers money to.
Speaker 2: It almost feels like it's just a chain of exploitation,
Speaker 2: Like the British aristocracy exploited England, exploited overseas, and now
Speaker 2: someone found a way to exploit them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is beautiful. That's exactly what's happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's England.
Speaker 1: It's a nice circle. So that's what we're going to
Speaker 1: end for today in part one and in part two
Speaker 1: we're going to have some more gambling and a whole
Speaker 1: lot more Zoos stories and then kind of end on
Speaker 1: a murder.
Speaker 2: So that's all exciting. That's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well pull little Cliffinger there, Robert, little Cliffhanger there.
Speaker 2: Ed, you got any pluggables to plug here? Just read
Speaker 2: my newsletter it where's your ed don't eh? And if
Speaker 2: you need public relations services, EZPR dot com.
Speaker 1: Please excellent ezpr dot com and where's your head at
Speaker 1: It is one of my favorite people to read on
Speaker 1: the tech industry. And uh yeah, we will be We
Speaker 1: will be back on Thursday with a little bit more.
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