WEBVTT - Episode 6: Quicksilver 0:00:03.440 --> 0:00:10.160 This is an I heart original Newgate Jail was built 0:00:10.200 --> 0:00:12.640 into the old Roman walls that had once bounded the 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:15.400 city of London. It had been a fixture of the 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:19.959 landscape since, and the interviewing years hadn't done much to 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:26.480 change its essential nature. Newgate was a horrible, horrible place, 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:31.120 full of desperation, damp, and disease. It was home to 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:36.920 highwaymen and murderers, rapists and thieves, as well as petty criminals, pickpockets, 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:40.880 and political activists who had fallen afoul of the establishment. Men, 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:44.159 women and children were crowded into the same words, and 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:48.919 there was no distinction between crimes. When William Challoner shuffled 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:53.760 into Newgate in August, heavy iron shackles at his ankles 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:57.080 and wrists, it was at least his third day in 0:00:57.200 --> 0:01:02.120 London's most notorious prison, and by now he knew his 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:06.440 way around. Chalder's first objective would have been to get 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:10.319 some coins, some real, actual coin, into the hands of 0:01:10.319 --> 0:01:14.600 the jailer. To get those shackles off easy enough. Newgate 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:17.319 was so corrupt that the guards would allow robbers out 0:01:17.319 --> 0:01:19.680 at night to go thieving in exchange for a cut 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:22.880 of the profits. Chalder's next job would have been to 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:27.560 sort out the basic necessities. Newgate was said to be 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:31.840 so filthy, so disgusting, that the floors were carpeted in 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:34.920 lice and bed bugs, and open sewer flowed through the 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:38.000 middle of it, and people sometimes tried to escape that way, 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:43.039 but not everyone survived. Typhus was so endemic, but it 0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:46.040 was called jail fever. In the main cells, there were 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:48.800 no beds, just to fit a bare board or straw 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:52.640 to sleep on. The water was tainted, the food was spoiled, 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:58.480 and everywhere was cold, dark and airless. Chaloner would have 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:01.080 spent some more coin to procure a real betting and 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:04.360 better food, and maybe even some wine or beer. He 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:06.680 might have even gotten a cell to himself, depending on 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:08.720 how much of his ill gotten coin he wanted to 0:02:08.760 --> 0:02:13.320 part with. That sorted, his next step was obvious, sit 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.160 down and figure out exactly what kind of mess he 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:19.800 was in and how to get out of it. There 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:22.520 would be a trial soon, maybe in a few months time, 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:25.760 and challenger, of course, had no defense attorney, no one 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:29.560 did he knew. The warden's case rested on the testimony 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:32.960 of Thomas Holloway, and though Halloway was his friend, his 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:38.400 long time accomplice, Chaloner knew that loyalty only went so far. Certainly, 0:02:38.440 --> 0:02:41.720 Chaloner was loyal to no one but himself. But Joner 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:45.600 also knew that, beyond Holloway's testimony, the evidence Student had 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:49.760 on him was thin. Challenger's first move was to start 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:52.399 talking in the hopes of earning and out the same 0:02:52.440 --> 0:02:57.040 way most other people did, informing he accused Aubrey Price 0:02:57.240 --> 0:03:01.079 of several criminal acts, counterfeiting among them. Price had been 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:04.520 part of that convoluted plan that led to Challenger's arrest. 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:08.040 But the problem was Aubrey Price was already in prison, 0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:11.440 a man of quote good parentage but poor morals. Evidently, 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:16.880 he was later executed for forging banknotes, which was a 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:23.240 capital offense. So that didn't work. But Chaloner had another plan, 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:33.600 one that involved removing Thomas Holloway from the picture. For 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:37.200 I Heart Radio, I'm Linda Rodriguez, Mcrabbie and this is 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:44.320 Newton's Law and I heard original podcast episode six Quicksilver, 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:35.279 Act one Rotten Apple. While Shanoner was trying to figure 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:38.080 a way out of his current jam, Newton was just 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:43.360 a three mile walk away through London's crooked, smoky, filthy streets. 0:04:43.800 --> 0:04:48.560 He now lived in Westminster, much quieter, less smelly than 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:53.640 his home at the Mint had been. He sat alone thinking. 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:57.760 Newton could have been reviewing all the depositions, all the 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:01.360 information he'd collected since he'd first scotten wind of challengers 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:05.360 Eggam operation. He would have been looking for something, anything, 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:08.800 that would give him leverage. If Chaloner knew that Newton's 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:12.000 case against him was thin, then Newton certainly did too. 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:17.080 Or maybe his mind drifted a bit. He might have 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:21.120 been thinking about his work on optics, for example, experiments 0:05:21.160 --> 0:05:24.400 and research that had talled somewhat since he arrived in London. 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:28.159 He might have been thinking about his theological studies, ideas 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:32.359 that sometimes took him to the brink and beyond of heresy. 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:37.040 Or he might have been thinking about how he Isaac Newton, 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:40.599 born on a lincoature farm to rise to scholarly fame, 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:45.400 had gotten here sitting in his London study, struggling with 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:49.640 a different kind of problem, how to nail down a 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:57.200 slippery criminal mastermind. Newton was no stranger to introspection as 0:05:57.200 --> 0:05:59.839 a teenager, and in his first years at Cambridge he 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:05.400 the ledger of his quote sins making Pies on Sunday night, 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:12.720 missing chapel, twisting accord on Sunday morning, using Wilford's towel 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:16.760 to spare my own wishing death and hoping it to 0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:23.120 some striking many having on clean thoughts, words and actions 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:27.159 and dreams. Also on the list, trying to spend a 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:34.480 bronze and therefore counterfeit groat, which is well ironic. Newton's 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:39.359 childhood and adolescence hadn't been exactly pleasant. His father was 0:06:39.400 --> 0:06:42.599 a relatively well off farmer who died before Newton was born. 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:45.960 His mother remarried when little Isaac was just about three 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:49.360 years old. Her new husband was more than twice her age, 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:53.000 a widower, and as part of their marriage contract, she 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:57.200 was meant to move in with him alone. Little Isaac 0:06:57.279 --> 0:06:59.040 was to be left in the care of his grandparents 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:02.320 at the farmhouse where was born. When her second husband 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:06.080 died eight years later, his mother returned with three smaller 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:11.560 children into Biographers have suggested that this early perceived rejection 0:07:11.640 --> 0:07:15.960 by his mother left Isaac Newton with a few issues. 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:20.800 Punching my sister, rubbing my mother's box of plums and sugar, 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:25.040 threatening my father and mother to burn them. I'm the 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:34.440 househover them with my mother, with my sister. Newton's brilliance 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:38.480 carried him into university. His years in academia were characterized 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:42.720 by intense study and also by a lack of connection 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:46.400 with other people. During his Cambridge years, he rarely left 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:48.440 his rooms at the college, and when he did, he 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:52.280 was usually unkempt, with his hair uncombed, and he tended 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:55.040 to draw mathematical equations in the dust by the river 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:59.320 cam that sort of thing. Newton wasn't exactly happy in 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:02.680 his solitude, but neither did he particularly enjoy the company 0:08:02.680 --> 0:08:05.480 of other people. For I see not what there is 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:09.840 desirable in public esteem. Where I able to acquire and 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:14.640 maintain it, it would perhaps increase my acquaintance the thing 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:19.160 which I chiefly study to decline. Still, Newton could only 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:23.160 stand the intellectual isolation for so long. Newton had been 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:25.760 restless in his last few years at Trainee College, around 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:27.520 the time that he was looking for another job in 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:30.320 a way out of Cambridge. But that wasn't the only 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:34.840 explanation for his abrupt departure from academic life for London. 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:39.840 In the Mint in the years before he left, Newton 0:08:39.920 --> 0:08:45.319 was behaving erratically. I am extremely troubled at the embroilment. 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:49.520 I am in. I have neither ate nor slept well 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:54.240 this twelve month, nor have my former consistency of mind. 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:58.840 Newton confessed this to his friend, the ubiquitous Samuel Peeps 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:02.400 in a letter from sixty nine three. Not sleeping or 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:05.160 eating is a bad sign, even from Newton, who tended 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:08.199 to be too distracted by work to do either consistently. 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:12.400 But there was more. I must withdraw from your acquaintance, 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:15.600 and seeing neither you nor the rest of my friends anymore, 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:19.640 if I may leave them quietly. Newton did have a 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:23.200 reputation for being quick to lose people if they offended him. 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:25.199 He once stitched a friend for telling a dirty joke 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:27.760 about a nun, even though he definitely wasn't Catholic and 0:09:27.840 --> 0:09:31.840 didn't seem to have any particular respect for nuns. And 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:37.240 Newton could be for sure petty and vindictive. He fought 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:40.080 with many of the leading scientists of the day, in 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:44.480 some cases physically. In the sixteen nineties, Newton visited John Flamsteed, 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:48.840 the first astronomer Royal, out at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:52.160 and the two got into an actual wrestling match over 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:56.560 one of Flamsteed's Instruments. Flamsteed says that Newton called him 0:09:56.679 --> 0:10:00.199 all the names that he could think of. Poppy was 0:10:00.280 --> 0:10:03.120 the most innocent of them. But Newton's declaration that he 0:10:03.160 --> 0:10:08.800 intended tosevered ties with peeps and others was strange worrying. 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:12.560 Just three days after his letter to Peep's, Newton wrote 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:16.400 to philosopher John Locke, one of his closest allies, being 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:20.280 off opinion that you endeavored to embroil me with women 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:24.120 and by other means. I was so affected with it 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:27.760 that when one told me you were sickly and would 0:10:27.800 --> 0:10:32.360 not live, I answered to a better if you were dead. 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:37.120 Locke's reply was graceful and kind, and he clearly forgave Newton. 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:43.760 But Newton's response to that was, if anything more worrying, sir, 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:48.800 the last winter, by sleeping too often by my fire, 0:10:49.200 --> 0:10:52.880 I got an ill habit of sleeping, and a distemper 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:56.920 which this summer has been epidemical, put me farther out 0:10:56.920 --> 0:10:59.280 of order, so that when I wrote to you, I 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:01.360 had not up to an hour and night for a 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:05.199 fortnight together, and for five days together. Not a wink 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:09.640 I remember, I wrote to you. But what I said, 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:14.760 of your book, I remember not. Newton's letters worried peeps 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:18.520 so much that peeps wrote to another Cambridge academic, John Millington. 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:22.280 I had lately received a letter from him, so surprising 0:11:22.320 --> 0:11:25.280 to me, for the inconsistency of every part of it, 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:27.960 as to be put into great disorder by it, for 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:32.760 the concernment I have for him, I mean a discomposure 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:37.600 in head or mind or both. Peeps asked Millington to 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:41.840 check in on Newton discreetly. It wouldn't do anyone any good, 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:44.679 at least of all Newton, to have people start suspecting 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:47.839 that the great genius of Trinity was having a breakdown. 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:51.400 For I own too great an esteem for Mr Newton 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:54.080 as for a public good to be able to let 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:56.679 any doubt in me of this kind concerning him lie 0:11:56.679 --> 0:12:00.080 a moment uncleared where I can have any hopes of 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:08.160 helping it. New news quote frenzied state, and the flurry 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:11.680 of paranoid letters coming from him prompted all kinds of 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:15.360 schaden freda, as well as real concern from the gossipy grades. 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:19.040 At the time, Dutch physicist Christian Hygens heard it from 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:23.600 his friends in England. He told mathematician and philosopher Godfried 0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:27.160 Wilhelm von Leibnez, who spread it around to his circle. 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:30.120 By the time Newton's frenzy made it back to England 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:34.320 via German philosopher Johann Christoph Sturm to a Dr. Wallace, 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:38.520 Newton had been quote reduced to very ill circumstances by 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:42.240 a quote disturbance of mind caused by a supposed fire 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:45.199 that destroyed his lab, his home, and all of his 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:48.600 worldly possessions. It was like the longest game of telephone ever. 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:53.280 Have you heard of Newton's frenzied state that newton fancies pace? 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:59.679 I'm concerned about Newton's dancing. Wait, okay, so there hadn't 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:03.959 been in a lab destroying fire in Newton, unlike many 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:07.360 other educated people in his time, didn't believe that his 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:10.240 periods of frenzy were the product of the influence of 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:15.400 the devil or evil spirits. But there was definitely something 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:31.600 going on in Newton's head Act two. The alchemist. Newton had, 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:36.000 according to some sources, struggled with depression at several points 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:39.640 in his life, times when he'd retreat to his inner 0:13:39.640 --> 0:13:42.839 world and cut off what few ties he had with 0:13:42.960 --> 0:13:47.880 friends and fellow academics, But this particular episode seemed so 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:53.040 much more profound and incomprehensible to his worried friends. Something 0:13:53.280 --> 0:13:58.840 was going on, and it's possible that something was mercury poisoning. 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:04.720 Newton had for years been a semi secret practicing alchemist. 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:09.160 Alchemy was an ancient science with roots in Eastern cultures. 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:13.520 It was largely concerned with pulling substances of heart and 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:16.559 trying to put them back together in more valuable ways, 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:21.360 for example, transforming lead into gold. In the seventeenth century, 0:14:21.760 --> 0:14:25.160 alchemy was branching in two directions. There was a branch 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:28.440 that would eventually become what we'd consider chemistry today, and 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:33.640 the branch that stuck with the more metaphysical stuff that's 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:37.400 kind of alchemy was regarded as more or less madness. 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:43.440 Newton was sort of between the two branches. He was, 0:14:43.680 --> 0:14:47.280 as John Maynard Keynes later wrote, The Last of the Magicians, 0:14:47.640 --> 0:14:51.960 But he wasn't interested in power or living forever. Rather, 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:55.800 Newton was trying to find God in his work. All 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:58.720 of his work. He had written the Principia, he said, 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:04.720 not with it design of betting defiance, but to enforce 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:10.560 and demonstrate the power and superintendency of the Supreme Being. 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:15.880 Many of Newton's meticulous notes on his alchemical experiments survive 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:21.520 one million handwritten words describing his interpretations of scripture, of 0:15:21.560 --> 0:15:25.360 the essences of elements, the movements of the heavens. Arcane 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:30.840 potions meant to prolonged life, but Newton's search for divinity 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:36.280 through experimentation also meant messing about with some fairly toxic substances, 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:44.120 like mercury. Mercury is an element number eighty on the 0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:47.680 periodic table, although the periodic table wouldn't actually be created 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:51.240 for another hundred and seventy years. It's the only metallic 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:54.520 element that's a liquid at room temperature, giving it the 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:59.840 historic and popular name quicksilver. If you've ever accidentally cracked 0:15:59.880 --> 0:16:03.040 up in a thermometer, young people, thermometers used to have 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:07.000 mercury inside them. True story, you probably remember the way 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:10.880 that the silvery liquid coalesced into little blobs like a 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:15.200 bad guy in Terminator two. For eighteen years, Newton carried 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:19.720 out hundreds of experiments involving all kinds of metals gold, silver, lead, 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:23.480 and mercury. He would often heat things up and then 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:27.479 intentionally breathe in their fumes or even taste the results 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:31.480 once they cooled. When he was on an experimental bender, 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:34.200 he tended to sleep in his laboratory by the fire 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:38.200 while his experiments bubbled merrily away, releasing fumes into the air. 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:43.320 Newton used quicksilver so much in his experiments that he 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:46.440 once joked, quite possibly his only joke ever, that his 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:51.239 hair had turned prematurely silver because of it. But mercury 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:54.960 is toxic, hence why thermometers aren't made with mercury anymore. 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:59.640 Exposure to mercury can lead to mercury poisoning. The mercury 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:03.240 builds of in your system over time, eventually resulting in 0:17:03.480 --> 0:17:07.920 serious neurological issues. You can suffer ill effects from ingesting mercury, 0:17:07.960 --> 0:17:10.639 of course, although nineteenth century doctors used to prescribe it 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:13.280 as a laxative because it's so dense it just moves 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:16.760 right through you. But it's most damaging when it's inhaled 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:19.480 in vapor form, moving quickly from the lungs into the 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:23.000 blood into the brain. The symptoms of mercury poisoning we 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:29.000 know now include irritability, depression, anxiety, problems with memory. I 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:32.200 remember I wrote to you, but what I said of 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:36.720 your book, I remember not insomnia. I had not slipped 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:39.639 an hour and night for a fortnight together. In quote 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:45.119 pathological shyness, I must withdraw from your acquaintance. Researchers are 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:48.480 divided on the impact of mercury on Newton's health, certainly, 0:17:49.119 --> 0:17:51.960 and it's never a really good idea to diagnose the 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:54.520 physical and mental problems with someone who died nearly three 0:17:54.920 --> 0:17:58.359 years ago. But if we're looking for a suspect and 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:03.399 the quote madness of Isaac Newton, mercury poisoning seems like 0:18:03.480 --> 0:18:07.720 a prime one. But that wasn't all that was going 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:10.760 on in Newton's life right now. His mind was traveled, 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:14.840 and so is his heart. Newton had never married or 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:18.360 seemed to show the slightest romantic interest in anyone at all, 0:18:18.920 --> 0:18:22.800 but it's possible that in six Newton was dealing with 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:26.760 a romance, or at least a very strong emotional attachment 0:18:27.000 --> 0:18:31.880 that ended badly. A few years earlier, Newton had begun 0:18:31.920 --> 0:18:34.920 paying a lot of attention to a young Swiss mathematician 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:40.040 and philosopher called Nicola Fatiou to Julie. Newton wrote to 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:43.639 Fatio with a kind of warmth that he rarely showed 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:46.159 in letters to other people, not even to his own relatives, 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:51.840 and Fatio seemed to return his regard. I could wish 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:55.720 to live all my life, or the greatest part of it, 0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:59.960 with you, if it was possible. When Newton found out 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:05.440 that Fattio was desperately ill in September, he was truly distraught. 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:11.359 Ah last night received your letter with which how much 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:16.480 I was affected. I cannot express pray, procure the advice 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:19.479 and assistance of physician before it is too late, And 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:24.280 if you want any money, I will supply you with 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:29.240 my prayers for your recovery. I rest he signed it 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:34.960 your most affectionate and faithful friend to serve you. Newton 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:38.960 tried to send presidents, medical remedies, even money, but Fattier 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:43.160 didn't take them. In February nine three, Newton even suggested 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:45.760 that Fattio come live with him in Cambridge so that 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:49.240 Newton could take care of him. Fattia refused, saying he 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:53.399 didn't want to be a burden, and then Fattio seemed 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:56.600 to end it. Fatio wrote Newton to say that he 0:19:56.640 --> 0:19:58.840 had made a new friend in London, a good and 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:04.199 upright man. Newton rushed to London. But what happened there 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:08.880 we can only guess. After that, letters between the two 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:18.760 largely ceased. It's possible that Newton was in love with Fatio, 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:22.200 although there was no indication that this relationship was ever 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:26.359 physical or sexual. A much older Newton later told a 0:20:26.400 --> 0:20:31.520 relative that he had quote never violated chastity with anyone. Ever, 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:36.600 the way to chastity is not to struggle with incontinent thoughts, 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:41.720 but to avert the thoughts by some employment, or by reading, 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:48.600 or by conversation, or by meditating on other things. But 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:51.520 whatever his attachment to Fatio, it appeared to be one 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:54.880 of the very few deep relationships Newton had ever been 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:57.959 able to form with another human being, and its loss 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:01.720 would have cut him to the bone. Later in s 0:21:02.840 --> 0:21:06.679 John Millington, Newton's Cambridge colleague, paid Newton a visit at 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:11.720 Peeves's request. Millington reported back to Peep's that Newton seemed fine. 0:21:12.400 --> 0:21:15.919 At least Newton still seemed to have his intellect. He 0:21:16.080 --> 0:21:19.199 is now very well, and though I fear he is 0:21:19.280 --> 0:21:22.720 under some small degree of melancholy, yet I think there 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:25.800 is no reason to suspect it hath at all touched 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:30.040 his understanding and I hope it never will. But Millington's 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:33.280 response contained another clue as to what was grieving Newton. 0:21:34.000 --> 0:21:37.360 Millington said that it was a sign, not a good one. 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:40.719 It seemed of how much the love of learning and 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:43.800 the honor of the nation was looked after. When such 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:47.440 a person as Mr Newton lies so neglected by those 0:21:47.480 --> 0:21:55.480 in power, Newton was feeling overlooked, less relevant. Though the 0:21:55.480 --> 0:21:58.520 publication of Brinkipia had been a triumph that was now 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:02.000 behind him, and his work following Principia wasn't a failure 0:22:02.040 --> 0:22:04.240 by any means, but he was conscious that it wasn't, 0:22:04.280 --> 0:22:08.280 you know, explaining the universe. At the same time, his friends, 0:22:08.320 --> 0:22:11.000 people like Peeps in Locke, had long been trying to 0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:14.960 find him work outside of Cambridge, with little success. What 0:22:15.119 --> 0:22:19.560 it all added up to was a crisis. Dr Patricia Farah. 0:22:20.160 --> 0:22:23.880 He certainly does seem to have had some sort of breakdown. 0:22:24.320 --> 0:22:28.000 I imagine life was a bit difficult for him. He 0:22:28.320 --> 0:22:31.280 perhaps wasn't the easiest man in the world to get 0:22:31.280 --> 0:22:36.320 on with. Perhaps he was worried about his failing mathematical paths. 0:22:36.440 --> 0:22:39.480 That's something that a lot of mathematicians talking about when 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:41.800 they get to the age about forty or fifty that 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:46.120 there past their creative best. I don't think there's any 0:22:46.200 --> 0:22:49.240 single reason, and I'm not sure we even really know 0:22:49.640 --> 0:22:55.439 exactly why, so new to this period of disordered mind. 0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:59.159 Could have been a lifelong struggle with depression compounded by 0:22:59.240 --> 0:23:02.040 mercury pois ning. Or it could have been a love 0:23:02.080 --> 0:23:05.480 affair gone south. Or it could have just been a 0:23:05.520 --> 0:23:08.600 regular old midlife crisis. He was in his early fifties, 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:10.760 after all, and he'd been trying for years to get 0:23:10.760 --> 0:23:12.919 out of Cambridge, where it could have been all of 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:18.320 the above. But whatever it was, Newton needed a new purpose, 0:23:19.320 --> 0:23:23.920 finding counterfeiters and sending them to the gallows. Well maybe 0:23:23.960 --> 0:23:35.520 that was it. Act three, no face, no Case. In 0:23:35.600 --> 0:23:40.200 s and Pillsbury, a poor woman who lived in Westminster 0:23:40.720 --> 0:23:43.879 went to a bakery with her young daughter to buy food. 0:23:44.359 --> 0:23:47.720 A night near bread please, and a night me a chase. 0:23:49.560 --> 0:23:56.119 The shop, however, was run by an informant of Newton's, 0:23:56.240 --> 0:23:58.920 and he believed that the sixpence that she tried to 0:23:58.960 --> 0:24:03.400 pay with was fake. You consider me a fool. He's 0:24:03.440 --> 0:24:06.960 not legitimate coin of the crown. The informants searched her 0:24:07.080 --> 0:24:09.760 right there in the shop, finding a good sixpence between 0:24:09.800 --> 0:24:13.359 her bodice and stomach, evidence that she knew she had 0:24:13.359 --> 0:24:16.920 been passing bad coin, as well as evidence of the 0:24:16.960 --> 0:24:19.239 shop owner wasn't at all concerned about being brought up 0:24:19.240 --> 0:24:23.760 on sexual assault charges or humiliating poor Anne. He then 0:24:24.000 --> 0:24:28.600 brought her to Newton himself. Newton ordered her and her 0:24:28.680 --> 0:24:33.159 daughter searched again, well, search again, both of them, this 0:24:33.240 --> 0:24:36.119 time finding more counterfeit coins wrapped in paper and hidden 0:24:36.160 --> 0:24:40.080 in the child's clothing. You dare embroyal the girl in 0:24:40.160 --> 0:24:44.439 your petty scheme, please, sir. The bat six pinches off 0:24:44.440 --> 0:24:48.000 a person? What sells linen cloth in streets? They made it, 0:24:48.280 --> 0:24:52.000 and that was There's no word on what happened to 0:24:52.040 --> 0:24:54.560 Anne and her daughter next, but it's possible, and I 0:24:54.640 --> 0:24:57.400 really hope this is the case, that she became another 0:24:57.560 --> 0:25:01.520 of Newton's informants rather than being packed off to Newgate. 0:25:02.080 --> 0:25:04.960 Patricia Farra again, I mean, these people who were being 0:25:05.040 --> 0:25:09.560 persecuted as criminals were often living on the edge of poverty. 0:25:09.680 --> 0:25:13.080 They were very ignorant, they hadn't got any work. And 0:25:13.160 --> 0:25:16.159 although there was the most criminals like Challoner who managed 0:25:16.160 --> 0:25:19.639 to become quite rich, a lot of the petty theft 0:25:19.680 --> 0:25:23.800 going on was just so that people could survive. Newton 0:25:23.960 --> 0:25:26.200 was not moved by the plight of the people he 0:25:26.280 --> 0:25:29.679 squeezed for information or even sent to the gallows, and 0:25:29.800 --> 0:25:33.840 his industriousness in pursuing counterfeiters and clippers might have been 0:25:34.000 --> 0:25:38.280 fueled or at least aided by this darker side of 0:25:38.280 --> 0:25:42.880 his personality. But as it turns out, it was precisely 0:25:43.000 --> 0:25:47.720 this unforgiving character, combined with his laser like focus, that 0:25:47.800 --> 0:25:51.639 made him so good at being a cop. And in 0:25:51.720 --> 0:25:55.840 William Chaloner, Newton had found his equal and opposite, so 0:25:55.960 --> 0:26:00.159 to speak. Where Challenger was garrulous, charming and friend lee, 0:26:00.640 --> 0:26:05.320 Newton was terse, introspective, quick to anger, where Challenger seemed 0:26:05.320 --> 0:26:08.560 too so anarchy. Newton wanted to order, He wanted to 0:26:08.680 --> 0:26:12.480 use his scientific abilities to fix things, where Challenger was 0:26:12.520 --> 0:26:15.240 happy to twist and bend the law to break it. 0:26:15.880 --> 0:26:18.719 Newton was devoted to the oath he took to protect 0:26:18.800 --> 0:26:22.639 the mint and its machines. Tom Levinson m I T. 0:26:22.800 --> 0:26:26.280 Science writer and author of Newton and the Counterfeiter Does 0:26:26.359 --> 0:26:28.280 he really see him? I think in this as as 0:26:28.359 --> 0:26:31.359 as one three dimensional person rather than as Newton the 0:26:31.359 --> 0:26:33.560 scientists new in the mathematician, ding the magician, whatever it 0:26:33.600 --> 0:26:37.639 may be, because you really see the two to me 0:26:37.880 --> 0:26:42.240 dominant characteristics of Newton's mind at playing in his confrontation 0:26:42.280 --> 0:26:47.119 with Chaloner. On the one hand, he's just really smart. 0:26:47.200 --> 0:26:49.679 He has a disciplined mind, He defines problems, all that 0:26:49.720 --> 0:26:51.720 kind of stuff that you think of as Newton, the 0:26:52.000 --> 0:26:54.640 great mind that we know him as. But I think 0:26:54.680 --> 0:26:59.080 you also see something that is often underestimated in the 0:26:59.200 --> 0:27:04.760 lives of great scientists. They are persistent and focused in 0:27:04.800 --> 0:27:06.679 a way that most other people are not. They have 0:27:07.600 --> 0:27:13.720 power of concentration combined with stamina that's really distinctive. And 0:27:13.760 --> 0:27:18.879 Newton stayed with the problems over months and years and 0:27:18.960 --> 0:27:24.040 with Challenger, and Challenger was a problem. In March, Newton 0:27:24.119 --> 0:27:29.440 received a pleading letter from Thomas Carter, one of challengers colleagues, 0:27:29.720 --> 0:27:34.080 who was then languishing in Newgate jail. Carter promised, all 0:27:34.200 --> 0:27:38.199 kinds of information, I should have the irons put on 0:27:38.320 --> 0:27:42.879 me tomorrow if your worship not older. The contrary, being 0:27:42.960 --> 0:27:45.640 clapped in irons sounds like something that happened to pirates 0:27:45.680 --> 0:27:50.040 because it was, but it was also extremely painful. Heavy 0:27:50.119 --> 0:27:53.960 iron shackles were secured around the prisoners ankles, leaving bruises, 0:27:54.200 --> 0:28:00.959 broken skin sores. It sounds a lot like torture. Newton 0:28:01.119 --> 0:28:03.879 was undoubtedly willing to let people be hurt in his 0:28:03.920 --> 0:28:07.240 pursuit of justice. He once said, of a counterfeiter in prison, 0:28:07.480 --> 0:28:11.560 better to let him. But to be fair, there's not 0:28:11.680 --> 0:28:14.159 a lot of evidence that Newton was torturing people to 0:28:14.200 --> 0:28:17.600 get his information. That reference is the only one that survives, 0:28:17.640 --> 0:28:20.600 although he did burn much of his records concerning counterfeiters. 0:28:21.640 --> 0:28:26.119