Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Margaret Killjoy and with me today is prop
Speaker 1: most of the only other cool Zone media podcast with politics.
Speaker 1: Probably what up? Talk to me nice, Margaret. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean we'll give you some good information here, give me
Speaker 1: something to smile about, rather than every other time I'm
Speaker 1: on some sort of cool Zone guest. Yeah. No, I
Speaker 1: I think I will succeed at this, but you'll you'll
Speaker 1: you'll find out because Jamie Do'll be inviting me to stuff.
Speaker 1: Her stuff would make me. Jamie stuff is so positive, Jamie,
Speaker 1: if you and funny, I did get to be uh.
Speaker 1: I did get to be uh on one of the
Speaker 1: did you do like the voice acting for it? I
Speaker 1: did do one of them, so I'm jealous. I want
Speaker 1: to do that. I got to beat jigs. Anyone who's listening,
Speaker 1: go listen to Jamie Loftus podcast. Any of them would
Speaker 1: be sad secretly the other third cool Zone new podcast,
Speaker 1: like she needs help with all the I don't know
Speaker 1: how she can talk over all the awards she's won,
Speaker 1: just like Uncle Scrooge jumping into the money pit, just
Speaker 1: pull money. Yeah, anyway, I wish I had my Webby handy.
Speaker 1: This would have an age time to hold it up.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you eat all those hot dogs
Speaker 1: in front of all those awards. Well. In speaking of which,
Speaker 1: that other voice is our producer, Sophie, the Webby Award
Speaker 1: winning Sophie Lecterman. Sophie, how are you doing? I'm laughing,
Speaker 1: Dr Dre P Diddy a podcast. Jamie deserves all the credit,
Speaker 1: though she's the ship, and so do both of you.
Speaker 1: I'm just here sure awards. So he actually provides all
Speaker 1: of the scripts and writes it all, um, and I
Speaker 1: just voice it. Yeah, and all of Robert doesn't do anything. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: Robert proper, there's no other post. Yeah no, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: Jamie and Jamie just just Margaret and Robert lazy. Yeah. Yeah. So, Sophie,
Speaker 1: have you ever met anyone else named Sophie in your life?
Speaker 1: I have a great story about this, actually, and it
Speaker 1: is a point of childhood trauma. Um oh good, I'll
Speaker 1: bring that back up. In the seventh grade. In the
Speaker 1: seventh grade, there was another another Sofie. If you're listening
Speaker 1: to this, yes I still remember this, Yes you still
Speaker 1: It's scarred me. Thank you so much. Also, I hope
Speaker 1: you are doing well because I do not hold resentment. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you haven't seen in seventh grade this is exactly
Speaker 1: there was. There was another Sophie in my class, and
Speaker 1: the science teacher said, how how would you like me
Speaker 1: to differentiate? Would you like me to call you Sophie?
Speaker 1: Lu would you like me to call you? And she
Speaker 1: goes and I quote to the entire class, well, that
Speaker 1: is easy because I am the pretty Sophie. Oh no,
Speaker 1: did it work with my little saturn er self close.
Speaker 1: I'm smart Sophie, and I've never been more ashamed and
Speaker 1: and seen. Thank you, I've done that and you just
Speaker 1: you just yes, and your way through that, way through it.
Speaker 1: I'm the pretty one, You're like, I'm this, I'm the
Speaker 1: smart one. My friend, my friend, my friend Tia handled
Speaker 1: it for me after class, good shout out. She was like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make you no longer to pretty Sofie, but
Speaker 1: you know, yes, why are you asking me this horrible? Well,
Speaker 1: I think that is how the Sophie we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about would have handled it. But you're no longer
Speaker 1: than pretty Sofie to the other Sofie. Probably today we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about crime. Have you ever heard of crime.
Speaker 1: I have. I'm pretty uh, pretty astute in crime. I
Speaker 1: hear that it's got a lot of sodium, but when
Speaker 1: you put it on your eggs, tastes amazing. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is wait, and that's salt. Oh yeah, no, I'm
Speaker 1: mixing year. Yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So today we're
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna talk about crime. And most of the
Speaker 1: time when we talk about criminals on this show, they're
Speaker 1: usually criminals because they're like trying to change the system
Speaker 1: that they live in, which usually involves breaking the law
Speaker 1: right most places, most times, throwing a bomb at the
Speaker 1: czars for some unknowable reason. Illegal. Yeah, But today we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about crime for the sake of crime, or
Speaker 1: rather crime for the sake of money, because today we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about a professional criminal who did lots of
Speaker 1: criming and nineteenth century America, she was the Queen of
Speaker 1: the Burglars, as she called herself in her memoir. She
Speaker 1: was called the Queen of the underworld by her peers,
Speaker 1: but we like to call her Sophie Sophie Listererman. No, wait,
Speaker 1: Sophie Lyons, Sophie, I see what you did there? Thanks,
Speaker 1: I didn't even write that like that, and that was
Speaker 1: the cuff. Let's go market, all right, we've got I've
Speaker 1: got two disclaimers for you this week. Neither one is
Speaker 1: a content warning. It's no worse than usual in terms
Speaker 1: of the stuff that happens. So, first of all, usually okay,
Speaker 1: I started this episode like I usually do, right, I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, I know a story that I think
Speaker 1: is really cool because I've heard this story told by
Speaker 1: people before, and I was like, this story is cool.
Speaker 1: Sophie Lions is cool. And then I um started learning
Speaker 1: more about Sophie Lyons because most of what I knew
Speaker 1: before was what she had written about herself in which
Speaker 1: she lionized herself. Of course, so if you do, you
Speaker 1: get the joke. I liked it. It was very close
Speaker 1: because lion isn what I was like, of course, Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks Margaret, thanks for explaining. Yeah, that's that's how you
Speaker 1: make the joke extra funny. Um where no one gets it,
Speaker 1: you just doubled down. So I did more research and
Speaker 1: this week's episode is a bit more of a complicated
Speaker 1: person who did interest in stuff than a cool person
Speaker 1: who did full stuff. But I think it's a story
Speaker 1: worth telling. And secondly, prop. How do you feel about
Speaker 1: the fact that white people love when white people do crime,
Speaker 1: but create an entire system of mass incarceration that perpetuates
Speaker 1: white supremacy and demonizes the black people who do the
Speaker 1: same crimes. Yeah, man, this is tale as old as time. Great.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to hear about a story about a
Speaker 1: person who's a hero doing the same exact ship that
Speaker 1: got my family locked up for it. I cannot wait
Speaker 1: to hear this again. Yeah. Um, and that's you know
Speaker 1: what here? Okay? Side notes? Yeah. Yeah. One of my
Speaker 1: buddies was asking about Blue Eyed Soul, right, and it
Speaker 1: was like, did you know that was a thing? I
Speaker 1: was like, Yeah, one of favorite voices of all time
Speaker 1: Michael McDonald. I mean, that's the greatest, The greatest person
Speaker 1: to impersonate is Michael McDonald's wonderful voice. He was like, Yo,
Speaker 1: why is that of thing? Why do white people love
Speaker 1: when white people do black stuff? YEA, Like, why y'all
Speaker 1: love it? It's just always the most amazing thing to them.
Speaker 1: And they're just like because they're kind of like it's
Speaker 1: kind of a side note, but it's just like I
Speaker 1: don't feel that way. I don't feel as strong as
Speaker 1: he does about like this is absurd, Like why do
Speaker 1: y'all just love because I'm like, well, you know, representation,
Speaker 1: you like seeing, you know what I'm saying. And of
Speaker 1: course you're gonna favor somebody that looks like you doing
Speaker 1: something that you think is awesome that you didn't think
Speaker 1: you could do. You know what I'm saying. I get it,
Speaker 1: But it is there is a special thing about specifically
Speaker 1: white people that like y'all love it when y'all do
Speaker 1: the thing, Like it's never wrong when y'all do it,
Speaker 1: and it's always better when y'all do it, Like it's
Speaker 1: just what I really do. That is a thing to
Speaker 1: think about. Yeah, no, I, um yeah. I Like I
Speaker 1: started this episode and I'm like, oh, this is this
Speaker 1: is about a white fucking criminal, And like I'm hoping
Speaker 1: that by exploring this story, I'm hoping to like kind
Speaker 1: of touch on and address some of that ship and
Speaker 1: like I'm hoping to sort of lay open those hypocrisies.
Speaker 1: But like I don't know. Um yeah. A friend of mine, Miriam,
Speaker 1: is a guest on this show a lot, and she
Speaker 1: used to work at the Museum of the American Gangster
Speaker 1: in New York City, and we talk a lot about
Speaker 1: how people would come in and all all these white
Speaker 1: tourists would come in and they'd be like, hell yeah,
Speaker 1: all of these white gangsters who fucking machine gunned each other. Well,
Speaker 1: at the same time, they're like freaked out by the
Speaker 1: fact that they're in New York City. Where is the
Speaker 1: city full of like crime, let's say, and in particular, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: while they're like going and being like, oh, but it's
Speaker 1: cool that like, you know, this Irish guy was a
Speaker 1: gangster or whatever, right, and in particular, people were excited
Speaker 1: as long as it was someone of their own ethnicity
Speaker 1: like Irish, Italian or Jewish, and and so you know,
Speaker 1: here I am telling you story about German born Jewish
Speaker 1: white crime lady. Um, but this isn't the gangster era.
Speaker 1: And I actually think there's something kind of interesting to this.
Speaker 1: And I'm wondering if by the end whether we'll have
Speaker 1: like hit that is interesting. Yeah, that's dude. I'm now okay,
Speaker 1: Like all jokes aside, Like I am interested in stuff
Speaker 1: like this because I do. I do enjoy a good
Speaker 1: peaky blinder, you know what I'm saying, Like I enjoy
Speaker 1: seeing like ratchet white people. I do enjoy seeing that,
Speaker 1: Like I think that like there I get. I do
Speaker 1: get a little bit of joy from that because I
Speaker 1: do feel like generally, like I like I understand them more,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like, I'm like I understand you,
Speaker 1: you know, because most of time when people are being
Speaker 1: a ratchet, it's a crime of survival, like haint no food,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna get mine, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like I get that, you know what I mean. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's and that's what's kind of interesting me about
Speaker 1: this is because this pre uh, this pre mafia era
Speaker 1: crime was like people just trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to fucking get by, as compared to like necessarily like
Speaker 1: building empires. There's a little bit of like empire building
Speaker 1: and ship in this, but but not to the same
Speaker 1: degree that you hit in the like Prohibition era. Um.
Speaker 1: And then actually Sophie saw a little bit of the
Speaker 1: Prohibition era and hated it because she was like, now
Speaker 1: you all robbed poor people and kill people. This sucks
Speaker 1: like this some this some bullshit. Yeah we're not hungry
Speaker 1: no more. Man, you ain't got to do this to people. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk about the Gilded Age of America
Speaker 1: the second half of the nineteenth century, which means talking
Speaker 1: about the era that is ruled by crime, but not
Speaker 1: the kind of crime we're talking about today. Yeah, corporate Yeah, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got And so I wanna just to like, I
Speaker 1: feel like it's if you're going to talk about someone
Speaker 1: who like robbed a bunch of ship, I feel like
Speaker 1: it's worth pointing out some of the people who robbed
Speaker 1: a lot of ship that are at the time the
Speaker 1: robber barons. Okay, So the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine. By nine seventy two, it came out
Speaker 1: that the Union Pacific had just created shell companies and
Speaker 1: like robbed the US government and taxpayers about a billion
Speaker 1: dollars in today's money. They just and then just bribed
Speaker 1: the government to let them keep robbing everyone. Right, So
Speaker 1: this is the air of what's fucking happening. Um, And
Speaker 1: this wasn't the soul cause of the Panic of eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, but it's actually part of it. This big
Speaker 1: depression that happened. It fox up the U. S economy,
Speaker 1: It hits small farmers and small shops and poor people
Speaker 1: like just way more than hits big corporations. This might
Speaker 1: be familiar to people who are listening now, or you
Speaker 1: have a depression where suddenly, even though you're in the
Speaker 1: middle of the depression, the rich keep getting richer and
Speaker 1: all the economic numbers start creeping up. Yeah, unemployment hit
Speaker 1: and Vanderbilt was the first guy who actually got called
Speaker 1: a Robert Baron. Basically, everyone found ways to take public money,
Speaker 1: taxpayer money, and use it to fund private enterprise. And
Speaker 1: then one fun thing is that they used the Fourteenth Amendment,
Speaker 1: which was designed to um help people who are recently
Speaker 1: freed from slavery, they used it to shield corporate rations
Speaker 1: from government scrutiny. M hmmm, venting a lot of inventing
Speaker 1: of culture here. Huh. Yeah, some ship that we are
Speaker 1: definitely still dealing with. Yes, this is the culture in
Speaker 1: which Sophie Lyons is working Sophie van Elkin Lions, which
Speaker 1: is interesting too because so van Elkin is actually also
Speaker 1: Sophie the producer Sophie Lichterman, it's actually her middle name
Speaker 1: as well as van Elkin. Word ah, Sophie is making
Speaker 1: a face that implies that she doesn't want me to
Speaker 1: tell people the truth about her name. No, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: it is a ray of sunshine. So Sophie, are Sophie
Speaker 1: um not smart? Sophie, I don't know. Sophie Lyons. Sophy
Speaker 1: Lyons used a couple of different aliases here and there,
Speaker 1: just a couple. Here's a list of some of them.
Speaker 1: Louis Is Andress, Mrs f H. Brody, Ella Drama, Sophia
Speaker 1: d Varney, Rose, Divine, Sarah English, Julia Kelso, Sophie Levy,
Speaker 1: Susan Lockwood, Katel Angie, Kate la Anger, Sophie Lawrence, Kate Lucas,
Speaker 1: s E. Lucas, Sarah Lyons, Sophia Monikey, Fannie Owen, Sarah Richardson,
Speaker 1: Harriet Smith, Jane Smith, Sarah Smith, Louisa Sylvan, Mary Walton,
Speaker 1: Katherine Williams, and Kate Wilson. Yo. I respect that so much.
Speaker 1: That is hard. What was the second name? I think
Speaker 1: the second name is the one that stuck with me.
Speaker 1: Mrs f H. Brody, Mrs f HS Brody. That is great.
Speaker 1: That is the most That is a perfect, like eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds name, and it's just oh, it's just f H. Brody.
Speaker 1: I love it. You don't even know what f H
Speaker 1: stands for. You're just the arrested me. You're not exact
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. What's your name? F H. Brody?
Speaker 1: Know I'm saying, which means funk a hol? I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like just you know, I love it, f H Brody.
Speaker 1: My name is H paper Stacks. Yeah, yeah, totally. It
Speaker 1: sounds like a woutang name. Yeah. So. So, Sophie was
Speaker 1: born in Germany and she was born to a wandering
Speaker 1: Jewish merchant. Jews weren't allowed to be citizens in Germany
Speaker 1: at the time, so she was a resident alien. Her
Speaker 1: dad and her some of her siblings were like, all right,
Speaker 1: fuck this, and you know, rising anti Semitism as always,
Speaker 1: they go to the States. They don't have enough money
Speaker 1: to bring the whole family. So I think it's like
Speaker 1: her dad and like, I think it's her brothers who
Speaker 1: are old enough to work. Basically, they go and then
Speaker 1: they start trying to get some money. And then when
Speaker 1: she's seven, her and her siblings and some of her
Speaker 1: cousins come over on the next boat that they can
Speaker 1: and they arrive on December eighteen fifty five. She turns
Speaker 1: eight on the voyage and she shows up sucking, starving
Speaker 1: and poor and then was immediately granted US citizenship, at
Speaker 1: least according to one book. Other sources say it took
Speaker 1: them two years for citizens But either way, it's really
Speaker 1: funny to me because there's all of this talk about
Speaker 1: how um, there's absolutely some truth to the fact that,
Speaker 1: like ethnic whites weren't white in nineteenth century America, but
Speaker 1: there's also some complete bullshit to that because free the
Speaker 1: the law about who can immigrate freely was free white
Speaker 1: people can come immigrant legally without restriction, and that included
Speaker 1: these people who, like, you know, the Irish, Italian and
Speaker 1: Jews and stuff, who were like sort of considered not white,
Speaker 1: but we're still white enough to get fucking citizenship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Whitewood an astrict, Yeah yeah, totally yeah, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it still wasn't fucking easy for him. They live in
Speaker 1: a neighborhood called Little Germany and a row home subdivided
Speaker 1: to hold several families per floor, so it's like probably
Speaker 1: her and like fucking six or seven siblings living in
Speaker 1: one goddamn room in a row home. There's no indoor plumbing,
Speaker 1: there's a chamber pot or maybe an outhouse water who
Speaker 1: was brought in from the yard. They had to walk
Speaker 1: like a mile to go take a bath at like
Speaker 1: a public bath house, so they probably didn't. She was
Speaker 1: out that much disgusting. I see why you choose not
Speaker 1: to bathe if you're just like, look, man, like you
Speaker 1: want to get in this this gray water that the
Speaker 1: whole city was in. Like Nam Also, I would still
Speaker 1: like to reiterate um when we did the Potato Blight
Speaker 1: with on the Bastards podcast that like, I really feel
Speaker 1: like the Irish missed the boat when because y'alls, like
Speaker 1: y'all's race was it was up for grabs, like you
Speaker 1: could have you could have been drafted as a person
Speaker 1: of color, you know what I'm saying. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: y'all could have since it was up for debate, you know,
Speaker 1: since since whiteness was like I we don't know about y'all,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. I'm like, I wish I
Speaker 1: would have just thought about what whiteness did to you
Speaker 1: and been like, you know what, just think about how
Speaker 1: different history would be if the who were like, nah,
Speaker 1: wholl cool, you know, keep it, we don't need it.
Speaker 1: I fucking wish jus fucking wish being like oh, instead
Speaker 1: like learning English, the language of the people who are
Speaker 1: the reason that we had to flee our country, and
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, I know, like like my my grandmother
Speaker 1: didn't didn't learning but sorry, didn't learn Irish even though
Speaker 1: her parents spoke Irish because they were like, no, you
Speaker 1: gotta be a white American, you know. But I want
Speaker 1: you to know that Sophie Lyons was not a working
Speaker 1: class family. They were very much Sophie has a quote,
Speaker 1: I don't belong to the working class. I belonged to
Speaker 1: the criminal class. So if that's her family and her
Speaker 1: love with the streets, yeah, her upbringing is a bit
Speaker 1: of a mystery because she lies constantly because she's a
Speaker 1: con artist. She writes about it, but she lied about it,
Speaker 1: and so but she grew up with her father, and
Speaker 1: then either her mother or her stepmother, and her real
Speaker 1: mother might have died early and her father might have remarried.
Speaker 1: Either way, every one of the families doing crime. In
Speaker 1: her telling of it, she steals her first pocketbook at six,
Speaker 1: although different source claims three. But I don't know whatever,
Speaker 1: and she gets punished harshly by her family if she
Speaker 1: refuses to steal. This is the part I actually don't
Speaker 1: necessarily trust, because she uses this in court constantly. She's like,
Speaker 1: I was forced into crime by my evil, wicked stepmother.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, my mama made me. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: so her quote about this. All during my early childhood,
Speaker 1: I did little but steal and was never sent to school.
Speaker 1: I did not learn to read or write until its
Speaker 1: years old. If my stepmother brought me to a place
Speaker 1: where many persons congregated and I was slow in getting
Speaker 1: pocketbooks and other articles, she would stick a pin into
Speaker 1: my arm to remind me that I must be more industrious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's like making like that's movie lore. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And you know what else is movie lower prop? It's adds.
Speaker 1: I don't actually know how their movie luwer. Um, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: we are sponsored by ads, and movies aren't sponsored by ads,
Speaker 1: so we actually we are not really related in that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what movies have ads? This just other movies. That's true,
Speaker 1: isn't there? That's true. That's a good point. And I
Speaker 1: suspect that we're Depending on where you're listening, most of
Speaker 1: your ads are going to be for other podcasts usually,
Speaker 1: So here are some of those ads. Let's do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back and we're talking about Sophie Lyons in the
Speaker 1: criminal class and she claims once again, this is her
Speaker 1: claim the first time. One of her first memories is
Speaker 1: getting arrested and it was better than home because the
Speaker 1: cops gave her candy and let her play. Oh my god. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not convinced by that one. But who
Speaker 1: knows of all of her numerous siblings, only her and
Speaker 1: one other one made it to adulthood because it's the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, and that sibling was never convicted of a crime,
Speaker 1: lived a nice long life. And then in eighteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: she's like twelve years old and she starts seeing how
Speaker 1: corrupt the fucking criminal justice system is. Her dad, Jacob,
Speaker 1: is arrested on perjury charges, which was just blackmail by
Speaker 1: the cops because he had been arrested on some bullshit
Speaker 1: charge and he'd gone and complained to the police commissioners.
Speaker 1: He was like, hey, cops has tried to blackmail me.
Speaker 1: And so the cops then, including the police commissioners he
Speaker 1: had just talked to, turned around and blackmailed him and
Speaker 1: accused him of perjury. Yeah, you're obviously lying unless you
Speaker 1: pay me this money. Exactly. It was that he refused
Speaker 1: to pay a bribe, and so that's like, that's that's
Speaker 1: definitely true. Yeah, yeah, And that's like some of this
Speaker 1: like oh, it's this criminal family and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they they wouldn't fucking pay bribes to the cops, so
Speaker 1: they keep getting arrested, Like like, at what point is
Speaker 1: society making the criminal whatever? Totally, the cops are fucking
Speaker 1: in on all of this crime that's happening in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Only the nineteenth century that has stopped the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system works at expertly. Now, that's not true.
Speaker 1: Her dad stayed mostly free for a while. He got
Speaker 1: the name Old Elkin the Fence, and he ran a
Speaker 1: clothing store where he fenced stolen objects. And at one
Speaker 1: point he signed up to fight in the Civil War.
Speaker 1: But he did it like right before the war ended
Speaker 1: because he just wanted the recruitment bonus. Yeah, he was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I think this war is almost over, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely brilliant And in her book, Sophie paints a story
Speaker 1: of how she had an evil, wicked step mom who,
Speaker 1: as soon as her noble dad was off fighting the
Speaker 1: noble war turned around and like corrupted her. But this
Speaker 1: is just entirely a lie. Her dad was like barely
Speaker 1: gone for either days or months, but not not very long.
Speaker 1: Her mom was a crook. She spent at least three
Speaker 1: terms in Sing Sing prison, and one time she was
Speaker 1: arrested because she she stole some diamond jewelry, right, and
Speaker 1: so she fenced it at a pawn shop like you do.
Speaker 1: And then she was thinking to herself, man, I wonder
Speaker 1: whether there's anything I can steal. I know where there's
Speaker 1: some diamond jewelry. So she went back to the pawn shop.
Speaker 1: She just sold the stuff too, stole it from them,
Speaker 1: and then sold it to another poun shop, which would well,
Speaker 1: except she got caught. Dang it. I was like, that's pretty,
Speaker 1: that's bold. That's a bold I know. He was like, yo,
Speaker 1: ain't you the lady that was just here too minutes? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean like, how can I see that one that
Speaker 1: looks interesting to me? And then just just bolts out
Speaker 1: the doors like yeah, totally alright right here. And when
Speaker 1: she dropped off jewelry, her name, yeah, hr paper Stacks.
Speaker 1: So when Sophie was twelve, she gets arrested for burglary
Speaker 1: and she gets sent to a juvenile detention center. It's
Speaker 1: the first one in the United States, the House of Refuge,
Speaker 1: and she's one of the first girls at this newly
Speaker 1: opened she's she's one of the first girl juvenile delinquents
Speaker 1: in the United States. What an's called the House of Refuge? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it had been created by a group called the
Speaker 1: Society for the Prevention of Pauperism. Wow, I thought it
Speaker 1: was going to be. Wow, the Society for the Prevention
Speaker 1: of Pauperism. Yeah, that's quite a name. Also, House of
Speaker 1: Refuge is the name of many Black churches. Oh interesting,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so many black house refuge. That that's a
Speaker 1: more deserving name, or like they deserve the name more. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: that's all what it's called House of Refuge. I was like,
Speaker 1: I thought you was gonna say, which was founded by
Speaker 1: House of Refuge missionary Baptist Church. But never mind, no, no,
Speaker 1: no one seems to know what she was convicted over,
Speaker 1: how long she stayed there. Most of her fellow inmates
Speaker 1: where kids who had been convicted of vagrancy, so she
Speaker 1: was like one of the like got it most sketchy.
Speaker 1: She was like one of the most badass people there
Speaker 1: or whatever, because everyone else was just like fucking thrown
Speaker 1: in prison for being homeless. And while in the house
Speaker 1: of refuge, she faced whipping solitary confinement. She kept in
Speaker 1: the leg irons. She's twelve years old, damn. And it's
Speaker 1: funny to contrast this with what she supposedly faced at home, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were all taught how to sew. All the girls
Speaker 1: were taught how to sew and cook and clean and
Speaker 1: basically how to get shitty jobs for life outside of jail.
Speaker 1: And so this is probably when she was like, all right,
Speaker 1: given my options, I choose crime for sure, for absolutely sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she gets out since her family is all tied up
Speaker 1: in court and ship, Like, I think her dad's in
Speaker 1: jail at this point, maybe her mom is too. She
Speaker 1: sets out on her own. She's fourteen years old. She
Speaker 1: gets arrested right away, like less than a year later,
Speaker 1: she gets arrested her picking pockets, spends two months in
Speaker 1: an adult prison for the first time, and she gets
Speaker 1: out and she's going back to her crime. She's fifteen.
Speaker 1: She's good looking and she knows it, and she uses
Speaker 1: that to distinct advantage her entire life, which makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1: At fifteen, she gets married to another Germany fIF Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I think as far as I can tell, basically, it
Speaker 1: was just like if two people were hooking up, they
Speaker 1: were like, we should probably get married, right, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's got to be that because I was like,
Speaker 1: I ain't no way. Yeah. Then again, it is like
Speaker 1: she ends up with four husbands and fox a many
Speaker 1: many other people besides that. But she marries Mari Harris,
Speaker 1: who was about twenty and he was a shoemaker in
Speaker 1: a pickpocket and the marriage lasted about two years. Okay.
Speaker 1: Around this time, though, she finds a new mom, a
Speaker 1: mom she likes way more than old mom. And this
Speaker 1: is in one of the most cinema cinema movie like
Speaker 1: parts of this whole story. The sort of orphaned crime
Speaker 1: girl discovers the old matron of crime because she gets
Speaker 1: a new crime mom. Old crime mom kind of mean,
Speaker 1: new crime mom super nice. Yes. Federica yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: Fedorica what mandel bomb? These names are flawless b oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And she's known to everyone as morm Okay. She's another
Speaker 1: German immigrant and she's a widow and she's the most
Speaker 1: famous fence in America at the time. She inherited the
Speaker 1: business from her deceased husband. I don't think she like
Speaker 1: poisoned her husband or anything, but you know, wouldn't wouldn't
Speaker 1: put it past anyone. And she ran the business with
Speaker 1: her two daughters, and they basically they would have like
Speaker 1: pawn shops and ship right and jewelry stores and clothing stores.
Speaker 1: And then any time the police would raid, they had
Speaker 1: this like whole crazy mechanism with like a dumb waiter
Speaker 1: in the chimney where you can throw the jewelry into
Speaker 1: it and it hides the jewelry behind the fire like
Speaker 1: an active burning fire. Um. There's diagrams of it in
Speaker 1: in Sophie's book, Okay. And she runs the shop from
Speaker 1: behind a counter with iron bars, so it's harder to
Speaker 1: rob her. And this is something that never really occurred
Speaker 1: to me, because you know, I've lived in cities where
Speaker 1: everything is behind bulletproof glass or whatever. Right, the iron
Speaker 1: bars make it harder to rob her, but they also
Speaker 1: make it hard to arrest her. And that was absolutely
Speaker 1: part of the point, because cops come in and you've
Speaker 1: got some time, you know, they can't do anything for
Speaker 1: a minute. Yeah, that's brilliant. Yeah, I'm actually you're I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of liking her so far. Oh yeah, no, totally,
Speaker 1: like I actually like her. It was just a little
Speaker 1: bit like, well, we'll get to it, Okay, Well she's
Speaker 1: not like, she's not a monster, this is not a
Speaker 1: bastard's episode. Yeah. True. Oh I have to keep reminding myself.
Speaker 1: You're right. Yeah, totally people. Yeah, And basically what she
Speaker 1: does is she has this whole fucking empire where the
Speaker 1: thieves come in and they drop off all the jewelry
Speaker 1: and ship, and then she has employees who are jewelers
Speaker 1: who spend all of their time pulling all the stones
Speaker 1: out of the settings and like melting down the gold
Speaker 1: and like just selling gold en gets and jewels like loose.
Speaker 1: I think maybe even making new jewelry out of all
Speaker 1: the stolen ship, which would be what an amazing way.
Speaker 1: I wish I had the story of like someone who
Speaker 1: was just a jeweler who like later becomes some world
Speaker 1: class jeweler because he kinda start just melting down stolen ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like and like the Dove story would be like
Speaker 1: you don't even know stolen it was just it's just
Speaker 1: the homegirl down the street, you know, the big HOMEI
Speaker 1: down the street. She said, hey, you want a little job.
Speaker 1: You know, here's a nickel, here's a nickel. Put this together.
Speaker 1: You're like, dude, I'm getting life skills out later on.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was stolen. Yeah, And I wouldn't put this
Speaker 1: pastor right. And she's she's fencing um and the cops
Speaker 1: keep trying to get her, but her security culture is
Speaker 1: just like too fucking good. Every time they come and
Speaker 1: try and get her. It's like she's getting tipped off
Speaker 1: before they come and get her. Like she fucking marm
Speaker 1: seems to have a flawless career. She fences goods from
Speaker 1: all over the East Coast in the Midwest, so she's
Speaker 1: coming from like St. Louis, if you like, pick a
Speaker 1: pocket in St. Louis. The ring gets sent to New
Speaker 1: York to be melted down, and I know, and it's
Speaker 1: like no fucking cars, right, it's just on train, like
Speaker 1: y'all walk in this stuff, like the horse care courrier
Speaker 1: who just shows up in the middle of the night
Speaker 1: with a saber and some stolen ship. Yes, And so
Speaker 1: she's crime boss mom and she makes a fortune off
Speaker 1: of her pickpockets. She pays all the cops off to
Speaker 1: keep everyone safe, and she pays this massive retainer to
Speaker 1: like the most prestigious law firm in New York City
Speaker 1: to defend them all in court. So anytime one of
Speaker 1: her pickpockets gets caught, world class lawyers come in and
Speaker 1: defend the pickpocketing court. And but everyone, okay, the one trap, right,
Speaker 1: everyone's in debt to her because not everyone like if
Speaker 1: you get caught, she'll pay your bail and then she
Speaker 1: charges interest and so you basically have to keep working
Speaker 1: for because okay, yeah, that's how it works. That was
Speaker 1: how it works. You know, we was talking all the politics.
Speaker 1: It's like there are some favors you have to add
Speaker 1: you it's like used to trade. It's the opportunity costs
Speaker 1: like this, if I make this call, it's gonna work,
Speaker 1: but it's gonna cost me, and you gotta like you listen.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's some there's some cousins, there's some uncles, there's
Speaker 1: some friends you don't call because even though to work,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if I should call it this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so she sounds like she's that where it's like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, we'll take care of you. Yeah, but you're
Speaker 1: gonna own me something. Yeah exactly. Yeah, And like, you know,
Speaker 1: I bet you that, Like, if I'm facing two months,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll take two months instead of owing her money,
Speaker 1: you know, yes, yes, exactly, I'll just take these two
Speaker 1: months tough it out. You're already a street You're already
Speaker 1: a street person, so you're fine. You probably know half
Speaker 1: the people in the sales anyway. Yeah, yeah exactly. So
Speaker 1: she has this big fancy house, Morm does, and she
Speaker 1: throws big fancy parties. But the thing that I really
Speaker 1: like about this, it's not high society parties. It's not
Speaker 1: for the rich assholes around the city. She throws high
Speaker 1: society parties for her thieves. Yes, they all kick it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so this is this is how Sophie comes up.
Speaker 1: And eventually later end of her life, Morm finally gets caught,
Speaker 1: so she pays her bail, moves to Canada, and died
Speaker 1: a free woman. And so that's that's Marm's and brilliant
Speaker 1: morm is hard And this is how Sophie learned the
Speaker 1: tricks of the trade. She already knew how to steal,
Speaker 1: but now she learns how to bribe cops. She learns
Speaker 1: how to get out of jail and ship. She learns
Speaker 1: how to move goods. She learns how to change jewelry.
Speaker 1: She meets petty thieves who end up like world class
Speaker 1: art thieves, like a lot of the like world class
Speaker 1: art heist people from the time, all like came up
Speaker 1: under marm And she learns some some shoplifting tricks that
Speaker 1: I think are fucking sick, but I've never encouraged anyone
Speaker 1: to make whatever people can whatever skirts with hidden pockets
Speaker 1: is a big one that she steals. And then the
Speaker 1: other one is that she walks into the store with
Speaker 1: a folded up umbrella like as a cane, and then
Speaker 1: just drops the objects into the umbrella. And she's say
Speaker 1: that again. Yeah, so she walks into the store. She's
Speaker 1: got an umbrella, but it's like folded up right, and
Speaker 1: so she has it upside down like a cane. And
Speaker 1: so that's where she just like drops ship that she's
Speaker 1: trying to steal. Brilliant. Yeah. Uh, that beats the whole
Speaker 1: like up the sleeve thing. Not that I would know
Speaker 1: anything or anything like that. Now, why why would you?
Speaker 1: Why would you? I don't even know. Yeah, I definitely
Speaker 1: didn't spend a long time as a squatter, uh no,
Speaker 1: And so she was beautiful and vain. She kept her
Speaker 1: hair cropped short, which was not the fashion, but so
Speaker 1: that she could wear wigs more easily for her crimes.
Speaker 1: And so although like photos and etchings of her, she
Speaker 1: has this like total Dike haircut, it rules. But then
Speaker 1: she meets ned Lyons, who's eight years older than her,
Speaker 1: and this is where she gets the name Lions. He
Speaker 1: was Irish. He had fled Ireland because of the potato
Speaker 1: famine again colonial genocide, not to follow the potatoes pato blight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and once in America, ned Like lied and said he
Speaker 1: was British, but it was just to deal with all
Speaker 1: the anti Irish bigotry that he faced everywhere he went.
Speaker 1: Which again I'm like, I'm I'm with you, I like
Speaker 1: wish it just I don't know whatever which the Irish different,
Speaker 1: you know what? No, I'm cool, yeah yeah. But at
Speaker 1: one point he gets arrested. He listed his occupation as
Speaker 1: jeweler when he gets arrested, because he was one of
Speaker 1: Marm's jewelers. But more than that, his occupation was something
Speaker 1: called a cracksman, which meant that he blew up safes. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I definitely thought Cracksman as something else but century early
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, yeah, and that's actually interesting. There's like I
Speaker 1: cannot find and histories really pick what they do and
Speaker 1: don't talk about, right, Like one of the main things
Speaker 1: that I keep running across is history books don't like
Speaker 1: to talk about sex work, and history books don't like
Speaker 1: to talk about the drug trade if they can fucking
Speaker 1: help it. Yeah, And I I don't know whether or
Speaker 1: not any of this criminal enterprise stuff involved the drug trade.
Speaker 1: There's like some stuff where at some point, like she
Speaker 1: claims to be a morphine addict a lot, but I
Speaker 1: think she's literally just faking it to get sympathy from
Speaker 1: the courts, which is really funny to imagine that that
Speaker 1: would get you sympathy from the courts as compared to now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think that there's like like you said, like
Speaker 1: history don't like talking about it, mainly because like most
Speaker 1: drug syndicates were actually the government, so you want to
Speaker 1: admit that, like the government's actually doing it. But like
Speaker 1: you said, ain't no way, Yeah, ain't no way, She's
Speaker 1: not moving drugs, heroin, morphine, poppy, Like ain't no way.
Speaker 1: You don't say yeah, yeah, yeah, because I mean, like
Speaker 1: where would the other because someone is doing that, right,
Speaker 1: and like how else would you get hot adrenaline at
Speaker 1: the time, But that still had to get moved by someone.
Speaker 1: You just you threw that. You threw that in there.
Speaker 1: That was a freebee. That's the first time I ever
Speaker 1: heard those two words. But yeah, yeah, no, I want some.
Speaker 1: I once edited an article about all the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: drugs that people did, and the only one that I remember,
Speaker 1: sides like ether is a orangutanng adrenaline, which people would
Speaker 1: just yeah adrenaline, which imagine that fucking crime scene, like
Speaker 1: the not crime scene, like the syndicate that's moving arang
Speaker 1: and the supply chain out mug like that's wow, okay, anyway,
Speaker 1: going alright, so this whole scene. You have to be
Speaker 1: the toughest human being to get adrenaline out of an
Speaker 1: orang orangutank Yeah yeah nah, you'd like that's a scary
Speaker 1: that's a scary person who's able to go get adrenaline
Speaker 1: out of yone. That's true. I would not. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: sunk with someone who's on it, and I wouldn't work
Speaker 1: with someone who gets it because on it when you're
Speaker 1: trying to get it exactly. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: So this whole scene it seems like almost like free
Speaker 1: love or polyquel ish because they meet everyone through like
Speaker 1: like she meets Ned Lyons through his previous wife. Their
Speaker 1: mutual friend, an Irish woman named redheaded Kate. Sophie was
Speaker 1: probably Ned's like third wife. He's like in his early twenties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, basically people kept marrying the people
Speaker 1: that they were dating instead of just dating them. Um.
Speaker 1: I think partly because like she's Jewish, but almost all
Speaker 1: these people are Catholic, because it's all fucking Irish people,
Speaker 1: and but everyone's fucking everyone and it seems to be
Speaker 1: it's basically like so they're not Polly, but they're all
Speaker 1: sucking each other and it's totally fine until one day
Speaker 1: it's just not fine, and then there's like gunfights and
Speaker 1: ship you know, because like you sucked my wife and
Speaker 1: you're like, well it's fine last week, and like I
Speaker 1: don't care you sucked my wife. Suck you you fucked
Speaker 1: my wife, Like that's different. Yeah, I know that's different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's awful away. Yeah yeah, and so I think it
Speaker 1: was totally normal that they were all just like mutual friends.
Speaker 1: And she made her new husband through her new husband's
Speaker 1: ex for whatever, who might not even be legally married,
Speaker 1: who knows, And so if he fucking hates Nedlines by
Speaker 1: the end of her life. But at the time she's seventeen,
Speaker 1: they fall madly in love and become partners in crime, okay,
Speaker 1: And in eighteen sixty five she gets pregnant she's seventeen,
Speaker 1: and then a couple of months later they get married
Speaker 1: I think, like right on her basically or eighteenth birthday,
Speaker 1: although I don't know if that has any significance. I'm
Speaker 1: sure they can get married before then. And kind of
Speaker 1: fun Nedlines he did some interesting ship, but he was controlling, right,
Speaker 1: because he was this Catholic man, right, and he wanted
Speaker 1: to provide for his family, And so they go out
Speaker 1: places and he would jack she would jackson watches or whatever,
Speaker 1: and then like come home and be like, oh, what
Speaker 1: did you get? I got some watches? And he'd be
Speaker 1: like mad right, And then because he wanted to be
Speaker 1: the provider, yeah, even though he blew all their money
Speaker 1: all the time, so she the family relied on the
Speaker 1: fucking on her her thievery Yeah, so ned lions by
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine. He's feeling the pressure. He's got two
Speaker 1: kids and he's got one on the way, and he's like,
Speaker 1: this is it, man, I need a big score take
Speaker 1: care of my family. So he cruise up with a
Speaker 1: bunch of other big time bank robbers and they're gonna
Speaker 1: hit Ocean Bank in Manhattan. So it's oceans for this
Speaker 1: is my theory. But before we learn about the bank robbery, first,
Speaker 1: we're going to learn about the opposite of bank robbery,
Speaker 1: where instead services take money from you, instead of you
Speaker 1: taking money from services, and then they enter it into banks. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: here's some ads and we are back. So our our
Speaker 1: bank robbing crew. The bank is on the first floor
Speaker 1: of a brownstone near Wall Street, and the vault is
Speaker 1: steel and brick. It has three heavy doors, so there's
Speaker 1: no need for a weekend watchman because no one can
Speaker 1: get through those three heavy doors and that vault. Right,
Speaker 1: So what do the robbers do? They do the same
Speaker 1: ship everyone in this fucking podcast does. They every tunneler,
Speaker 1: every everyone. They rent a space nearby. In this case,
Speaker 1: the space is real nearby. The bank is on the
Speaker 1: first floor. There's a a basement storefront underneath the bank. Yes,
Speaker 1: so they rent the basement storefront under the bank. They
Speaker 1: set up a fake business. I wish I could find
Speaker 1: out what the business was. I'm really sad. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was a florist. I don't know. They set up a
Speaker 1: wall in the basement shop so they can work without
Speaker 1: being seen. And then they just dropped the fucking bank.
Speaker 1: It's closed on Sundays, so as soon as it closed
Speaker 1: this door on Saturday, they saw a hole through the
Speaker 1: ceiling into the floor of the bank. They climb up through,
Speaker 1: they break through each of the heavy doors. Then they
Speaker 1: blow the vault the funk open, and they leave with
Speaker 1: a half a million or a million dollars, which is
Speaker 1: like ten to twenty million dollars today. I love it.
Speaker 1: And fucking a few days work for like four people,
Speaker 1: and they never got caught and they never got charged,
Speaker 1: no one got hurt. How if you two dudes that rented,
Speaker 1: like when you signed the lease downstairs, did you guys
Speaker 1: not go eight and floes that rented those four Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean probably just went up and it was like,
Speaker 1: I'm Mr. F. H. Aubrey and it has a monocle
Speaker 1: and ship, right, you know, I don't know, like, hello,
Speaker 1: what is your name? Beatrid Hamiles fourth? Yeah, exactly. And
Speaker 1: then they go and spend a lot of time trying
Speaker 1: to track down Mr Hamilt's fourth and yeah he's in
Speaker 1: the wind. Yeah, And so you'd think they've done this
Speaker 1: big score. So they're all set to go straight right
Speaker 1: from penniless immigrants to middle class citizens. You could start
Speaker 1: their own businesses. Now they just they just keep they
Speaker 1: just keep robbing ship. Yeah, because that was too easy,
Speaker 1: Like you're just like you telling me, with four days work,
Speaker 1: we made twenty million dollars and don't nobody know who
Speaker 1: we are and nobody asking where we got this money.
Speaker 1: We have to do this again, yeah, like there's no townside. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least that time. So Ned though, he kind of
Speaker 1: sucks up his career because in the in the criming world,
Speaker 1: being able to change your appearance is really important, right,
Speaker 1: especially because there's no fucking fingerprints yet photos have barely
Speaker 1: been invented. There's a really good time to be a
Speaker 1: criminal in some ways. Some ways it was really terrible, actually,
Speaker 1: but Ned he goes and he picks a fight with
Speaker 1: a really fighty guy with a really fighting name, Jimmy Haggarty,
Speaker 1: and Jimmy bites most of Ned's ear off, everything but
Speaker 1: the ear lobe. Let's go, yeah, ear off. So Ned's
Speaker 1: fucked now, right. He grows his hair long, and he
Speaker 1: grows a sideburns out to try and cover the fact
Speaker 1: that he's missing a fucking ear and he's sort of successful.
Speaker 1: Jimmy Haggerty. However, he's a little bit too fighty and
Speaker 1: he dies in a fight. A couple of years later.
Speaker 1: He died doing what he loved. And then one night
Speaker 1: in seventy Ned was mining his own business, just hanging
Speaker 1: out in Philly with some of his friends, including someone
Speaker 1: with the name Jimmy Hope. And my theory here is
Speaker 1: that if your name is Jimmy, don't go by your
Speaker 1: first or last name, or you'll just sound like an
Speaker 1: old timy crook. Yeah Jimmy one leg one year, Yeah, lefty, Jimmy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Hope whatever. Ye. So, so Nan and his buddies,
Speaker 1: including Jimmy Hope, they're just hanging out and they're carrying
Speaker 1: a safe across the street that they just stole from somewhere.
Speaker 1: When someone tries to arrest them, pulls a gun out
Speaker 1: even and Ned gets arrested. He gives a fake name,
Speaker 1: Edwards Salman, and then he goes back to New York
Speaker 1: after he jumps bail, because that's what you do. You
Speaker 1: get caught, you give a fake name, you pay bail,
Speaker 1: you fucking jump bail and move to a different city. Day.
Speaker 1: It must be nice being a white criminal. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying. I was. Actually I spent a while trying
Speaker 1: to find out about black crime in this era, and
Speaker 1: it's like, in terms of like professional crime, I mostly
Speaker 1: started seeing in my research someone listening might know more
Speaker 1: about this, or you might know more about this, But
Speaker 1: I started seeing like professional crime coming up more in
Speaker 1: the Prohibition era. Um and then instead of course, what
Speaker 1: you know, the black crime at the time was being
Speaker 1: black and they continue, yeah, yeah, exactly. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's not that there weren't a lot of black people
Speaker 1: in prisons then and now the reason that whatever. One
Speaker 1: day it's more of a bastards thing, I guess, But
Speaker 1: one day I want to do stuff that touches more
Speaker 1: on the fact that, like the fucking prison system just
Speaker 1: came out of the like slave system. Oh yeah, we
Speaker 1: did that okay, well behind the police. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: that's right, and everyone should go check that out because
Speaker 1: that is important context to have. Ye yeah, alright. Anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Jimmy one Leg. Yeah, so he's hanging out with
Speaker 1: Jimmy Hope, Jimmy one Leg and Hope up in New
Speaker 1: York and he's he's just doing his thing. A couple
Speaker 1: of days later, a couple of weeks later or whatever,
Speaker 1: we can't catch a break. He's just doing his thing,
Speaker 1: robbing a bank. When some armed citizens stopped him, some
Speaker 1: gunfire was exchanged. Our man Ned gets in jail again.
Speaker 1: This time he goes to jail under the name Robert E.
Speaker 1: Hapgood but yeah, and he gets he gets five years
Speaker 1: upstate in Auburn prison. He does not get away with
Speaker 1: it this time. I think they don't offer a bail.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. And this prison is fucked up. The
Speaker 1: cells are three and a half feet wide, and there's
Speaker 1: a code of silence enforced at all hours, like it's
Speaker 1: a silent retreat of a fucking prison. It's awful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Sophie, she does what any good partner would do,
Speaker 1: and she starts figuring out who she has to bribe.
Speaker 1: Or funk to get him transferred to Sing Sing Prison,
Speaker 1: which is way closer and has much more bribeable guards
Speaker 1: because the guards in and Auburn were much harder to bribe.
Speaker 1: So she finds a long term sitter for the three kids,
Speaker 1: basically like, hey, someone, can you watch my kids? I
Speaker 1: gotta go figure out how to get my fucking husband
Speaker 1: out of this fucking prison. She moved to Albany, New York.
Speaker 1: She finds a lawyer politician guy and starts fucking him,
Speaker 1: and then he then starts putting the wheels of justice
Speaker 1: in motion to get her husband transferred to Sing Sing prison.
Speaker 1: But then she feels very betrayed because after doing all
Speaker 1: of that work, he then demands on top of the
Speaker 1: sex um. But her husband gets transferred, and so she's like,
Speaker 1: all right, I go back to New York. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: start looking after the kids the only way I know
Speaker 1: how by stealing a bunch of ship. Yeah, And she
Speaker 1: immediately gets busted. And she gets busted for stealing a cloak,
Speaker 1: which feels really fucking old timing a cloak, But what
Speaker 1: I realized is that cloaks. Cloaks have been in fashion
Speaker 1: for like four thousand years and they only went out
Speaker 1: of fashion, like the nineteen thirties. We live in this
Speaker 1: tiny little period of non cloak wearing. Everyone else in
Speaker 1: history got to wear cloaks. I'm not that's crazy. I
Speaker 1: never thought I never thought of it like that. Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: who's been wearing a cloak since? Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just run fair people and me. I guess I'm probably
Speaker 1: run fair people. You're definitely a You're definitely a cloak. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My ex partner made me a cloak. Is very nice.
Speaker 1: You're listening. Thanks for the cloak. Um, right, did you say?
Speaker 1: Did you say, Margaret, it's a cloak kind of gala?
Speaker 1: So she is, that's true, It's absolutely true. I love that.
Speaker 1: So she steals a cloak. This gets her sense to
Speaker 1: sing Sing prison, where her husband is, and a few
Speaker 1: months later her mother ends up there too, So the
Speaker 1: whole family is reunited in sing Sing prison. And oh yeah,
Speaker 1: but not not the not good trime mom, but like
Speaker 1: wicked evil stepmom who was probably fine. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: whole family of course works with out pay up in
Speaker 1: sing Sing prison because the thirteen Amendment says, the one
Speaker 1: that outlaws slavery says, well that loaves. Some slavery says
Speaker 1: neither slavery nor involuntary servitude accept as punishment for crime,
Speaker 1: whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist
Speaker 1: within the United States. You know, now I wrote into
Speaker 1: the script here like here talk about the thing that
Speaker 1: we already talked about about, how fucking the reason the
Speaker 1: prison system exists so that black people have to keep
Speaker 1: working for free mm hmm. But Sophie, she figures, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be in prison anymore. It's not working
Speaker 1: out for me. I liked hanging out with my kids
Speaker 1: and being not in prison. Um. And she preferred not
Speaker 1: working for lots of money than lots of working for
Speaker 1: not money. Yeah. So they organize a prison break, and
Speaker 1: who does this prison break As a matter of who
Speaker 1: you ask, you ask her, she's the entire thing. If
Speaker 1: you ask history, probably husband did most of it. Mm hm.
Speaker 1: Basically everyone knows that he's richest ship from the bank job,
Speaker 1: and so everyone's willing to put in a lot of
Speaker 1: work to get him out because they're like, oh, if
Speaker 1: we get him out, he'll give us his richest ship money.
Speaker 1: And he convinces an inmate who's a clerk, to get
Speaker 1: in on it. They bribe guards to bring in disguises,
Speaker 1: which are men's clothes, wigs, fake mustaches, and beards, basically
Speaker 1: like to be like fancy gentlemen. They hide all this
Speaker 1: ship under dark stairwell in the prison. The clerk steals
Speaker 1: documents that has all of the info someone would need
Speaker 1: to like send a fake telegraph. It's like all of
Speaker 1: the who to address ship to stuff. And then they wait.
Speaker 1: They wait for their opportunity because their plan is to
Speaker 1: find an excuse to lure the warden and the chief
Speaker 1: clerk away from the prison. So this politician dies is
Speaker 1: this big funk off funeral, and outside contacts send a
Speaker 1: fake telegram to the warden and the chief clerk and
Speaker 1: they're like pretending to be a prison supplier, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we love you so much, you buy all the ship
Speaker 1: from us. Capitalism is totally the same in the twenty
Speaker 1: century the nineteenth century. You two should come to the
Speaker 1: fucking funeral and we'll all watch it together. So it works.
Speaker 1: The two fucking head people out of the jail are gone.
Speaker 1: Some other crooks dressed up like rich assholes. They ride
Speaker 1: up in a coach. They asked for a tour of
Speaker 1: the prison, and then Ned and his accomplice donned their
Speaker 1: rich asshole clothes and put on fake beards and ship
Speaker 1: and they walk out of the prison into a horse
Speaker 1: draung coach and funk off out of there. And two
Speaker 1: weeks later, because he's a stand up guy right now,
Speaker 1: at least, he comes back for his wife and he
Speaker 1: does more or less the same thing. He shows up
Speaker 1: in his dandy outfit. He goes up to the kitchen
Speaker 1: of the prisons hospital where Sophie is working, and he
Speaker 1: shows up with a big basket of fruit and he's like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm some rich asshole and I have bought so much
Speaker 1: fruit for the poor prisoners. And so someone goes off
Speaker 1: to take the fruit basket away and while and so
Speaker 1: now he's alone with Sophie, and so he throws up,
Speaker 1: let's go yeah. Yeah, he throws a fur coat over her.
Speaker 1: They walk out into the snow as some rich asshole couple,
Speaker 1: and they get on a fucking sleigh and then they
Speaker 1: ride away on a sleigh because there's so much fucking snow,
Speaker 1: Oh my god. And they go home in the nobody
Speaker 1: was like, who's that? Did you come in with it? Yeah, nope,
Speaker 1: Wait a second. Yeah, they probably run out with their
Speaker 1: whistles and they're like fucking sticks and they're like funny
Speaker 1: hats and ship Oh god, hilarious. So they break out
Speaker 1: a fucking sing sing prison and they lost a kid
Speaker 1: while they were in uh, like one of their six
Speaker 1: year olds dies because it's the nineteenth century and kids
Speaker 1: die all over the place. I think she dies of
Speaker 1: scarlet fever or something. They moved to Montreal because Canada
Speaker 1: has no extradition treaty. But then a super hot crime
Speaker 1: lady named Becky showed up and was like, Becky, I know,
Speaker 1: I know, Hey, Ned, help me break my husband out
Speaker 1: of prison, because you're very good at breaking people out
Speaker 1: of prison, I hear. So he goes to Maine and
Speaker 1: he works on a jailbreak, but he fails at the
Speaker 1: jail break, and but he does succeed at sleeping with Becky,
Speaker 1: of course, so if he gets mad about this. But
Speaker 1: then Ned was like, but you fucked that guy to
Speaker 1: get me transferred. Yeah, wait a minute, and she's like,
Speaker 1: but I did that for you, yeah, yeah exactly, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can imagine that fight, you know, And there's there's
Speaker 1: some truth to that, but whatever. Yeah, So they bicker,
Speaker 1: she leaves him, then they get back, moves to New Orleans,
Speaker 1: and they get back together. She has three more kids.
Speaker 1: She just shipping all of her kids off to Catholic
Speaker 1: schools in Canada. And it took me a while to
Speaker 1: get a sense of this, right because at first, because
Speaker 1: I'm kind of like, oh, you just have kids and
Speaker 1: ditch them, which is not like the best look, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I actually believe her in what she talks about
Speaker 1: this later. She didn't want her kids to be crooks
Speaker 1: because she came up in a crime family. And she's like,
Speaker 1: and I think she likes her crime life, right, but
Speaker 1: she's still kind of like, I don't want I don't
Speaker 1: want this for my kids. So she doesn't everything she
Speaker 1: fucking can to get them a proper education and go
Speaker 1: through life without knowing mom and dad, basically like without
Speaker 1: knowing what they were up to, which basically made barely
Speaker 1: knowing them. Yeah, And it's kind yeah, like tracks, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to me, right because it's it's the greatest
Speaker 1: emotional wound of her life, right, um, that she's estranged
Speaker 1: from her family. But she's like, oh, I'm doing it
Speaker 1: for my kids. Yeah, probably even to like, although a
Speaker 1: lot of it, you know, sounds a lot like folklore
Speaker 1: as far as like her wicked stepmom or whatever, but
Speaker 1: just being like, you know, her coming to terms with
Speaker 1: being like, why would you do that to a child?
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. And then after spending so
Speaker 1: much time and then yeah, like anybody who's like, no
Speaker 1: matter how institutionalized or like hardened you are, at some
Speaker 1: point you like, man, you know, nobody should have to
Speaker 1: live like this, you know what I'm saying. So I
Speaker 1: could see I could see her being like, man, I
Speaker 1: don't want you to live like I lived. Yeah, especially
Speaker 1: if she can provide them enough money and enough education
Speaker 1: to have them not like because if it's for her
Speaker 1: it was like that, or be a pauper like the
Speaker 1: Society of the Prevention of Pauperism wanted, you know. But
Speaker 1: the couple they keep doing all their crime stuff. Ned
Speaker 1: goes off to rob banks, he narrowly avoids capture. Then
Speaker 1: they go on shoplifting dates. Whenever they get caught, they
Speaker 1: give a grand to the cops who catch them. They
Speaker 1: get off free. They move all over the place. This
Speaker 1: goes on to her mid thirties or so eventually they
Speaker 1: get caught when a bribe failed. They offer the cops
Speaker 1: thousand bucks. The cops like fuck you, and they get
Speaker 1: sent off to prison to reserve the remainder of their
Speaker 1: sentences right because they escaped. But this is what a
Speaker 1: good lawyer will do. The good lawyer was like, well,
Speaker 1: actually her prison time is elapsed, so you can't put
Speaker 1: her in prison. And it worked brilliant And I don't
Speaker 1: go but it fucking worked, but amazing. It didn't get
Speaker 1: her husband out, but I think she's kind of done
Speaker 1: with them. She moves to Yah, she don't care to more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she moved to Detroit, which remains her home base for
Speaker 1: the rest of her life, close enough to Canada that
Speaker 1: you keep her eye and her kids. And it's here
Speaker 1: in Detroit that she goes from good thief who was
Speaker 1: kind of overshadowed by her husband to the fucking queen
Speaker 1: of the underworld. And on Wednesday is my cliffhanger. On
Speaker 1: Wednesday we will talk about that. What an origin story
Speaker 1: is my heart? You are man? Okay? All right? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: prop do you ever talk about anything or is there
Speaker 1: anything that people could listen to of you doing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll be talking about a lot of stuff. The politics
Speaker 1: will prop. I don't know when this is coming out,
Speaker 1: but next week. Okay, So we would have just completed
Speaker 1: cractober Fest, right, which is about blowing up saves. Right. Yes,
Speaker 1: so go learn about what it's like to blow up
Speaker 1: safe out crack um and how it got to our streets. Uh.
Speaker 1: So that's a hip politics who prop. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a vastard's prop crossover. It's pretty fun to do. Um.
Speaker 1: I make music, I write poetry. I have a cold
Speaker 1: brew coffee company called Terraform Cold Brew. Uh. If you're
Speaker 1: into ready to drink coffee, that's taste delicious and um
Speaker 1: yeah Terraform cold Brew. But yeah, people's I got a
Speaker 1: book called Terraform. Also, what's it about. It's about that.
Speaker 1: It's poetry and short story about the idea of like
Speaker 1: building a livable world. Pretty fun. Yeah, it's about yep,
Speaker 1: building a world. Uh and um yeah and yeah so
Speaker 1: propity pop dot com um and uh hood politics pod
Speaker 1: and Margaret you have a book and another podcast. Correct,
Speaker 1: it's true. I have a book called We Won't Be
Speaker 1: Here Tomorrow, which is about mostly crime people actually, but
Speaker 1: it's science fiction and fantasy and I have a podcast
Speaker 1: that is not about crime people. Sometimes you could be
Speaker 1: the crime people if you want the dear listener. It's
Speaker 1: called Live Like the World Is Dying and it's about
Speaker 1: individual and community preparedness. And you can follow Sophie's life
Speaker 1: of crime at why Underscore Sophie. I actually don't remember
Speaker 1: your handle? Yeah yeah, yeah, Why Underscore Sophie underscore hy
Speaker 1: on Twitter and we will see you on Wednesday. I
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
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