Speaker 1: Fellow ridiculous historians. We are going abroad in this week's
Speaker 1: classic episode, to northeastern England. I'm Ben your nol And
Speaker 1: right before we re listened to this episode and recorded this,
Speaker 1: you and I were looking back at our notes and
Speaker 1: we immediately said, oh, man, and you said that's a word.
Speaker 2: I did say that's a word. Folks from Hartpool in
Speaker 2: northeastern England are apparently referred to as Heartapudlians, much like
Speaker 2: people from Liverpool are referred to as Liverpudlians, much like
Speaker 2: people from Lilliput are referred to as Lilliputians. Ben, have
Speaker 2: you seen the new sort of horror comedy The Monkey.
Speaker 2: I have.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was fine.
Speaker 2: It was a bit final destination coded.
Speaker 1: Let's just say yeah, yeah, actually you know what I'm
Speaker 1: going to go on a Wednesday. It wasn't very good.
Speaker 1: I was not. You know, it's it's making your plused. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sure I was, because you know, I'm kind of like
Speaker 1: a Larry David character. So about fifteen minutes in I
Speaker 1: give every film at least ten to fifteen minutes. Fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes in I thought, man, I'm not gonna get a
Speaker 1: refund on it.
Speaker 2: I bought it on Amazon's I paid the price. I
Speaker 2: honestly Ben didn't finish it. But that's neither here nor there, y'all.
Speaker 2: We're not a movie criticism podcast, though we do critique
Speaker 2: things from time to time. Today we are talking about
Speaker 2: monkeys from Heartlepull hertlepull.
Speaker 1: Yes, Hartleplian monkeys hangers even. Yeah, if you wanted to
Speaker 1: have fighting words with some people in this part of
Speaker 1: northeastern England, all you would have to do is walk
Speaker 1: into the local or the local pub. I guess we
Speaker 1: should say and start calling people monkey hangers. And this
Speaker 1: goes back to the Napoleonic War, classic war. Yes, actually
Speaker 1: for tacticians and students of you know, war colleges, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure a huge demographic for us, along with hungover
Speaker 1: substitute teachers. Uh, the Napoleonic War. Thank you for the
Speaker 1: thank you for the shrug there, Maxis. The facts are
Speaker 1: the facts. Do they have war summer camps? Yeah? They?
Speaker 1: Oh man, that is actually a great idea for another
Speaker 1: episode in the future. Noel, we are sharing a story
Speaker 1: that I think made us both feel kind of bad
Speaker 1: because you know, I'm a huge fan of pretty much
Speaker 1: every animal other than the Honda Odyssey, and uh, I
Speaker 1: don't rank it as a reputable vehicle. But this is
Speaker 1: also the tale of one incredibly unlucky little monkey.
Speaker 2: Man Ah, the unlucky little monkey, that's right, And how
Speaker 2: the Napoleonic War, a terrified village and said unlucky Simeon
Speaker 2: collided in a ridiculous historical explosion for the ages.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
Speaker 1: fellow ridiculous historians. My name is Ben.
Speaker 2: You usually do something that you usually do A bit
Speaker 2: at the beginning of the show. Threw me for a
Speaker 2: loop there, Ben, do.
Speaker 1: You want a bit? We can? I think I need
Speaker 1: to go back. I need a bit. Okay, guys, journey
Speaker 1: with us back to the beginning. Wait, should we keep
Speaker 1: this all on my Yeah, of course do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we need a full time all right. So there's our
Speaker 1: super producer, Casey Pegram. Everybody give him a hand. You guys,
Speaker 1: we are flying blind today. We are. Here's instead of
Speaker 1: a bit, let's do a bit of background.
Speaker 2: How about that, Ben, that's smart. That is a smart
Speaker 2: use of the word bit.
Speaker 1: So everyone knows where we're coming from right now.
Speaker 2: Well, that's very important. Setting up the scene is very important.
Speaker 2: So today's scene starts in h well, in France and
Speaker 2: Europe in general. I guess in the late seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 2: because you see in seventeen ninety nine Napoleon Bonaparte, remember
Speaker 2: the guy that got formed by cute little bunnies. He
Speaker 2: overthrew the French Revolutionary government, right, yes, and this triggered
Speaker 2: what is known as the Napoleonic Wars. Yeah, because he
Speaker 2: had designs on conquering like everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was like a more successful William Walker, who
Speaker 1: you'll recall from previous episodes. The Napoleonic Wars occurred between
Speaker 1: eighteen o three and eighteen fifteen, and this was the
Speaker 1: French Empire led by Napoleon against just a mixtape of
Speaker 1: various European powers voltroning together, usually led by the United
Speaker 1: Kingdom that was the ringleader.
Speaker 2: And just just for a little bit of a quick bookkeeping,
Speaker 2: it was in eighteen o two that there was a
Speaker 2: thing called the Piece of Our Means that ended a
Speaker 2: decade of war between Great Britain and France.
Speaker 1: Right right, So things were not particularly stable to begin with.
Speaker 1: When the wars begin in eighteen o three and before
Speaker 1: we go on this is this is gonna be a
Speaker 1: punchy episode, folks. I think that's the word you use. No,
Speaker 1: because when I said a bit of background, I was
Speaker 1: also talking on a meta level about our situation today.
Speaker 1: We are Noel Casey and I are in the studio
Speaker 1: for this episode, and then we're going to be here
Speaker 1: into the night making an appearance on a favorite show
Speaker 1: of ours. Behind the Bastards. Should go ahead and plugged
Speaker 1: that and assume that we survived this recording session. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll see.
Speaker 2: We're gonna be some punchy characters by the time that's
Speaker 2: all said and done. But yeah, our buddy Robert Evans
Speaker 2: asked to be on the show, and we thought he
Speaker 2: was joking when he said, yeah, you know, just be
Speaker 2: about three or four hours.
Speaker 1: We're like, okay, you know, we're game.
Speaker 2: But I'll tell you who else was game? Was Napoleon
Speaker 2: for some conquerings?
Speaker 1: Yes, no, why don't you walk us through a few
Speaker 1: of these conflicts, because this context is very important to
Speaker 1: today's story.
Speaker 2: Well, the US was actually involved a little bit as well.
Speaker 2: Napoleon got back Louisiana from Spain in eighteen hundred, and
Speaker 2: then he made a brash attempt to overthrow a revolution
Speaker 2: in Haiti, but it did not succeed, and so having
Speaker 2: Louisiana was not a valuable thing without the strategic stronghold
Speaker 2: of Haiti, so he decided to give it back to
Speaker 2: the US in the Louisiana Purchase of eighteen oh three,
Speaker 2: before Great Britain could invade it.
Speaker 1: Yes, and in addition to this, the British forces were
Speaker 1: increasingly creeped out, irritated, angered, upset, and eventually frightened by
Speaker 1: Napoleon's actions in Europe, right with Switzerland, Germany, Italy and
Speaker 1: the Netherlands. And they were also concerned, as you said,
Speaker 1: that Napoleon might not stop at Haiti, he might become
Speaker 1: a threat to Britain's overseas colonies.
Speaker 2: That's right, because the British had the Royal Navy and
Speaker 2: they were doing quite a good job of defending their
Speaker 2: shores and French invasion attempts had not gone so well.
Speaker 2: But the tide kind of turned when there were some
Speaker 2: big successes by the French military and the power of
Speaker 2: the British navy started to wane a little bit and
Speaker 2: they really needed to kind of bolster that up. So
Speaker 2: there was a lot of paranoia there would be a
Speaker 2: direct invasion by sea of British territories. And that is
Speaker 2: where our story truly begins with this paranoia and this
Speaker 2: concept of the French are coming.
Speaker 1: Yes, the French are coming. There was a nationwide fear
Speaker 1: that some historians describe as interrational anxiety about Napoleon's motives
Speaker 1: and intentions. They were especially spooked when Napoleon assurded control
Speaker 1: over Switzerland. They thought the French the British. They just
Speaker 1: thought the French could be coming at any given moment.
Speaker 1: And one day, according to the story, or a legend,
Speaker 1: or at the very least alleged story, a French ship
Speaker 1: actually did land in England, but it wrecked. It wrecked
Speaker 1: by an old fishing village named Hartleypool. Yeah, it was like.
Speaker 2: Right there on the beach, and supposedly the heart Pudlians
Speaker 2: hart Lapulions came running and there were supposedly no survivors
Speaker 2: to this wreck, no humans. Well, oh, man, come on,
Speaker 2: come now, no human survivors to this wreck. But there
Speaker 2: was a little hairy guy who was, you know, in
Speaker 2: fact or in fiction, a monkey.
Speaker 1: Yes, the only survivor of the wreck. There on the
Speaker 1: northeastern coast of England was a very panicked and traumatized
Speaker 1: little monkey who washed ashore miraculously survived. Keep in mind,
Speaker 1: everybody else on the ship drowned, right and the hard
Speaker 1: Lipudlians had never seen a primate like this before.
Speaker 2: That is what they say, And according to a source
Speaker 2: from historicuk dot com, the monkey was possibly dressed in
Speaker 2: a tiny military uniform.
Speaker 1: See, that's that's interesting. I appreciate these say possibly because again,
Speaker 1: there are things about this story. I think you can
Speaker 1: tell by the way we're carefully hedging some of these statements.
Speaker 1: There are things about this story that can't really be proven,
Speaker 1: but we do know internally the logic jibes because the
Speaker 1: monkey's supposed to be a mascot of the ship, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But this is the thing, though, Ben, I mean, do
Speaker 2: do all ships have mascots? That's not something I'd ever
Speaker 2: heard of.
Speaker 1: Surely not.
Speaker 2: You carry around like a signature animal, like a familiar.
Speaker 1: No, some military groups have done that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I guess so like I can actual living
Speaker 2: create well, I guess like a football team, like having
Speaker 2: like the Uga bulldog or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I guess when I think of a mascot. I think
Speaker 2: of somebody wearing a you know, a big custos Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So yeah, So this is a supposed primate, supposedly dressed
Speaker 2: in a tiny military uniform, was panicked as one could imagine,
Speaker 2: and gibbering mindlessly as monkeys do. And according to the tale,
Speaker 2: the Hartleypudlians interpreted this gibbering as as a foreign language,
Speaker 2: possibly French.
Speaker 1: Let's pause there for a second, casey, could you do
Speaker 1: us a massive favor and play the sound of a
Speaker 1: monkey chattering, because we all know a little bit about
Speaker 1: French enough to know what it sounds like roughly, so
Speaker 1: clearly not French.
Speaker 2: Why if you don't know French, who's to say? Who's
Speaker 2: to say? And that is the crux of the story, nol,
Speaker 2: Because the people of this town, the Hartleypudlians, had an
Speaker 2: awareness of the nation of France and the threat that
Speaker 2: opposed geopolitically, but not a person in the village had
Speaker 2: ever seen a French person. And to make matters worse, apparently,
Speaker 2: a lot of political satire cartoons of the day depicted
Speaker 2: frenchmen as hairy, monkey like creatures with sales and sub
Speaker 2: humans exactly because they were the enemy. I mean it
Speaker 2: was sort of like the you know, the Red Scare
Speaker 2: type stuff. I mean, this guy is like gunning for
Speaker 2: their their lands, right. So yeah, so what do they do.
Speaker 2: They do like any god fearing, French fearing person would do.
Speaker 1: They panic.
Speaker 2: They panic, They absolutely freak out.
Speaker 1: They bug out, and according to the story, they seize
Speaker 1: again this poor traumatized monkey who has skirted death once already.
Speaker 1: So they panic, It's exactly what they do, and they say,
Speaker 1: we have to do something about this frenchman. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But thankfully, you know, they had their their wits were
Speaker 2: about them. They didn't let justice go unserved.
Speaker 1: Ben.
Speaker 2: They they decided to put this monkey on trial.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, due to the language barrier, yes, the monkey was
Speaker 1: not able to defend itself or provide satisfactory answers to
Speaker 1: the townspeople's question.
Speaker 2: That's right, because the thing is, Ben, they didn't just
Speaker 2: think the monkey was it was a Frenchman. They thought
Speaker 2: the monkey was a French spy. And I've yet to
Speaker 2: find a detail that that justifies why exactly that was.
Speaker 1: But those are the questions they were asking him, a
Speaker 1: lot of them. Are you a spy? Right, I said,
Speaker 1: are you a spy. He just keeps speaking frendship me.
Speaker 1: I know, I know.
Speaker 2: So. Yeah, so they sentenced the monkey to death according
Speaker 2: to the tale.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can read different accounts of this, but sources
Speaker 1: that cleave to the story or the anecdote say that
Speaker 1: the townsfolk literally dragged this monkey into the town square
Speaker 1: and then they hanged him and he died. But this
Speaker 1: is where we get a couple of different I don't
Speaker 1: know interpretations and questions about credibility, because there's a darker
Speaker 1: side to the tale that we found in HISTORICUK dot com. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know the one you're talking about on Ben The
Speaker 1: Hanging of the Heartlepool Monkey by Ben Johnson. The dark
Speaker 1: turn is this, maybe the villagers didn't actually hang a monkey,
Speaker 1: but instead a small bully pretty a child who was
Speaker 1: employed on the warship because at this time there were
Speaker 1: boys who were hired on and worked on these ships
Speaker 1: to prime the cannons with gunpowder. Yeah, with the very
Speaker 1: convenient name of powder monkeys. Right. So is this a
Speaker 1: game of telephone throughout history with the misinterpretation occurring as
Speaker 1: people tell the story over and over again. Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2: These are all very important questions that we probably won't
Speaker 2: have an actual satisfactory answer to spoiler. But it's because
Speaker 2: no one was there and it was you know, a
Speaker 2: lot of ships went down around that time, because, like
Speaker 2: I said, the naval exploits of Napoleon weren't all always that.
Speaker 1: Successful, right, And according to Historic England's records of thirty
Speaker 1: eight thousand shipwrecks around the coast of Britain, fourteen ships
Speaker 1: sank in the Hartlepool Bay area around that time, so
Speaker 1: there it was not incredibly uncommon for shipwrecks to occur.
Speaker 1: So that's I think we can agree that's more or
Speaker 1: less the gist of the legend.
Speaker 2: Correct, correct, But that's not the gist of the episode.
Speaker 2: I mean, we wouldn't just stop short there. There's got
Speaker 2: to be more, Ben, There's got to be more. Please
Speaker 2: give us more.
Speaker 1: There has to be more. You're right, because you see,
Speaker 1: this is where the credibility of the tail comes into question.
Speaker 1: So you could say maybe something like this happened and
Speaker 1: it got embellished over time, right. But the problem is
Speaker 1: this tale is attributed to more than one place. There's
Speaker 1: a remarkably similar tale from seventeen seventy two that centers
Speaker 1: on Bodom near Peterhead in Aberdeenshire. I love British town names.
Speaker 2: There's an even better one, ben, I believe that's a
Speaker 2: Welsh town or I'm sorry, a Cornish town, right, yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll give this one a go. My never legacy, okay, nevigacy,
Speaker 2: that's good. Yeah, come on, Cornish folk tells us I
Speaker 2: would have done the same. I'm with you on that.
Speaker 1: So in both of these cases, villagers supposedly find a monkey.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in one of them I believe they it
Speaker 2: was the last survivor of the shipwreck, and so they
Speaker 2: killed it so that they could have claim on the cargo.
Speaker 1: Isn't that the deal with some kind of technicality law? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's aberdeen Shire. H it's a brutal The monkey was
Speaker 1: human enough. I guess what would it have done. Would
Speaker 1: it have become the new captain of the wreck?
Speaker 2: Would it have made a claim? And then the other one,
Speaker 2: I believe the monkey was an organ grinder monkey. It
Speaker 2: wasn't the same. It was a slightly different did a
Speaker 2: kid uh huh?
Speaker 1: Yeah? That monkey had a comment that still happens when
Speaker 1: animals attack people.
Speaker 2: Have you ever seen that show when animals attack people.
Speaker 1: I've seen when animals attack.
Speaker 2: Yes, but my favorite one is the one where it's
Speaker 2: specifically they attack people.
Speaker 1: I you know what, I'm fond of animals attacking cars.
Speaker 1: H that's the thing. Yeah, have you ever seen those videos? Like,
Speaker 1: first off, if you have never been around a monkey,
Speaker 1: some of those monkeys are brutal. They are not playing no,
Speaker 1: and it will break into tart. Don't they eat their
Speaker 1: young too? Did I make that up? I don't know.
Speaker 2: Never mind, let us know if that's just the primate
Speaker 2: stereotype that we've we've seen spread or we could just
Speaker 2: check it now.
Speaker 1: Right. So those are two points against the veracity of
Speaker 1: the story that one thing very similar is attributed to
Speaker 1: a completely different town, And there are other points that
Speaker 1: stick with it. A lot of people who say that
Speaker 1: it definitely happened they're in Heartlepool are supportive of it
Speaker 1: as a being a part of local culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, it's totally like part of their heritage because
Speaker 2: it's weird. It's like, on the one hand, it seems
Speaker 2: like a term of abuse, but on the other hand,
Speaker 2: some people look at it as a term of pride.
Speaker 2: Heartlepudlians are often described as monkey hangers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And for centuries after the legend spread, references to
Speaker 1: monkey hanging were used to mock the residents the Heartlepudlians
Speaker 1: and apparently at football matches today between local rivals they
Speaker 1: have this chant who hung the monkey? Which I would
Speaker 1: have loved to hear out of context.
Speaker 2: There's also a quote in this BBC article called was
Speaker 2: a Monkey Really Hanged in Hartleypool from a historian by
Speaker 2: the name of Keith Gregson, who mentions the fact that
Speaker 2: there was sort of a divide between the town because
Speaker 2: of a newly industrialized area.
Speaker 1: I believe so.
Speaker 2: There was a sense that the folks that lived in
Speaker 2: this new industrialized part of the town called West Hartleypool
Speaker 2: were more intelligent than those who would and the old
Speaker 2: more antiquated, you know, old and clinging on to the
Speaker 2: old way as part of the town. Who may have
Speaker 2: been the ones who hanged this monkey? So it was
Speaker 2: kind of a there is a divide.
Speaker 1: There and that's the older part of the town is
Speaker 1: also where the fishing industry continued, right, so they would
Speaker 1: have been most likely to be hanging out by the waters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And as the years passed, the people of Hartlepool begin
Speaker 1: to embrace this story as you mentioned, know, as you
Speaker 1: alluded to earlier, it becomes a point of cultural pride
Speaker 1: or something that differentiates their town from other nearby towns,
Speaker 1: and people begin to fall in love with it. It
Speaker 1: becomes the subject of books. There's even a graphic novel.
Speaker 1: I think, there's a play. And there's even a song
Speaker 1: with a little bit of story behind it. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: hear that.
Speaker 3: Well, a lord there of auto was walking along the shore.
Speaker 3: But you se a little Harry Man he's never seen before,
Speaker 3: sitting in the sun. Was very little man punching a banana,
Speaker 3: and a little Harry.
Speaker 1: Hansing also not proven. No, no, this this song spoiler.
Speaker 1: This song essentially does the entire story.
Speaker 2: It really does, and it takes a good four and
Speaker 2: a half minutes to do it. So we'll go ahead
Speaker 2: and give it a nice little fade out right now.
Speaker 2: But the song is actually a big part of how
Speaker 2: this legend kind of came to be what it is today, right, Ben, Right,
Speaker 2: that's how it got popularized, or at least the evolution
Speaker 2: of a song. I'm not quite sure if it's this song.
Speaker 2: So they can actually find any attribution for what this
Speaker 2: song is and there's a set of lyrics that's a
Speaker 2: little different. That is a reference to a song that
Speaker 2: was first performed in eighteen fifty five by a performer
Speaker 2: from the area by the name of mister E Corvin
Speaker 2: or Edward ned Corvin, who is a Victorian performer who
Speaker 2: toured around the area known as the Tyne Side.
Speaker 1: You ever heard of this Ben? Yeah, he was a
Speaker 1: Tyne Side concert hall player, wrote songs and stuff. Tyneside
Speaker 1: is the banks of the River Tyne in northeast England,
Speaker 1: so its region that includes a couple of places, a
Speaker 1: couple of different places that have great names. Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, Tynemouth, Wallsend,
Speaker 1: south Shields and Jarrow. Probably mispronounced a couple of those,
Speaker 1: but if you're listening, you're from that part of the world. Hey,
Speaker 1: shout out to you. Shout out to you. I thought
Speaker 1: you were gonna tell him to shut up no more.
Speaker 1: I want more Tyne Side. You know what's interesting about
Speaker 1: Ned we can call him Ned because we're fans of his,
Speaker 1: was that he was known for writing like a satirical song,
Speaker 1: a little bit of a lighthearted roast for every town
Speaker 1: that he visited. So he would go visit a town
Speaker 1: and he would write a song about them while he
Speaker 1: was there, and he would perform it in the town.
Speaker 1: So when Ned goes to heart Lip, he writes a
Speaker 1: song about Yeah, he writes to talking about the monkey
Speaker 1: hanging hm. And this song becomes popular in the region.
Speaker 1: People love it. Eventually, from what I understand, hart Lipudleyan's
Speaker 1: themselves begin to be fans of the song. Well, here's
Speaker 1: the thing.
Speaker 2: In this BBC article, they talk about how he was
Speaker 2: making references to a previous song that existed called the Baboon,
Speaker 2: which has written in eighteen twenty five, or which was
Speaker 2: first heard around eighteen twenty five, and it was a
Speaker 2: different story entirely about a baboon that visited the region
Speaker 2: with some Cossack soldiers. So I don't quite see the
Speaker 2: connection there, but just they both happened in Tyneside. Yeah too.
Speaker 2: But how did he know about the He just made
Speaker 2: up the Napoleonic? Is that what's being implied here, Ben,
Speaker 2: that he just made this thing up wholesale.
Speaker 1: What it seems they're implying is that this was a
Speaker 1: remix or a reworked version of the song, and that
Speaker 1: he took elements from the Baboon and used them in
Speaker 1: his song about the heartlek Pudlian monkey hankers.
Speaker 2: But at that point was this already a legend? That's
Speaker 2: my question is like is the legend coming from the song?
Speaker 2: Like where is the uh? Where's the seed of truth here?
Speaker 2: Because there are people that still we're gonna talk about
Speaker 2: a second that still hang on to the fact that
Speaker 2: the idea of this could well have happened. Is it's
Speaker 2: such a bizarre story, but that logic always eludes me.
Speaker 2: When you say it's so crazy it must be true.
Speaker 1: Well, also those folks, as we'll find, have skin in
Speaker 1: the game, right, The main people who believe it are
Speaker 1: themselves Heartlepudlians. It feels like Corvin heard the story, the
Speaker 1: French monkey story right, and then mixed with it aspects
Speaker 1: of the story about the baboon, also from Tyne side,
Speaker 1: and then added a dash of his own stuff. I'll
Speaker 1: here we go, and then set the whole thing in heartlepool. Okay,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, and here we go.
Speaker 2: We also have something from this BBC article that says
Speaker 2: the original song had some phrases in it that he
Speaker 2: reused like hairy French spy Andan's uncle, and I wish
Speaker 2: I could find the lyrics to the Baboon. But there's
Speaker 2: another set of lyrics called the Monkey Song that's not
Speaker 2: the same as only played. There's a lot of these
Speaker 2: songs floating around, but it goes in former times when
Speaker 2: Warren strife, the French invasion threatened life, and all was
Speaker 2: armed to the knife. The fisherman hung the monkey. Oh,
Speaker 2: the fisherman with courage high seized on the monkey for
Speaker 2: a French spy, hang him, says one, he's to die.
Speaker 2: They did, and they hung the monkey.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: But it's like it's got that same sing songy folky
Speaker 2: quality that the song we played has in the original song.
Speaker 2: That's when we played it because they think he's a spy,
Speaker 2: so we'll hang him in the square. And this one's
Speaker 2: just a little bit different. If the fishermen were courage high,
Speaker 2: seized on the monkey for a French spy, hang him,
Speaker 2: says one, he's to die, They did, and they hung
Speaker 2: the monkey.
Speaker 1: Oh. So I don't know, man like, is it.
Speaker 2: Song that's like making this legend a thing or is
Speaker 2: it oral history?
Speaker 1: It's oral history first, and then the song, which is
Speaker 1: borrowing from other songs I got it, okay, So it's
Speaker 1: still and because it's a song, it's oral history. It's true.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. Then here's where we find disagreements.
Speaker 1: As as we mentioned earlier, a lot of the people
Speaker 1: who wholeheartedly believe in this story or claimed to are
Speaker 1: themselves heart Leapudlians. The successful mayoral candidate in the two
Speaker 1: thousand and two local elections, it's a guy named Stuart Drummond.
Speaker 1: He campaigned dressed in the costume of.
Speaker 2: Oh he wasn't just dressed in it, man, He was
Speaker 2: the official mascot of the Heartleaputulian Football Club.
Speaker 1: Right, and he campaigned for mayor dressed in that character.
Speaker 1: But that was a it was like a sort of
Speaker 1: a goof. It was sort of a goof. But he
Speaker 1: maintains that it really did happen. But of course you
Speaker 1: would maintain that really did happen. He's running for mayor,
Speaker 1: wants the town to be unique. It's great pr and
Speaker 1: as as we said, he was the mascot for a time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he also won. He did win and stayed
Speaker 2: mayor for like, I think eleven years.
Speaker 1: He was mayor. Three election victories.
Speaker 2: He succeeded and yeah, and it just goes to and
Speaker 2: he you know, he maintains that nobody can say whether
Speaker 2: or not this happened or not because nobody was there.
Speaker 2: And that's okay, that's one way of looking at it.
Speaker 1: I saw a quote where he said that it definitely
Speaker 1: something happened. The problem is most of the people who
Speaker 1: disagree with him are professional historians, and even if they
Speaker 1: don't go so far as to say this never happened,
Speaker 1: they end up saying, we looked everywhere for proof of this,
Speaker 1: and we could find absolutely no proof. There was some
Speaker 1: excitement in two thousand and five when an animal bone
Speaker 1: was found buried on the beach, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: in the story the monkeys hanged in the town square.
Speaker 1: People thought, well, this might be physical proof of a
Speaker 1: small primate washing ashore. Unfortunately, it was not a primate bone.
Speaker 1: It was the bone of a prehistoric deer.
Speaker 2: That's right, a deer from somewhere the neighbor had a
Speaker 2: six thousand years ago when herds of deer would have
Speaker 2: migrated across that part of the country, and they were
Speaker 2: followed by tribes of hunters who wanted them for sustenance
Speaker 2: and for you know, the byproducts like their skin and
Speaker 2: there in their antlers and stuff. And this is from
Speaker 2: a great article. Well this is my headline, very very
Speaker 2: pithy headlined, very good ancient bone not from monkey spy.
Speaker 1: Hopes of unraveling the mystery of the legendary Heartlepool monkey,
Speaker 1: said to have been hanged as a Napoleonic spy, have
Speaker 1: been scuppered by science. Scuppered scupperd's a great word. We
Speaker 1: need to bring that back. Like a scuppernog. What's a scuppernog.
Speaker 2: It's like a type of grape, I think, Oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: sort of like a muscat.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, muscott, I know, but scupper see it again, scuppernog,
Speaker 1: scupper dog. That sounds so tolkien esque.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can make wine out of it. And in fact,
Speaker 2: it is compared to a muscadine. It is a large
Speaker 2: variety of muscadine. Oh, there you go, a species of
Speaker 2: grape native to the southern United States, so right here
Speaker 2: in our backyard.
Speaker 1: And at this point it becomes somewhat of a matter
Speaker 1: of opinion, what do you feel better about believing the
Speaker 1: main argument for proponents of the story is that it's
Speaker 1: not hurting anyone and there's no proof that it didn't happen,
Speaker 1: which is not a particularly strong position to take, especially
Speaker 1: because on the other side of the coin, there's no
Speaker 1: proof that it did happen. That's right. So what do
Speaker 1: you believe? What do you choose to believe? Folks?
Speaker 2: Oh, we're putting it to the people, well and to
Speaker 2: you as well, though, Okay, well, I don't know, man.
Speaker 2: I don't want to poop you on anybody's monkey parade
Speaker 2: or anything. But it feels to me like with the
Speaker 2: nature of the multiple monkey stories, some of the kind
Speaker 2: of you know, mutating facts in the story and the
Speaker 2: different accounts in song, I feel like this is rife
Speaker 2: for having been a kind of a good gag, poking
Speaker 2: fun at the intellect of the people of Hartlepool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, personally, I choose to believe it didn't happen because
Speaker 1: I don't like the idea of a town of people
Speaker 1: hanging a monkey, you know, man, come on, that's brutal.
Speaker 1: For me to be able to laugh at it and
Speaker 1: derive enjoyment from it, I have to think of it
Speaker 1: as a tall tale. There you go. So this is
Speaker 1: this is the story? Oh man, I can't wait for
Speaker 1: the flood of email from people who have strong opinions.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get a lot of time side people have.
Speaker 2: Strong opinions and they send emails.
Speaker 1: It's a new thing. It's insane. You can be part
Speaker 1: of it. We'll give you the information at the end.
Speaker 1: But speaking of emails, enough about us, what about you?
Speaker 1: Did you see any good listener mails today?
Speaker 2: Nol? As a matter of fact, I do, Ben, I did,
Speaker 2: and I do still doing this one. Yeah, this one
Speaker 2: comes from mister venomous and it says Ben and Nole
Speaker 2: Agents of discord is what he's referring to, toss, which
Speaker 2: I like. In all of history, my favorite historical figure
Speaker 2: is Emperor Norton. His story makes him a perfect candidate
Speaker 2: for ridiculous history. In eighteen forty eight, he was bequeathed
Speaker 2: forty thousand dollars from his father's estate. He tried making
Speaker 2: it as a business man and Sam Cisco, but made
Speaker 2: a bad investment in buying one hundred tons of pure
Speaker 2: Peruvian rice. A prolonged core battle over the loss of
Speaker 2: his investment led him to go bankrupt in eighteen fifty eight.
Speaker 2: Penniless and discontent with the legal system and politics, he
Speaker 2: declared himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of
Speaker 2: Mexico in eighteen fifty nine. Let's just leave it there, Ben,
Speaker 2: because I like this one and it almost sounds like
Speaker 2: it's something stuffy miss in history class our peer podcast
Speaker 2: may have done, but if not, we're going to snatch
Speaker 2: it up.
Speaker 1: And Agents of Discord is a reference, I believe to
Speaker 1: one of our other shows. Mister Venomous has written into
Speaker 1: us before on stuff they don't want you to know
Speaker 1: what it does. Ring a bell. Yeah, well, it's great
Speaker 1: to hear from you again, man, I agree with my
Speaker 1: trustee co host here. That is a fantastic idea for
Speaker 1: an episode if we're the first ones to get to
Speaker 1: the plate on it. We have one more emails that's
Speaker 1: a little bit long from Adam s. He titled it
Speaker 1: lots of topics. Sorry, I'm just going to read some
Speaker 1: of the greatest hits of the excerpts here. So Adam,
Speaker 1: you say, hey, guys recently picked up the podcast, So
Speaker 1: catching up, and I'm nearly there. I love the show
Speaker 1: so far, but I do listen to the new episodes
Speaker 1: then go back to make my way through that golden backlog. Huh.
Speaker 1: And I've never heard us our backlog described as golden.
Speaker 1: He has some suggestions for food fils. Adam says, you
Speaker 1: talked about food fails. Can I point a drink one
Speaker 1: your way? Here in the UK, Coca Cola released a
Speaker 1: water which I think you may still get in the
Speaker 1: US Desani. They use the marketing as something like can't
Speaker 1: live without spunk. Here in the UK, that's a slang
Speaker 1: word for something you really wouldn't want in your drink.
Speaker 1: We said that over here plenty. Yeah. I think that
Speaker 1: what made it across the pond. And Adam says it
Speaker 1: got better when it was found out that it was
Speaker 1: treated tapwater from a suburb in London and was no
Speaker 1: better than said tapwater. When the press got a hold
Speaker 1: of it, it was a pr nightmare and pulled. I
Speaker 1: think it may be one of the funniest and worst
Speaker 1: pas our disasters here for a while now. This got
Speaker 1: me thinking, at least we could do an episode on
Speaker 1: some of the biggest historic food fails. There used to
Speaker 1: be a museum in the States A long time ago.
Speaker 1: There was a Hall of shame for foods that appeared
Speaker 1: and disappeared from supermarkets, Things like peas that were pressed
Speaker 1: into a shape of French fries to try to trick
Speaker 1: kids into eating their vegetables.
Speaker 2: Ah. Yeah, as a as a father of a nine
Speaker 2: year old, I can tell you.
Speaker 1: That's not gonna fly. It did not fly.
Speaker 2: But I tried making my kid eat cauliflower because you
Speaker 2: can like make cauliflower into like a rice tiy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she doesn't buy it. She knows it's non rice.
Speaker 1: I'll make a cauliflower pizza. I bet she did it. Well,
Speaker 1: that's different.
Speaker 2: I feel like that's that's that's a good example, Ben,
Speaker 2: because that's like you're baking it and it has that crunch.
Speaker 2: But with rice, it's just they're not they're not rice
Speaker 2: sized grains. You're not gonna mistake them for RTT. That's
Speaker 2: why it's rice cauliflower, not cauliflower rice.
Speaker 1: Right. So thank you mister venomous, Thank you Adam for writing.
Speaker 1: And we want to hear some more food fails. So
Speaker 1: send us your favorite ones from your neck of the
Speaker 1: global woods.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can write to us at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks
Speaker 2: dot com. You can hit us up on social media Facebook, Instagram,
Speaker 2: Twitter and all that. You can join our Facebook group
Speaker 2: Ridiculous Historians, where we still kick around some fun ideas
Speaker 2: and have a really nice community that's sprung up there,
Speaker 2: So come come hang out with us there on Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 1: Of course, we want to thank you for listening. We
Speaker 1: want to thank our super producer Casey Pegram, thanks to
Speaker 1: Christopher Hasiotis and Eve's Jeff Cod our research associates, and
Speaker 1: thanks to Alex Williams who composed our track We'll see
Speaker 1: you next time, folks, can we go out on the
Speaker 1: monkey song?
Speaker 2: Let's catch you, oh man, Let's do it.
Speaker 3: It was a pond old nay pool about the time
Speaker 3: of France the Emperor Napoleon Leslie Insance, where a pullo
Speaker 3: on the post. I'm a British man of Wall. The
Speaker 3: captain's old but monkey washed the bottle the shop and
Speaker 3: singing oh boo to everyone on each come and see
Speaker 3: the French eat has landed on the beach. He's got
Speaker 3: my hams a great one telling his co ad doll
Speaker 3: in a spy so ill likeabre.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.