Speaker 1: You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. Marie and
Speaker 1: Charles welcomed their son Aunton Joseph in eighteen fourteen, but
Speaker 1: they called him Adolph. Marie cared for the home and
Speaker 1: the children, while Charles worked as a carpenter. His gift
Speaker 1: for woodworking made him highly sought after among wealthy Belgian clients.
Speaker 1: Oh William the First, the reigning monarch of the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: commissioned to Charles to make musical instruments for the military.
Speaker 1: His father's work that Adolph spent plenty of time around music.
Speaker 1: He watched his father carefully shaped the wood into fine instruments.
Speaker 1: Adolph's love of this art and craft led him to
Speaker 1: learn to play the clarinet and the flute. As a teen,
Speaker 1: Adolph helped his father make improvements to wind instruments. When
Speaker 1: he wasn't studying music or watching his father, Adolf spent
Speaker 1: his youth doing one more thing, keeping himself alive. The
Speaker 1: only thing that overshadowed young Adolph's musical talent was his
Speaker 1: ability to skirt death. In his mother's words, her son
Speaker 1: was condemned to misfortune. When Adolf was just three, he
Speaker 1: tumbled down three flights of stairs before his head smartly
Speaker 1: met the stone floor. Reports of his recovery vary from
Speaker 1: a week's bed rest to a temporary coma. As many
Speaker 1: a parent might commisserate. Toddlers and young children sometimes eat
Speaker 1: things that they shouldn't, and Adolf was no exception, and
Speaker 1: not long after his fall, he swallowed a large needle.
Speaker 1: Fortunately it passed without incident. Miraculously, he also survived after
Speaker 1: drinking a combination of arsenic white, lead, and copper oxide.
Speaker 1: All of this would be enough to age any parent,
Speaker 1: but Adolph was just getting started. He suffered from severe
Speaker 1: burns after falling onto a hot stove. Although the incident
Speaker 1: left him with scars on his side, he avoided infection.
Speaker 1: At ten, he fell into a nearby river. A stranger
Speaker 1: passing the mill saw him floating face down and rescued him.
Speaker 1: On another occasion, he was enjoying a walk down the
Speaker 1: street when a chunk of slate broke loose from a
Speaker 1: rooftop and struck him in the head. He made a
Speaker 1: full recovery. Adolf had one more brush with debt. He
Speaker 1: happened to be in his father's workshop when a container
Speaker 1: of gunpowder ignited from a nearby flame. Though the blast
Speaker 1: threw him across the workshop, Adolf survived. The fact that
Speaker 1: he lived to see adulthood surprised everyone. He followed in
Speaker 1: his father's footsteps in making musical instruments, and Adolf presented
Speaker 1: nine musical inventions for the eighteen forty Belgian Exhibition. Due
Speaker 1: to his age, the judges snubbed his submissions. He moved
Speaker 1: to Paris and entered another competition. He might have won,
Speaker 1: but someone destroyed his new invention, the saxophone. Undaunted, he
Speaker 1: made another. In fact, he made six other variations by
Speaker 1: eighteen forty six, including the sex Traumba and in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty nine the sax tuba. If you've never heard of them,
Speaker 1: it's because only the saxophone ever made him any money.
Speaker 1: People either liked the saxophone or hated it, and mostly
Speaker 1: the saxophone found a following with the military, but it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be until World War One, when U S soldiers
Speaker 1: and the era of jazz and blues made the saxophone famous. Sadly,
Speaker 1: Adolph Sax's luck ran out. He died in eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: decades before his invention became popular. If history has taught
Speaker 1: us anything about luck, it would be that sometimes it's
Speaker 1: fickle other times, though it has a strange sense of humor.
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, Welcome to American Shadows. Nothing sums up
Speaker 1: Timothy Dexter's life more than the phrase it's smarter to
Speaker 1: be lucky than it's lucky to be smart, a light
Speaker 1: many others living in Ireland during the seventeen hundreds. His
Speaker 1: parents immigrated to the Americas in the hopes of escaping
Speaker 1: British tyranny. England had stripped them of their land, religion,
Speaker 1: and culture, among other atrocities. The Dexters settled in Malden, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: where Timothy was born in seventeen forty seven. While the
Speaker 1: Irish were still not wholly welcome in the colonies. The
Speaker 1: family squeezed out of life as farmers, and they considered
Speaker 1: themselves lucky. Other Irish immigrants were forced into indentured servitude
Speaker 1: with little hope of escaping, a system that kept them subservient,
Speaker 1: and Dexter and his siblings attended school and helped around
Speaker 1: the farm with the daily chores in the house, field
Speaker 1: and barn. During certain growing seasons, crops became more important
Speaker 1: than schooling. The family was poor, and to help keep
Speaker 1: them fed and clothed, Dexter left school at eight years
Speaker 1: old to find outside employment. He worked as a laborer
Speaker 1: for larger, more profitable farms before eventually finding an apprenticeship. Essentially,
Speaker 1: family would send their sons to live with a tradesmen
Speaker 1: who agreed to house, feed, and teach his young apprentice
Speaker 1: say valuable trade in exchange for free labor. Other times
Speaker 1: the parents paid a small fee. Poor farming children didn't
Speaker 1: have much schooling. They were offered only the most basic
Speaker 1: education in reading, writing, and some math. By age nine,
Speaker 1: their schooling was considered complete. College for boys like Dexter
Speaker 1: was mostly limited to Latin colleges, requiring them to train
Speaker 1: as ministers of the Christian faith. Alternatively, parents could opt
Speaker 1: to keep their sons at home to learn their father's
Speaker 1: trade or find them an apprenticeship. The colonies were new
Speaker 1: and tradesmen and workers were in short supply. A Dexter
Speaker 1: began his apprenticeship at a tannery to learn how to
Speaker 1: make leather goods when he turned sixteen. The job was
Speaker 1: far from glamorous. The due to the smell of the
Speaker 1: animal hides. Tanneries usually existed on the outskirts of towns.
Speaker 1: The tanners used every type of animal skin, from wild
Speaker 1: to domestic. The colonies needed every amount norble leather product,
Speaker 1: including shoes, boots, and hats, as well as carriage tops,
Speaker 1: harnesses and saddles. Dexter's apprenticeship lasted for five years. In
Speaker 1: seventeen sixty eight, he opened his own shop and dreamed
Speaker 1: of becoming wealthy. But as good as his products might be,
Speaker 1: they would never build the wealth he wanted. So he
Speaker 1: did the next best thing. He married into money. He
Speaker 1: met Elizabeth Frothingham, a widow ten years his senior. She
Speaker 1: had money, a home, and four children. In seventeen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: he married Elizabeth while continuing his business selling gloves and
Speaker 1: moose hide trousers. As you might imagine, with his available
Speaker 1: inventory and the British blockade of Boston Harbor, Dexter mostly
Speaker 1: lived off his wife's fortune. At first, Dexter hoped that
Speaker 1: his wife's social status meant he would be invited to
Speaker 1: high society functions. He was not. Many looked down on him.
Speaker 1: He came across as nothing more than a vain, poor,
Speaker 1: uneducated man who had managed to marry his way into money.
Speaker 1: The slights infuriated Dexter, and he set out to prove
Speaker 1: his equality and rightful place among Boston's and Charles Town's elite.
Speaker 1: Aside from making his own wealth, he had two other options.
Speaker 1: He could join the army and work his way through
Speaker 1: the ranks, or run for public office. He set his
Speaker 1: sights on an appointment in the town of Malden, and
Speaker 1: if at first he didn't succeed, Dexter tried again and again.
Speaker 1: He applied and harassed council members so much that at
Speaker 1: long last they relented. They created a position just for
Speaker 1: him informer of deer and the appointment required him to
Speaker 1: track the deer population in Malden, even though no one
Speaker 1: had seen a deer in the town limits for nearly
Speaker 1: twenty years. Some townsfolk thought the position was ridiculous, but
Speaker 1: Dexter was content he had achieved his goal of having
Speaker 1: an official public office appointment. Now all he needed to
Speaker 1: gain social status was to make a lot of money
Speaker 1: in the most unusual way possible. During the Revolutionary War,
Speaker 1: the British pound had value, while the Continental dollar was
Speaker 1: practically worthless. Congress printed approximately two hundred and fifty million
Speaker 1: in Continental dollars, but merchants were reluctant to accept it
Speaker 1: with good reason. They were worth pennies compared to the
Speaker 1: British pound. Congress printed more bills, causing the dollar to
Speaker 1: depreciate even more. The value dropped so drastically the colonists
Speaker 1: took to saying that items of low value weren't worth
Speaker 1: a continental. Congress paid the military with Continental dollars, leaving
Speaker 1: most soldiers destitute after the war, and John Hancock purchased
Speaker 1: some of the bills from soldiers at full value to
Speaker 1: help drive up the Continental's were the good deed raised
Speaker 1: Hancock's popularity inspired Dexter believed that if he purchased more
Speaker 1: dollars than Hancock, kid finally be accepted among societies elite.
Speaker 1: Dexter went about it a little differently than Hancock. He
Speaker 1: used his wife's money to buy the bills for pennies
Speaker 1: on the dollar instead of full value. A Dexter purchased
Speaker 1: so many bills that he and his wife went bankrupt,
Speaker 1: and townsfolks shook their heads and whispered among themselves. The
Speaker 1: Dexter was an idiot and had dragged his respectable wife
Speaker 1: down with him. When the Colonies won the war, a
Speaker 1: few things happened. They signed the Constitution and throughout the
Speaker 1: British tax and monetary systems, the founding Fathers added a
Speaker 1: provision promising to trade treasury bonds for continental dollars. Suddenly
Speaker 1: Dexter was exceptionally wealthy. Neighbors scratched their heads. No one
Speaker 1: could argue that Dexter was undoubtedly lucky, and while none
Speaker 1: would ever call him intelligent, some thought he might be shrewd,
Speaker 1: and Dexter was delighted. Finally his wealk would grant him
Speaker 1: a place among the powerful and elite. It did not.
Speaker 1: He continued with his rude interruptions and vulgar comments. Coupled
Speaker 1: with his crude behavior, he remained an outcast, feeling they
Speaker 1: just needed to warm up to him a bit. Dexter
Speaker 1: continued being Dexter. All he had to do, in his mind,
Speaker 1: was hold on to the money and not go bankrupt again.
Speaker 1: When things didn't improve to his liking, he moved his
Speaker 1: family to Newburyport. The problem wasn't him, he insisted, The
Speaker 1: people in Boston were just uptight and stuffy, Newburyport, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, was nearly perfect, a rich and poor intermingled.
Speaker 1: The town was smaller than Boston, and Dexter felt confident
Speaker 1: he would stand out. Immediately after arriving, he bought ships
Speaker 1: for his next venture, exporting food. The residents in Newburyport
Speaker 1: found Dexter as uncouth as those in Boston had. The
Speaker 1: wealthy wondered how someone is crude and illiterate. As Dexter
Speaker 1: had become a millionaire, his personality and business decisions made
Speaker 1: them speculate about his mental stability. Dexter claimed that the
Speaker 1: other wealthy merchants disliked him because he was a rival. Still,
Speaker 1: he wanted to become part of Newburyport's upper society, so
Speaker 1: he took their business advice to heart. He didn't realize
Speaker 1: that they wanted to destroy his fortune so that he
Speaker 1: would move out of Newburyport. One businessman advised Dexter to
Speaker 1: get into the bed warmer trade. Though the device was
Speaker 1: popular in cold New England winters, the businessman suggested Dexter
Speaker 1: sell it in a new market the Caribbean. Convinced he
Speaker 1: would make a tidy profit, Dexter sent forty two bed
Speaker 1: warmers to the Caribbean. Unsurprisingly, the bedwarmers didn't sell oh well,
Speaker 1: not as their intended use anyway. The sugarcane industry was
Speaker 1: huge in the Caribbean. The serrupy sugarcane byproduct molasses, was
Speaker 1: also wildly popular. Plantation owners found the long handled bedwarmers
Speaker 1: made perfect molasses ladles. Soon plantation owners scrambled to buy
Speaker 1: more bedwarmers. Dexter raised the price by nearly eight percent
Speaker 1: and made his second fortune. The joke the Newburyport businessmen
Speaker 1: played had backfired, but that didn't mean they were about
Speaker 1: to give up. They urged him to expand into the
Speaker 1: coal business, though much needed. New England already had plenty
Speaker 1: of coal, especially in the England mining town of Newcastle,
Speaker 1: and still Dexter shipped coal to the town as suggested.
Speaker 1: When his ships arrived laden with coal, the miners were
Speaker 1: on stripe. Residents bought the coal for a markup, making
Speaker 1: Dexter even wealthier. The merchants put their heads together to
Speaker 1: come up with something even more outlandish. They had to
Speaker 1: do something to run him out of town, and certainly
Speaker 1: Dexter's luck couldn't hold forever. While various advisers handed Dexter
Speaker 1: some pretty outrageous business ideas. A Dexter himself came up
Speaker 1: with a few so outlandish that the townspeople were sure
Speaker 1: they would bankrupt him. All they had to do was
Speaker 1: sit back and watch. Dexter decided to send gloves to
Speaker 1: Polynesia Again. His idea worked. Portuguese traders arrived and bought
Speaker 1: the gloves to sell in China. For his next endeavor,
Speaker 1: Dexter traveled back to Austin, where he purchased an enormous
Speaker 1: quantity of whalebone. This material isn't actually bone, but rather
Speaker 1: the strong, flexible filtering teeth of bailen whales. A whalebone
Speaker 1: was used in corsets, toys, and caller stays. He had
Speaker 1: purchased enough that he controlled the market and set his
Speaker 1: own price. Dexter raked in more money, thinking wealth alone
Speaker 1: would win over his wealthy neighbors, and he bragged about
Speaker 1: buying bibles at wholesale for less than half price. Then
Speaker 1: sent the bibles to port cities. His captains carried a
Speaker 1: poorly written note from Dexter, complete with frequent misspellings. The
Speaker 1: note stated that anyone who didn't have at least one
Speaker 1: Bible in the house would go to hell. Of course,
Speaker 1: he had plenty of bibles for sale to help save
Speaker 1: their souls. Dexter made another handsome profit, much to the
Speaker 1: town's dismay, and yet they swore his next scheme would
Speaker 1: surely be his last. You see, Dexter took it upon
Speaker 1: himself to reduce the town's overpopulation of stray cat He
Speaker 1: offered to buy the cats, and of course people brought
Speaker 1: him plenty of strays. Unsure what he planned to do
Speaker 1: with them, Dexter sent them to the plantation owners in
Speaker 1: the Caribbean. As it turned out, their warehouses had a
Speaker 1: rodent problem, and they were willing to pay a tidy
Speaker 1: sum for the cats. With all his wealth, Dexter purchased
Speaker 1: a mansion alongside some of the town's most prominent families.
Speaker 1: While everyone avoided him, they enjoyed the company of his wife.
Speaker 1: This angered Dexter. He became so jealous of Elizabeth that
Speaker 1: he treated her poorly. He had always been a heavy drinker,
Speaker 1: which was bad enough, and now he started to ignore her,
Speaker 1: calling her a ghost and pretending as though she weren't
Speaker 1: a living, breathing human being. He cheated on her more
Speaker 1: than once. It's not clear if he had affairs with
Speaker 1: married women are not but at some point someone gave
Speaker 1: Dexter a serious beating. He promptly sold the mansion and
Speaker 1: bought a new home in a different part of town.
Speaker 1: He didn't treat his children much better than his wife.
Speaker 1: In turn, his and Samuel became an alcoholic as well.
Speaker 1: His daughter Nancy made poor choices in men. She married
Speaker 1: one who took to beating her, and she returned home
Speaker 1: and she also began drinking heavily. Still trying to impress
Speaker 1: the town, Dexter furnished his home with the largest and
Speaker 1: gaudiest objects. He called his new home the Princely Chateau.
Speaker 1: Forty statues, each costing two thousand dollars, sat in the
Speaker 1: front yard. Alongside statues of people like Washington and Jefferson.
Speaker 1: Stood Dexter's own statue at the base. The inscription bragg
Speaker 1: that he was the greatest philosopher in the Western world.
Speaker 1: Dexter furnished his home with an impressive library, though he
Speaker 1: never read a single book. He collected a gallery of
Speaker 1: paintings to adorn the walls. With the house and gardens complete,
Speaker 1: Dexter awaited his wealthy neighbor's lavish praise and attention. None
Speaker 1: of that happened. Still rude and obnoxious and unable to
Speaker 1: see the real problem, he had alienated everyone, including his
Speaker 1: wife and shul Drin. Determined that his greatness would not
Speaker 1: be denied, Dexter decided he'd find new friends, one's equally
Speaker 1: as strange an outcast as himself. One such friend, a
Speaker 1: former teacher named John, had come from a respectable family.
Speaker 1: John's undoing had been to open his own school to
Speaker 1: teach students on subjects in which he had no formal training.
Speaker 1: His teachings were so bizarre that John's family disowned him.
Speaker 1: A Dexter found another friend and Madam Hooper, a wealthy
Speaker 1: widow turned fortune teller. Hooper offered dexter astrology advice and
Speaker 1: took her payment in tea. But even his new friends
Speaker 1: couldn't fill Dexter's desire to be loved and admired. If
Speaker 1: no one else would give him compliments, he'd pay them.
Speaker 1: Dexter hired a twenty year old selling halibut from a
Speaker 1: wheelbarrow to be his poet laureate. In Dexter wrote and
Speaker 1: published A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, a nonsensical book
Speaker 1: in which he ranted about his wife, religion, and politics.
Speaker 1: A Dexter could barely read much less right. Complaints about
Speaker 1: his spelling and grammar rolled in. To solve the issue,
Speaker 1: Dexter printed an extra page of commas in his next edition,
Speaker 1: with a note telling the reader to put commas wherever
Speaker 1: they liked. The book got plenty of attention, though maybe
Speaker 1: not the way he intended, since he had to give
Speaker 1: away the copies. Still, Timothy Dexter considered the book a success.
Speaker 1: He managed to give away enough copies for eight printings.
Speaker 1: Newberry Port took solace the Dexter couldn't do anything more
Speaker 1: ridiculous or absurd, and they'd be wrong about that. Aside
Speaker 1: from his bizarre behavior and business dealings, Dexter had started
Speaker 1: to demand Newburyport residents address him as the Earl of Chester.
Speaker 1: When the demands failed to produce results, Dexter took to
Speaker 1: paying them in a pickle For the knowing ones, Dexter
Speaker 1: wrote that he was the first Lord of the United States,
Speaker 1: a titled bestowed upon him by the Blick. He claimed
Speaker 1: the people of America had spoken and he was helpless
Speaker 1: to do anything other than allow them to grant him
Speaker 1: the title. He paid children who called him Lord Dexter
Speaker 1: a quarter. Adults were paid with dinner and drinks. His
Speaker 1: gaudy statues brought spectators to look at his house. While
Speaker 1: Dexter might have thought they appreciated his fine art, they
Speaker 1: were more likely curious about the tawdry outdoor museum in
Speaker 1: such a fancy neighborhood, and Dexter continued to chase after
Speaker 1: younger women. Drinking remained a favorite pastime, and he often
Speaker 1: took two walks while drunk, his little dog walking beside him.
Speaker 1: And No one lives forever, and Dexter began planning for
Speaker 1: his eventual death. For years, he worked at building a
Speaker 1: magnificent tomb. Peep even arranged to the funeral. Dexter wrote
Speaker 1: a will making ample provisions for his family and friends,
Speaker 1: though after years of neglect and abuse, it took bribery
Speaker 1: to convince his wife and children to promise that they
Speaker 1: would show up at the funeral. Dexter was fifty nine
Speaker 1: when the day he had planned for finally came. Nearly
Speaker 1: three thousand people turned up. Guests greeted his widow and
Speaker 1: paid their respects. Elizabeth accepted their well wishes politely enough
Speaker 1: and occasionally laughed with a few of the guests. Given
Speaker 1: Dexter's treatment of her, none were surprised that she never
Speaker 1: shed a tear. Well, everyone except Dexter, who had planned
Speaker 1: and faked the funeral. He had wanted to see how
Speaker 1: everyone would react to his death, especially friends who he
Speaker 1: worried had remained at his company for the money. Dexter
Speaker 1: got up from where he had been pretending to lie
Speaker 1: in state. Furious, he began to be rate and beat
Speaker 1: his wife in front of the spectators for not properly
Speaker 1: mourning him. His actual death occurred shortly after the faith one.
Speaker 1: He passed on October six of eighteen o six. This
Speaker 1: time he made provisions to leave his fortune to the poor,
Speaker 1: in addition to the wife and children he had treated
Speaker 1: so poorly. There is no record of whether anyone attended
Speaker 1: the second funeral. The mass of tomb he had created
Speaker 1: was declared a hazard, and his family laid him in
Speaker 1: a standard coffin and had him buried in a small
Speaker 1: hillside cemetery. No one visited, and no one maintained the site.
Speaker 1: Grass eventually overtook his grave. Dexter may have been exceptionally
Speaker 1: lucky in business, but was unsuccessful in the areas he
Speaker 1: wanted the most love and respect. There's more to this story.
Speaker 1: Stick around after this brief sponsored break to hear all
Speaker 1: about it. Everyone agreed that little Violet Jessip was lucky.
Speaker 1: During the eighteen hundreds, a diagnosis of tuberculosis generally meant
Speaker 1: to death sentence. She was just a child when the
Speaker 1: doctors delivered the news to her parents a Violet would
Speaker 1: probably die within a couple of months. She surprised them though,
Speaker 1: beating the odds and sir driving this highly contagious and
Speaker 1: often fatal disease. However, Violet's luck did not transfer to
Speaker 1: her father. He did die, leaving his wife and six
Speaker 1: remaining children in a dire financial situation. The family had
Speaker 1: immigrated from Ireland to Argentina, where Joseph Jessup had worked
Speaker 1: as a sheep farmer. Without a way to earn a living,
Speaker 1: Katherine Jessop moved the family to England and found employment
Speaker 1: aboard ships as a stewardess. The work took Catherine away
Speaker 1: for extended periods, leaving Violet to care for her siblings.
Speaker 1: When Katherine fell ill, Violet needed to join the workforce
Speaker 1: to feed and care for the family. She also applied
Speaker 1: for jobs as a ship stewardess. She was young and
Speaker 1: strikingly beautiful, which promptly earned her rejection. After rejection, employers
Speaker 1: shied away from hiring young girls with extraordinary looks. In
Speaker 1: their opinion, such beauty distracted the crew and male passengers.
Speaker 1: Jobs that paid enough for women to support a family
Speaker 1: were rare. A viole, it had to get creative. She
Speaker 1: wore clothes that made her look older and reapplied, this
Speaker 1: time without wearing makeup. Her creativity paid off. Violet found
Speaker 1: work on the Orinoco Royal Mail steamer. In night, she
Speaker 1: found a better job with the White Star Line, one
Speaker 1: of the largest ship companies of the time. The ships
Speaker 1: carried cargo and passengers, and Violet's job was to cater
Speaker 1: to the wealthy passengers every need. Additionally, she cleaned cabins,
Speaker 1: arranged flowers, and ran errands on the ship. The Violet
Speaker 1: proved to be a reliable and hard worker and was
Speaker 1: well liked by passengers and staff. Although the White Star
Speaker 1: Line paid slightly better, she earned every pound sterling. She
Speaker 1: worked seventeen hours a day on ships that frequently traveled
Speaker 1: rough seas and bad weather to compete with other large
Speaker 1: shipping companies, the White Star Line launched three luxury ships,
Speaker 1: offering wealthy passengers and experience and service that rivaled the
Speaker 1: world's finest hotels and resorts. A Violet worked on all
Speaker 1: three ships that she had worked on the first ship,
Speaker 1: the Olympic, for a year, and everything ran smoothly until
Speaker 1: September of nineteen eleven. As bad luck would have it,
Speaker 1: the ship crossed paths with the HMS Hawk, a combat ship. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: the Olympic didn't sink and no one was injured. It
Speaker 1: limped back to port, where everyone disembarked. The company offered
Speaker 1: her a job aboard second ship, designed to cater to
Speaker 1: the world's most elite. The Violet was hesitant. A while
Speaker 1: American passengers treated her well, rich Britons treated her poorly.
Speaker 1: The job would be more prestigious, the company promised, and
Speaker 1: the ship, though it had yet to sail, had captured
Speaker 1: everyone's attention. Without better prospects, Violet accepted. She kept a
Speaker 1: journal and made notes on the passengers. Some of the
Speaker 1: world's most wealthy and prominent passengers had booked a trip,
Speaker 1: and many were as pretentious and rude to the staff
Speaker 1: as she had anticipated. Violet had just returned to her
Speaker 1: bed when the Titanic struck the Iceberg. The captain ordered
Speaker 1: all the staff on deck. She stood with the other
Speaker 1: stewardesses while staff loaded children and women passengers onto lifeboats.
Speaker 1: A ship officer ordered Violet and a handful of other
Speaker 1: stewardesses onto lifeboat number sixteen to show a few of
Speaker 1: the remaining women that the boats were safe. The officer
Speaker 1: called to Violet and handed her a small bundle. Here,
Speaker 1: miss jessup, look after this baby. The lifeboats floated away
Speaker 1: from the sinking ship. They drifted for eight hours until
Speaker 1: the crew aboard the Carpathia rescued them. Violet still clutched
Speaker 1: the infant close to her on the deck when the
Speaker 1: mother grabbed the baby and ran off without so much
Speaker 1: as a thank you. A Violet returned to work aboard
Speaker 1: the newly repaired Olympic until World War One broke out
Speaker 1: in nineteen fourteen, when she served as a nurse above
Speaker 1: the White Star Lines third ship, the Britannic. The ship
Speaker 1: hit a German mine in the Aegean Sea. Violet been
Speaker 1: several shipmates made it to a lifeboat, only to realize
Speaker 1: the sinking ship's propellers were as surface level and pulling
Speaker 1: them in. They abandoned the ship and tried to swim away.
Speaker 1: Violet's head struck the keel. Luckily, someone on another boat
Speaker 1: pulled her to safety. Though she did return to work
Speaker 1: as a stewardess, Violet eventually decided to not press her
Speaker 1: luck any further. She found work on land, where she
Speaker 1: remained until she died in at the age of eighty four.
Speaker 1: American Shadows is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was
Speaker 1: written by Michelle Muto, researched by Ali Steed, and produced
Speaker 1: by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show,
Speaker 1: visit Grim and Mild dot com. From more podcasts from
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.