Speaker 1: School of Humans. Let's start this episode with a man's
Speaker 1: dying words.
Speaker 2: Why don't we here? They are.
Speaker 1: A boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand kim.
Speaker 1: You can play jacks and girls do that with a
Speaker 1: softball and do tricks with it.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, dog, biscuit.
Speaker 1: And when he is happy, he doesn't get snappy. You
Speaker 1: might hear those and be like, what the fuck does
Speaker 1: that mean? And that is a great question, because we
Speaker 1: don't know. This was the dying utterance of New York
Speaker 1: Jewish mafia kingpen Dutch Schultz in nineteen thirty five. These
Speaker 1: famous last words were recorded by a stenographer working for
Speaker 1: the police. They've been immortalized in books and movies, and
Speaker 1: some people think they are a coded message or a
Speaker 1: clue that will help you locate some hidden in money.
Speaker 2: But I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe he was just delirious because he was dying.
Speaker 1: He had just been shot while he was on the toilet.
Speaker 1: But we'll get to that. What is often less shared
Speaker 1: about this fatal moment in the life of Schultz is
Speaker 1: a telegram he received on his deathbed, presumably moments before
Speaker 1: these words left his lips. The telegram was from a
Speaker 1: woman and it read as ye sow, so shall ye reap?
Speaker 1: A Bible verse, A creepy but not so cryptic note
Speaker 1: from one of his most formidable foes and the first
Speaker 1: female mob boss seen.
Speaker 2: By New York City.
Speaker 1: Her name was Stephanie Saint Clair. So let's see how
Speaker 1: was she involved getting this mob boss to his deathbed?
Speaker 2: Cue the theme music.
Speaker 1: This is American filth and I'm your host, Gabby Watts.
Speaker 1: Each week I tell you a filthy story from American history.
Speaker 1: This week's episode, girl Boss, My Boss. So let's go
Speaker 1: back to the beginning. Whomst is Stephanie Saint Clair. That
Speaker 1: is a question that many historians are trying to answer
Speaker 1: because what it's not exactly clear. You know, on the
Speaker 1: one side, maybe her early years are lost to history
Speaker 1: because she was a Caribbean immigrant, people didn't.
Speaker 2: Keep the records.
Speaker 1: But it's also possible that she kept herself, her origins,
Speaker 1: and her exact movements throughout her life a mystery because
Speaker 1: she wanted to.
Speaker 2: It was on purpose, just to further.
Speaker 1: Shroud her in mystery, to heighten her status as a
Speaker 1: crime boss in New York City. So let's look at
Speaker 1: some of the hypotheses of where she's from. Some people
Speaker 1: think that she was from France, like some people who
Speaker 1: knew her swore that she grew up in Paris, was
Speaker 1: the daughter of an aristocrat. She was, after all, fluent
Speaker 1: in French and extremely well educated. And then when she
Speaker 1: was probably in her thirties or forties, she vehemently denied
Speaker 1: being from the Caribbean, claiming that she was from France
Speaker 1: one hundred percent more likely, though her early life was
Speaker 1: spent in Guadaloupe or Martinique, and she was either born
Speaker 1: on Christmas or Christmas Eve in the mid eighteen eighties
Speaker 1: or eighteen nineties. But what we do know, or what
Speaker 1: we are pretty sure we know, is that on July
Speaker 1: twenty second, nineteen eleven, she left the Caribbean and headed
Speaker 1: to New York City. However, at the time that wasn't
Speaker 1: her final destination. She then went to Quebec, where some
Speaker 1: historians think she was part of a program that recruited
Speaker 1: women from Guadalupe to be domestic workers for white households.
Speaker 1: And what would happen is basically the employer would pay
Speaker 1: your way there, but then you'd have to work for
Speaker 1: them for two years to pay it off, So kind
Speaker 1: of like a messed up, indentured servitude sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But it does seem that Saint Clair left Canada before
Speaker 1: she paid that off, because it looks like in nineteen
Speaker 1: twelve she finally ended up in New York City in Harlem.
Speaker 1: And Saint Clair reached Harlem in a very pivotal moment.
Speaker 1: She moved there in the nineteen tens, which was the
Speaker 1: beginning of the Harlem Renaissance. During this time, black people
Speaker 1: were moving into cities in what was called the Great Migration.
Speaker 1: Thousands and thousands of people moved into Harlem, black thinkers, intellectuals, artists,
Speaker 1: so many people made Harlem their home and Stephanie Saint
Speaker 1: Clair was right in the middle of it.
Speaker 2: And again, can you believe this?
Speaker 1: It's not exactly clear what she was doing when she
Speaker 1: first arrived in Harlem. We do know from a marriage
Speaker 1: certificate that she got married in nineteen fifteen to a
Speaker 1: guy named George Gaschett.
Speaker 2: He was from Dominica and an elevator operator. And while
Speaker 2: they were.
Speaker 1: Technically married and through their marriage she was eventually able
Speaker 1: to get citizenship, it doesn't seem that their actual relationship
Speaker 1: lasted that long. Most likely when she first arrived in
Speaker 1: New York City. Like a lot of other Afro Caribbean women,
Speaker 1: she was probably either working as a housekeeper or a seamstress.
Speaker 1: But what we do know is at some time in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen twenties she was like, hey, I can
Speaker 1: probably do better for myself than this shit, and that's
Speaker 1: when she started getting in with Harlem's drug lords, pimps,
Speaker 1: and big time gangsters.
Speaker 2: So apparently there was this long standing gang called the
Speaker 2: Forty Thieves.
Speaker 1: They had roots tracing back to the eighteen twenties in
Speaker 1: New York and it was these guys who showed her
Speaker 1: the ropes to the illegal gambling world and becoming the
Speaker 1: queen of gambling that would make Stephanie Saint Clair infamous.
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen twenties, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: different people playing these games of chance, because you know,
Speaker 1: you had all the rich people on Wall Street making
Speaker 1: their money by speculating. So it was like, hey, in
Speaker 1: the underground, in the underbelly of these cities, we're also
Speaker 1: going to start our own operations where you could pay
Speaker 1: into a pool and maybe win some money, maybe win
Speaker 1: a shit ton of money, also maybe lose a lot
Speaker 1: of money. But this was very popular at the time
Speaker 1: around the world. In New York City, specifically, black people
Speaker 1: weren't allowed to participate in Wall Street. So these games,
Speaker 1: also called the numbers game or the numbers racket, or
Speaker 1: policy banking, they were a way to circumvent this ban,
Speaker 1: allowing Black Americans to speculate, to scheme to maybe win
Speaker 1: some money, but then also by keeping that money inside
Speaker 1: of Harlem. And yeah, of course these numbers games they
Speaker 1: weren't legal, but it also seemed to become a fun
Speaker 1: pastime and a very ubiquitous experience in Harlem. Like one
Speaker 1: newspaper wrote, numbers was a people's game, a community pastime
Speaker 1: in which old and young, literate and illiterate, the neediest folk,
Speaker 1: and well to do all participate. All of Harlem played
Speaker 1: the humble laundry woman, the disrespectful pool player, as well
Speaker 1: as the respectable teacher. And the thing is, if you
Speaker 1: were the numbers game's game runner, or basically what they
Speaker 1: would call the banker, you had a lot going for
Speaker 1: you because not only would you control the game, you
Speaker 1: also would get a lot of money because they got
Speaker 1: to pay you to play the game. And that's where
Speaker 1: Stephanie Saint Clair came in. She established her own numbers
Speaker 1: operation sometime in the early to mid nineteen twenties, and
Speaker 1: her numbers game became very, very successful, and so Saint
Speaker 1: Clair began to build her enterprise. And the thing about
Speaker 1: this is that a numbers operation comes with a whole hierarchy.
Speaker 1: So you have Saint Claire at the top, and then
Speaker 1: she's hiring a bunch of people who are like numbers collectors, clerks, messengers.
Speaker 1: She's basically starting this whole ecosystem of illegal gambling. And
Speaker 1: with her game, Stephanie Saint Clair quickly rose to the
Speaker 1: tippy top of New York's underworld. She became known across
Speaker 1: Manhattan as Queenie, and up in Harlem people referred to
Speaker 1: her as Madame Saint Clair, Queen Madame, or simply Madame.
Speaker 1: And as she was becoming more and more wealthy, as
Speaker 1: she was having an even more successful enterprise, of course,
Speaker 1: she started getting noticed outside of Harlem by the other
Speaker 1: people who run illegal enterprises. Yes, I mean people in
Speaker 1: the mob for example, and her fellow compatriots in the underworld.
Speaker 1: A lot of people described her as extremely well educated, arrogant, confident,
Speaker 1: and that she also had an intense temper that you
Speaker 1: didn't want directed at you. By nineteen thirty, one journalist
Speaker 1: estimated that Saint Clair had about half a million dollars,
Speaker 1: which would be about ten million dollars in today's money.
Speaker 1: She also had a huge flamboyant personality when she was
Speaker 1: in public. She wore big hats for diamonds, the finest
Speaker 1: dresses cut in the latest styles, and she also owned
Speaker 1: apartments and houses in Harlem. She lived in the Esteemed
Speaker 1: Building four h nine Edgecombe Avenue, where her neighbors were
Speaker 1: led wev du Bois, their Good Marshall Duke Ellington cab
Speaker 1: Callaway baseball Great Willie May's. She was becoming a celebrity.
Speaker 1: One neighbor wrote about her that Madame Stephanie Saint Clair
Speaker 1: breezes through the lobby with her fur coach dramatically flowing
Speaker 1: behind her. She has a mystical aura about her and
Speaker 1: she wears exotic dresses with a colorful turbine wrapped around
Speaker 1: her head.
Speaker 2: And the thing is Saint Clair.
Speaker 1: She seemed to pour a lot of her wealth back
Speaker 1: into Harlem and also used her renown to support black causes.
Speaker 1: You know, she created jobs, She donated money to organizations
Speaker 1: that supported progress towards equality for black Americans. She wrote
Speaker 1: so many articles and newspapers that discussed black rights. She
Speaker 1: wrote letters to the presidents, congressmen, senators. She also spoke
Speaker 1: a lot about police brutality against black people. And of course,
Speaker 1: Stephanie Saint Clair she had a lot of run ins
Speaker 1: with the law. You know, she was a prominent banker
Speaker 1: of a numbers game with a flamboyant personality, so she
Speaker 1: for sure on the police's radar. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: like a lot of other mob bosses at the time,
Speaker 1: people suspected that she had police officers on her payroll.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it does seem that the
Speaker 1: police did surveil most of her staff. For example, in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty eight, the police arrested her housekeeper. They were like,
Speaker 1: you have gambling materials on you and she's like, no,
Speaker 1: I don't. They're like, give it to us, and she's
Speaker 1: like no. She was also like, you're only arresting me
Speaker 1: because you think I'm Stephanie Saint Clair, which I am not.
Speaker 2: I am her housekeeper. You guys are stupid.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately for the housekeeper, she did end up spending
Speaker 1: time in prison, and then Stephanie Saint Clair was arrested
Speaker 1: on December thirtieth, nineteen twenty nine.
Speaker 2: Obviously, she was pissed.
Speaker 1: She put an editorial in the newspaper talking about how
Speaker 1: she was arrested. She was like, yeah, I was arrested,
Speaker 1: but I was framed. She was like, these police are
Speaker 1: cowards who wear civilian clothes boo. In court, she ended
Speaker 1: up representing herself and she admitted to being a banker,
Speaker 1: and she gave a three hour court testimony basically shitting
Speaker 1: on the police, saying that the police arrested her because
Speaker 1: they were jealous that they were not on her payroll.
Speaker 1: They wanted her money, and she said that when they
Speaker 1: went to her apartment, they also took four hundred dollars
Speaker 1: of her money, and the officer who took it wasn't
Speaker 1: getting punished, and she was like, I'm going to expose
Speaker 1: who did it. But when I said I was going
Speaker 1: to do that, they threatened me. Unfortunately, her very vivacious
Speaker 1: testimony didn't work and she was sentenced to eight months
Speaker 1: and twenty days in a workhouse. This arrest led to
Speaker 1: two things. One, she lost her stronghold as the Queen
Speaker 1: of Numbers in Harlem, but also it made her even
Speaker 1: more pissed off at the police. Once she was out
Speaker 1: of the workhouse, Saint Clair went on a rampage. She
Speaker 1: was determined to prove how corrupt the police were. She
Speaker 1: testified before this commission quote Elee avishly dressed in her
Speaker 1: mink coat. She mounted the witness stand and hurled a
Speaker 1: series of charges. She's like, yeah, here are the people
Speaker 1: I paid off.
Speaker 2: That's corruption.
Speaker 1: But also even though I paid them off, they still
Speaker 1: surveil me, and that's rude. This testimony led to a
Speaker 1: lieutenant and thirteen other people who worked with the New
Speaker 1: York Police Department.
Speaker 2: It got them suspended. Amazing.
Speaker 1: So after this, Stephanie Saint Clair was back on top.
Speaker 1: You know, she was organizing numbers games. She was telling
Speaker 1: the police that they were dumb. But there's another threat
Speaker 1: on the horizon. Because we're in the nineteen thirties, baby,
Speaker 1: and what's happening. It's the end of prohibition, It's the
Speaker 1: Great Depression. People are losing money, people are sad, including
Speaker 1: all those white mobsters who had been keeping an eye
Speaker 1: on Saint Clair, people who had previously ignored Harlem.
Speaker 2: They're like, I don't care about their schemes. Over there.
Speaker 1: But the thing is now they're like, shit, we're losing
Speaker 1: all of our income streams. Maybe we should see what's
Speaker 1: up with Harlem. So Saint Clair's about to come up
Speaker 1: against her nastiest enemy, the crime boss of the Bronx,
Speaker 1: Dutch Schultz. We'll be right back after these soothing advertisements. Now,
Speaker 1: before we get to all of those white mob bosses,
Speaker 1: we got to go on a little side quest here,
Speaker 1: because while Stephanie Saint Clair was a girl boss mob boss,
Speaker 1: she also had a bunch of other shit to deal with,
Speaker 1: you know, as I was saying. She wrote editorials in
Speaker 1: the newspapers constantly about legal rights for black people, police brutality,
Speaker 1: voting rights, other issues, and a lot of people obviously
Speaker 1: had their opinions on what she wrote, but there was
Speaker 1: one group of people who she didn't want to hear
Speaker 1: back from ever again.
Speaker 2: Here's what she wrote in nineteen twenty nine.
Speaker 1: She said, to whom it may concern, I have received
Speaker 1: letters and telephone messages from men which have annoyed me
Speaker 1: very much, and I take this occasion to ask them
Speaker 1: publicly to please not annoy me. I, Madame Saint Clair,
Speaker 1: am not looking for a husband or a sweetheart. If
Speaker 1: they do not stop annoying me, I shall publish their
Speaker 1: names and letters in the newspaper.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: One of her biggest enemies were dudes constantly hitting on her. Now,
Speaker 1: while Saint Clair was technically married to George Gaschett, it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem their actual relationship lasted very long. You know,
Speaker 1: that was the man she married in nineteen fifteen, but
Speaker 1: it seems that around the same time she had several
Speaker 1: other relationships, and based on the rumors of how they went,
Speaker 1: it might be obvious why she wasn't really into having
Speaker 1: a boyfriend. Like at some point she was with this guy, Duke,
Speaker 1: but it turned sour when he tried to what prostitute her.
Speaker 1: She was like, fuck, no, I'm not doing that. And
Speaker 1: after that he ended up being shot in a gang
Speaker 1: fight and dying.
Speaker 2: Is that a coincidence? Perhaps? Perhaps not.
Speaker 1: She then had another lover named Ed and they had
Speaker 1: started selling drugs together and made a ton of money
Speaker 1: very fast. But then when she said she wanted to
Speaker 1: leave him, he tried to strangle her, and when he
Speaker 1: was coming towards her, she pushed him away, and apparently
Speaker 1: she pushed him so hard that he fell back and
Speaker 1: cracked his skull on a table and died.
Speaker 2: Whoops.
Speaker 1: So boo men in her romantic life. But now it's
Speaker 1: boo men and her professional life. Let's get to Dutch Shultz.
Speaker 1: So Steffie Saint Clair was officially known as the Queen
Speaker 1: of Harlem, just in time for the Great Depression, and
Speaker 1: obviously her reign didn't go on threatened for long. She
Speaker 1: got arrested, but now she had another enemy to contend with.
Speaker 1: The mob bosses that dominated New York City, specifically the
Speaker 1: Jewish and Italian mafias, and up until that point in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, they had left the Harlem numbers games
Speaker 1: alone because for most of the white crime bosses, they
Speaker 1: didn't have any interest in Harlem. They're like these numbers games,
Speaker 1: they're not profitable. Also, it's only poor people doing it.
Speaker 1: There's not enough money. But throughout the nineteen twenties there
Speaker 1: were more and more articles talking about how rich people
Speaker 1: were getting off of these games. So the white crime
Speaker 1: bosses were like, hmm, let's keep an eye on this.
Speaker 1: And then when the Volstad Act was repealed, the white
Speaker 1: crime bosses started losing a lot of money because they
Speaker 1: had made money and selling illegal alcohol.
Speaker 2: But now people could drink because they're sad. It's the depression.
Speaker 2: Let them drink.
Speaker 1: So at this point they're like, Harlem's getting more and
Speaker 1: more interesting. Perhaps we should get involved, and by that
Speaker 1: I mean violently take it over. The head of the
Speaker 1: Bronx faction of the Jewish mobsters at the time was
Speaker 1: Dutch Schultz Duchy. He was very well known for his
Speaker 1: bootlegging operations during Prohibition, and he also ran numbers rackets
Speaker 1: similar to ones that Stephanie Saint Clair was running, but
Speaker 1: in the Bronx. But Schultz was also known for being
Speaker 1: very brutal. He loved his gun, he was very trigger
Speaker 1: happy and spared no one. He was such a bad
Speaker 1: boy that FBI director j Edgar Hoover called him Public
Speaker 1: Enemy number one, listing him as one of the most
Speaker 1: dangerous criminals of the time.
Speaker 2: So around nineteen thirty, Schultz starts moving into Harlem, and
Speaker 2: he had a strategy.
Speaker 1: He was like, basically, I'm going to tell these black
Speaker 1: and Latino numbers bankers that they can either give me
Speaker 1: their operation, or they can give me a big share
Speaker 1: of the profits, or I kill them.
Speaker 2: What a deal.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, he was ruthless, and eventually he got to
Speaker 1: Saint Clair. Apparently he started making threatening phone calls to her,
Speaker 1: and then he escalated it to kidnapping and murdering her men.
Speaker 1: Then he paid off police, who normally turned a blind
Speaker 1: eye to her operation, which then landed her in jail.
Speaker 1: In fact, she said quote, fighting Schultz from nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: one to nineteen thirty five cost me a total of
Speaker 1: eight hundred and twenty days in jail and three fourths
Speaker 1: to one million dollars. No surprise based on what we
Speaker 1: know of Saint Clair, she and her right hand man,
Speaker 1: Bumpy Johnson reacted immediately, making moves towards a swift and
Speaker 1: severe revenge. As payback, she started vandalizing his property. She
Speaker 1: herself would go to white store owners who were affront
Speaker 1: for Schultz and would destroy all of their products, smashing
Speaker 1: play glasses and destroying all of their gaming slips, and
Speaker 1: then she would order the small timers to get out
Speaker 1: of Harlem. Another time, when Schultz had sent an underlin
Speaker 1: to intimidate her, she pushed that dude into a closet,
Speaker 1: locked him in, and then got her four massive bodyguards.
Speaker 2: To take care of him.
Speaker 1: Saint Clair also tipped the police off to a bunch
Speaker 1: of his people in operations that led to them raiding
Speaker 1: his properties and finding two million dollars. But the thing is,
Speaker 1: Saint Clair was also frustrated that her fellow black bankers
Speaker 1: weren't putting up more of a fight. She said in
Speaker 1: a newspaper on January fifth, nineteen thirty five, I'm not
Speaker 1: afraid of Dutch Schultz or any other living man. He'll
Speaker 1: never touch me. I will kill Schultz if he sets
Speaker 1: foot in Harlem. He is a rat. The policy game
Speaker 1: is my game. He took it away from me and
Speaker 1: is swindling the colored people. And I'm the only one
Speaker 1: who's after him.
Speaker 2: She's p.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, Schultz hated that it was Saint
Speaker 1: Clair who was standing up to him because not only
Speaker 1: was she an enemy, but also she was a black
Speaker 1: woman and an immigrant who was fighting against him.
Speaker 2: He hated that.
Speaker 1: He hated it so much that he had a hit
Speaker 1: put out on her in nineteen thirty five. At that point,
Speaker 1: Saint Clair went into hiding. She said she quote hid
Speaker 1: in a cellar while the super, a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: covered me with coal. You know, a normal hiding spot
Speaker 1: under some coal, But lucky for her.
Speaker 2: Other people were also pissed at Schultz.
Speaker 1: So if you go down the rabbit hole of like
Speaker 1: mobster in mafia history in New York, it's very complicated
Speaker 1: and it's just like men being mad about shit. I'm
Speaker 1: just like, could you guys just calm down. But basically,
Speaker 1: there is this group called the Commission, and this is
Speaker 1: where the heads of the mafia families would gather and
Speaker 1: discuss mob mafia stuff. And so the Commission was met
Speaker 1: at Schultz because Schultz had tried to kill this senator
Speaker 1: even though the Commission was like, hey, don't kill that senator,
Speaker 1: but he had tried to and he had failed, so
Speaker 1: they were pissed at him.
Speaker 2: They were also pissed at him.
Speaker 1: That they were like, actually, we should just kill him.
Speaker 1: So on October twenty third, nineteen thirty five, they get
Speaker 1: some guys to go shoot Schultz while he's on the toilet,
Speaker 1: no less, And not only was he shot on the toilet,
Speaker 1: which is embarrassing, Oh no, it's worse than that. He
Speaker 1: was shot on a toilet that was in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: The place was called the Palace Chop House in Newark,
Speaker 1: New Jersey. And basically he was ambushed on the toilet,
Speaker 1: got shot. Then a bunch of other people were shooting
Speaker 1: his men. But I guess getting shot in the toilet
Speaker 1: didn't kill him, because then he was rushed to the
Speaker 1: hospital and he didn't die until three days later, which
Speaker 1: was long enough for Saint Clair to send him that
Speaker 1: creepy fucking telegram and then he uttered those last words
Speaker 1: of total nonsense. I'm sure this might be kind of
Speaker 1: an anticlimactic ending because Saint Clair didn't actually get to
Speaker 1: kill him or kind of.
Speaker 2: Be involved with that, it seems.
Speaker 1: But I think with this death at this point she
Speaker 1: was like, ah, maybe I should start retiring out of
Speaker 1: the Number's business.
Speaker 2: It's getting a bit crazy.
Speaker 1: So she handed her assets over to that guy, Bumpy Johnson,
Speaker 1: and they all seem to negotiate with the Commission that
Speaker 1: the other New York mafia gangs would stay out of Harlem,
Speaker 1: and eventually Bumpy became known as the Godfather of Harlem, and.
Speaker 2: Then Saint Clair. It seems she stopped doing the.
Speaker 1: Number stuff, but she continued to fight for political reform.
Speaker 1: The thing, though, is, even as her reign as the
Speaker 1: Queen of Numbers came to an end, she was still
Speaker 1: in the newspapers, and that's because she decided to let
Speaker 1: another man into her life. His name was Sufi Hamid. Now,
Speaker 1: based on her previous relationships aka she dated men who
Speaker 1: then she beat the shit out of or killed or
Speaker 1: they died by coincidence, you might imagine this relationship isn't
Speaker 1: going to end. Well, let's see, Saint Clair got to
Speaker 1: know Sufi Hammad because they both did advocacy work.
Speaker 2: But his was a little bit extreme.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: It seemed that starting.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen thirties, he was very anti Semitic, and
Speaker 1: some people called him the black Hitler. He was also
Speaker 1: a proponent of black separatism. He organized a campaign to
Speaker 1: boycott businesses that didn't employ black people. He ran a mosque,
Speaker 1: he wore a turban and a cape, and he also
Speaker 1: claimed that he was born in Egypt in the shadow
Speaker 1: of the Pyramids.
Speaker 2: When really he was from Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: But you guys know what they say Massachusetts, it's basically
Speaker 1: the Egypt of Massachuset sits. So technically, when Hamid and
Speaker 1: Saint Clair were together, she was probably still legally married
Speaker 1: to George Goschett from nineteen fifteen, but she and Hamid
Speaker 1: decided to create this non legal marriage contract. Basically that said, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be together, but in a year, if we
Speaker 1: don't like being together still, we can break up and
Speaker 1: leave this contract. But if we still like each other,
Speaker 1: then we can continue. Isn't that great and then we
Speaker 1: can be together for ninety nine years or something like that.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, it seems soon after they signed this contract
Speaker 1: it did not work out because on January nineteenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty eight, Saint Clair shot him three times.
Speaker 2: Whoops.
Speaker 1: Here's what came out that happened during the trial. So
Speaker 1: apparently Hamid had an appointment with his attorney, but then
Speaker 1: when he got there to the office, Saint Clair was
Speaker 1: there with a gun pointed at him, and she was
Speaker 1: accusing him of cheating on her with this fortune teller,
Speaker 1: and she said, give me all the clothing and money
Speaker 1: I've given you, you stupid bitch, and then she.
Speaker 2: Fired at him.
Speaker 1: The first bullet went through his mouth and broke a tooth,
Speaker 1: and then he grabbed at her hand, and then she
Speaker 1: stepped back and fired again, and the second bullet went
Speaker 1: through his jacket and then the third bullet went over
Speaker 1: his head. So unfortunately she did miss.
Speaker 2: But during the.
Speaker 1: Trial she was like, oh, I wasn't going to kill him.
Speaker 1: I was just trying to scare him, you know. Like
Speaker 1: if I had killed him, I would have died. I
Speaker 1: would have been so upset. But the thing is, in trial,
Speaker 1: her act didn't really work out, and so the judge,
Speaker 1: James G. Wallace said, this woman has been living by
Speaker 1: her wits all her life. She has a bad temper
Speaker 1: and muscleer and she can't go around shooting at other people.
Speaker 1: So alas, even though Hamid's wounds were not fatal, Saint
Speaker 1: Clair was sentenced to another two to ten years in prison,
Speaker 1: and historians think she served about three of those at
Speaker 1: the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York. After her release,
Speaker 1: it's unclear exactly what happened to her. At some point
Speaker 1: in the decades after, she might have gone back to
Speaker 1: the West Indies to visit her family and then came back.
Speaker 1: Some accounts say that she and Bumpy Johnson retired to
Speaker 1: a Long Island mansion where they lived together and he
Speaker 1: started writing poetry. I mean, it's a good thing. It's
Speaker 1: a mansion. Otherwise, can you imagine just a man reading
Speaker 1: poetry to.
Speaker 2: You for the rest of your life? God.
Speaker 1: But then there's another historian, Alexis Co, who said that
Speaker 1: her last address was at a Long Island psychiatric facility
Speaker 1: and then she died there in nineteen sixty nine. But
Speaker 1: what we do know about her is that she was
Speaker 1: a crime boss.
Speaker 2: She got rich. She might have died rich, or she
Speaker 2: might have died poor.
Speaker 1: She was an advocate and she never stopped pushing for
Speaker 1: the black commune that she lived in. She established organizations
Speaker 1: to help immigrants get settled. She also advocated for voting rights.
Speaker 1: She got those police officers fired, and she fucked up
Speaker 1: a lot of dudes. And I think what Stephanie Saint
Speaker 1: Claire can really teach us, and what this episode can
Speaker 1: teach us today, because of course, American Filth comes with
Speaker 1: a lesson is that if you're not in touch with
Speaker 1: your entrepreneurial spirit, get your shit together. There's so much
Speaker 1: you can do even when the world is stacked against you. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, was that moral too positive to end the
Speaker 1: show with?
Speaker 2: Whatever? Roll the credits.
Speaker 1: American Filth is a production of School of Humans and
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts. This episode was written by Julia Chriscau and
Speaker 1: hosted by.
Speaker 2: Me Gabby Watts.
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by me and Jesse Niswanger. Our
Speaker 1: senior producer is Amelia Brock. Our executive producers are Virginia Prescott,
Speaker 1: Elsie Croley, and Brandon Barr. Please leave a review, leave
Speaker 1: a star, give us some feedback. Also follow the pod
Speaker 1: on Instagram at American Filth Pod. All Right, Catch you
Speaker 1: next time by
Speaker 2: School of Humans