Speaker 1: Take some long shots, guys.
Speaker 2: So this is the Denner cell, Is that right?
Speaker 3: Cash?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they suspect that later in the eighteenth century,
Speaker 4: after the expansion of the building, what we just saw
Speaker 4: where the jail keeper lived. That was added new and
Speaker 4: originally this served as the jail keepers living quarters, with
Speaker 4: the cells beginning on the other side of this wall,
Speaker 4: and then up on the second floor as well. We
Speaker 4: can go take a look at in some of them.
Speaker 5: As a matter of.
Speaker 4: Fact, if you'll want to come up the stairs, we
Speaker 4: move the barrier out of the way. Let be careful.
Speaker 4: Mortimers up there somewhere.
Speaker 6: Let's go up together.
Speaker 7: We shall be creaked out together.
Speaker 1: My daughters and I are back in Williamsburg, Virginia touring
Speaker 1: the old jail there with Cash ear Harts and Nicole Brown.
Speaker 1: Is this gold sund.
Speaker 7: Course? Sweet?
Speaker 1: Well, that's creepy. I don't think that's Mortimer.
Speaker 2: Him, that's him.
Speaker 6: There's a body in there.
Speaker 2: Hi, Yeah, we found Mortimer.
Speaker 6: Tell us about Mortimer.
Speaker 7: Uh So.
Speaker 8: Mortimer is the nickname that we gave to a large dummy,
Speaker 8: a mannequin that we used to use for a program
Speaker 8: called Williamsburg Crime and Punishment. And we used to suspend
Speaker 8: Mortimer from the gallows in the evening, and they would
Speaker 8: have some cressets set up some of the fire baskets
Speaker 8: to offer illumination to show people what it would have
Speaker 8: looked like to have seen a body suspended from the gallows.
Speaker 2: It is a really very visual kind of death.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that is so groovy.
Speaker 8: I love it.
Speaker 1: Back in October of seventeen sixty six, Colonel John Chisel
Speaker 1: faced the same fate as Mortimer, a possible public hanging.
Speaker 1: His attorney, John Wales, had been working hard to establish
Speaker 1: a convincing defense, but he couldn't promise an acquittal. The
Speaker 1: gentry class in the wealthiest colony in the United Colonies
Speaker 1: was understandably shaken. What would happen to them if Chisel
Speaker 1: were convicted, and how would it affect the class structure
Speaker 1: in the colonies.
Speaker 9: Gentlemen don't do those things, and gentlemen are not found
Speaker 9: guilty of murdering.
Speaker 2: Peasants to have a gentleman not just behave this way,
Speaker 2: but then the law bend in his favor rather than
Speaker 2: in the arc that we are hope it goes in.
Speaker 2: Is such a violation of trust? Is such a violation
Speaker 2: of identity? Is such a violation of one's individual self
Speaker 2: when looking at oneself as a British subject and saying,
Speaker 2: but would the law apply to me that way?
Speaker 1: In the seventeen hundreds, children across the city of Williamsburg,
Speaker 1: Virginia flipped through books at their schools and their churches.
Speaker 1: The common theme across their pages declared that status is
Speaker 1: everything you're born into the place God has meant to
Speaker 1: ordain you. And if God has ordained me to be
Speaker 1: a gentleman, and he ordained Robert Rutledge to be a merchant,
Speaker 1: then God did not mean for us to be on
Speaker 1: equal footing. But the murder of Robert Rutledge had created
Speaker 1: a disparity in the fundamental belief thou shalt not kill yes.
Speaker 1: But in this case it seemed that perhaps a merchant's
Speaker 1: lie was less valuable than a member of the gentry class.
Speaker 1: John Chisel was trapped.
Speaker 10: Colonel Chisel, if he is convicted of this felony, will
Speaker 10: forfeit his property, and in the forfeit of his property,
Speaker 10: he ruins his family.
Speaker 1: John Robinson's descendant, Simon Robinson, says that the General Court
Speaker 1: judges in Williamsburg and the colonies Governor were also trapped.
Speaker 7: I think those in power couldn't win almost if they
Speaker 7: convicted him. They were convicting one of their own, and
Speaker 7: how that would be seen when they might want to
Speaker 7: be a view, well, it was only a commoner. He
Speaker 7: had it coming. I'm sure there was that view.
Speaker 1: This certainly wouldn't be the last time the courts struggled
Speaker 1: to reconcile the law in the handling of a suspected
Speaker 1: murder by a member of the upper class. Ever hear
Speaker 1: of the Chapiquittic incident. It's a very famous case in history,
Speaker 1: involving the death of a middle class woman and a
Speaker 1: politician from a storied family. On July eighteenth, nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car off a bridge on
Speaker 1: Chapiquittic Island in Massachusetts. The accident killed a twenty eight
Speaker 1: year old campaign strategist named Mary Joe Kopeckney, who worked
Speaker 1: for Kennedy. The subsequent investigation led to minor charges for Kennedy,
Speaker 1: but derailed his aspirations to run for president. Yet many
Speaker 1: questions remained about Kapeckney's death and if Kennedy should have
Speaker 1: been held responsible. Historia Nicole Brown says she can see
Speaker 1: the parallels between the two cases white male privilege.
Speaker 2: At what point is somebody considered too valuable to be
Speaker 2: held accountable for their behavior? But what it also makes
Speaker 2: me think of, you know, it sounds like Edward Ruloff,
Speaker 2: and you're asking and asking this question of how far
Speaker 2: can someone get away with their status before they're challenged
Speaker 2: on their behavior.
Speaker 1: Edward Ruloff is from my book All That Is Wicked
Speaker 1: and Season one of this podcast. In eighteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: he was executed for murdering a shopkeeper during a botched robbery,
Speaker 1: but he had killed four people from his own family beforehand.
Speaker 1: Rulof was a killer, even he admitted, But he was
Speaker 1: also a genius, and there were many people, including Mark Twain,
Speaker 1: who believed that it would be a waste to execute him.
Speaker 1: What if his mind could be harnessed for good instead
Speaker 1: of evil? Privilege? Colonel Chisel was privileged. As he sat
Speaker 1: at his dining room table on Tuesday, October fourteenth, there
Speaker 1: were still death threats. He didn't feel safe. Death in
Speaker 1: the news would humiliate his family and they would lose everything.
Speaker 1: But still, he had stabbed a man in front of
Speaker 1: a room full of witnesses. It was privilege that allowed
Speaker 1: him even the possibility of escaping punishment. Chisel surely understood
Speaker 1: that the governor and the General Court were in a
Speaker 1: tough position. They had already done so much for him,
Speaker 1: and now the public was turning against them too. The
Speaker 1: next day, a visitor arrived at the Chisel home on
Speaker 1: Saint Francis Street. As they stepped inside, they made an
Speaker 1: upsetting discovery.
Speaker 2: Colonel chisels I'm dead in his home.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of information about John Chisel's death.
Speaker 1: For good reason. It was kept secret, and then the
Speaker 1: details were very vague. We don't even know what room
Speaker 1: he was found in, or the state of his body.
Speaker 1: We just know for certain that John Chisel was dead.
Speaker 2: Did his family know he was dead? They're all staying
Speaker 2: at the house with him. In theory the children were
Speaker 2: all there. I think so, but they might not have
Speaker 2: been so. Did they find out to the newspaper? These
Speaker 2: are some answers we just don't have.
Speaker 1: Was he murdered. Did one of the angry protesters break
Speaker 1: in and kill him? That was definitely a possibility. But
Speaker 1: when the coroner arrived and examined John Chisel, he made
Speaker 1: a decision about the cause of death, and then his
Speaker 1: ruling was printed in the newspaper, the Virginia Gazette. John
Speaker 1: Chisel had died from nervous fits. Nervous fits I've talked
Speaker 1: about that phrase in past seasons. It's a vague nineteenth
Speaker 1: century term, but essentially they're describing a stroke or a
Speaker 1: heart attack brought on by stress.
Speaker 2: Now it says in the paper he'd died from nervous
Speaker 2: fits due to and I'm paraphrasing here, essentially being troubled.
Speaker 2: So that would imply that he's under some level of stress,
Speaker 2: Whether he has suffered from some type of mental illness
Speaker 2: or he is depressed.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 2: We don't know.
Speaker 1: The coroner's report specifically said nervous fits owing to a
Speaker 1: constant uneasiness of the mind. Julie Richter says, in this
Speaker 1: case it was coded language for suicide. But that would
Speaker 1: never have been said about a member of the gentry
Speaker 1: for several reasons.
Speaker 6: What we would call mental illness today, you know, emotional
Speaker 6: turmoil is something that was supposed to be handled within
Speaker 6: the family.
Speaker 1: Historian Neil Darby explains the other reason that Chisel's death
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been labeled that way. Suicide wasn't allowed.
Speaker 3: It is kind of you know, you should not. You
Speaker 3: don't have the capacity to take your own life, and
Speaker 3: God has the power to take that, so it's it's
Speaker 3: a religious thing.
Speaker 1: In the seventeen hundred, suicides were categorized in two different ways.
Speaker 3: There were two different types of suicide. So there was
Speaker 3: a fellow to say which was self murder, and then
Speaker 3: there was suicide by buttons of your mind being disturbed recently.
Speaker 3: So you had the two different types, and you know
Speaker 3: that they would kind of distinguish between them. So which
Speaker 3: was the better form? Which was the not so nice form.
Speaker 1: Historian and interpreter Nicole Brown says suicide was illegal in
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds in England and the colonies, and so
Speaker 1: it was your family who would actually suffer.
Speaker 2: In the eighteenth century horribly. Under English common law, death
Speaker 2: to one's person by oneself is still considered a felony.
Speaker 2: All his property, everything he owned would be forfeit, and
Speaker 2: his wife and daughters under English common law for free
Speaker 2: English women, all of it would be forfeit.
Speaker 1: With so much writing on the specifics in this case,
Speaker 1: it was strange that the city's coroner had issued only
Speaker 1: a vague description of Chisel's cause of death. He certainly
Speaker 1: didn't indicate whether it was a suicide or murder, or
Speaker 1: even an accident. Nicole Brown says that unless the reason
Speaker 1: for death was obvious, like rope marks around the neck
Speaker 1: or slice marks on the body, it was more difficult
Speaker 1: to sort out what happened than it is today, and
Speaker 1: that was particularly true if poison were involved.
Speaker 2: To be as sensitive as I can to a very
Speaker 2: difficult topic, there are some methods that are more visible
Speaker 2: than others, and in the eighteenth century you can't do
Speaker 2: a toxicology report, so if he died by suicide with poison,
Speaker 2: it would be harder to prove, and legally that's very important.
Speaker 1: The coroner didn't describe any injuries found on Chisel's body,
Speaker 1: including signs of poison or anything else really, so it's
Speaker 1: conceivable that maybe he just couldn't make a clear determination.
Speaker 1: But in this case there was another reason. The coroner
Speaker 1: of Williamsburg was one of Chisel's good friends. John Chisel's
Speaker 1: family would have lost everything if he had died by suicide.
Speaker 1: It was the law in the United Colonies. In fact,
Speaker 1: suicide is still considered a crime in twenty countries. Today,
Speaker 1: attempted suicide is punishable by fines of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: and up to three years in prison. In seventeen sixty six, Virginia,
Speaker 1: not only was Chisel's financial future in jeopardy, so was
Speaker 1: his reputation.
Speaker 2: Everybody has lots of different choices, but when it comes
Speaker 2: to the significance of one's status, and status is everything
Speaker 2: because it's connected to power in Virginia, I think he
Speaker 2: may have felt this was the only choice, which shows
Speaker 2: you how profoundly important status is. I mean, if this
Speaker 2: is what you consider better than going to prison.
Speaker 1: In life, Colonel John Chisel and his wife Elizabeth, and
Speaker 1: perhaps their adult children had attended a church that serviced
Speaker 1: the gentry in Williamsburg. It was called the Bruton Parish Church,
Speaker 1: and by the time that Chisel had died, the church
Speaker 1: was almost one hundred years old. Bruton was a storied institution,
Speaker 1: and some of the founding fathers had even worshiped there.
Speaker 1: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry all attended services
Speaker 1: when they were in Williamsburg. After the Stamp Act passed
Speaker 1: in seventeen sixty five members of the House of Burgesses
Speaker 1: complained and fretted during a service at Bruton, and it
Speaker 1: even served as a space for debates that would lead
Speaker 1: up to the Revolutionary War. Some of the most important
Speaker 1: men in the colony attended services there, and tombs and
Speaker 1: monuments in the church and the churchyard were tributes to
Speaker 1: royal governors, members of the council, and local leaders who
Speaker 1: had been part of the esteemed congregation. John Chisel's status
Speaker 1: in life meant that he was destined to be buried
Speaker 1: at Routin or in a prominent location in his family
Speaker 1: plot at Scotchtown, but after his death a series of
Speaker 1: events plunged his family into further despair. Local leaders suspected
Speaker 1: that he had died by suicide, and because suicide was
Speaker 1: considered self murder and a felony, anyone who had taken
Speaker 1: their own life was forbidden to be buried there. So
Speaker 1: Chisel was banned from being buried at Rutin, which must
Speaker 1: have been very humiliating for the Chisels and the Randolphs.
Speaker 1: Instead of holding an upper class service for him amongst
Speaker 1: the gentry, his family was forced to load his coffin
Speaker 1: onto a horse and cart and send his body off
Speaker 1: to the family's plantation surreptitiously in Scotchtown, almost seventy five
Speaker 1: miles away from Williamsburg. Chisel's wife and his four daughters
Speaker 1: planned to hold a service on the land where he
Speaker 1: was born. By this time, word had spread among the
Speaker 1: colonists that Chisel had been found dead. He would not
Speaker 1: be jailed, he would not be convicted of murdering Robert Rutledge,
Speaker 1: and he would not face their idea of justice at
Speaker 1: the gallows. The colonists were outraged, and the lack of
Speaker 1: details from the corner and the city's leaders made it worse.
Speaker 1: They were convinced that Chisel had faked his death to
Speaker 1: escape the death penalty. Once again, John Chisel had been
Speaker 1: given privilege. A member of the gentry who brazenly murdered
Speaker 1: a lowly Scottish merchant had gotten away with it.
Speaker 10: They're really pissed off now they think that he is
Speaker 10: trying to escape to Britain, to London.
Speaker 9: But you know, the obvious thing is, you know hell
Speaker 9: Now the guys on a boat to Jamaica.
Speaker 1: Then the colonists learned that a coffin supposedly containing John
Speaker 1: Chisel would be buried at Scotch Town. They didn't believe it.
Speaker 1: The colonists did not believe that Chisel was dead. The
Speaker 1: gentry were once again protecting him. At this point, they
Speaker 1: trusted no one from the upper classes. They were all
Speaker 1: liars and cheats and above the law, and now John
Speaker 1: Chisel would be free to live his life somewhere else.
Speaker 1: He wasn't dead. They believed his coffin was full of rocks,
Speaker 1: and they planned to prove it. Word quickly spread around
Speaker 1: Virginia's countryside that John Chisel's body was being taken to
Speaker 1: Scotch Town. Robert Rutledge's many friends loaded people onto carts,
Speaker 1: mounted their horses, and rode off to Scotch Town, just
Speaker 1: in time to meet the coffin. Chisel's family had arrived
Speaker 1: for the service as well.
Speaker 9: And his daughter arranges for the funeral at Scotch Town. Supposedly,
Speaker 9: once the body gets to Scotch toown that is a
Speaker 9: mob of people who are basically Ruttledge people.
Speaker 1: The carts driver tried to move through the crowd, but
Speaker 1: it was useless. There were too many of them.
Speaker 10: A mob shows up at the funeral procession and they
Speaker 10: block the procession and demand that they open the coffin
Speaker 10: in front of his family is presumably his wife, his
Speaker 10: daughter's everyone.
Speaker 1: This was already a difficult day for John Chisel's wife
Speaker 1: and children, so the crowd and the profanities and the
Speaker 1: sheer anger just compounded their His family was terrified.
Speaker 10: You can imagine the scene. You know, people are saying, please,
Speaker 10: you know, for Heaven's sakes, get out of the way,
Speaker 10: let these people grieve. All this, and the mob just
Speaker 10: will not listen.
Speaker 1: The mob grew even louder. They demanded that someone opened
Speaker 1: the coffin immediately. They demanded proof that he was actually dead.
Speaker 1: The people riding with the coffin realized that the crowd
Speaker 1: wouldn't be satisfied until they saw his body, so they
Speaker 1: retrieved a bar and pried open the coffin. Several of
Speaker 1: religious friends looked inside and saw a body, somebody's body.
Speaker 10: The body has I think the phrase they use is blackened,
Speaker 10: decomposed over the course of the time. It's summer, so
Speaker 10: it's probably happened pretty quickly. It's decomposed to such a
Speaker 10: state that nobody in the mob can recognize the body.
Speaker 1: Remember there was no embalming in the seventeen hundreds, so
Speaker 1: it didn't take very long for a body to degrade,
Speaker 1: and this was an especially hot Virginia summer. The mob
Speaker 1: wasn't satisfied. How did they know it wasn't someone else?
Speaker 1: Chissel's family wept. Finally, a relative named Colonel William Dabney
Speaker 1: stepped forward and confirmed it. Yes, this was John Chisel.
Speaker 10: And it's not until they actually force some of the
Speaker 10: close relatives of Colonel Chisel to come over and look
Speaker 10: at the body that they confirm that's who it is,
Speaker 10: and the mob is satisfied enough to disperse.
Speaker 1: What a disturbing scene that must have been, a mob
Speaker 1: forcing a grieving family to probably open their dead family
Speaker 1: patriarch's coffin. But they knew that John Chisel was a murderer,
Speaker 1: and they had been convinced that his powerful friends were
Speaker 1: helping him get away with it, and they had had enough.
Speaker 2: The protest that really culminates in this case is at
Speaker 2: his funeral, in people refusing to accept what someone who
Speaker 2: previously six months prior would be defined as there better
Speaker 2: as the truth.
Speaker 1: They were protesting the inequity of it all, the privilege
Speaker 1: that Chisel had been offered in life, even when he
Speaker 1: was free on.
Speaker 2: Bail, Colonel Chisel has an endless amount of resources. He's
Speaker 2: allowed to still have access to his property. He's been
Speaker 2: given bail for an enormous son, six thousand pounds, two
Speaker 2: thousand for him and another four thousand for the four
Speaker 2: people vouching for him, which is insane. He's still allowed
Speaker 2: to have access to what he perceives as his property,
Speaker 2: which are the enslaved individuals. He allowed to visit his
Speaker 2: lead minds in the summer. He literally travels hundreds of
Speaker 2: miles outside of the city. If he had wanted to
Speaker 2: disappear at that point, he certainly could have. He doesn't
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
Speaker 1: Is he I illusional enough to think this isn't gonna happen.
Speaker 2: That's a really good question. I don't know the answer
Speaker 2: to that, but I think it's a compelling It's a
Speaker 2: compelling question which has no answer. Was he in denial?
Speaker 2: Did he see it as a matter of honor?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2: You're a gentleman and you see everyone as beneath you,
Speaker 2: then you're probably gonna be shocked when all of a
Speaker 2: sudden you're held accountable and who held him accountable. Who
Speaker 2: held him accountable, I would argue, would be not only
Speaker 2: concerned anonymous citizens in the gazette, but people who are saying, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, you should not be able to receive
Speaker 2: bail from murder. I think the minute that this fallacy
Speaker 2: hypocrisy of different laws applying to different people based on
Speaker 2: race is no longer no longer applied on race. In
Speaker 2: Chisel's mind, it's the citizens or the subjects of Virginia
Speaker 2: who who respond and say, no, you're not allowed to
Speaker 2: kill whoever you are because you're a gentleman, and then
Speaker 2: have no consequences.
Speaker 1: John Chisel and Robert Rutledge's argument and then the merchant's
Speaker 1: murder shook the foundation of Williamsburg. And then it was
Speaker 1: talked about for decades to come, and it's been written
Speaker 1: about in history books. Some of America's most important men
Speaker 1: knew John Chisel, They were affected by him and his death.
Speaker 2: In various ways. Patrick Henry is connected to this case
Speaker 2: through scotch Town. Thomas Jefferson is connected to this case
Speaker 2: through his future father in law. And at this point
Speaker 2: even the new Guard is still gentry. They have to
Speaker 2: have thought or pondered or reflected upon it because it
Speaker 2: if pacted one of what they would perceive as their ilk.
Speaker 2: Certainly it touched everybody's lives in Williamsburg, whether directly or indirectly,
Speaker 2: I think probably made for a very hot, sticky, uncomfortable
Speaker 2: summer of truth discovering for individuals.
Speaker 1: By the time that John Chisel died in seventeen sixty six,
Speaker 1: the rebels and the loyalists were becoming more distinct. Men
Speaker 1: and women began taking sides. Were you loyal to the
Speaker 1: King of England or were you loyal to the increasingly
Speaker 1: outspoken leaders like Patrick Henry who declared that colonists deserve
Speaker 1: to be free from tyranny.
Speaker 2: To jump between what happens with the Stamp Act all
Speaker 2: the way to declaring independence in less than eleven years
Speaker 2: or eleven years approximately, is it cataclismic shift?
Speaker 1: A revolution was coming very quickly.
Speaker 2: The only metaphor I can think of is if you're
Speaker 2: standing between two tectonic plates and they start shifting. I
Speaker 2: think with this case, though, you know, the Stamp Act
Speaker 2: is more universally disparaged as well as the townshend duties,
Speaker 2: the tax on tea, the coercion acts, which we know
Speaker 2: is the intolerable acts, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: The colony of Virginia was very powerful and very influential,
Speaker 1: and the people there were trapped between two immovable forces
Speaker 1: that were both determined to control the colonies.
Speaker 2: Virginia holds an immense amount of sway as a colony
Speaker 2: in how people respond to these acts and respond from
Speaker 2: being divided to finding a kind of common enemy which
Speaker 2: is not British law or British rights, but British individuals
Speaker 2: who've never been to the colonies infringing upon those British rights.
Speaker 2: I think the Chisel case fits in, though on a
Speaker 2: much more personal level, with Virginia, in the same way
Speaker 2: that the Stamp Act was seen as a violation of
Speaker 2: British rights on a larger international scale, the Chisel murder
Speaker 2: is a violation of what Virginians perceive as this unspoken
Speaker 2: but sometimes in the law certainly explicit relationship between individuals
Speaker 2: and their strata in society and what they are expected
Speaker 2: to do and how the laws apply to them.
Speaker 1: So this case was a sort of tipping point in
Speaker 1: the class struggles amongst the colonists. But of course we
Speaker 1: have to remember that there was still another very large
Speaker 1: population in Virginia who were ignored and under virtual complete control,
Speaker 1: enslaved people who were essentially dismissed by the law, regardless
Speaker 1: of their class. There were no white colonists demanding that
Speaker 1: a member of the gentry be hanged for murdering a
Speaker 1: black person.
Speaker 2: The hypocrisy, I can be murdered by my owner and
Speaker 2: people won't make this much of a stink. So you
Speaker 2: don't really have to look at the free white British
Speaker 2: subjects who are seeing this as a violation. You have
Speaker 2: to look at the half of the population in Williamsburg
Speaker 2: who are black majority enslaved, but even free blacks saying
Speaker 2: what a hip critical turn of events. Both of those
Speaker 2: are cataclysmics reimaginings.
Speaker 1: So what does this case represent to the gentry of
Speaker 1: the colonies?
Speaker 7: Do you think?
Speaker 1: Is there fear that we see that this could happen
Speaker 1: to us, that we are not untouchable.
Speaker 2: Fear might be part of it, But the greater thing,
Speaker 2: I think is this idea of shame as well. If
Speaker 2: status is one of those things where if a gentleman
Speaker 2: as a gentleman should behave as a gentleman, then people
Speaker 2: are I would imagine both nervous by how individuals are
Speaker 2: being held accountable as well as ashamed that one of
Speaker 2: their ilk would behave in such a way.
Speaker 1: There's one more possibility we should talk about concerning Chisel's death.
Speaker 1: It's the PostScript that I mentioned. Patrick Henry would later
Speaker 1: become a founding father, one of the men who would
Speaker 1: sign the Declaration of Independents ten years later, and he
Speaker 1: was at the procession in Scotch Town where Chisel's coffin
Speaker 1: was pride open. Like the rest of the crowd, Henry
Speaker 1: stepped toward the coffin and surveyed the body inside.
Speaker 9: Patrick Henry is one of the people that's in the crowd,
Speaker 9: and according to somebody, some people say Patrick Henry said
Speaker 9: that his face was black from like arsenic or something
Speaker 9: like that.
Speaker 1: Arsenic it's a very powerful poison. It's a classical poison
Speaker 1: that has been historically used for homicidal purposes. Suicide with
Speaker 1: arsenic could have been very quick if the dosage were
Speaker 1: large enough, but it would have been very painful. He
Speaker 1: would have experienced vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. Those symptoms
Speaker 1: would be followed by numbness, and tingling of the extremities,
Speaker 1: muscle cramping and death. I spoke with doctor Neil Bradberry,
Speaker 1: who is a poison expert, and we talked about the
Speaker 1: blackened face that Patrick Henry might have referred to. Doctor
Speaker 1: Bradbury says that arsenic poisoning is associated with hyper pigmentation
Speaker 1: of the skin, So while it is unlikely that the
Speaker 1: victim's whole face was blackened, the hyperpigmentation and overgrowth of
Speaker 1: skin would give the appearance of dark patches on the skin.
Speaker 1: Of course, this takes time and would be more consistent
Speaker 1: with long term ingestion of small doses rather than a
Speaker 1: quick large dose. So is it likely that John Chisel
Speaker 1: used arsenic to take his own life. I'm not so sure,
Speaker 1: and doctor Bradbury is skeptical. He said this sounds more
Speaker 1: like an accidental overdose or it could have been intentional.
Speaker 1: Nicole Brown and Simon Robinson agree that suicide might not
Speaker 1: have been his cause of death.
Speaker 2: But but he has enemies, he has enemies. We don't know,
Speaker 2: We don't know.
Speaker 1: It's possible that.
Speaker 2: Somebody killed him. It's possible, absolutely, so.
Speaker 7: He may well have committed suicide. And I don't want
Speaker 7: to inflame. Any more conspiracy theories across North America, I
Speaker 7: think you've had plenty. But you know, you could almost
Speaker 7: say was he offered it, was.
Speaker 1: He depressed enough to take his own life that night
Speaker 1: in October, or was he forced or convinced to take
Speaker 1: his own life, or did someone ambush him just to
Speaker 1: save the reputation of the gentry class. We may never
Speaker 1: be sure exactly how John Chisel died, but it's clear
Speaker 1: there could have been even more dramatic outcomes.
Speaker 7: So if it been convicted, he would have been a
Speaker 7: gentleman being hung or beheaded however they wished to do
Speaker 7: it in those days. If it had been acquitted, the populace
Speaker 7: could have risen up and you know, taken on the
Speaker 7: powers that be in Virginia. So maybe the way events
Speaker 7: transpired him, whether he did die a fit, or whether
Speaker 7: it was suicide or possibly encouraged suicide.
Speaker 1: Based on past events, Chisel would have likely been acquitted
Speaker 1: because of his privilege, but an acquittal would have triggered
Speaker 1: chaos in the lower classes.
Speaker 7: If he had been acquitted, the public reaction could have
Speaker 7: been explosive. So in some ways, I think it was
Speaker 7: almost a good result for those in power that he
Speaker 7: died on the eve of the trial.
Speaker 1: Some of the material out there about Chisel is misleading.
Speaker 1: He didn't die the night before his trial. He died
Speaker 1: in October, and his trial wasn't scheduled until mid November
Speaker 1: when the new Assembly convened. He didn't die the night
Speaker 1: before he was to be taken to jail either. His
Speaker 1: attorneys were still building their case at that time. I
Speaker 1: think murder is just as likely as suicide, and many
Speaker 1: colonists agreed with me. This story also spoke to how
Speaker 1: widely and quickly the gossip spread. There were many, many
Speaker 1: rumors about Chisel's death.
Speaker 9: Now, these are different things that I've heard, but I
Speaker 9: have no documentation for any of it. But I've heard
Speaker 9: that he hanged himself.
Speaker 6: I've also heard that too.
Speaker 9: Another one is that he's found dead on the floor,
Speaker 9: and I have no documentation that says okay. And then
Speaker 9: there's the third thing that I've heard, again no documentation
Speaker 9: at all, is that he's murdered, really by the governor
Speaker 9: and some of his associates, his friends.
Speaker 7: To make this go away.
Speaker 9: He's a problem the governor or, you know, maybe as
Speaker 9: high as the governor, but maybe not but you know
Speaker 9: he's a big problem. Let's make the problem go away
Speaker 9: and somebody else poisons him.
Speaker 1: Once John Chisel was buried on his property in the countryside,
Speaker 1: his family was left without a patriarch. Nicole Brown believes
Speaker 1: that Chisel likely made the decision to take his life
Speaker 1: in part for the sake of his family. She reminded
Speaker 1: me of their financial situation during my interview with Robert Weathers.
Speaker 2: Basically, under English common law, if you commit a felony
Speaker 2: to oneself, or you commit a murder to yourself suicide,
Speaker 2: it's considered a crime against your person, and like with
Speaker 2: other felonies, your entire estate is forfeit too. Coblica, you know,
Speaker 2: when we're talking about privilege. I think Chisel in some
Speaker 2: ways still gets the last laugh in that The belief
Speaker 2: from several historians when you look at the primary records
Speaker 2: is that he probably did commit suicide, but no one
Speaker 2: calls it that publicly, which means that publicly his family
Speaker 2: still gets to maintain their status and their money because
Speaker 2: no one is going to bring that crime of suicide
Speaker 2: against him.
Speaker 1: Carson Hudson reminds us that John Chisel's death impacted his
Speaker 1: family and the colony of Virginia.
Speaker 9: Some consequences of that are that Scotch Town, which is
Speaker 9: where Chisel was born and where he was buried, it
Speaker 9: had been a family possession. It went to his daughter
Speaker 9: and son in law, and because of the debts that
Speaker 9: were owed because of the Robinson scandal, she had to
Speaker 9: sell it, so it falls into Patrick Henry's hands.
Speaker 1: Despite John Chisel's death, his four daughters and his wife
Speaker 1: continued on. His two unmarried children, both wedded, wealthy men.
Speaker 1: His wife, Elizabeth, died ten years after he did. The
Speaker 1: Randolph family survived at Chisel's humiliation, but there was still
Speaker 1: the taint left from John Robinson's financial scandal.
Speaker 6: Too much power in one person's hands led to embarrassment, murder,
Speaker 6: financial problems that were widespread. And that is abundantly clear
Speaker 6: that that lesson was learned very quickly.
Speaker 1: And yet both of the families carried on because the
Speaker 1: story of John Robinson's theft and the deception had been
Speaker 1: reframed by the gentry.
Speaker 7: You know, I think that there had also been a
Speaker 7: narrative that John Robinson was a lovely fellow. He was
Speaker 7: just trying to do right by the planters and others.
Speaker 7: Who was really struggling. It was his generosity that was
Speaker 7: his failing. So I think there was a narrative, maybe
Speaker 7: created to gloss over what we can call fraud and
Speaker 7: dress it up as something a lot more palatable.
Speaker 1: I asked historian Julie Richter about this story and its legacy.
Speaker 1: I wish there were more documents, even more information, even
Speaker 1: though I have a lot of it. What really happened
Speaker 1: to John Chisel that night in October.
Speaker 6: I'm one who firmly believes that will keep finding more
Speaker 6: documents from the eighteenth century. People go through addicts, archives,
Speaker 6: finished processing documents. You know, maybe someday somebody will or
Speaker 6: a letter or even a diary that will add another
Speaker 6: piece to this puzzle of this mystery. But it must
Speaker 6: have been horrendous to a witnessed so I guess another
Speaker 6: lesson as a historian, as a people in the past
Speaker 6: suffered trauma too.
Speaker 1: Julie says that there are many victims in this case,
Speaker 1: not just Chisel's family or religious family and his friends.
Speaker 1: The people in the tavern who witnessed this event carried
Speaker 1: the tragedy with them. The enslaved person who was ordered
Speaker 1: to bring the sword would have been traumatized.
Speaker 6: I mean, slavery is a violet institution inherently, but this
Speaker 6: young boy is most likely in the audience. It seems
Speaker 6: like a wrong word, and there may have been other
Speaker 6: children in the tavern who are serving the customers. So
Speaker 6: you're going to have people from a swath of the
Speaker 6: Virginia society seeing this and then going to repeat the
Speaker 6: story too. It's just cip yeah, it's yeah. It is trauma,
Speaker 6: and it's one that would have deeply affected people.
Speaker 1: One note about Robert Rutledge and his legacy. The Scottish
Speaker 1: merchant had died intestate and without errors. Because of that,
Speaker 1: Rutledge's two hundred and seventy two acres of land were
Speaker 1: given to the Colony of Virginia. The same men who
Speaker 1: protected his killer now had possession of his land. After
Speaker 1: America became America as we know it now, the land
Speaker 1: was officially owned by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and then
Speaker 1: something special happened. In seventeen ninety four, Virginia lawmakers turned
Speaker 1: over the land once owned by Rutledge to a university
Speaker 1: called Hampden Sydney College. It's now a private men's liberal
Speaker 1: arts college. Robert Rutledge, the commoner had contributed to higher education.
Speaker 1: So that is Rutledge's legacy. But what about John Chisel.
Speaker 10: Father in law of the Speaker of the House of Burgesses,
Speaker 10: married to a randof represented by a Wales who is
Speaker 10: a randof two? Is he not? All of these people
Speaker 10: know each other and are intermarried. And what do we
Speaker 10: love more than rich people behaving badly?
Speaker 5: And that's really kind of what you see throughout seventeen
Speaker 5: sixty six, with all of these different events, with the
Speaker 5: repeal of the Stamp Act, with the towns and Duties
Speaker 5: set into place, the Declaratory Act in Parliament. In some ways,
Speaker 5: I would liken it to the United States in nineteen
Speaker 5: sixty eight, or much of America in twenty twenty, with
Speaker 5: the protests against police killings of unarmed black citizens. There
Speaker 5: are these incidents that inspire individuals to protest to try
Speaker 5: to make sure that their rights are being preserved.
Speaker 1: The time right before the Revolutionary War was electric. Everyone
Speaker 1: could feel that something was coming. Robert Weathers says that
Speaker 1: Robert Rutledge's murder was another match strike in the bomb
Speaker 1: that would begin the American Revolutionary War.
Speaker 10: It is hard for me to overstate to you, considering
Speaker 10: that this is a case, I think that ninety nine
Speaker 10: point nine to ninety nine percent of people have no
Speaker 10: idea of, or have ever heard of, how important this
Speaker 10: individual decision is to the era of the American Revolution.
Speaker 1: The scene had been set because of the King's tightening
Speaker 1: of the colonist's rites and in turn their fury over
Speaker 1: their lack of freedom.
Speaker 10: The Stamp Act the previous year shook the foundations of
Speaker 10: trust in the overruling government of the British Empire. But
Speaker 10: this shakes the trust of the mid and lower class
Speaker 10: in their rulers here in Virginia, the gentry class. And
Speaker 10: that has to be a terrifying notion in a slave
Speaker 10: holding society, and it has to be a terrifying notion
Speaker 10: for the top two percent.
Speaker 1: It's incredible to think how one murder can lead to
Speaker 1: so much.
Speaker 10: A lot of people are of the impression that the
Speaker 10: revolutionary war begins in April of seventeen seventy five at
Speaker 10: Lexington and conquered. But those men, I'm telling you, those
Speaker 10: men do not stand on the green at Lexington without
Speaker 10: the events taking place here in Virginia. And that includes Chisel,
Speaker 10: it includes Robinson. It includes the effects of the stamp tax.
Speaker 10: That includes Henry and his resolutions. All of these things,
Speaker 10: these point directly to one end. In hindsight, we can
Speaker 10: see it. The groundwork is late, and it's laid perhaps
Speaker 10: on what otherwise would have been a rather uneventful night,
Speaker 10: had an uneventful tavern with two uneventful people in Western Virginia.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this season of tenfold More Wicked
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