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Speaker 1: Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we

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Speaker 1: have another episode in which we're going to devote some

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Speaker 1: time to three unique women, all of whom are notable

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Speaker 1: in their own way. And the two things that they

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Speaker 1: have in common is that each of them has an

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Speaker 1: element to their story that really surprised me in some way,

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Speaker 1: and the other is that they each have the name Belle.

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Speaker 1: If you're wondering, hey, Tracy, why is this not a

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Speaker 1: six impossible episodes, It's because a lot of the other

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Speaker 1: Bells were already taken. You will find Belle Boyd, Bell Starr,

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Speaker 1: and Bell Ganness in the archive, along with Gertrude Bell,

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Speaker 1: whose name doesn't have the E on end, and even

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Speaker 1: the Bell which he was not a person. The three

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Speaker 1: three women today are Gertrude Bell, Ellien Aldo, Costa Green

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Speaker 1: and died O Elizabeth Bell. Died O. Elizabeth Bell is

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Speaker 1: a frequent listener request, including more recently from Renee and

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Speaker 1: Melissa and then other The other two are people I

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Speaker 1: learned about kind of stumbled over in various travels. Gertrude

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Speaker 1: bell Elien, known as Trudy, was born on January twenty third,

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen. Her father, Robert, was a dentist who had

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Speaker 1: immigrated from Lithuania and moved to New York at the

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Speaker 1: age of twelve. Her mother, Bertha Cohen, had immigrated from

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Speaker 1: a part of Russia that is now Poland when she

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Speaker 1: was fourteen years old. The family was Jewish, and Robert

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Speaker 1: was from a long line of rabbis. Ellen grew up

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Speaker 1: in a Manhattan apartment adjacent to her father's dentistry practice,

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Speaker 1: and when she was six, a younger brother, Herbert, was born.

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Speaker 1: Not long after that, the family moved to the Bronx,

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Speaker 1: which was at the time considered more of a suburb

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Speaker 1: than an actual part of New York City. In nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirty three, elim graduated from high school, and her family,

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Speaker 1: at that point in pretty dire financial streets. Like much

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Speaker 1: of the rest of the country and in some cases,

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Speaker 1: the world, they had suffered huge losses in the Great Depression,

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Speaker 1: and her father had declared bankruptcy. Fortunately, though, because Ellian

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Speaker 1: had been such an exceptional student, she was accepted at

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Speaker 1: Hunter College, which was at the time a tuition free

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Speaker 1: Women's College. Ellien's grandfather died of cancer the same year

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Speaker 1: that she graduated from high school, and she wanted to

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Speaker 1: pursue a career that would let her fight the disease.

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Speaker 1: But she also had kind of an aversion to dissection,

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Speaker 1: so she got around this difficulty by studying chemistry. Ellian

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Speaker 1: graduated from Hunter College summa cum laude in seven, but

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Speaker 1: in spite of her excellent academic record, she couldn't find

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Speaker 1: work as a chemist because of her gender. She got

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Speaker 1: a job teaching biochemistry to nursing students at the New

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Speaker 1: York Hospital School of Nursing, but that was only a

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Speaker 1: temporary position, with the course only taught once every nine months.

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Speaker 1: When she finally did find a job working as a

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Speaker 1: lab assistant, it was unpaid and it's slowly and gradually

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Speaker 1: increased from zero to twenty dollars a week. She saved

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Speaker 1: as much money as she could. Her parents gradually recovered

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Speaker 1: from the Great Depression thanks to her father's loyal dentistry patients,

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Speaker 1: so by ninety nine she had enough money to go

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Speaker 1: back to school. She enrolled at New York University in

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Speaker 1: the chemistry department, as its only female master's degree student,

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Speaker 1: earning her MS in ninety one, not long after the

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Speaker 1: United States entered World War Two after the bombing of

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Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor. We often talk about World War two as

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Speaker 1: a time when more women were entering the civilian workforce

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Speaker 1: because so many men were entering the military, and that's

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Speaker 1: often discussed in terms of factory labor or wartime industries,

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Speaker 1: but the same concept applied to other jobs as well.

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Speaker 1: So during the war, Alien was finally able to get

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Speaker 1: work as a chemist, starting out in the Quaker Made

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Speaker 1: Company's quality control department. She didn't really love doing this work.

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Speaker 1: She was doing things like testing the acidity of pickles,

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Speaker 1: and it was pretty repetitive, but it did give her

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Speaker 1: a lot of practice at conducting tests quickly and efficiently

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Speaker 1: and doing them accurately. When she felt like there wasn't

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Speaker 1: anything else she could learn at Quaker Mate, she looked

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Speaker 1: for another job and was hired in a research position

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Speaker 1: at Johnson and Johnson, but that company shuttered the research

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Speaker 1: lab when she had been there for only about six months.

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Speaker 1: Then in n she got a position doing what she

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Speaker 1: had really wanted to do since high school, working as

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Speaker 1: a research chemist at pharmaceutical company Burrows Welcome, where she

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Speaker 1: started out as an assistant to Dr. George H. Hitchings.

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Speaker 1: Side note that after many moves and name changes, Burrows

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Speaker 1: Welcome is now Glaxo Smith Klein. This new role was

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Speaker 1: really ideal for her. Hitchings encouraged her to learn as

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Speaker 1: much as she could, including branching out from the field

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Speaker 1: of chemistry. He progressively gave her more and more responsibility,

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Speaker 1: and often when Hitchings got promoted, she got promoted into

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Speaker 1: his old role. By nineteen sixty seven, she had risen

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Speaker 1: through the ranks to become Burrow's Welcome's Head of Experimental Therapy,

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Speaker 1: a position that she would hold until the end of

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Speaker 1: her career. When Elian started working at Burrow's Welcome, a

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Speaker 1: lot of pharmaceutical research was carried out basically on a

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Speaker 1: trial and error basis, but Elien and the rest of

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Speaker 1: their team took a different approach, examining and then exploiting

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Speaker 1: biochemical differences between healthy cells and pasages so that they

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Speaker 1: could develop targeted drugs. While at Burrow's Welcome, Ellien and

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Speaker 1: Hitchings developed the first successful chemotherapy for the treatment of

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Speaker 1: childhood leukemia. They developed the world's first anti rejection drug,

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Speaker 1: which made kidney transplants possible between people who weren't related

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Speaker 1: to one another. Ellian also developed treatments for a number

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Speaker 1: of other diseases, including gout, lupus, malaria, meningitis, and arthur itis.

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Speaker 1: In the late nineteen sixties, after she had become head

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Speaker 1: of the Department of Experimental Therapy, Elien did pioneering work

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Speaker 1: in anti viral drugs. The conventional wisdom at this point

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Speaker 1: was that any drug that could successfully work against viruses

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Speaker 1: would be far too toxic to be tolerated by the

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Speaker 1: human body. The department's first breakthrough was a cyclavier, invented

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Speaker 1: by Howard Schaefer. A cyclavier, used to treat herpes, was

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Speaker 1: the world's first truly successful targeted anti viral medication. There

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Speaker 1: were a few other anti viral drugs at this point,

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Speaker 1: but most of them had been developed as treatments for

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Speaker 1: non viral diseases, they were discovered to actually have some

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Speaker 1: antiviral efficacy, or they were broad spectrum treatments that were

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Speaker 1: really hard on the patient. Elien's worked with a cyclavier

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Speaker 1: included refining its development, as well as figuring out exactly

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Speaker 1: why it worked, and then applying those findings to other drugs.

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Speaker 1: Elien's techniques also led to the development of a zendo thymidine,

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Speaker 1: more commonly known as a z T, which in ven

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Speaker 1: became the first drug approved by the FDA for the

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Speaker 1: treatment of HIV. By the time a z T was developed,

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Speaker 1: Elliant had retired and was serving as Scientist emeritus and consultant,

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Speaker 1: so she had more of a supervisory role than a

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Speaker 1: hands on one. Early in her career at Burrow's Welcome,

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Speaker 1: Ellien had wanted to continue her education. She enrolled in

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Speaker 1: the PhD program at Brooklyn Polytechnic, going to school part

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Speaker 1: time while continuing to work. But after two years in

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Speaker 1: the program, the dean told her she needed to choose

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Speaker 1: between her job and her studies. She chose the job,

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Speaker 1: and she never finished her doctorate. So she rose to

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Speaker 1: these incredible heights with two strikes against her, the fact

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Speaker 1: that she was a woman and the fact that she

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Speaker 1: didn't have a PhD. Be in her own words quote

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Speaker 1: years later, when I received three honorary doctorate degrees from

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Speaker 1: George Washington University, Brown University, and University of Michigan, I

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Speaker 1: decided that perhaps that decision had been the right one.

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Speaker 1: After all, in d eight, Gertrude bell Elian and George H.

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Speaker 1: Hitchings were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

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Speaker 1: In the words of the Nobel Assembly, they quote demonstrated

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Speaker 1: differences in nucleic acid metabolism between normal human cells, cancer cells, protozoa, bacteria,

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Speaker 1: and virus. On the basis of such differences, a series

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Speaker 1: of drugs were developed the block nucleic acid synthesis and

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Speaker 1: cancer cells and noxious organisms without damaging the normal human cells. Elien,

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Speaker 1: in that moment, became the fifth woman to earn a

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Speaker 1: Nobel Prize in medicine, the ninth woman to earn a

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Speaker 1: Nobel Prize in any science category, and one of a

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Speaker 1: very few people to earn a Nobel Prize in the

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Speaker 1: sciences without having a doctorate. As a side note, also

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Speaker 1: receiving the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in was

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Speaker 1: James W. Black, who developed beta blockers, which are used

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Speaker 1: to treat high blood pressure and heart disease, and H

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Speaker 1: two antagonists, which are used to treat peptic ulcers. Ellien

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Speaker 1: is also listed on the patents for more than forty drugs.

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Speaker 1: She received more than twenty honorary doctoral degrees. In nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty eight, she was awarded the Garvin Medal from the

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Speaker 1: American Chemical Society, and in nineteen eighty five she earned

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Speaker 1: the American Chemical Society Distinguished Chemist Award. She also earned

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Speaker 1: the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor, the National Medal

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Speaker 1: of Science, and the Lemlson M I T Lifetime Achievement Award,

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Speaker 1: among others. In nineteen ninety one, at the age of

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Speaker 1: seventy three, she became the first woman inducted into the

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Speaker 1: National Inventors Hall of Fame. She also served as a

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Speaker 1: leader in several organizations dedicated to health and research, including

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Speaker 1: serving on the board of directors of the National Cancer Institute,

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Speaker 1: the American Cancer Society, and the Multiple Sclerosis Society. She

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Speaker 1: was also a member of the American Academy of Pharmaceutical Scientists,

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Speaker 1: the National Academy of Sciences, the American Chemical Society, and

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Speaker 1: the American Association of Cancer Research, also serving as its president.

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Speaker 1: In addition to all of this, she did a lot

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Speaker 1: of outreach to encourage children to study the sciences, especially girls.

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Speaker 1: She was an avid traveler and photographer, and she also

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Speaker 1: loved music that she subscribed to the Metropolitan Opera for

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Speaker 1: forty years. Eventually, Bro's Welcome moved its headquarters to Chapel Hill,

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Speaker 1: North Carolina, and Elian moved as well. While in North Carolina,

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Speaker 1: she taught at both the University of North Carolina and

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Speaker 1: at Duke University in Durham. She died on in Chapel

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Speaker 1: Hill on Sunday, February one, at the age of eighty one.

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Speaker 1: I learned about her at the National Museum of Jewish

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Speaker 1: American History in Philadelphia. I had never heard of her before,

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Speaker 1: and it is amazing that she did such important and

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Speaker 1: groundbreaking work in the field of chemistry, and especially in

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Speaker 1: pharmaceutical chemistry without as would typically be expected a PhD.

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Speaker 1: Like for her to be at that rank within the

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Speaker 1: company without a p HD and also a woman is amazing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about another fascinating lady with the name

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Speaker 1: Bell in just a moment, but first we're gonna pause

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Speaker 1: and have a little sponsor break. Beginning in about eighteen ninety,

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Speaker 1: wealthy financier and banking titan John Pierpont Morgan, Sr. Started

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Speaker 1: amassing a huge collection of rare and antique books, artifacts

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Speaker 1: and art, and other assorted treasures at his home at

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Speaker 1: two nineteen Madison Avenue in New York City, he acquired

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Speaker 1: a Guttenberg Bible on vellum, the first of three Guttenberg

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Speaker 1: Bibles that he would go on to own. Also for

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Speaker 1: Shakespeare folios, signed manuscripts by John Keats and Charles Dickens

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Speaker 1: fourteen fifty nine edition of The Man's Psalter, on and on.

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Speaker 1: A very impressive collection. Uh. It was extensive and expensive

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Speaker 1: as well as being impressive, so much so that in

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Speaker 1: nine You Know Too, he commissioned an architect to build

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Speaker 1: a library adjoining his home to house it all. And

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Speaker 1: while he did seem to have the knowledge, taste, and

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Speaker 1: money to build a good collection, he didn't really have

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Speaker 1: a head for curating or organizing it. For that, he

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Speaker 1: needed a librarian. That librarian was belled Acosta Green, who

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Speaker 1: he hired in nineteen o five when she was twenty two.

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Speaker 1: Green born on December eighty three, was of Portuguese heritage.

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Speaker 1: She had been born in Virginia and grew up in Alexandria,

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Speaker 1: and she had gone directly from public school to working

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Speaker 1: at the Princeton University Library in nineteen o one or

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Speaker 1: nineteen o two. Although she had no prior training as

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Speaker 1: a librarian. Her time at Princeton had made her quite

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Speaker 1: skilled at cataloging and reference work, and she'd had a

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Speaker 1: lifelong affinity for rare books and illuminated manuscripts. I would

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Speaker 1: imagine that would seem like a dream job. Then, at

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Speaker 1: least that is the biography that she probably gave to

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Speaker 1: JP Morgan, who had been introduced to Green through his nephew,

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Speaker 1: Junior Spencer Morgan, associate librarian at Princeton, and it is

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Speaker 1: also the one she presented to the world at large.

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Speaker 1: And you will still find some of those details in

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Speaker 1: articles about her life. Green did go to public school

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Speaker 1: and work in a Princeton University library, but biographer Heidi

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Speaker 1: Artistone puts her birth at November eighteen seventy nine in Washington,

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Speaker 1: d C. So slightly different place than also a little

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Speaker 1: older from there, her family moved to New York in

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Speaker 1: eighty five, and then after graduating from high school, Green

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Speaker 1: went on to Teachers College, as well as possibly taking

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Speaker 1: a library apprenticeship at New York Public Library and a

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Speaker 1: bibliography course at Amherst College. And her name was not

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Speaker 1: initially Belle A Costa Green. It was Bell Marian Greener.

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Speaker 1: Her father, Richard T. Greener, was the first black man

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Speaker 1: to graduate from Harvard, the first black librarian and professor

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Speaker 1: at the University of South Carolina, and a former dean

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Speaker 1: at how University, a historically black university in Washington, d C.

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Speaker 1: Green may have had some Portuguese ancestry. Her parents both

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Speaker 1: had very light complexions, but the name the Costa and

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Speaker 1: the change of her last name from Greener to Green

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Speaker 1: both came after her father left the family and moved

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Speaker 1: to Russia to take on a consular post. The race

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Speaker 1: that was listed on Green's birth certificate was colored. It's

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Speaker 1: virtually certain that Belda Costa Green could not have gone

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Speaker 1: on to the life that she had and the work

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Speaker 1: that she did had she presented herself to the world

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Speaker 1: as a black woman. Her father was able to rise

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Speaker 1: to some prominence, largely thanks to when he was born.

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Speaker 1: His admission to Harvard and his job at USC were

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Speaker 1: products of reconstruction happening during the brief window when the

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Speaker 1: nation made reluctant strides towards rachel equality. But Belda Costa

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Speaker 1: Green went to work for JP. Morgan in nineteen o six,

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Speaker 1: well into the Jim Crow era. Even though the South

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Speaker 1: is a much more notorious reputation for segregation and racist violence,

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Speaker 1: segregation and racism were present in the rest of the

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Speaker 1: nation as well, although often in a somewhat subtler way.

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Speaker 1: We have a whole library of podcast episodes called not

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Speaker 1: Just in the South that relate to this whole idea,

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Speaker 1: which we will link to in our show notes. So,

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Speaker 1: after her father's departure, Green, along with her mother and siblings,

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Speaker 1: changed their last names, with a brother adding Da Costa

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Speaker 1: to his as well. They distanced themselves from Richard T. Greener,

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Speaker 1: his reputation and his color, and they joined the white world.

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Speaker 1: For Bell's part, she had far more opportunity available to

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Speaker 1: her as a white woman straight out of high school

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Speaker 1: than is the daughter of a black Harvard graduate who

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Speaker 1: had attended college and possibly completed a library apprenticeship. I

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Speaker 1: want to take just a moment to talk about the

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Speaker 1: idea of passing because it has come up yeah previous

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Speaker 1: episodes a couple of times, like the idea of passing.

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Speaker 1: So a person of color living within the white world

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Speaker 1: as a white person has this connotation of deception and

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Speaker 1: doing something wrong. But to be clear, what is wrong

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Speaker 1: is the society that made it impossible for people of

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Speaker 1: color to live the same life as white people had

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Speaker 1: access to. So what what she was basically doing here

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Speaker 1: was just not playing by the rules that white society

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Speaker 1: was establishing for people of color, doing her own thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it is one of those things that sometimes framed as

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Speaker 1: sort of sneaky, but when you look at it, really

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Speaker 1: is the comparative that Tracy laid out in these notes

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Speaker 1: of like, here's a woman who is educated, she has

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Speaker 1: all of these skills, she is super smart, but if

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Speaker 1: she presents herself as black, she will never get this job,

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Speaker 1: versus saying, oh, no, I'm just an enthusiast straight out

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Speaker 1: of high school, but I'm white and gets the job.

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Speaker 1: Like that's a pretty clear indicator of why passing became

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Speaker 1: something that people tried to do. Yes, So, for her

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Speaker 1: first three years working for Pierrepont, Morgan, Green spent most

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Speaker 1: of her time sorting out this collection he had accumulated,

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Speaker 1: organizing catalog and curating this whole haphazard mess into an

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Speaker 1: actual private library, and then from there, while still acting

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Speaker 1: as his personal librarian, she started traveling around the world

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Speaker 1: on his behalf, basically as an acquisitions agent in this.

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Speaker 1: Green was highly confident and completely competent. Particularly in her

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Speaker 1: early career. There was quite a bit of media coverage

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Speaker 1: that painted her as a fluberty gibbet, but she carried

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Speaker 1: herself with such assurance that it increasingly offset the fact

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Speaker 1: that she was, to everyone else's eye, a twentysomething woman

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Speaker 1: who had never been to college. She was also quite

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Speaker 1: stylish and fashionable, playing up her so called quote exotic appearance,

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Speaker 1: reportedly saying, quote just because I am a librarian doesn't

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Speaker 1: mean I have to dress like one. She was openly

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Speaker 1: flirtatious with everyone, and she had a string of lovers,

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Speaker 1: rumored to include women and men. She was briefly engaged

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Speaker 1: to a few of the latter. There were rumors that

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Speaker 1: she was involved with Morgan himself, which she neither confirmed

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Speaker 1: nor denied, just saying we tried when asked about it,

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Speaker 1: like what does that even mean? I don't know. Her

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Speaker 1: longest and most important relationship was with married art historian

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Speaker 1: Bernard Berenson, who she wrote more than six hundred letters

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Speaker 1: to between nineteen ten and nineteen four. Green also neither

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Speaker 1: confirmed nor denied speculation about whether she had quote crossed

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Speaker 1: the color line. Which went on throughout her life. Instead,

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Speaker 1: she lived exuberantly and passionately, presenting herself as a mysterious,

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Speaker 1: intriguing woman with a sharp tongue and shrewd bargaining skills,

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Speaker 1: who also became highly and internationally respected for her work

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Speaker 1: as a librarian and her ability to negotiate for new acquisitions.

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Speaker 1: Bald Acosta Green expanded pure pot Morgan's holdings into one

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Speaker 1: of the finest of a library collections in the world.

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Speaker 1: By the time Morgan died in nineteen thirteen, his library

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Speaker 1: contained six hundred rare and valuable volumes. It included an

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Speaker 1: incredible collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, along with a

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Speaker 1: sizeable collection of books printed by William Caxton, in large

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Speaker 1: part thanks to Green negotiating a private purchase the night

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Speaker 1: before an entire set was supposed to be sold at auction,

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Speaker 1: and one of her most famous acquisitions, she secured another

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Speaker 1: caxton an edition of La Morte d'artour forty two eight

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Speaker 1: hundred dollars, which is a lot of money, but it

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Speaker 1: is a whole lot less than the hundred thousand dollars

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Speaker 1: that Morgan had offered her had authorized her to pay

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Speaker 1: for it. After Morgan's death, Green's future was briefly uncertain.

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Speaker 1: His son JP Morgan Jr. Known as Jack, was not

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Speaker 1: particularly interested in his father's collection, but in about nine

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Speaker 1: twenty he changed his mind, and Green resumed her travels

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Speaker 1: to Europe to continue acquiring manuscripts, books, and art, now

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Speaker 1: hoping to develop the Morgan Collection until it rivaled the

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Speaker 1: world's finest public institutions and make it into something that

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Speaker 1: the public could access. Jack Morgan ultimately agreed with this goal,

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Speaker 1: and the Morgan Library became a public institution in nineteen

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Speaker 1: twenty four, at which point Green became its became its

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Speaker 1: first director. For the next twenty four years, Baldacosta Green

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Speaker 1: worked to transform the Morgan Library into an internationally recognized

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Speaker 1: center for academic study. She developed an information services department,

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Speaker 1: copying services department. She arranged public lectures and publications. She

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Speaker 1: also continued to travel and acquire new works until nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirty six, when her health started to decline. She worked

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Speaker 1: at the Morgan Library until her retirement in nineteen and

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Speaker 1: she died on May tenth, nineteen fifty. Although she was

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Speaker 1: seventy one and the people in her life thought she

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Speaker 1: was more like sixty seven. People wondered what there she

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Speaker 1: had been ill or whether her lifestyle had contributed to

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Speaker 1: her early death. She was a lifelong smoker and a

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Speaker 1: heavy drinker, and she'd always burned the candle at both

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Speaker 1: ends in a life of passion, travel and adventure. The

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Speaker 1: Morgan Library, which is now the Morgan Library and Museum,

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Speaker 1: held in an exhibition the year before her death which

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Speaker 1: featured more than two hundred and fifty of the most

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Speaker 1: notable items she had acquired for the library, and today

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Speaker 1: her presence is still definitely felt there. Uh there's including

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Speaker 1: a piece about her in the free audio tour that

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Speaker 1: you can get if you go to the Morgan, which

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Speaker 1: is how I first learned about her. It was actually

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Speaker 1: on my second trip to the Morrigan. For whatever reason,

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Speaker 1: my first time there I hadn't I hadn't flipped through

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Speaker 1: to that part, and I was there my second time

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Speaker 1: around with my husband and he came over to me

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Speaker 1: and was like, Hey, if you listen to this about

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Speaker 1: the librarian, listen to the one about the librarian. She

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Speaker 1: sounds amazing. So we have one more amazed woman to

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Speaker 1: talk about. After one more quick sponsor break, hanging in

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Speaker 1: skun Palace in Perth, Scotland is a striking and beautiful

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Speaker 1: portrait of two young women. The woman on the right

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Speaker 1: is in a pink gown with a gauzy white overlay.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty traditional, maybe even a little bit old fashioned

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Speaker 1: for the time. She's holding a book in one hand

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Speaker 1: and the other woman's farm and the other. Her expression

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Speaker 1: is a little reserved, but it has kind of a

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Speaker 1: playful little smile. The woman on the left is dressed

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Speaker 1: more exotically, a white satin dress with a silken blue

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Speaker 1: shawl flowing back from her arms. In a white turban

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Speaker 1: decorated with a fashionable ostrich plume and little gold embellishments.

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Speaker 1: She's carrying a basket of fruit and holding one finger

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Speaker 1: up to her cheek, wearing a decidedly mischievous expression. Given

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Speaker 1: their clothing, their jewelry, and the setting, both women are

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Speaker 1: clearly wealthy. They're also obviously fond of one another. The

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Speaker 1: paintings composition suggests that they might be sisters, and in

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Speaker 1: what's most striking about the portrait, which dates back to

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Speaker 1: the late seventeen seventies, that the woman on the right

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Speaker 1: is white and the woman on the left is black

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Speaker 1: in a dramatic departure from what would have been accepted

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Speaker 1: at the time and what is really depicted in paintings

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Speaker 1: from the time. It presents them as near equals. That

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Speaker 1: woman on the left is Dido Elizabeth Bell, and on

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Speaker 1: the right is her cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray. Both were

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Speaker 1: grandnieces of William Murray, first Earl of Mansfield and the

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Speaker 1: Lord Chief Justice of Britain, who along with his wife,

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Speaker 1: raised them at the estate of kentwood House. Their fathers

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Speaker 1: were two of Lord Mansfield's nephews. Lady Elizabeth Murray's father

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Speaker 1: was an ambassador and her mother had died when she

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Speaker 1: was still a baby, which is why she was being

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Speaker 1: raised at kentwood House. Died o Elizabeth Bell's father was

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Speaker 1: a British Navy officer, Sir John Lindsay. Her mother was

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Speaker 1: an enslaved woman named Maria, who Lindsay either stole or rescued,

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Speaker 1: depending on who you ask, from a Spanish vessel in

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Speaker 1: the Caribbean. We know virtually nothing concrete about Maria's life.

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Speaker 1: We don't know whether she was bound from Africa to

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Speaker 1: the Caribbean when Lindsay encountered the ship she was on,

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Speaker 1: or whether she had already been in the colonies and

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00:24:20,480 --> 00:24:23,960
Speaker 1: then was being transported elsewhere. We don't even know what

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Speaker 1: ship it was. We also know virtually nothing about her

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00:24:28,840 --> 00:24:32,760
Speaker 1: connection to John Lindsay. It was extremely common for a

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Speaker 1: ship's crew to rape enslave women in transit, but it

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00:24:36,480 --> 00:24:40,240
Speaker 1: was unheard of for a British officer to return home

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Speaker 1: with an enslaved woman who was carrying his child, which,

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Speaker 1: according to what the one surviving second hand account that

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Speaker 1: we have, is what John Lindsay did. It would have

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Speaker 1: been simple enough for Lindsay to set Dido and her

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Speaker 1: mother up with comfortable living arrangements somewhere in London, the

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Speaker 1: city's black community numbered about fifteen thousand in eighteenth century,

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Speaker 1: but instead he acknowledged his daughter and made arrangements for

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Speaker 1: her to be brought up as a lady in a

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Speaker 1: manner befitting his family and his station, and in seventeen

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Speaker 1: seventy two, roughly eleven years after Dido's birth, he gave

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Speaker 1: her mother land in Pensacola, Florida, suggesting both that she

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Speaker 1: was free and that they had an ongoing relationship. In

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Speaker 1: the years after Dido's birth. In seventeen sixty one, there

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Speaker 1: is just so much we don't know here. Bell and

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Speaker 1: her cousin were raised, not quite as equals, but much

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Speaker 1: closer to one another than one would have expected given

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Speaker 1: Bell's birth and color. Lord and Lady Murray had no children,

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Speaker 1: and while there's some debate about exactly what Bell's position

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Speaker 1: was in the family, they seem to have raised both

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Speaker 1: girls as daughters. Household accounts show orders for things like

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Speaker 1: betting and dresses being ordered in pairs. Dido was able

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Speaker 1: to read and write, and seems to have had the

430
00:25:56,560 --> 00:26:00,200
Speaker 1: same education that Elizabeth did at the same time time,

431
00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:04,040
Speaker 1: there were clear differences in their stations. Both ladies received

432
00:26:04,040 --> 00:26:08,000
Speaker 1: an allowance, but Didos was thirty pounds a year Elizabeth's

433
00:26:08,240 --> 00:26:11,919
Speaker 1: was one hundred. At least some of the time, Dido

434
00:26:12,080 --> 00:26:13,919
Speaker 1: was not allowed to eat with the family when they

435
00:26:13,960 --> 00:26:17,440
Speaker 1: were entertaining guests, and she was also expected to work.

436
00:26:17,880 --> 00:26:21,080
Speaker 1: She supervised the dairy and the poultry yard, and took

437
00:26:21,160 --> 00:26:24,720
Speaker 1: dictation for Lord Murray's letters. All of this was pretty

438
00:26:24,760 --> 00:26:28,320
Speaker 1: typical for how the aristocracy treated quote, poor relations and

439
00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:31,520
Speaker 1: out of wedlock children who they actually liked, but it

440
00:26:31,640 --> 00:26:34,320
Speaker 1: was not at all typical for how the aristocracy treated

441
00:26:34,359 --> 00:26:38,399
Speaker 1: people of color Bell's life at Kenwood House and her

442
00:26:38,440 --> 00:26:42,200
Speaker 1: relationship with the Lord Chief Justice drews and criticism. Lord

443
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:45,000
Speaker 1: Mansfield was already the subject of some scrutiny. He was

444
00:26:45,080 --> 00:26:48,119
Speaker 1: a scott from a line of Catholic Jacobites. Although he

445
00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:51,359
Speaker 1: had distanced himself from Scotland and from his Scottish family

446
00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:55,480
Speaker 1: in his young adulthood, having his nephew's multi racial natural

447
00:26:55,600 --> 00:26:58,720
Speaker 1: daughter living in his home and treating her with obvious

448
00:26:58,800 --> 00:27:03,359
Speaker 1: familial affection raised even more eyebrows. This was particularly true

449
00:27:03,440 --> 00:27:06,920
Speaker 1: when it came to Lord Mansfield's work as Lord Chief Justice,

450
00:27:07,200 --> 00:27:10,639
Speaker 1: especially when it came to cases relating to slavery. In

451
00:27:10,760 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy two, Lord Mansfield heard what's known as the

452
00:27:13,920 --> 00:27:19,200
Speaker 1: Somerset case. Charles Stewart, accustoms official from Boston, had brought

453
00:27:19,320 --> 00:27:24,680
Speaker 1: his enslaved servant, James Somerset with him to England. Somerset escaped,

454
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:28,159
Speaker 1: was recaptured, and was forced onto a ship bound for

455
00:27:28,280 --> 00:27:32,960
Speaker 1: Jamaica to be sold back into slavery. So the question

456
00:27:33,240 --> 00:27:36,440
Speaker 1: was whether the capture and sale of Somerset was lawful.

457
00:27:37,160 --> 00:27:40,919
Speaker 1: After a lengthy and often delayed process, Mansfield real quote,

458
00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:44,119
Speaker 1: no master ever was allowed here to take a slave

459
00:27:44,200 --> 00:27:46,800
Speaker 1: by force, to be sold abroad because he deserted from

460
00:27:46,840 --> 00:27:50,560
Speaker 1: his service, or for any other reason whatsoever. Therefore the

461
00:27:50,640 --> 00:27:54,880
Speaker 1: man must be discharged. This meant the enslaved people who

462
00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:59,120
Speaker 1: had escaped their enslavement in England could not be recaptured

463
00:27:59,240 --> 00:28:02,639
Speaker 1: and sold back into slavery, and more specifically, that James

464
00:28:02,760 --> 00:28:07,000
Speaker 1: Somerset was free. Mansfield's ruling also noted that there was

465
00:28:07,160 --> 00:28:11,600
Speaker 1: nothing in English common law specifically establishing slavery as legal,

466
00:28:12,440 --> 00:28:15,239
Speaker 1: so the decision was widely misunderstood at the time as

467
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:19,680
Speaker 1: freeing all slaves in Britain immediately. There continues to be

468
00:28:19,840 --> 00:28:22,280
Speaker 1: some debate about how it was put into practice at

469
00:28:22,320 --> 00:28:24,879
Speaker 1: the time, but this was certainly more of a starting

470
00:28:24,920 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 1: point than an ending point, bolstering the movement for abolition

471
00:28:28,359 --> 00:28:34,160
Speaker 1: throughout the British Empire. So naysayers suggested that Mansfield's decision

472
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:37,280
Speaker 1: was influenced by the by the fact that Dido Elizabeth

473
00:28:37,320 --> 00:28:39,480
Speaker 1: Bell was living in his home as a member of

474
00:28:39,600 --> 00:28:43,400
Speaker 1: his family, It's certainly possible or even probable, that her

475
00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:47,040
Speaker 1: place in his life shaped his views. At multiple points

476
00:28:47,120 --> 00:28:51,120
Speaker 1: he described slavery as odious and unnatural, but his work

477
00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:58,200
Speaker 1: as Lord Chief justice was really dedicated to meticulously interpreting, clarifying, consolidating,

478
00:28:58,320 --> 00:29:02,800
Speaker 1: and following the law, particularly commercial law, and there are

479
00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:05,200
Speaker 1: other cases where it's hard to imagine that he was

480
00:29:05,320 --> 00:29:08,760
Speaker 1: thinking of Bell at all. For example, he was also

481
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:11,960
Speaker 1: involved in the case of the Zong massacre. This was

482
00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:14,920
Speaker 1: a seventy one incident in which the crew of a

483
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:18,320
Speaker 1: slave ship threw more than one hundred sick and dying

484
00:29:18,480 --> 00:29:22,360
Speaker 1: enslaved people overboard during an epidemic, claiming that this was

485
00:29:22,520 --> 00:29:25,760
Speaker 1: necessary because the ship was running out of water. The

486
00:29:25,840 --> 00:29:28,920
Speaker 1: ship's owners filed an insurance claim over the loss of

487
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:33,200
Speaker 1: their enslaved property, which was granted. Lord Mansfield held a

488
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:38,440
Speaker 1: hearing regarding the insurer's appeal in seventeen eighty three. Lord

489
00:29:38,520 --> 00:29:41,520
Speaker 1: Mansfield did suggest that a new trial might be in order,

490
00:29:41,920 --> 00:29:44,960
Speaker 1: largely because of evidence that the ship's captain and crew

491
00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:48,040
Speaker 1: had passed up the opportunity to take on fresh water

492
00:29:48,560 --> 00:29:52,120
Speaker 1: and had continued calling the enslaved people after rains had

493
00:29:52,320 --> 00:29:56,200
Speaker 1: replenished the water supply, But he didn't really consider the

494
00:29:56,280 --> 00:29:59,720
Speaker 1: question of whether this was murder. He approached it strictly

495
00:29:59,840 --> 00:30:03,680
Speaker 1: for the perspective that the people on board were insured property.

496
00:30:04,080 --> 00:30:07,720
Speaker 1: Even at one point, comparing them to horses. The insurers

497
00:30:07,960 --> 00:30:10,600
Speaker 1: may be worried that another trial might lead to murder

498
00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:13,600
Speaker 1: convictions stopped pursuing the case, even though Man's Field down

499
00:30:13,640 --> 00:30:17,959
Speaker 1: in their favor. Dido Elizabeth Bell lived with Lord Mansfield

500
00:30:18,080 --> 00:30:22,240
Speaker 1: until his death in seventeen. At that point, his wife

501
00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:25,640
Speaker 1: Elizabeth had also died, and the younger lady, Elizabeth Murray,

502
00:30:25,800 --> 00:30:29,360
Speaker 1: had married and left the house. Lord Mansfield left Bell

503
00:30:29,520 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 1: five hundred pounds upon his death, plus one hundred pounds

504
00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:35,560
Speaker 1: a year for the rest of her life. In his will,

505
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:38,680
Speaker 1: he also confirmed that she was free, so that there

506
00:30:38,720 --> 00:30:41,480
Speaker 1: would be no doubt about it in anyone else's mind.

507
00:30:43,320 --> 00:30:45,520
Speaker 1: It's also the way that he phrased that was not

508
00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:48,680
Speaker 1: that he granted her her freedom, but that he confirmed it,

509
00:30:48,800 --> 00:30:52,520
Speaker 1: so he was basically confirming something that already existed. The

510
00:30:52,640 --> 00:30:56,760
Speaker 1: following year, Dido married a Frenchman named John Davinier, and

511
00:30:56,840 --> 00:30:58,920
Speaker 1: they lived on land that had been left to her

512
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:01,800
Speaker 1: by her father, who by this point had also died,

513
00:31:02,240 --> 00:31:05,080
Speaker 1: leaving a thousand pounds to his children, named in his

514
00:31:05,160 --> 00:31:08,520
Speaker 1: will as Elizabeth and John. It's widely believed that this

515
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:12,360
Speaker 1: Elizabeth is died of Elizabeth Bell and not another Elizabeth,

516
00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:15,760
Speaker 1: even though Elizabeth was a really common name in that family. Obviously,

517
00:31:16,560 --> 00:31:19,680
Speaker 1: John would have been either her brother or a half

518
00:31:19,760 --> 00:31:23,320
Speaker 1: brother by another woman. John Lindsay had no children with

519
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:27,080
Speaker 1: his wife Dido, and her husband John had at least

520
00:31:27,120 --> 00:31:30,680
Speaker 1: three children together and could have lived comfortably on her income.

521
00:31:31,360 --> 00:31:34,280
Speaker 1: There's little else about her in the historical record, but

522
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:36,640
Speaker 1: she died at the age of forty two in July

523
00:31:36,880 --> 00:31:41,600
Speaker 1: of eighteen o four. Her father's obituary and the London Chronicle, though,

524
00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:44,400
Speaker 1: suggests that she was admired outside the family, and also

525
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:47,360
Speaker 1: sums up her story a little bit. It describes her

526
00:31:47,400 --> 00:31:49,760
Speaker 1: as quote a Mulatto who has been brought up in

527
00:31:49,840 --> 00:31:53,720
Speaker 1: Lord Mansfield's family almost from her infancy, and whose amiable

528
00:31:53,840 --> 00:31:58,239
Speaker 1: disposition and accomplishments have earned her the highest respect from

529
00:31:58,320 --> 00:32:02,200
Speaker 1: all his Lordship's relations and visitants. There is also a

530
00:32:02,400 --> 00:32:06,719
Speaker 1: highly fictionalized dramatization of her life, a film that came

531
00:32:06,720 --> 00:32:08,800
Speaker 1: out a couple of years ago that's simply titled Bell.

532
00:32:09,800 --> 00:32:15,239
Speaker 1: I watched that. It's enjoyable, but it is highly fictional. Also, uh,

533
00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:20,960
Speaker 1: at times maybe a little melodramatic. What a movie melodramatic? Ever,

534
00:32:22,240 --> 00:32:25,920
Speaker 1: so those are those are the three astonishing bells that

535
00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:28,720
Speaker 1: I found talked about on the podcast today. I'm not

536
00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:31,120
Speaker 1: going to disguise the fact that unabashedly love all of them.

537
00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:38,520
Speaker 1: Did you find astonishing email? Uh? Not exactly what I

538
00:32:38,560 --> 00:32:41,400
Speaker 1: did find some email. It is from Carrie and it

539
00:32:41,520 --> 00:32:44,400
Speaker 1: is about our recent two parterre on the Fort Shot

540
00:32:44,480 --> 00:32:48,800
Speaker 1: Indian School basketball team, specifically Part two, and Carrie says,

541
00:32:48,960 --> 00:32:51,840
Speaker 1: Dear Holly and Tracy, I just finished listening to Fort

542
00:32:51,880 --> 00:32:55,240
Speaker 1: Shaw Indian School Basketball Champions Part two podcast. In the

543
00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:58,120
Speaker 1: description of the St. Louis World's Fair, the fact that

544
00:32:58,240 --> 00:33:01,080
Speaker 1: babies and incubators were on display there was mentioned. This

545
00:33:01,240 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 1: was no surprise to me, as I had previously written

546
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:06,960
Speaker 1: an article on the most famous of these incubator babies.

547
00:33:07,560 --> 00:33:10,640
Speaker 1: A long running dispute over the custody of the baby

548
00:33:10,720 --> 00:33:13,120
Speaker 1: between the birth mother and a woman who wanted to

549
00:33:13,240 --> 00:33:16,600
Speaker 1: adopt the baby drug on for years and at one

550
00:33:16,640 --> 00:33:20,240
Speaker 1: point involved kidnapping. The case involved the Kansas Supreme Court,

551
00:33:20,320 --> 00:33:23,440
Speaker 1: the Illinois Supreme Court, and finally several decisions by the

552
00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:26,560
Speaker 1: United States Supreme Court the debate. The debate was a

553
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:29,320
Speaker 1: sensation and made national headlines on and off rou for

554
00:33:29,440 --> 00:33:32,720
Speaker 1: ten years, little girl named Marian by her birth mother

555
00:33:32,840 --> 00:33:35,880
Speaker 1: and Dorothy by the attempted adopted mother, was known across

556
00:33:35,960 --> 00:33:39,520
Speaker 1: the country as the incubator baby. Eventually the birth mother

557
00:33:39,680 --> 00:33:42,440
Speaker 1: one out and what is a heartrending story of two women,

558
00:33:42,480 --> 00:33:44,560
Speaker 1: their love for one baby girl and the links they

559
00:33:44,560 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 1: would go to try to get custody of her. H

560
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:50,800
Speaker 1: And then she sent an article that she wrote about

561
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:54,400
Speaker 1: this to us. UM. This is the major emphasis of

562
00:33:54,480 --> 00:33:57,280
Speaker 1: the article is the local connection to the story. UM.

563
00:33:57,520 --> 00:34:00,440
Speaker 1: But Uh points out at the time everybody had heard

564
00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:03,320
Speaker 1: of this incubator baby. She says, I think this would

565
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:05,320
Speaker 1: make a good topic for one of your podcasts. Keep

566
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:08,239
Speaker 1: up the good work, sincerely, Carrie. Yes. So, in addition

567
00:34:08,320 --> 00:34:12,480
Speaker 1: to these incubator babies in the World's Fair, there were

568
00:34:12,600 --> 00:34:16,279
Speaker 1: other incubator babies that were in public display, like is

569
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:21,040
Speaker 1: that at at like at Tony Island, um, and that

570
00:34:21,239 --> 00:34:23,400
Speaker 1: that has come up as a podcast request before, so

571
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:25,160
Speaker 1: it may be something we do in the future. A

572
00:34:25,239 --> 00:34:27,760
Speaker 1: lot of times it was like the the hospitals didn't

573
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:32,120
Speaker 1: have funding for all these incubators, but if they made

574
00:34:32,160 --> 00:34:35,520
Speaker 1: a public display of the incubators and charged admission, they

575
00:34:35,560 --> 00:34:38,799
Speaker 1: could keep the program running. There's a lot of complicated

576
00:34:38,840 --> 00:34:42,919
Speaker 1: ethics going on there, for sure. It's like you, uh, yeah,

577
00:34:43,960 --> 00:34:45,840
Speaker 1: it's easy to see that it is not as simple

578
00:34:45,920 --> 00:34:50,359
Speaker 1: as a black and white wrong and right situation there. Yeah,

579
00:34:50,480 --> 00:34:52,799
Speaker 1: maybe in terms of custody, the custody I haven't read

580
00:34:52,840 --> 00:34:54,680
Speaker 1: the custody article, to be honest, though, I don't know

581
00:34:54,800 --> 00:34:57,120
Speaker 1: if that is entirely clear cut. But yeah, the question

582
00:34:57,200 --> 00:35:00,880
Speaker 1: of whether it's ethical to to just play babies for

583
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:04,600
Speaker 1: public consumption if not displaying them means that they wouldn't like,

584
00:35:04,640 --> 00:35:07,200
Speaker 1: that's a whole complicated thing. Yeah, I imagine it would

585
00:35:07,200 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 1: be a scenario on the Good Place. It's sort of

586
00:35:10,200 --> 00:35:16,720
Speaker 1: is a scenario on The Simpsons where a boo afoo

587
00:35:16,880 --> 00:35:19,200
Speaker 1: and his wife have so many children that they cannot

588
00:35:19,239 --> 00:35:22,719
Speaker 1: reasonably manage or um provide for them, and so they

589
00:35:22,840 --> 00:35:25,239
Speaker 1: kind of make a bad deal with someone who wants

590
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:28,240
Speaker 1: to basically make them an entertainment object. But they're thinking

591
00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:30,960
Speaker 1: is that it will enable us to you know, actually

592
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:32,880
Speaker 1: support these children. But it turned up to go not

593
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:36,800
Speaker 1: so well. But it's the Simpsons. So aside from the

594
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:40,560
Speaker 1: issues raised by Harry Kondabolou in his recent documentary The

595
00:35:40,600 --> 00:35:43,320
Speaker 1: Trouble with a boo. The story itself is you know it.

596
00:35:43,480 --> 00:35:46,479
Speaker 1: It plays out in a humorous and goofy way. Yeah,

597
00:35:47,360 --> 00:35:49,439
Speaker 1: that sounds in a way horrifying. I have not seen

598
00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:53,439
Speaker 1: that episode, so uh if you would like to write

599
00:35:53,480 --> 00:35:55,680
Speaker 1: to us about this or any other podcast or a

600
00:35:55,800 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: history podcast at how stuffworks dot com. We're all over

601
00:35:59,360 --> 00:36:05,520
Speaker 1: social media as missed in History, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram. Uh.

602
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:08,359
Speaker 1: We have a website missed in History dot com where

603
00:36:08,400 --> 00:36:10,440
Speaker 1: you can find show notes for all the episodes we

604
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:12,640
Speaker 1: have ever worked on. There are pictures of all three

605
00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:15,360
Speaker 1: of these women. Two of them are portraits, and the

606
00:36:15,440 --> 00:36:20,319
Speaker 1: one of Belba Costa Green looks I'm just gonna say,

607
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:24,880
Speaker 1: a lot wider than photos of her did um. So

608
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:28,759
Speaker 1: note that if you have a look at that, that's

609
00:36:28,800 --> 00:36:31,680
Speaker 1: on our website, along with a searchable archive every episode

610
00:36:31,719 --> 00:36:33,360
Speaker 1: we have ever done. So you can do all that

611
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:36,120
Speaker 1: and a whole lot more at our website, which is

612
00:36:36,239 --> 00:36:43,279
Speaker 1: missed in History dot com. For more on this and

613
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:46,160
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, is it howtof works dot com