Speaker 1: School of Humans. Huge announcement for American Filth.
Speaker 2: The Brits have bravely asked American Filth to travel across
Speaker 2: the Pond and do a live recording at the Cheerful
Speaker 2: Earful Podcast Festival in London. The show will be on Tuesday,
Speaker 2: October fifteenth at apm at the Bedford Pub And if
Speaker 2: you want to come to the show, I got the
Speaker 2: tickets linked in the show description or on the American
Speaker 2: Filth Instagram, or you can visit the Cheerful Earful website
Speaker 2: at Cheerfulearful dot co dot uk. It's going to be
Speaker 2: really fun and also it's very cheap. Wow but blah
Speaker 2: blah blah live events. You guys are probably wondering what's
Speaker 2: today's episode about. Well, it's about a very bizarre incident
Speaker 2: in Boston where a woman got hanged for stealing a bonnet.
Speaker 2: Cue the theme song. This is American Filth and I'm
Speaker 2: Gabby Watts. Every week I tell you a filthy story
Speaker 2: from American history. Today's episode executed for stealing a bonnet
Speaker 2: so in Boston on October ninth, seventeen eighty nine, several
Speaker 2: newspapers reported on a woman named Rachel Wall, who had
Speaker 2: been executed the day before for quote, snatching a bonnet
Speaker 2: off from another woman's head. This is pretty unbelievable that
Speaker 2: a woman would be hanged for merely stealing a bonnet.
Speaker 3: Like.
Speaker 2: Yes, at the time seventeen eighty nine people were hanged
Speaker 2: for theft, but that wasn't happening every day, and also
Speaker 2: women were generally given more lenient sentences. But this hat
Speaker 2: stealing woman, Rachel Wall, was hanged alongside three other men,
Speaker 2: all convicted of highway robbery, but again still a bonnet
Speaker 2: that was worth a mere seven shillings. The punishment seems
Speaker 2: a bit outsized for the crime, does it not. If
Speaker 2: this is what happens when you steal a bonnet, just
Speaker 2: imagine what they would have done to Winona Wrider. The
Speaker 2: young woman who had her bonnet snatched was named Margaret Bender.
Speaker 2: She was about seventeen years old, and even she didn't
Speaker 2: want the thief, Rachel.
Speaker 1: Wall, to be hanged.
Speaker 2: Her granddaughter wrote about it and said, it was said
Speaker 2: that my grandmother never ceased to deplore the fact that
Speaker 2: a life was forfeited.
Speaker 1: On her account.
Speaker 2: And so yes, stealing a bonnet being executed for it
Speaker 2: seems crazy. So I did some further investigation wow, and
Speaker 2: found that these newspaper pas that reported on Rachel Wall
Speaker 2: were being a bit hyperbolic, as it was not just
Speaker 2: a bonnet that this lady stole. So what actually happened.
Speaker 2: Here's what one Boston newspaper wrote on April second, seventeen
Speaker 2: eighty nine, a couple weeks after the original theft quote.
Speaker 2: A singular kind of robbery for this part of the
Speaker 2: world took place on Friday evening last as a woman
Speaker 2: was walking alone. She was met by another woman who
Speaker 2: seized hold of her and stopped her mouth with her
Speaker 2: handkerchief and tore from her head her bonnet and cushion,
Speaker 2: after which she flung her down, took her shoes and buckles,
Speaker 2: and then fled. She was soon after overtaken and then
Speaker 2: committed to jail. So Wow, Clearly Rachel Wall did more
Speaker 2: than steal a bonnet. She also stole some shoes and buckles.
Speaker 2: And not only that, she also violently assaulted Margaret Bender.
Speaker 2: You might be wondering what does it mean A seized
Speaker 2: hold of Margaret Bender and stopped her mouth. Well, according
Speaker 2: to Margaret Bender's granddaughter, Rachel Wall pulled out Margaret's tongue
Speaker 2: and seemed.
Speaker 1: Like she was going to rip it out, which she
Speaker 1: did not.
Speaker 2: But still, even with that added to Rachel's crimes, Margaret
Speaker 2: did not want Rachel hanged, and so shoes, buckle's bonnet,
Speaker 2: violent assault. Those are the crimes, but that's not the
Speaker 2: end of them. If we look at the actual arrest
Speaker 2: record of Rachel Wall, it alludes to her having an
Speaker 2: extensive criminal past. In the arrest record, it says that
Speaker 2: Rachel committed a quote sundry of other thefts, a sundry
Speaker 2: heaven forbid. Some of Rachel Wall's previous hijinks were described
Speaker 2: on April twenty fifth, seventeen eighty nine in the record
Speaker 2: of the Supreme Judicial Court. At this point, Rachel Wall
Speaker 2: has just been sitting in jail for months. First, in
Speaker 2: the record, it identifies Rachel Wall as of Boston and
Speaker 2: a spinster rude.
Speaker 1: I don't know why they need to say that.
Speaker 2: And then the record outlines some of Wall's previous encounters
Speaker 2: with the law, like, for example, she quote was duly
Speaker 2: convicted of feloniously stealing, taking and carrying away the goods
Speaker 2: and chattels of Perez Morton, Okay, and now we're getting
Speaker 2: about spicyer. You guys remember Perez Morton, right, He was
Speaker 2: that lawyer and politician in Boston who had an affair
Speaker 2: with his wife's younger sister, and then that younger sister
Speaker 2: killed herself, and then their neighbor wrote a book about
Speaker 2: the whole thing, hoping to make a lot of money,
Speaker 2: but then it was a flop.
Speaker 1: You guys remember him well.
Speaker 2: The same year that that scandal broke, Rachel Wall apparently
Speaker 2: stole his stuff. At the time, Perez was spending a
Speaker 2: lot of money and time trying to get that book
Speaker 2: about his family off the shelves, so he was in
Speaker 2: a litigious mood. Rachel really had no chance of getting
Speaker 2: away with her crimes against him, But Perez wasn't the
Speaker 2: only person she stole from. The court record continues on
Speaker 2: the last Tuesday of August in the year of our
Speaker 2: Lord seventeen eighty eight, that said Rachel Wall was duly
Speaker 2: convicted of breaking and entering the dwelling house of one
Speaker 2: Lumiel Ludden, and feloniously stealing, taking and carrying away the
Speaker 2: goods and chattels of said Loumiel.
Speaker 1: Who is that guy? Unclear?
Speaker 2: But he was probably a merchant in Boston, but what
Speaker 2: is clear is that Rachel had a thirst for theft
Speaker 2: hashtag theft thirsty. At Wall's trial for the stolen bonnet,
Speaker 2: the jury found her guilty and then the Attorney general
Speaker 2: moved that she be executed for highway robbery. The governor
Speaker 2: of Massachusetts at the time was John Hancock. He's the
Speaker 2: dude who signed the Declaration of Independence and really big handwriting,
Speaker 2: and he's the one who signed her execution notice. So
Speaker 2: on October eighth, seventeen eighty nine, Rachel Wall, along with
Speaker 2: those three men who were also accused of highway robbery,
Speaker 2: were brought to the Boston Common where thousands of people
Speaker 2: had gathered to watch, and they were hanged until dead.
Speaker 2: Rachel Wall was twenty nine, but still to be hanged
Speaker 2: for stealing a bonnet is extreme. To be hanged for
Speaker 2: stealing the bonnet and then also two previous thefts, that
Speaker 2: also seems extreme, But perhaps the Bostonians of.
Speaker 1: The law were eager to hang her.
Speaker 2: Because she was in fact guilty of other crimes, crimes
Speaker 2: that they didn't have enough evidence to prosecute. Because Rachel
Speaker 2: Wall might have been responsible for killing twenty four people
Speaker 2: because Wall was a pirate. We'll be right back after
Speaker 2: these soothing advertisements. In colonial America, there was a fair
Speaker 2: amount of pirate stuff going on. You know, you guys
Speaker 2: have seen the pirates of the Caribbee and you get it.
Speaker 2: Because just as the founders of this United States wanted
Speaker 2: freedom from mommy England, other people wanted freedom from everyone
Speaker 2: to pillage and plunder as much as they wanted in
Speaker 2: the relatively lawless oceans of the Americas. Along with pirates,
Speaker 2: there are also privateers, people who privately owned ships and
Speaker 2: worked on commission Sometimes they'd run slave ships, or they'd
Speaker 2: get commissioned by governments to fight, kind of like seafaring mercenaries.
Speaker 2: A lot of privateers were hired by the Continental Congress
Speaker 2: during the American Revolution to duke it out with Britain's
Speaker 2: powerful navy. Britain also hired privateers, and so while privateers
Speaker 2: aren't pirates, sometimes pirates would become privateers. You know, sometimes
Speaker 2: it makes business sense to work with the law, sometimes
Speaker 2: it doesn't. But Rachel Wall, for about a year of
Speaker 2: her life, was pretty much a straight up pirate. So
Speaker 2: let's hear directly from Rachel Wall. The evening before her execution,
Speaker 2: Boston Newspapers published her last words. It's basically the only
Speaker 2: source about her life. And while I want to believe women,
Speaker 2: Rachel does seem to exaggerate and law just a little bit.
Speaker 2: So here's how the last words began, read by one
Speaker 2: of our producers, Julia christgau.
Speaker 3: I. Rachel Wall was born in the town of Carlisle
Speaker 3: in the state of Pennsylvania in the year seventeen sixty,
Speaker 3: of honest and reputable parents who were alive and in
Speaker 3: good health. Not long since. I had three brothers and
Speaker 3: two sisters alive and will My father was a farmer,
Speaker 3: and my parents gave me a good education and instructed
Speaker 3: me in the fundamental principles of the Christian religion and
Speaker 3: taught me the fear of God. And if I had
Speaker 3: followed the good advice, I should never have come to
Speaker 3: this untimely fate.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, isn't she a godly gal. I'm sure she's
Speaker 2: presenting herself as a God fearing woman because that's what
Speaker 2: she is, not because she's trying to garner sympathy before
Speaker 2: her execution aka incite a wild Christian mob that prevents
Speaker 2: her death. But anyway, most scholars agree with this account.
Speaker 2: At the beginning, Rachel was born in seventeen sixty in Carlisle.
Speaker 1: Her last name was Schmidt.
Speaker 2: And though she's saying these nice things about her parents,
Speaker 2: she didn't seem that happy as a farmer's daughter. She
Speaker 2: would spend a lot of time by the waterfront and
Speaker 2: even ran away a few times.
Speaker 3: I left my parents without their consent when I was
Speaker 3: very young, and returning again was received by them, but
Speaker 3: could not be contented. Therefore I tarried with them. But
Speaker 3: two years before I left them again, and I've never
Speaker 3: seen him since.
Speaker 2: And what was the reason that Rachel left her parents
Speaker 2: this last.
Speaker 1: Time, Well, she met a man. One day.
Speaker 2: She was down by the waterfront and she was getting
Speaker 2: harassed by some other young women. They were beating her up,
Speaker 2: but the fight got broken up by a man named
Speaker 2: George Wall.
Speaker 1: Not much is known about George.
Speaker 2: But Rachel Smith fell in love with this dastardly man immediately.
Speaker 2: Well he might have not been dastardly at the time,
Speaker 2: but he seemed like a roguish type, a rambling man, much.
Speaker 1: Unlike her family, who were all farmers.
Speaker 2: But eventually George and Rachel got married and they left
Speaker 2: Carlyle forever.
Speaker 3: If I had never seen him, I should not have
Speaker 3: left my parents. I went with him to Philadelphia. We
Speaker 3: tarried there sometime, but left that place and went to
Speaker 3: New York, where we stayed about three months. From thence
Speaker 3: we came to Boston, where he tarried with me sometime
Speaker 3: and then went off, leaving me an entire stranger.
Speaker 2: See, George becomes pretty dastardly soon after their marriage, but
Speaker 2: Rachel's making it seem that he up and.
Speaker 1: Left her for no good reason.
Speaker 2: But it's likely what happened is that he got a
Speaker 2: job as a fisherman and went out to sea to work.
Speaker 2: But still Rachel was all alone in Boston and she
Speaker 2: needed to make some money, so she entered the workforce
Speaker 2: as a servant. She was, according to her last words,
Speaker 2: perfectly happy with that honest profession. I'm sure what seems
Speaker 2: to have happened is during his fishermen job, George met
Speaker 2: five sailors, and he and those sailors concocted a plan.
Speaker 2: Why continue sailing the ocean blue working for the man
Speaker 2: when they could commandeer their own vessel and make more
Speaker 2: money by stealing. Obviously, so the sailors and George came
Speaker 2: home and convinced their lovers to come along and join
Speaker 2: them in a life of piracy. That's why, ladies, if
Speaker 2: you ever match with a guy on tender, you need
Speaker 2: to make sure whether or not he's going to try
Speaker 2: to convince you to be a pirate with him.
Speaker 1: Okay, just check that, see if they have anything written
Speaker 1: about it in their bio.
Speaker 2: But also, if you and your couple friends are looking
Speaker 2: to spice up your life, why not try to find
Speaker 2: a boat and become pirates. So in seventeen eighty one,
Speaker 2: this band of fishermen's sailors and their lovers commandeered a
Speaker 2: boat called the Essex and sailed to the Isle of Shoals,
Speaker 2: a group of islands near the coast of New Hampshire
Speaker 2: and Maine. This is where they devised a piracy scheme.
Speaker 2: What they would do is after a storm, they would
Speaker 2: pretend their boat was broken and they needed help. While
Speaker 2: the rest of the crew hid. Rachel posed as a
Speaker 2: lady in distress and yelled out to passing boats being like, oh, please.
Speaker 1: Help me, I'm a sad shipwrecked lady.
Speaker 2: And then and the well meaning crews of the other
Speaker 2: boats came and range to help Rachel and the.
Speaker 1: Others would attack.
Speaker 2: That's why it's important never to help anyone. After the tussle,
Speaker 2: the Essex crew would steal the goods and money on
Speaker 2: board the other ship, and then they would murder everyone
Speaker 2: over their brief stent as pirates. From seventeen eighty one
Speaker 2: to seventeen eighty two, the Essex robbed about a dozen ships,
Speaker 2: pilfering about six thousand dollars worth of goods and killing
Speaker 2: probably around twenty four people. But Rachel, remember she's a good,
Speaker 2: god fearing woman. She denied ever murdering anyone.
Speaker 3: I acknowledge myself to have been guilty of a great
Speaker 3: many crimes, including sabbath breaking, stealing, lying, disobedience to parents,
Speaker 3: and almost every other sin a person could commit except murder.
Speaker 3: And I have not lived in the fear of God,
Speaker 3: nor regarded the kind admonitions and counsels of men. In short,
Speaker 3: the many small crimes I've committed are too numerous to mention,
Speaker 3: and is sheep.
Speaker 2: But Rachel's pirate life would quickly come to an end.
Speaker 2: In seventeen eighty two, the Essex got caught in a
Speaker 2: storm and shipwrecked off the coast. Several of the crew
Speaker 2: members died, but it's not clear what happened to George.
Speaker 2: Rachel survived, and after the shipwreck she headed back to
Speaker 2: Boston to get back to her happy life as a servant,
Speaker 2: you know, the life she would have been happy to
Speaker 2: lead without that dastardly husband of hers. In her job interviews,
Speaker 2: I imagine she was quite careful about the question, what's
Speaker 2: this blank year in your resume?
Speaker 1: What were you do?
Speaker 2: When people hate when they have a servant who is
Speaker 2: also a pirate. But even though Rachel had given up
Speaker 2: piracy technically, she continued to steal stuff as a side hustle.
Speaker 2: But it's not her fault that crime is so much
Speaker 2: more profitable than honest labor. Honestly, in the middle of
Speaker 2: the night, Rachel started sneaking on board ships docked in
Speaker 2: the harbor and stealing stuff, calling these evenings of thieving.
Speaker 1: Her nocturnal excursions.
Speaker 2: Like one time in seventeen eighty seven she crept on
Speaker 2: board a ship captained by a Frenchman, Yuck the French.
Speaker 2: She found that the door to the captain's cabin wasn't locked,
Speaker 2: so she snuck in and saw the captain and his
Speaker 2: mate asleep in their beds. I mean, come on, it
Speaker 2: was unlocked. It's as if they were asking for it.
Speaker 2: In the cabin, Rachel found a black silk bag that
Speaker 2: contained more than thirty pounds like the money, not like
Speaker 2: just thirty pounds of random pounds. And guess where it
Speaker 2: was under the captain's head. Literally, he was snoozing on
Speaker 2: top of his money. But Rachel is so good at stealing,
Speaker 2: she was just able to get that thing right out
Speaker 2: of there and scud daddle off the ship. When she
Speaker 2: saw that bounty, she quote immediately sees the booty and
Speaker 2: decamped therewith as soon as possible. She then obviously spent
Speaker 2: her money very responsibly by partying. She quote spent it
Speaker 2: freely in company as wicked as myself. Another time, Rachel
Speaker 2: went on board another ship and found the captain and
Speaker 2: the entire crew asleep. A silver watch was dangling from
Speaker 2: the ceiling above the captain's head. She took that, obviously,
Speaker 2: and then also took the silver buckles of his shoes.
Speaker 2: She then went through everybody else's stuff and pocketed all
Speaker 2: their money. Again, she needed to hang out with some
Speaker 2: wicked company. She took all this stuff to quote make
Speaker 2: myself merry among my evil companions. Along with detailing these
Speaker 2: thefts and her final words, Rachel Wall relayed another tale
Speaker 2: that concerned the fate of her husband George Wall after
Speaker 2: the shipwreck in seventeen eighty two. As I said, it
Speaker 2: wasn't clear what happened to George, but Rachel knew his whereabouts.
Speaker 2: In seventeen eighty five, he was in the same jail
Speaker 2: where she gave her last words. At that time, Rachel
Speaker 2: was going to help him escape. How well, she had
Speaker 2: some tools, including a saw and a file, which he
Speaker 2: could use to escape the jail from the inside. But
Speaker 2: obviously she had to sneak those tools in. You can't
Speaker 2: just give a prisoner a saw and a file. You
Speaker 2: can't be like, well, these are my husband's emotional support tools.
Speaker 2: He needs them. So what she did is she baked
Speaker 2: the tools into a loaf of bread, and then she
Speaker 2: had someone give that bread to the prison guard to
Speaker 2: give to George. And luckily the prison guard did not
Speaker 2: chomp on the loaf himself, otherwise he would have found
Speaker 2: it nutritiously dense with iron. But the prison guard gave
Speaker 2: it to George, and George quickly said about trying to
Speaker 2: escape from his cell. But Unfortunately, Rachel said that as
Speaker 2: he employed the tools on the door, he was discovered
Speaker 2: and his fate may be the same as his wife's.
Speaker 2: She does not give the resolution to the story. Come on, Rachel,
Speaker 2: we're curious. I don't want to go dig through court records.
Speaker 1: So yes.
Speaker 2: In this last testament, Rachel Wall admitted she was guilty
Speaker 2: of many crimes, but when it came to the bonnet,
Speaker 2: this is what Rachel said.
Speaker 3: With regard to the above robbery, I would beg permission
Speaker 3: to relate a few particulars. I had been at work
Speaker 3: all the preceding day and was on my way home
Speaker 3: in the evening without design to injure any person. I
Speaker 3: never saw miss Bender, the person i'm charged with robbing,
Speaker 3: that evening, and was quite surprised when the crime is
Speaker 3: laid to my charge.
Speaker 2: Yep, she's saying she is innocent. She didn't steal that bonnet.
Speaker 3: The witnesses who swore against me are certainly mistaken, but
Speaker 3: as a dying person, I freely forgive them.
Speaker 1: Wow, isn't Rachel a wonderful person.
Speaker 2: She's like, Hey, these people are accusing me of something
Speaker 2: I'm innocent of, but I forgive you.
Speaker 1: She ended, her last words, with.
Speaker 3: This and now into the hands of Almighty God, I
Speaker 3: commit my soul, relying on His mercy through the merits
Speaker 3: and meditation of my Redeemer, and die an unworthy member
Speaker 3: of the Presbyterian Church in the twenty ninth year of
Speaker 3: my age.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, even with these last words, Rachel did not endear
Speaker 2: herself to the Bostonian public or the judicial system.
Speaker 1: As we all know, she was hanged, and this.
Speaker 2: Execution is historically significant because it was the last time
Speaker 2: the state of Massachusetts executed a woman. But clearly she
Speaker 2: wasn't executed just for stealing a bonnet. The bonnet stealing
Speaker 2: was just what they used to pin her down for
Speaker 2: her numerous crimes. But if this had happened a few
Speaker 2: years later, they wouldn't have been able to get her
Speaker 2: for that either, because the laws were updated and you
Speaker 2: could no longer get executed for an unarmed robbery or
Speaker 2: even an unarmed robbery. Sorry, every week we learn a
Speaker 2: lesson from American Filth, and I think the lesson from
Speaker 2: this week's episode is if.
Speaker 1: You want to bond it, just buy one. It's not
Speaker 1: that expensive. Talk to you guys next time.
Speaker 2: American Filth is a production of School of Humans and
Speaker 2: iHeart Podcast. This episode was written and hosted by me
Speaker 2: Gabby Watts. Julia Chris Gal played Rachel wall Our. Executive
Speaker 2: producers are Brandon Barr, Virginia Prescott, and Elsie Crowley. And
Speaker 2: you can follow along with the show on Instagram at
Speaker 2: American Filth Pod. Please also subscribe, like, leave a review,
Speaker 2: share the pod with your friend's enemies, families, etc. Also,
Speaker 2: if you're in London, please come to the show October fifteenth,
Speaker 2: eight pm. It's gonna be so fun. Tickets are in
Speaker 2: the show notes. Bye School of Humans.