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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff 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 Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. Oh and Sarah.

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Speaker 1: Before we start the podcast, I just thought we should

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Speaker 1: probably talk about tonight's plans. Uh. Tonight, I dine with

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Speaker 1: Count A and tomorrow with Duke B. And if I

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Speaker 1: don't have to dance, I make a trip with Marquis C.

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Speaker 1: I avoid serious liaisons. I satisfy all my caprices. M M, Katie,

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Speaker 1: that doesn't really sound that much like you. It sounds

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Speaker 1: a lot like Mata Harri though. Are you sure you're

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Speaker 1: not confusing your lives? Ding ding ding. She's her subject

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Speaker 1: for today. Mata Harri was an exotic dancer, and we

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Speaker 1: do mean exotic and a courtesan. But we know her

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Speaker 1: best for her reputation as a glamorous, beautiful spy and

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Speaker 1: snaring high powered military hairy men with her charms and

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Speaker 1: her talents. So who was this sinister salom A as

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Speaker 1: the newspapers called her, and what exactly was she guilty of? Well, unsurprisingly,

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Speaker 1: her birth name was not Mata Harri. I'm so surprised

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Speaker 1: it was Margaretta Gertruda Zel and she entered the world

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Speaker 1: in the Netherlands on August seven, eight seventy six, and

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Speaker 1: she was the spoiled little princess daughter of a hatter,

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Speaker 1: incredibly spoiled. I don't know what you're talking about, Sarah,

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Speaker 1: because I too had my own phaeton drawn by goats

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Speaker 1: when I was a child, So perhaps yours is just

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Speaker 1: a little deprived. Well maybe you both just had princess

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Speaker 1: like childhoods. But she was abandoned in her teens when

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Speaker 1: her father goes bankrupt and her mother dies, and from

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Speaker 1: that point on she has an affair with the headmaster.

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Speaker 1: It's her baby, her first entry into this scandalous world.

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Speaker 1: She was looking for a way out of the Netherlands,

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Speaker 1: and she found it in a guy who she met

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Speaker 1: through his personal ad Captain Rudolph McLeod of the Dutch

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Speaker 1: Colonial Army. They were engaged in six days and married

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Speaker 1: in the bride wore yellow, and according to one article

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Speaker 1: I read, he was extravagantly mustachioed. He was also older,

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Speaker 1: a drinker, a gambler, and a jealous man, so in short,

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Speaker 1: adornly and he beat her and threatened her with guns

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Speaker 1: and swords, and he verbally abused her, describing her as

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Speaker 1: the scum of the lowest kind. And he also had syphilis,

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Speaker 1: which he called diabetes, lossing the same thing, glossing over

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Speaker 1: that she wasn't a great wife, though she said that

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Speaker 1: she had inclinations that made it impossible for a woman

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Speaker 1: like me to be a good housewife. And it's also

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Speaker 1: probable that she was sleeping around with other military men

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Speaker 1: that he knew. Married life was definitely not for her,

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Speaker 1: but it wasn't for him either. He kept up his womanizing.

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Speaker 1: He just expected her to stay home and not the same.

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Speaker 1: She had two children with McLeod, a boy and a girl,

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Speaker 1: and tragically both children became very very ill, and her

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Speaker 1: son died at age two. And it's possible that she

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Speaker 1: had contracted civil as from her husband and passed it

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Speaker 1: on to her children. Maybe they sickened due to a

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Speaker 1: doctor's attempt to cure the infection with mercury, but other

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Speaker 1: rumors were that they were poisoned by a nanny or

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Speaker 1: a servant, and her husband's thought she might have done

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Speaker 1: it and admitted that he wanted to kill her. So

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Speaker 1: their marriage deteriorates, and as it becomes more violent and

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Speaker 1: more unhappy. They returned to the Netherlands and they separate

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Speaker 1: and he leaves her penniless, and she gives him custody

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Speaker 1: of their daughter. And what's she gonna do. She doesn't

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Speaker 1: have any money, she doesn't have a job, so she

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Speaker 1: goes to Paris and finds a way to survive, acting

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Speaker 1: as a nude artist model, being a circus rider, and

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Speaker 1: acting as a prostitute. But then she began dance, saying

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Speaker 1: first in private homes and then in public and Lady McCloud,

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Speaker 1: the name she went by then, was five ten and gorgeous,

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Speaker 1: with olive skin, dark hair and eyes. She looked a

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Speaker 1: bit exotic, and so she concocted a style of dance

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Speaker 1: to match it, which was vaguely reminiscent of Javanese dance

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Speaker 1: from her life there with the Captain, and definitely sexy.

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Speaker 1: She called these dances sacred dances, and they tied together religion,

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Speaker 1: art and nudity. You wish, Lady Gaga, And there were

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Speaker 1: lots of religious statues and veils, mainly veils dropping to

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Speaker 1: the floor as she became more and more nude and

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Speaker 1: writhed around in front of figurines of someone's gone classy classy,

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Speaker 1: and in the early nineteen hundred she emerges as Mata Harri,

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Speaker 1: which means the eye of the day in this beaded

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Speaker 1: metal brazier with a tiger like or sometimes people describe

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Speaker 1: it as serpent like move that she'd show off with. Yes,

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Speaker 1: this belly dancer would like to see these moves. And

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Speaker 1: reading accounts from the papers at the time is hilarious

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Speaker 1: because they're just falling all over themselves to try to

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Speaker 1: find words to describe just how sexy she is without

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Speaker 1: actually saying that, so over being able to print it. Oh, yes,

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Speaker 1: she's tiger like, and you know, talking about her serpentine

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Speaker 1: moves and how she does a simple dance when she

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Speaker 1: becomes more and more simple, meaning she drops more and

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Speaker 1: more veils until there's not a whole lot left. Well,

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Speaker 1: her dance maybe simple, but her life definitely isn't. Her

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Speaker 1: backstory isn't. It's this elaborate, made up story. She talks

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Speaker 1: about how her mother was an Indian princess and how

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Speaker 1: she sneaked into Hindu temples to learn the dances of worshippers,

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Speaker 1: just this off the wall stuff. And so she's this beautiful,

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Speaker 1: lying naked woman and was a smash hit in Paris,

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Speaker 1: more exciting than the Mula rouge. Collette went to see

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Speaker 1: her dance the detail I liked, and her newfound fame

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Speaker 1: brought her many new lovers. She did love her military men,

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Speaker 1: she said once, I have never loved any that officers.

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Speaker 1: So are things that Matahari loves include making up stories, dancing,

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Speaker 1: being naked, and having sex with military men. But we

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Speaker 1: cannot leave one thing offul list. That's spending money. She's

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Speaker 1: very extravagant, and it's how she eventually ends up at

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Speaker 1: the fully Berger, which is a downgrade compared to where

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Speaker 1: she was performing before. So how did she end up

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Speaker 1: shot by a firing squad on espionage charges? Was she

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Speaker 1: betting these military officers for nefarious purposes? That she didn't

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Speaker 1: see that one coming. They're a big shocker And the

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Speaker 1: answer to that depends on who you ask. The curator

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Speaker 1: of the Modahari exhibit at the Freeze Museum, Evert Cramer,

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Speaker 1: says that she's definitely guilty, that she definitely offered to

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Speaker 1: spy for the Germans, and she offered to spy several

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Speaker 1: times for the friend. But the Historian Leon Sherman and

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Speaker 1: biographer Pat Shipman maintained that her trial and execution was

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Speaker 1: more about scapegoating that she might have been a double agent,

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Speaker 1: but she was an incredibly inept one. She just wanted

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Speaker 1: money that she was offered. She didn't actually really pay

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Speaker 1: attention to the idea of the assignment. So now that

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Speaker 1: we've mentioned two possible judgments, we are going to give

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Speaker 1: you story. She was in Germany dancing at the Metropole

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Speaker 1: when World War One broke out, and she was Dutch

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Speaker 1: of the Netherlands, super neutral, but she's spent so much

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Speaker 1: time in France that the Germans considered her a French citizen.

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Speaker 1: They took everything she owned except for the clothes she

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Speaker 1: was wearing, and sent her out of town on a train,

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Speaker 1: presumably a scanty outfit, I would imagine, perhaps an elegant suit.

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Speaker 1: So she makes her way to Amsterdam in an old

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Speaker 1: lover and it's there that she possibly began her downfall.

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Speaker 1: She wanted restitution for the things that had been taken

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Speaker 1: from her, and the German consulate wouldn't give it to her,

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Speaker 1: but they did offer her another deal, and that was

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Speaker 1: money in exchange for spy work. So she takes the money.

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Speaker 1: But did she take the job. This is the big

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Speaker 1: question about Mota Harry. Did she do the work? She

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Speaker 1: did get assigned a code name H twenty one, which

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Speaker 1: is not nearly as good as Mata Harry, But everything

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Speaker 1: else during this period is very muddled. Some accounts have

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Speaker 1: her betraying both the Germans and the French, working for

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Speaker 1: both and screwing them both over. One account says that

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Speaker 1: she admitted to giving the Germans information, but just outdated information,

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Speaker 1: so not so bad, Please don't execute me, and another

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Speaker 1: one says that she came into contact with French intelligence

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Speaker 1: while she was trying to make her way to a

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Speaker 1: lover in Fiddle, and they later sent her to Belgium

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Speaker 1: on a mission, but she couldn't get there. Instead, she

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Speaker 1: got together with a German captain who told her German secrets.

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Speaker 1: According to her account, according to French intelligence, she was

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Speaker 1: passing French secrets on to the Germans. Of course, you

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Speaker 1: could look at it either way, because none of us

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Speaker 1: were there. And another says that French intelligence actually came

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Speaker 1: to her asking her to spy, to prove that she

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Speaker 1: wasn't spying for Germany. I knew that sounds counterintuitive, but basically,

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Speaker 1: if you'll do this work for us, well we'll know

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Speaker 1: that you're okay. And she takes money for clothes and

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Speaker 1: maybe again didn't perform her duties. So we have no

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Speaker 1: idea what actually happened during this period, or we have

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Speaker 1: little bits and pieces, but they don't ever come together

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Speaker 1: to form a cohesive picture of what happened. Trust me,

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Speaker 1: I've read account after account after account, but she definitely

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Speaker 1: had contact with German and French officers and with French

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Speaker 1: and German intelligence. It's simply uncertain what the extent of

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Speaker 1: that contact was. Was it just sex and money or

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Speaker 1: secrets or some delicious combination of the three. But whether

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Speaker 1: she did it or not, it's certainly true that her

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Speaker 1: reputation as a spend thrift, sexually promis scuous woman colored

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Speaker 1: people's perceptions of her and worked against her during her trial. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the British were very against matter. Harry. For example, they

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Speaker 1: stopped her on one of her trips and searched her,

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Speaker 1: and despite not finding anything, they still declared her a

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Speaker 1: person of suspicion. She was attractive and multi lingual, She's

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Speaker 1: this beautiful woman traveling alone, and they described her as bold,

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Speaker 1: which is probably a code word for her sex life.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you can just imagine her in a movie,

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Speaker 1: somebody who just seems suspicious, well, and you can see

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Speaker 1: her and that that glamorous depiction in the movies. But

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Speaker 1: in real life she sounds pretty terrible. And we were

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Speaker 1: talking about this before the podcast, how she sounds like

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Speaker 1: she would be an absolute pain if you're actually there

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Speaker 1: talking to her, but she's so fascinating. She was arrested

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Speaker 1: February thirteenth, nineteen seventeen, and she's said to have handed

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Speaker 1: out chocolates to her arrestors. And she was tried in

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Speaker 1: a military court, which some called a kangaroo court July,

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Speaker 1: and the French chief inquisitors said of her, just to

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Speaker 1: give you an idea of what kind of trial this was, feline,

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Speaker 1: supple and artificial, used to gambling everything and anything, without scruple,

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Speaker 1: without pity, always ready to devour fortunes, leaving her ruined

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Speaker 1: lovers to blow their brains out. She was a born spy,

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Speaker 1: and well, I don't see how any of those qualities

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Speaker 1: add together to form spy. I perhaps just lack the

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Speaker 1: inquisitor's imagination. I think that would be the dialogue to

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Speaker 1: open up the movie too, maybe as she's riding on

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Speaker 1: the train. But she is convicted and she's sentenced to

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Speaker 1: die by firing squad. And October fifteenth, nineteen seventeen, she

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Speaker 1: goes to face her death. She wears this nice gray

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Speaker 1: suit and a hat and refused to be tied to

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Speaker 1: the stake. And she also refused a blindfold thing that

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Speaker 1: won't be necessary, so she has a good death considering

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Speaker 1: and again and we come to our question was she

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Speaker 1: a spy? It's been proposed that the French simply needed

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Speaker 1: a scapegoat. The war was going badly, so many men

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Speaker 1: are dying, morale was very low, and here we have, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, a little miss sexy sex and her piles

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Speaker 1: of money, which just didn't seem right to them. The

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Speaker 1: papers were saying that she bathed in milk when French

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Speaker 1: children didn't even have milk to drink, so you can

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Speaker 1: see why she would be easy to hate well, and

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Speaker 1: that the money is being exchanged to buy things like

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Speaker 1: clothes that just makes it so much work instead of

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Speaker 1: contributing to the war effort. Right, And it's also been

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Speaker 1: suggested that some of the documents used in her trial

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Speaker 1: were altered by the French and surprise twist that the

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Speaker 1: French head of intelligence may have been a German spy

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Speaker 1: himself and was trying to deflect attention and distracting them

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Speaker 1: with Mona Harre. So was Mata Harri a victim or

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Speaker 1: was she really a criminal? Was she this cunning double

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Speaker 1: crosser and a fem fatale or was she somebody who

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Speaker 1: it was convenient to blame, a woman who was easy

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Speaker 1: to fear and easy to hate. I'm more of the

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Speaker 1: second opinion, to be honest, it doesn't really sound like

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Speaker 1: she would be capable of the former. A little dim yeah,

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Speaker 1: to be executing really high level double crossing, double agents

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Speaker 1: to someone who cared much more about sex and money

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Speaker 1: than she did about any sort of political ambitions. But

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Speaker 1: we are uncertain, and we probably will be until the

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Speaker 1: French declassified documents related to her case in so we'll

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Speaker 1: catch up with you in well, so in the meantime

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Speaker 1: we'll talk listener mail. Our first email is from Caroline

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Speaker 1: and she wrote, I guess as a Canadian, I wasn't

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Speaker 1: really the right audience for the bombardment of Baltimore episode,

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Speaker 1: as I was rooting for the other guys, I'm a

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Speaker 1: proud Hallegonian living across the street from our beauty, a

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Speaker 1: full citadel fort, which, by the way, would have been

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Speaker 1: more than prepared for an American attack, not the cake

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Speaker 1: walk Jefferson imagined. Also, General Robert Ross is buried about

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Speaker 1: two blocks from my apartment in the city's oldest and

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Speaker 1: prettiest cemetery. While he was killed in the States and

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Speaker 1: was Scottish and not from here, the tall tale I've

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Speaker 1: always heard was that Ross's body was shipped this far

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Speaker 1: in a barrel of whiskey and intended to be put

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Speaker 1: on a ship across the ocean, but there were delays,

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Speaker 1: so they didn't bother and just drank the whiskey, and

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Speaker 1: Bury came here. Bury the body saved the whiskey. The

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Speaker 1: good sentiment to have, I guess. Our second email is

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Speaker 1: from Aaron in Texas, and she wrote regarding the bombardment

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Speaker 1: of Baltimore podcasts. And in that podcast we talked a

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Speaker 1: little bit about the star Spangled banner and how little

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Speaker 1: pieces of it had been snipped up and given off

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Speaker 1: to people worst the family as gifts, and the flag

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Speaker 1: ends up cursing the family exactly, And she wrote that

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Speaker 1: she had a similarly his doric flag in her own family,

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Speaker 1: And a few years ago her parents were visiting her

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Speaker 1: grandmother when her dad found what she called a little

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Speaker 1: piece of history tucked away in a family photo album.

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Speaker 1: And he finds two small squares of fabric, one red,

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Speaker 1: one white, and the following letter addressed to his grandmother's grandmother.

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Speaker 1: And it's from December twenty one, eighteen sixty, Madam, I

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Speaker 1: have presumed sufficiently upon my acquaintance with Mr Andrews to

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Speaker 1: send you by him a souvenir of the past, the

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Speaker 1: piece of General R. E. Lee's battle flag after the

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Speaker 1: surrender had been determined upon. The officers of the General

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Speaker 1: staff determined that the glorious old flag, which had floated

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Speaker 1: in triumph over so many bloody fields, should never be

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Speaker 1: desecrated by Yankee hands. And the letter goes on like this.

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Speaker 1: But once her dad realized the importance of what he

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Speaker 1: had found, he and this writer's grandmother decided to send

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Speaker 1: the pieces off to the Appomatics Courthouse, National Historic Ark

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Speaker 1: so that it could be properly preserved, and so that

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Speaker 1: they could avoid a family flag feud of their own.

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Speaker 1: We loved both of these emails if you'd like to

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Speaker 1: email us or at History podcast at how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. But we try to make it easy for

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Speaker 1: you to keep in touch with us, so we're also

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Speaker 1: on Twitter at missed in History, and we have a

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Speaker 1: Facebook fan page which we keep updated pretty much every day,

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Speaker 1: so come check us out there or look for some

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Speaker 1: more history articles to read on our homepage at www

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Speaker 1: dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this

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Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com and be sure to check out the stuff

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Speaker 1: you missed in History Glass blog on the how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com home page