Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Human beings are all different. Every experience shapes
Speaker 1: us into the kinds of people we become. No one
Speaker 1: thing is responsible. Each of us is the product of
Speaker 1: nature and nurture working together. Sometimes that results in the
Speaker 1: next world leader, other times it leads to a life
Speaker 1: of crime. For one man, his unique upbringing didn't guide
Speaker 1: him toward fevery or murder, but he did wind up
Speaker 1: serving as a member Parliament. He also found himself as
Speaker 1: the topic of conversation, both during his life and afterward.
Speaker 1: George Rearsby Sitwell was born in January of eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: to a wealthy family. His father, Sir Sitwell Rearsby Sitwell,
Speaker 1: was a baronet, hereditary title just below that of a
Speaker 1: baron and above a night Sadly, the man passed away
Speaker 1: when George was only four years old. All the property
Speaker 1: he owned prior to his death was passed down to
Speaker 1: his son, and so was his debt, but that didn't
Speaker 1: stop the child from being proud of who he was.
Speaker 1: He had a knack for making himself the center of attention.
Speaker 1: Soon after his father's death, George had been writing on
Speaker 1: a train when he announced his name entitled to a
Speaker 1: fellow passenger. He told the man, I am four years
Speaker 1: old and the youngest baronets in England. To say George
Speaker 1: was difficult would be an understatement, and that difficulty manifested
Speaker 1: itself in various ways. For one, he was ambitious, becoming
Speaker 1: a member of Parliament before he turned thirty. He also
Speaker 1: married young, when he was twenty six and Lady Ida
Speaker 1: Dennison was only seventeen. The pair tied a knot, although
Speaker 1: it was clear from the start that they were horribly
Speaker 1: wrong for each other. Only days into their marriage, Dennison
Speaker 1: fled back to her family's home. She hated her new husband,
Speaker 1: and more than that, she hated the expectations that came
Speaker 1: with being a wife. They forced her to return to him,
Speaker 1: though what she did, but she resented everyone for it.
Speaker 1: Nine months later, she gave birth to a baby girl,
Speaker 1: angering her husband, who had hoped for a male heir.
Speaker 1: It would be another five years before their first son, Osbert,
Speaker 1: was born in eighteen ninety two. As time went on,
Speaker 1: Sitwell increased both his wealth and his political power. Much
Speaker 1: of the money went to his wife, who spent it
Speaker 1: almost as fast as he could earn it. But George
Speaker 1: also found ways to invest his fortune, possibly as distractions
Speaker 1: from his terrible marriage or to occupy his time after
Speaker 1: losing his parliamentary re election. He ended up becoming a
Speaker 1: prolific inventor, although none of his creations ever became very popular.
Speaker 1: The Sitwell egg, for example, was supposed to be a
Speaker 1: complete meal designed for a person on the go. It
Speaker 1: was a ball of white rice shaped like an egg.
Speaker 1: In its center a piece of smoked meat. None of
Speaker 1: the local shops were interested in carrying it. He also
Speaker 1: came up with a toothbrush that played a popular song
Speaker 1: as the person brush their teeth. This actually became a
Speaker 1: real product as a way to encourage children to brush
Speaker 1: their teeth just a century later. Perhaps the world wasn't
Speaker 1: ready for George's unique idea. There was also a tiny
Speaker 1: gun he created to protect himself from wasps. The agings
Speaker 1: sit Well didn't just invent things though. He also took
Speaker 1: a keen interest in restoring his family home, Rennischell Hall
Speaker 1: in Derbyshire, England. But as he worked to restore it
Speaker 1: to its former beauty, he began to develop some odd habits.
Speaker 1: Visitors to the home were greeted by a sign that read,
Speaker 1: I must ask anyone entering the house never to contradict
Speaker 1: me in any way as interferes with the functioning of
Speaker 1: the gastric juices and prevents my sleeping at night. He
Speaker 1: also mislabeled all of his medicinal vials to discourage others
Speaker 1: from sampling their contents when he traveled. His philosophies on health,
Speaker 1: in particular, were something special. Nonfiction writing was okay, but
Speaker 1: the body could not handle writing novels. According to him,
Speaker 1: he believed fiction would be a drain on one's condition.
Speaker 1: George's views and beliefs were odd and rarely based on
Speaker 1: sound logic, but he was also a lifelong student, learning
Speaker 1: all that he could on esoteric topics such as medieval
Speaker 1: wool gathering and gardening. He even wrote a detailed history
Speaker 1: of the fork. Sir George Sitwell led a strange and
Speaker 1: troubled life. His wife hated him, and his family didn't
Speaker 1: understand him. Yet regardless of how the world perceived him,
Speaker 1: he never shied away from the man. He truly was
Speaker 1: one of a kind. It's inevitable that many of us
Speaker 1: have grown up to be like our parents. Our mannerisms,
Speaker 1: are ways of speech, even our taste in movies and
Speaker 1: music are because of the people who raised us. Heck,
Speaker 1: every time I laugh, I hear my father's voice as
Speaker 1: if he's in the very same room as me. But
Speaker 1: how much of who we are is based on how
Speaker 1: we were raised and how much is based on our dna.
Speaker 1: It's the old nature versus nurtured debate. Well, Dina Santa
Speaker 1: Char may hold the answers. In eighteen sixty seven, a
Speaker 1: group of hunters were prowling through the jungle of Uttar Pradesh, India.
Speaker 1: When they came to a clearing some distance away, they
Speaker 1: noticed the entrance to a cave. The hunters approached the
Speaker 1: cave carefully, anticipating what they might find inside. It could,
Speaker 1: after all, be a ferocious animal. A creature did emerge,
Speaker 1: it ignored them at first, unbothered by their presence. The hunters,
Speaker 1: though did not raise their es. They couldn't bring themselves
Speaker 1: to kill something so unique. What they had countered was
Speaker 1: neither a bear nor a wolf, but something completely unexpected.
Speaker 1: They had found a boy, probably no more than six
Speaker 1: years old, and knowing they couldn't leave him in the jungle,
Speaker 1: the hunters gathered him up and brought him to an
Speaker 1: orphanage in the nearby town of Agra. It was there
Speaker 1: that he was given the name Dina Santa Char santit
Speaker 1: R was a Hindi word meaning Saturday. The day they
Speaker 1: had found him. He was considered a feral child because
Speaker 1: he couldn't walk upright or know how to conduct himself
Speaker 1: around other people. He couldn't even speak, but he did
Speaker 1: understand his new guardians to some extent. He had been
Speaker 1: raised by wolves, and his behavior reflected that. He ate
Speaker 1: raw meat and walked on all fours. He chewed on bones,
Speaker 1: which in turn had sharpened his teeth, and he couldn't
Speaker 1: form words, so he communicated with grunts like an animal.
Speaker 1: He found it difficult to stand on two legs like
Speaker 1: everyone else. He also had trouble following simple directions. For example,
Speaker 1: pointing at an object or a plate of food was
Speaker 1: a foreign gesture to him, as wolves didn't use their
Speaker 1: paws to indicate things of importance, and he never learned
Speaker 1: to speak the language of his caretakers, although the effects
Speaker 1: of living around other human beings did eventually rub off
Speaker 1: on him. Santa Char learned how to stand on two legs,
Speaker 1: and it was said that he figured out how to
Speaker 1: put on his clothes later in life. Surprisingly, one human
Speaker 1: habit came quite naturally to him, smoking He found the
Speaker 1: practice so enjoyable he became a chain smoker before his
Speaker 1: death at the age of thirty four. It's been theorized
Speaker 1: that Santa Char may have been the inspiration for the
Speaker 1: young man cub Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book series.
Speaker 1: In those novels, Mowgli is an abandoned child raised by
Speaker 1: wolves in the jungles of India. Yet he was not
Speaker 1: the first, nor would he be the last child raised
Speaker 1: by wolves that the orphanage would take in. Three more
Speaker 1: children were welcomed after him, including a girl and two boys,
Speaker 1: all who had been classified as ferrell. In fact, over
Speaker 1: the years, more than fifty children had been discovered living
Speaker 1: with animals in the jungles of India. One boy was
Speaker 1: found in nineteen fifty seven, crawling out of a cave.
Speaker 1: He had been stolen from his home by a wolf
Speaker 1: when he was only eighteen months old. Other children, though,
Speaker 1: were often abandoned by their parents for being born with
Speaker 1: intellectual disabilities, and India wasn't the only place where children
Speaker 1: were being raised in the wild either. In the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, a young Ukrainian girl named Oxana Malaya was
Speaker 1: taken in by stray dogs when she was just three
Speaker 1: years old. Her alcoholic father left her outside one night,
Speaker 1: so she crawled into a structure with the dogs to
Speaker 1: stay warm. She ended up living on the streets for
Speaker 1: five years, eating scraps of food and crawling on all fours,
Speaker 1: until social workers found her. I got her the help
Speaker 1: she needed, enrolling her in various therapies to help improve
Speaker 1: her speech and control her feral urges, and she eventually
Speaker 1: learned to speak fluent Russian and got a job on
Speaker 1: a farm. But she was never the same. Who knows
Speaker 1: how she, or Santa Char or any of the other
Speaker 1: children neglected by society might have turned out had they
Speaker 1: been given the tools to thrive. Instead, they were cast
Speaker 1: aside and left defend for themselves and it makes one
Speaker 1: wonder in this story, who are the real animals. I
Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Speaker 1: Ye