Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Tray Pybe Wilson and I'm Holly frying Back. In about
Speaker 1: February of last year, we tackled six topics in one episode,
Speaker 1: and they were all things that people had asked us
Speaker 1: to talk about, but for one reason or another, we
Speaker 1: couldn't really make a whole standalone episode out of each
Speaker 1: of them. People seem to really like that one. We
Speaker 1: called it six Impossible Episodes. So about six months later
Speaker 1: we did six more impossible episodes, which were similarly things
Speaker 1: people had asked us to talk about that we couldn't
Speaker 1: really do a whole show on. And both of those times,
Speaker 1: the biggest culprit was just a lack of information. Either
Speaker 1: there's not a lot actually known about what was being requested,
Speaker 1: or not a lot of information available to us, or
Speaker 1: in some cases just not quite enough to make a
Speaker 1: whole thirty minute story out of. Uh So, people seem
Speaker 1: to like that one too, And if we follow that
Speaker 1: basic six months or so pattern, we're basically a little
Speaker 1: bit overdue for another six impossible episodes. So we're doing
Speaker 1: Wednesday and today's has a little bit of a different theme.
Speaker 1: These are all subjects people have asked us to talk about,
Speaker 1: and they are impossible, not just for an overall lack
Speaker 1: of information, although that is sometimes true, but also because
Speaker 1: the events and the people themselves, or the reason that
Speaker 1: has people have asked us to talk about it I
Speaker 1: might not ever have actually happened. So this is like
Speaker 1: possible apocrypha. We're using the more casual meaning of apocrypha,
Speaker 1: they're not the religious meaning of apocrypha. Yeah, in some
Speaker 1: of these cases, there's lots of information, but none of
Speaker 1: it is corroborated, right, And in some cases we are
Speaker 1: going to talk about one thing that actually really did
Speaker 1: for sure happen, but the reason that people asked us
Speaker 1: to talk about it did not happen. First up, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the Battle of Curancbes. We don't
Speaker 1: know if we are accurate on that pronunciation, but that
Speaker 1: is uh the way it was heard in research. So
Speaker 1: this shows up on a lot of lists of weird
Speaker 1: military history or most absurd battles ever. Thought shows up
Speaker 1: in books about military blenders, you know, things like that,
Speaker 1: And it's the kind of story people pull out to
Speaker 1: try to illustrate purported military incompetence. Yeah, if somebody wants
Speaker 1: to basically make the military the butt of a joke.
Speaker 1: This is one of the stories that people will trot out,
Speaker 1: and the basic gist of it is that in Austria
Speaker 1: and Russia were both at war with the Ottoman Empire
Speaker 1: and that fall. According to the story, the Austrian army
Speaker 1: fell victim to an enormous friendly fire incident in which
Speaker 1: ten thousand troops were killed, and that is what is
Speaker 1: known as the Battle of curan SPEs. And here is
Speaker 1: how the history of the eighteenth century and of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth till the overthrow of the French Empire, with particular
Speaker 1: reference to mental cultivation and progress, which was a piece
Speaker 1: printed in eighteen forty five, describes this situation. According to
Speaker 1: that text, the Austrian army was en route to take
Speaker 1: up a new position near the town of Curancives. Then
Speaker 1: quote on the march thither, the army was seized with
Speaker 1: the most unaccountable panic. Believed themselves to be threatened by
Speaker 1: the enemy, fell into disorder and mistook their own troops
Speaker 1: from the Sclavonian frontier for enemies. The regiments fired upon
Speaker 1: one another looked everywhere for an enemy, where in reality
Speaker 1: there was none, and all attempts on the part of
Speaker 1: the emperor in person to stop the firing and put
Speaker 1: an end to the confusion were in vain. So the
Speaker 1: emperor in question who appeared in person was Holy Roman
Speaker 1: Emperor Joseph the Second, and according to this story, he
Speaker 1: had gotten separated from the rest of the fighting force,
Speaker 1: and he sort of came upon us melee with only
Speaker 1: one attendant with him. Sometimes, in some retellings of this
Speaker 1: story and the whole kerfuffle, he was knocked off of
Speaker 1: his horse into a river. And in some versions of
Speaker 1: the story, the cause of this chaos in which the
Speaker 1: army attacked itself was a peddler or perhaps a camp
Speaker 1: of roma selling schnops or some of their alcohol. Some
Speaker 1: scouts on patrol bought and consumed a great deal of
Speaker 1: the schnops, and then apparently on a lark, built some
Speaker 1: fortifications for themselves, and they're imbibing, and when another group
Speaker 1: of Austrian infantry approached, the inebriated scouts thought they were
Speaker 1: the enemy. Shots were exchanged and things escalated from there.
Speaker 1: The Ottoman Empire's army purportedly stumbled onto the scene of
Speaker 1: the incident a couple of days later, and then they
Speaker 1: found the bodies of about ten thousand men, and with
Speaker 1: the bulk of this fighting force out of the way,
Speaker 1: the Ottoman Empire captured the city of Kranzes with basically
Speaker 1: no resistance. There are just so many reasons to question
Speaker 1: this incident. Number One, information about it is incredibly sparse,
Speaker 1: which seems kind of unlikely if ten thousand people were
Speaker 1: actually killed by their own side. Number Two, the written
Speaker 1: record on it doesn't seem to start until more than
Speaker 1: fifty years after this event supposedly took place, and this
Speaker 1: is particularly weird considering that the emperor, who lived until
Speaker 1: February was purportedly there. That source we read from earlier
Speaker 1: points back to Austrian Military magazine of eighteen thirty one,
Speaker 1: which is an incredibly vague citation. A lot of the
Speaker 1: more modern retellings of the story, like lists on the
Speaker 1: Internet that people pass around about military ridiculousness, really seemed
Speaker 1: to be drawn from an old version of the current
Speaker 1: Wikipedia article, So that would have been the version that
Speaker 1: existed back when these lists and things were written, and
Speaker 1: that version presents it as a completely factual event that
Speaker 1: definitely happened. It also cites no sources. Uh ustrates one
Speaker 1: of the difficulties of citing Wikipedia as a source. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of the reasons we do not ever use it. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it is a fun tool of the Internet,
Speaker 1: but for us, it is not really verifiable enough source. Yes,
Speaker 1: there are definitely good reasons, like they're great things about Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: but we we do not use it as a as
Speaker 1: a source for our shows. Yeah. And the most likely
Speaker 1: scenario is that there was some kind of confusing and
Speaker 1: chaotic friendly fire incident, but the odds are that it
Speaker 1: was not nearly at the scale that is reported in
Speaker 1: these various fantastical versions of the story. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think probably something did happen, but not not the thing
Speaker 1: that people like to use to prove a point that
Speaker 1: maybe doesn't even need to be proven. It really is
Speaker 1: one of the stories of people tried out to be
Speaker 1: like and this is how the military waste your money,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, this is not You're not supporting your
Speaker 1: argument with this story that like number one, even if
Speaker 1: it were true, was hundreds of years ago and not
Speaker 1: in the nation whose military you're talking about anyway. Uh,
Speaker 1: So the next possibly an apocryphal person is somebody a
Speaker 1: lot of people have asked us to talk about, and
Speaker 1: that is Tomoy goes In, And she's really one of
Speaker 1: our most requested figures in Japanese history, and for good reason.
Speaker 1: She's described as this twelfth century Japanese warrior woman. She
Speaker 1: was described as beautiful and fearless and an expert with
Speaker 1: both a sword and a bow, really highly skilled on
Speaker 1: horseback and uh and and a little bit of a
Speaker 1: departure from what might be expected of her gender. She
Speaker 1: led men into battle. She's described in the epic The
Speaker 1: Tale of Haka as quote prepared to confront both demons
Speaker 1: and gods, a warrior equal to a thousand men. So
Speaker 1: she's really got a lot in common with a lot
Speaker 1: of other historical warrior women who we've talked about on
Speaker 1: the show, like Budhica and Zenobia and the Amazons of Dahomey.
Speaker 1: Goes In is a title meaning young lady or young one,
Speaker 1: and there's enough historical information to suggest that there probably
Speaker 1: was a young woman named to Moe involved in the
Speaker 1: gen Pay War near the end of the Hayon period
Speaker 1: in Japan, and we've talked about the hay On period
Speaker 1: in our previous episode on say Shanagon, it was what
Speaker 1: was happening in Japan at roughly the same time as
Speaker 1: the medieval period in Europe. The gen Pay War was
Speaker 1: between the Ta and the Minamoto clans, so the Minamoto
Speaker 1: clans victory led it to establish the show Gunate that
Speaker 1: would rule Japan from eleven ninety two to thirteen thirty three.
Speaker 1: So Moee served in the army of General Kiso no Yoshinaka,
Speaker 1: who was part of the Minamoto Clan, between eleven eighty
Speaker 1: one and eleven eighty four. She seems to have been
Speaker 1: present at at least three battles, getting the better of
Speaker 1: seven mounts and warriors in the first one, commanding a
Speaker 1: thousand warriors in the second, and beating a parterior a
Speaker 1: particularly fearsome opponent known as owned A no Ha Chiro
Speaker 1: moroshij in the third. A number of accounts suggests that
Speaker 1: she survived the war because Kiso no Yoshinaka, outnumbered and
Speaker 1: preparing to fight to the death or possibly mortally wounded himself,
Speaker 1: ordered to Moi to go, perhaps because it would have
Speaker 1: been considered shameful for him to die beside a woman.
Speaker 1: Or perhaps because the outlook was so grim that her gender,
Speaker 1: which apparently had not been an issue before, suddenly was Otherwise,
Speaker 1: There really no very little about her. We don't know
Speaker 1: who her parents were, Juan or where she was born,
Speaker 1: whether she was married or had children, or what happened
Speaker 1: to her after the war was over. Different accounts of
Speaker 1: her life give wildly different information about all of this,
Speaker 1: including different ages at the time of the war, as
Speaker 1: well as different family connections, both as related to her
Speaker 1: parents or siblings who she may or may not have
Speaker 1: been married to. All all of that stuff is kind
Speaker 1: of a fog of contradictions, and we don't even know
Speaker 1: in what capacity she wound up on the battlefield in
Speaker 1: the first place. There are some accounts that describe her
Speaker 1: as a female warrior or a female general, but others
Speaker 1: call her a servant, even a nun or someone's mistress,
Speaker 1: among other descriptions. A lot of the sources that describe
Speaker 1: all these details are from later on in Japanese history,
Speaker 1: and many of them are definitely fictitious or at least
Speaker 1: embellished versions of the truth, And a lot of the
Speaker 1: sources that write about her draw directly from the tale
Speaker 1: of the Tale of the Hicca, which really spent some
Speaker 1: time circulating as an oral history before it was ever
Speaker 1: written down. Some people draw comparisons between this epic and
Speaker 1: like the Iliad and how the Iliad is. I mean,
Speaker 1: the Iliad has probable historical roots that like, we don't
Speaker 1: really read it as the history of what actually happened,
Speaker 1: so there are some comparisons between that and this epic
Speaker 1: or Tamoi goes In was mentioned for the first time.
Speaker 1: Tamoi goes and also became a character and many, many,
Speaker 1: many stories both inside and out of Japan that have
Speaker 1: gone on in all of the centuries since since she
Speaker 1: was first mentioned in this poem. And Kristen and Caroline
Speaker 1: from our sister podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You actually
Speaker 1: dealed into this question a little bit in their August
Speaker 1: episode entitled Samurai Women. It's a really interesting episode that
Speaker 1: I recommend you listen to if you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about this topic in general. H as is the
Speaker 1: case with a lot of the things that we're talking
Speaker 1: about today, I have a feeling that there probably was
Speaker 1: a young woman known as Tomoe who was involved in
Speaker 1: some way, but the the almost godlike stature that that
Speaker 1: she has been given in later retailings, probably embellishment. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about some more things after a sponsor
Speaker 1: break that sounds great, including including a really creepy thing
Speaker 1: that people ask us about every Halloween that I love. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we get a lot of requests to talk about
Speaker 1: the terrifying cannibal Sanny Bean, especially around Halloween. I was
Speaker 1: sure the people in Scotland would probably say that differently,
Speaker 1: but then I watched videos of Scottish people talking about
Speaker 1: it and they all said sanny Bean. So sanny Bean was.
Speaker 1: Sanny Bean is a really famous figure in Scotland, and
Speaker 1: according to the lore, sanny Bean more properly known as
Speaker 1: Alexander Bean, and his wife abandoned their home in East Lothian.
Speaker 1: They wound up living in a cave on the coast
Speaker 1: of Scotland, and there they turned to a life of cannibalism.
Speaker 1: They murdered traveler travelers on a nearby road, then took
Speaker 1: them back to the cave, cooked them and ate them
Speaker 1: and in a maneuver that sounds like something out of
Speaker 1: that super wonderful but also terrifying X Files episode with
Speaker 1: the Peacock family, uh, Sawny Bean and his wife Black
Speaker 1: Agnes Douglas had children, and their children intermarried among one another,
Speaker 1: forming an incestuous cannibal clan that terrorized the neighboring region
Speaker 1: for at least twenty five years. Supposedly, this all played
Speaker 1: out sometime in the fifteenth century, and when the king
Speaker 1: heard that people were going missing thanks to somebody who
Speaker 1: actually escaped sawny Bean's clutches, he sent soldiers to capture
Speaker 1: the whole group of them. The women and the children
Speaker 1: were put to death first by being burned at the
Speaker 1: stake while the men were forced to watch, and then
Speaker 1: the men were themselves hanged. And this story is really
Speaker 1: entrenched in Scottish folklore, especially in the southwestern part of
Speaker 1: the country around Ayrshire, where it allegedly all took place,
Speaker 1: and there are even tours to sawnny Bean's supposed cave
Speaker 1: for tourists and the fans of the Grizzly. But there's
Speaker 1: no evidence that any of this ever happened. There's no
Speaker 1: archaeological evidence of a family living in a cave and
Speaker 1: cooking and eating other people there. There are no no
Speaker 1: royal records of a man hunt followed by a man
Speaker 1: a mass execution. There are no records of survivors saying
Speaker 1: their families had fallen victims to cannibals on the road
Speaker 1: in that part of Scotland, and even though it all
Speaker 1: supposedly happened around the fifteenth century, the first mention of
Speaker 1: it in writing didn't come along until seventeen thirty four,
Speaker 1: in a book called quote the Lives and Actions of
Speaker 1: the most Famous highwawand Highwaymen, which was printed in London
Speaker 1: under a pseudonym. Not really sure who originally wrote it.
Speaker 1: There are a few undated chat books that may have
Speaker 1: come out before seventeen thirty four, but they definitely do
Speaker 1: not date all the way back to the fifth, fifteenth,
Speaker 1: or even sixteenth centuries by any stretch. They are a
Speaker 1: lot more recent than that. It's certainly possible that there
Speaker 1: was a cannibalistic murderer in southeastern Scotland sometime around the
Speaker 1: fifteenth century, and that this became the basis for the
Speaker 1: Sawny being legend. But given how many of the first
Speaker 1: written and accounts of it were penned and published in England,
Speaker 1: it is actually a lot more likely that somebody made
Speaker 1: it up to portray Scotland is a dangerous inbred place
Speaker 1: just loaded with depraved killers. Uh. This may not have
Speaker 1: even been intentional. This extremely maccab's story may have just
Speaker 1: captured the imaginations of writers who already thought that Scotland
Speaker 1: was not really a good place to visit. This all
Speaker 1: kind of makes the fact that Sawny Bean has become
Speaker 1: a source of tourism dollars in Scotland today kind of
Speaker 1: a cool turnabout. It's like it was originally mentioned either
Speaker 1: to implicitly or explicitly paint Scotland is a dangerous place. Uh,
Speaker 1: not so much anymore. Even if there wasn't a Sawny
Speaker 1: Bean or someone sort of like him living in Scotland
Speaker 1: in the fifteenth century. This story has been around at
Speaker 1: least since the eighteenth century, so it does have kind
Speaker 1: of a history of its own. And now we're going
Speaker 1: to get to a topic that I personally love and
Speaker 1: wish we could do a real episode on because we
Speaker 1: had a ton of request about Lan. You tried multiple time.
Speaker 1: It is like I will try to kind of like
Speaker 1: do some research and see where any like actual heart
Speaker 1: evidence is and it just never quite like I pull
Speaker 1: the thread and it just pulls off and is a
Speaker 1: tiny fragment of something, it's never anything substantial enough to
Speaker 1: really be a standalone episode, and it becomes also very
Speaker 1: difficult to figure out which parts of the story are
Speaker 1: true and which parts are mythology and which parts. As
Speaker 1: we've talked about in many episodes throughout our years on
Speaker 1: this podcast, there are some where the mythology and the
Speaker 1: truth really kind of getting meshed in a way that
Speaker 1: it is impossible to figure out what degree which of
Speaker 1: them is driving the bus. So the first written reference
Speaker 1: to Mulan is in the Ballad of Mulan also known
Speaker 1: as Ode of Mulan, which is a Chinese poem from
Speaker 1: the fifth or sixth century. This poem follows the pattern
Speaker 1: of folk songs that were popular at the time, so
Speaker 1: it's definitely conceivable that there were some folk songs about
Speaker 1: this character before the poem itself was composed. And the
Speaker 1: poem begins with Mulan weaving it a loom, and she's
Speaker 1: worried because the con has called for troops, and on
Speaker 1: the list of men who are required to report for
Speaker 1: duty is Mulan's father. But her father is old and
Speaker 1: she has no older brothers, and so she wants to
Speaker 1: buy a saddle and a horse and serve in her
Speaker 1: father's place. In the poem, she does this, she buys
Speaker 1: the horse in the saddle, as well as a bridle
Speaker 1: and a whip, and she reports for duty dress as
Speaker 1: a boy. She serves nobly for ten years, but when
Speaker 1: it's time for the con to recognize her for her
Speaker 1: achievements and offers her promotion, she says she only wants
Speaker 1: a fast horse to take her back home. As with
Speaker 1: Tomoi goes in. Mulan's story became incredibly popular in China
Speaker 1: in the centuries after this ballad was first composed, a
Speaker 1: whole collection of stories, song and tales have talked about
Speaker 1: Lulan who dressed as a boy to serve in the
Speaker 1: army in place of her father. But there's really just
Speaker 1: not a lot of detail about who that original fifth
Speaker 1: century woman might have been, or even if she was real.
Speaker 1: We have no idea now and I wished, I wish
Speaker 1: there were more detail, because, as we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: the ladies that that dress up as men to go
Speaker 1: to war like those tend to be some of my
Speaker 1: favorite stories. They are, and it's a great Disney movie.
Speaker 1: And now we're going to take another quick sponsor break.
Speaker 1: Before we get our last to our last two impossible
Speaker 1: episodes on our an ultimate Impossible episode. At around three
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning on March fourteenth, nine year old
Speaker 1: Katherine Genevies, who was known as Kitty, was murdered on
Speaker 1: her way home from work at a bar in queen Is,
Speaker 1: New York. And this is not apocryphal at all. That
Speaker 1: definitely really happened. She fought back against her assailant for
Speaker 1: about forty minutes, during which time she was stabbed repeatedly,
Speaker 1: and she was eventually raped. This attack ended in the vestibule,
Speaker 1: the vestibule of her own building. We've had a huge
Speaker 1: uptick in request for this one lately, and I think
Speaker 1: it's because it appeared in an episode of Girls as
Speaker 1: Like a Play. Also, as I discovered as I was
Speaker 1: researching this, the perpetrator died recently. Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: been one of those things that's hovering on the edges
Speaker 1: of social conscience lately. Uh. And allegedly the and the
Speaker 1: reason why people ask us to tell this story is
Speaker 1: it thirty seven or thirty eight other people stood by
Speaker 1: and did nothing while Kitty Genevies fought four and then
Speaker 1: of course lost her life. As reported in the New
Speaker 1: York Times on March seven, nineteen sixty four, quote, for
Speaker 1: more than half an hour, thirty eight respectable law abiding
Speaker 1: citizens in Queens watched a killers stock and stab a
Speaker 1: woman in three separate attacks in kew gardens. And according
Speaker 1: to the New York Times, the reason for three separate
Speaker 1: attacks was that twice someone hearing a commotion outside turned
Speaker 1: on a light, which scared the perpetrator away. And according
Speaker 1: to that same New York Times article, it was only
Speaker 1: when the ambulance came that people actually came out of
Speaker 1: their homes. Winston Moseley, he was captured a few days
Speaker 1: later during a burglary, confessed to the crime, as well
Speaker 1: as the murders and sexual assaults of two other women
Speaker 1: in New York. He was ultimately tried only for his
Speaker 1: crimes against Genevese, for which he was convicted after a
Speaker 1: second trial. The first one actually ended up in a
Speaker 1: hung jury. As we noted a moment ago, he spent
Speaker 1: almost fifty two years in prison, and he died in
Speaker 1: April of sixteen at the age of eighty one. Back
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, this murder led to a lot
Speaker 1: of research and discussion about whether ordinary citizens are morally
Speaker 1: or legally obligated to report crimes, and it also led
Speaker 1: to a lot of research into the bystander effect. So
Speaker 1: this is the idea that people are less likely to
Speaker 1: help when there are other people around. Basically they think
Speaker 1: that one of those other people has already taken care
Speaker 1: of the situation. And the bystander effect, also known as
Speaker 1: the diffusion of responsibility, is also a real thing, just
Speaker 1: as this murder was a very real thing. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I personally have been, say, driving down a busy highway
Speaker 1: and I see someone trying to change a car by
Speaker 1: the side of the road, Like, people are a lot
Speaker 1: less likely to stop if there are lots of people
Speaker 1: on the highway, then if it's fairly deserted and you're
Speaker 1: thinking that person might not get help from someone else, Like,
Speaker 1: this is a real phenomenon that definitely exists. The case
Speaker 1: also spawned a number of places to start adopting Good
Speaker 1: Samaritan laws, and it was one of the factors that
Speaker 1: led to the adoption of nine one one is an
Speaker 1: emergency number. However, this number of thirty seven or thirty
Speaker 1: eight people, which is included with just about every single
Speaker 1: mention of Kitty Genevise and is the thing that people
Speaker 1: remember most about this case was actually greatly exaggerated. It
Speaker 1: apparently came from a casual conversation between the police commissioner
Speaker 1: and a journalist, and it was meant to simply be
Speaker 1: an estimate of how many witnesses the police had interviewed,
Speaker 1: not an estimate of how many people had failed to act.
Speaker 1: The actual number of interviewees seems to be uh forty nine,
Speaker 1: not thirty seven or thirty eight, but that would have
Speaker 1: included people who had absolutely no information to share because
Speaker 1: they weren't at home or they didn't wake up from
Speaker 1: the noise. And the words of researchers who thoroughly reviewed
Speaker 1: all of the evidence and then published their findings in
Speaker 1: the journal American Psychologists in two thousand seven quote. Using
Speaker 1: archive material, the authors show that there is no evidence
Speaker 1: for the presence of thirty eight witnesses, or that witnesses
Speaker 1: observed the murder, or that witnesses remained inactive. Some of
Speaker 1: those people who were interviewed also thought that what they
Speaker 1: were hearing was a domestic dispute and that it just
Speaker 1: simply wasn't their business. Others didn't think there was much
Speaker 1: of a point in calling the police, since in those
Speaker 1: pre nine one one years there really wasn't a central
Speaker 1: dispatch or a way of handling emergency calls, so police
Speaker 1: response was not super consistent. The sixties was also an era,
Speaker 1: particularly I think in Queens, New York, of people simply
Speaker 1: not trusting the police as a general rule. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of tension between police and citizenry at
Speaker 1: that time, um. And there were definitely people who were
Speaker 1: interviewed who were like, well, I saw something that was happening,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want to get involved. But they were
Speaker 1: also the person who eventually was there when Katie Geneviez
Speaker 1: actually died, was somebody who left her apartment to go
Speaker 1: to help, not even knowing if the killer was still there.
Speaker 1: So the whole way that it's framed as the entirety
Speaker 1: of Queens literally did not care like that is a
Speaker 1: huge exaggeration and not actually true. Um, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: the reason that people asked to talk about her and
Speaker 1: the reason that the case is still remembered today. Our
Speaker 1: last impossible thing is actually one that makes me a
Speaker 1: little bit sad to debunk. Um. It's been a while
Speaker 1: since we've gotten a request for this one, although I
Speaker 1: was surprised that we didn't get a new wave of
Speaker 1: them after our recent episode on knitting. Although we did
Speaker 1: get some request to talk about quilting in general. And
Speaker 1: that's the idea that quilts were used as codes by
Speaker 1: the underground rail Road. Yeah, that idea was actually popularized
Speaker 1: in the book Hidden in Plain View, A Secret Story
Speaker 1: of Quilts and the Underground Railroad by Jacqueline Tobin and
Speaker 1: Raymond Dobard, which came out, and since then the idea
Speaker 1: of quilt codes made its way into lots of children's books.
Speaker 1: It's in quilting books, uh, and even in interpretive displays
Speaker 1: in museums and in craft centers. It shows up on
Speaker 1: government websites, just lots of places. Yeah, it's presented as
Speaker 1: absolute fact in many places that you would think of
Speaker 1: as a reputable place for facts, like museums. So we
Speaker 1: want to make something really clear, I mean enormously clear
Speaker 1: right up front. Quilting was definitely a really important craft
Speaker 1: among enslaved women, and a lot of quilting history has
Speaker 1: really ignored the contributions of black of black women, both
Speaker 1: free and enslaved. Pre Civil War white women sometimes get
Speaker 1: the credit for beautiful quilts that were actually pieced and
Speaker 1: stitched by enslaved women for them. Scholarly examinations of African
Speaker 1: motifs and symbols and African American quilts are actually quite recent,
Speaker 1: considering the greater history of quilting as a whole, which
Speaker 1: for a long time was really focused on white quilters
Speaker 1: and not Black quilters. I was actually at a museum
Speaker 1: exhibition about quilts and there was literally a quilt, one
Speaker 1: one quilt in the whole thing by an African American person,
Speaker 1: and the sign at that quilt it infuriated me because
Speaker 1: it basically was like black people made quilts to quilts too,
Speaker 1: they were a lot like the quilts of white people,
Speaker 1: and that like was all that they had to say
Speaker 1: about that, and that was the only representation of uh like,
Speaker 1: African influence on quilting or African mult American quiltures in
Speaker 1: the entire thing. I found it enormously frustrating. Yeah, uh So,
Speaker 1: the idea though that the quilts were codes for the
Speaker 1: underground rail road unfortunately hasn't really held up to scholarly scrutiny.
Speaker 1: Uh Do Bart and Tobin source was Ozella McDaniel Williams,
Speaker 1: who was a quilter and a descendant of enslaved women,
Speaker 1: who related the story of how her ancestors would use
Speaker 1: quilts to plan and coordinate escapes, and according to williams description,
Speaker 1: a woman would make a sampler that would include all
Speaker 1: ten patterns used in the code, which the other enslaved
Speaker 1: people on the plantation could use to memorize those codes.
Speaker 1: The next step after making this sampler was to make
Speaker 1: ten full sized quilts, one for each of the ten patterns.
Speaker 1: When the full sized quilt was hung up uh for
Speaker 1: people to see it, it was time to take whatever
Speaker 1: step was encoded in its pattern. The next step in
Speaker 1: this whole process was to make ten full sized quilts,
Speaker 1: one full quilt for each of the patterns that was
Speaker 1: used in this sampler. When the full sized quote would
Speaker 1: be hung up, it was time to take whatever step
Speaker 1: was represented by that pattern. Some of these were actions
Speaker 1: to be taken before escaping the plantation. Like a monkey
Speaker 1: wrench pattern was meant to gather up your tools. There
Speaker 1: was a basket pattern which was meant to gather enough
Speaker 1: supplies for a long journey. There was also a wagon wheel,
Speaker 1: which either meant to load the wagon or actually prepare
Speaker 1: to leave, depending on who who you talked to. You
Speaker 1: others in these patterns were information to be followed along
Speaker 1: the way, like a north star pattern meant to follow
Speaker 1: the north Star, and a sail boat meant to take
Speaker 1: a boat across the Great Lakes. It's such a cool concept,
Speaker 1: but there are just so many unanswered questions about this
Speaker 1: whole idea. Ozella McDaniel Williams has passed away in the
Speaker 1: years since that book was published, and there aren't any
Speaker 1: other oral history testimonies that survived to confirm her account.
Speaker 1: There are no written records or references to coded quilts
Speaker 1: and slave narratives or in interviews conducted with people who
Speaker 1: had previously been enslaved, and there are also none in
Speaker 1: the remembrances or documents of people who worked along the
Speaker 1: underground railroad. There are also no actual quilts surviving today,
Speaker 1: at least none that anyone has found. Yeah, they're definitely
Speaker 1: quotes that used these patterns, but not that not ones
Speaker 1: that they all the way back to before the Civil War.
Speaker 1: The book's authors and other people who have written in
Speaker 1: support of this idea. You point out that a lot
Speaker 1: of the people making and using these quilts wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been literate, and that the quilts themselves would have been
Speaker 1: used as bed coverings until the end of their useful life,
Speaker 1: which explains both the lack of written records and the
Speaker 1: lack of quilts as physical artifacts. But there are a
Speaker 1: lot of practical questions as well. The late historian Giles
Speaker 1: are right pointed out a number of ways in which
Speaker 1: the instructions purportedly outlined in the quilts were completely different
Speaker 1: from established scholarship on the underground railroad, including that enslaved
Speaker 1: people in South Carolina who escaped via the underground railroad
Speaker 1: generally went northeast, not toward Cleveland, as would have been
Speaker 1: directed in the quilt blocks. Yeah, these these blocks, uh
Speaker 1: purportedly originated from a South Carolina plantation, And in addition
Speaker 1: to that, it takes a long time to make a
Speaker 1: full sized quilt, and this system purportedly required ten full
Speaker 1: sized quilts plus the sampler, which really would have would
Speaker 1: have been a huge and i'm consuming undertaking. Even if
Speaker 1: a plantation's enslaved women essentially held quilting bees after their
Speaker 1: other work was done, this really seems like an extraordinary
Speaker 1: and kind of convoluted and counterproductive amount of time and
Speaker 1: effort to put toward documenting very simple instructions like gather
Speaker 1: your tools and load up the wagons. In a two
Speaker 1: thousand seven Time magazine article, Tobin said, quote, it's frustrating
Speaker 1: to be attacked and not allowed to celebrate this amazing
Speaker 1: oral story of one family's experience. Whether or not it's
Speaker 1: completely valid, I have no idea, but it makes sense
Speaker 1: with the amount of research we did. My personal feeling
Speaker 1: on the matter is that Ozella McDaniel Williams ancestors probably
Speaker 1: really were making quilts, and they were probably using patterns
Speaker 1: and blocks that contained motifs that were related to freedom
Speaker 1: and escape, but that these family stories kind of morphed
Speaker 1: over the years to become that they were literally codes
Speaker 1: for the underground railroad, and that that part probably didn't
Speaker 1: happen it. Really, it wouldn't surprise me at all though,
Speaker 1: if her ancestors were making quilts that were sort of
Speaker 1: imbued with imagery that symbolized freedom as a form of resistance,
Speaker 1: even if they were not literally being used as tools
Speaker 1: of escape. Yeah, it's one of those things where probably
Speaker 1: the details have morphed a little over time and gotten
Speaker 1: a little a little fuzzy and taken on different meetings
Speaker 1: than their original. Yeah, it sort of ties to the
Speaker 1: idea that like most of the enslaved people and possibly
Speaker 1: all of the enslaved people on the plantation would not
Speaker 1: have known how to read, which is why visual symbols
Speaker 1: were used. But that is like, I cannot think of
Speaker 1: a visual symbol that would have taken longer to make
Speaker 1: before displaying to people, right, Like, uh, but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's not not at all to try to erase the
Speaker 1: importance the culture and cultural importance of quilt saying among
Speaker 1: enslaved women and then later on among African American cultures
Speaker 1: who have been so long overlooked in history. But that
Speaker 1: underground railroad railroad part of it is not not really
Speaker 1: something that can be substantiated. And it also a lot
Speaker 1: of folks have very romanticized ideas about the underground railroad,
Speaker 1: and the idea that very pretty things like quilts and
Speaker 1: songs were a big parts specifically of the underground railroad
Speaker 1: sort of ties to that uh, feel good aspect of
Speaker 1: the underground railroad when it's a great into Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like singing and quilting both very culturally important, but a
Speaker 1: lot of the songs that people have said we're used
Speaker 1: by the under underground railroad to to spread codes are
Speaker 1: are much more recent than that time also, so it
Speaker 1: sort of gives this um the shine to the underground railroad.
Speaker 1: That makes the whole story, like the more palatable aspect
Speaker 1: of slavery, which I think it's important to have stories
Speaker 1: that are accessible to children, but the a lot of
Speaker 1: adults also, I think that the underground Railroad was sort
Speaker 1: of a a dangerous but ultimately happy experience right well.
Speaker 1: And my thing with any of those, whether it's related
Speaker 1: to something like the underground Railroad or anything, is that
Speaker 1: when because there are people who will be like, why
Speaker 1: do you why do you want to attack that? It's
Speaker 1: a great story, but when you give credence to things
Speaker 1: that didn't happen, you're robbing the actual story of its
Speaker 1: place in history. Yeah. I read a really interesting paper
Speaker 1: while I was researching this that was about children's literature
Speaker 1: that that has drawn from this whole quilte idea and
Speaker 1: how this this literature for children. Uh, what's good about
Speaker 1: it is how it ties to the idea of like
Speaker 1: make king an identity for yourself and and making a
Speaker 1: world for yourself that uh that you can be a
Speaker 1: part of, and not so much about um factual information
Speaker 1: about the underground railroad for kids. Now that we've covered
Speaker 1: lots of things that may or may not have happened
Speaker 1: or didn't happen the way that people have always been
Speaker 1: told they did. Do you have some listener mail that
Speaker 1: really am for true happened? It really did? It really
Speaker 1: is what you happened. Um. It is about an episode
Speaker 1: that you did the research for, but about a comment
Speaker 1: that I made during the episode, and it's from Orla
Speaker 1: uh and it is response to the fact that when
Speaker 1: we were talking about carbon fiber knitting needles, which I
Speaker 1: think was actually in a listener mail about our knitting episode,
Speaker 1: I was like, why would you need that? That seems
Speaker 1: a little excessive, And so Orla rights to say, I
Speaker 1: was listening to your listener mail segment and you were
Speaker 1: wondering about the reason for carbon fiber and knitting needles.
Speaker 1: There are four main materials for knitting needles these days,
Speaker 1: would often bamboo for the list expensive versions, metal acrylic,
Speaker 1: which is just becoming popular over the last few years,
Speaker 1: and carbon fiber depending on what you are working, knitting
Speaker 1: needles can get very small. For example, zero zero zero
Speaker 1: zero needles are one point zero millimeters, and according to Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: the smallest size is zero zero zero zero zero zero,
Speaker 1: which is zero point seven millimeters. If you're using wood
Speaker 1: or acrylic needles, they can easily break from someone holding
Speaker 1: the needles too tightly, or even just carrying them in
Speaker 1: your bag between knitting sessions. But metal needles are sometimes
Speaker 1: unpleasant to work with. They're my least favorite kind of
Speaker 1: needle because as I formed the stitches, my needles rub
Speaker 1: against each other and I don't like the sound. Also,
Speaker 1: different needle materials of knitting needles work better with different
Speaker 1: types of yarn. Acrylic yarn tends to stick to acrylic needles.
Speaker 1: For example, carbon fiber has the advantage of being very
Speaker 1: tough to break, even in the smallest sizes. It also
Speaker 1: isn't as sticky with acrylic yarns. However, they tend to
Speaker 1: be more expense of and either have very sharp points
Speaker 1: in the end or have a metal tip, which can
Speaker 1: sometimes cause a bump where the carbon and metal join.
Speaker 1: And then she writes to say that basically a lot
Speaker 1: of this boils down to personal preference. She has met
Speaker 1: a lot of people that have had a lot of
Speaker 1: different preferences in terms of their needle type. So thank
Speaker 1: you so much or love for answering that question. I
Speaker 1: did definitely is that when I learned that people were
Speaker 1: making the knitting needles out of carbon fiber, was like,
Speaker 1: that seems like a little bit of overkill for a
Speaker 1: knitting needle material. So I am glad to have more
Speaker 1: information about that. If you would like to write to
Speaker 1: us about this or any other podcast, where History podcasts
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Speaker 1: you'll find all kinds of information about all kinds of
Speaker 1: fascinating stuff. And if you want to come to our website,
Speaker 1: which is isst in history dot com, that is where
Speaker 1: you will find show notes for all of the episodes
Speaker 1: we have ever done. We've had a couple of people
Speaker 1: right recently to say that they were not able to
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