The Wrong Foot

Mistakes happen, right? But whether a moment of bad judgment or a simple accident, mistakes can alter the course of lives, and even history itself.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

(00:27):
of Curiosities. Make enough people mad and they'll associate your
name with whatever awful thing you did forever. When the
Civil War and the abolition of slavery wiped out much
of his tobacco business, Dr Samuel Mud teamed up with

(00:49):
John Wilkes Booth. It was Dr Mud who fastened a
splint around Booth's broken leg and helped him escape. Although
the saying did not originate with him, the doctor is
often linked to the insult your name is Mud. Charles
Cunningham was another man with an unfortunate name, and he
had only himself to blame. Cunningham was a land agent,
a high ranking member of an estate who managed the

(01:12):
landowner's property by collecting rents and supervising maintenance. Cunningham worked
for a man named John Creighton, third earl arn Lord.
Aaron had come from a family dripping with aristocracy. He
was also a member of the House of Lords as
well as a Knight of the Order of St Patrick,
but he would go on to be remembered most as
the man who hired Charles Cunningham. Cunningham was a well

(01:33):
educated man who had joined the military when he was
only sixteen. His travels with the thirty ninth Foot Regiment
took him from London to Belfast and finally to Dublin
around eighteen fifty. He married shortly after that and decided
to stay in Ireland permanently. Cunningham lived all over the
country too, but he eventually found a more permanent home
in County Mayo. Lord Aaron owned a home there. He

(01:55):
had hired Cunningham to be his agent, which gave him
oversight over fifteen hundred acres. Cunningham was now in charge
of farmers, servants and other household staff, the kind of
power that he believed had been ordained by God and
passed on to those who deserved it. That sort of
classism didn't sit well with the estates, tenants, the farmers,
who resented the rules and regulations their new boss had

(02:17):
put in place. They also hated the exorbitant rents that
Cunningham was tasked with collecting for the Lord. Tenant farmers
had almost no rights, and although they had least the land,
the land's owner could evict them without notice, even if
the rent was current and paid on time. The farmers
had tried before to organize against landowners. They called for
the three f's, fair rent fix, city of tenure and

(02:39):
free sale. In other words, they were tired of paying
a lot of money for no security. When a member
of Parliament named Charles Stewart Parnell heard about their plight,
he stepped into help. It wasn't just about helping the underdog, though.
He needed the farmers on his side to further his
agenda for Irish independence. Parnell and the newly formed Land
League went to work. He gave speeches and riled up crowds,

(03:03):
laying the groundwork for an uprising that had been years
in the making. Cunningham was set to collect the rents
from the Lord's tenants in September of eighteen eighty. The
crops had not been as plentiful as in past years,
so the Lord gave them a ten percent discount as
a show of good faith. But it wasn't good enough,
it was still too high. The farmers demanded at least

(03:23):
twenty five percent off their rent, but Lord Aaron scoffed
at them. Either his farmers would pay or they would
be forced to leave. Cunningham got to work securing eviction
notices against eleven tenants who refused to pay. After three
notices had been delivered, though one tenant named Mrs Fitzmorris
turned them away, she waved a red flag outside her

(03:44):
home to let everyone else know what was going on.
Her neighbors joined her and started throwing rocks and manure
at the men until they left. Soon all of Cunningham's
servants quit. No shops in the nearby town would serve him.
He wasn't beaten or intimidated. His punishment was far worse.
He was ignored ostracized by the community, and he didn't

(04:06):
exactly do himself any favors when his letter to the
Times was published, in which he referred to his tenants
as a howling mob. Soon September turned into October, and
Cunningham was in danger of losing a fortune in crops
if they weren't harvested soon. Since the farmers and laborers
had all left and had threatened anyone who dared help him.
The Irish government deployed a small army of fifty men

(04:29):
to help pull the crops. The endeavor ended up costing
Cunningham his job with the estate, as well as several
thousand pounds. He left County Mayo for Dublin, where he
stayed for a few days before heading to England. Now
he would have stayed longer, but his hotel had received
numerous letters from potential guests who swore they would never
stay there again if he was given a room. A

(04:50):
year later, a new law was introduced, titled the Land
Law Act of eighteen eighty one. It stated that landlords
could no longer evict tenants on a whim, and establis
fixed terms of fifteen years for rent the people at
one As for Cunningham, he slipped into the United States
to visit some friends, the few he still had left

(05:11):
who lived in Virginia. He had to use his middle name, however,
as his last name had come to symbolize the treatment
he'd endured back in Ireland, not Cunningham. Cunningham was his
middle name. No, Charles real last name would go down
in history as the term for the process of ostracizing
bad businesses Charles Cunningham Boycott. To become an expert in

(05:46):
one's field takes serious devotion. Hundreds, even thousands of hours
must be spent practicing and perfecting. Attorney Judith Cogan studied
harp at Juilliard School in New York City, and experience
she documented in her nineteen eighties seven book Nothing but
the Best. In the book, Cogan discussed the long hours
spent by students practicing their art until late into the night.

(06:08):
There was no time or tolerance for goofing off at Juilliard,
but the dedication paid off in the end. Robin Williams,
Yo Yo Ma and Nina Simone are just some of
the school's famous former students who went on to great
success later in life. Jean Baptiste Lally also dedicated his
life to his passion music, and in a way, it

(06:29):
was this passion that would inevitably kill him. Lally was
born in Florence, Italy, in sixty two. While the rest
of his family didn't show much interest in music, he
devoted a love for it with the help of a
Franciscan friar who taught him how to play guitar. From there,
Lally went on to study the violin, which enabled him
to entertain crowds on the street during Mardi Gras when

(06:50):
he was only fourteen years old. He would play his
violin and dance while dressed up as a harlequin. A
French aristocrat named Rodre de Lorraine was taking with Lally
street performances. He offered to bring him back to France
to work with his niece on her Italian It was
a wise decision for Lally, who found himself studying with
the popular composers of the day who spent time at

(07:12):
the young woman's home. Lally quickly made a name for
himself among the French elites to his musical abilities and dancing.
It had earned him the nickname Baptiste and great street artist.
After de Lorraine's niece was exiled in sixteen fifty two,
Lally also left. He continued to study music and perform,
eventually becoming a composer himself. A young Louis the fourteenth

(07:36):
had performed with him in a production of the Ballet
Royal de la Louis, after which he hired him as
his royal composer. Lally demonstrated such musical acumen that he
was made the Superintendent of Royal Music. Once Louis took
over the government, he was taken with writing new pieces,
such as instrumentals, vocal arrangements, and operas to be performed

(07:56):
for the court by royal musicians and dancers. Lally was
prolific during the years that he wrote for King Louis.
He was also quite animated. Musical performances were different in
the seventeenth century than they are today. Conductors didn't often
use small batons to direct the tempo of their arrangements. Instead,
they wielded giant staffs that they would slam into the floor,

(08:18):
making loud sounds to mark the speeds the musicians had
to follow. Seven was a difficult year for the royal family.
Louis had lost his affection for Lally due to the
composer's sexual orientation, which went against the king's beliefs. Still,
Lally held him in high regard, so when Louis underwent
surgery for an infection, the composer celebrated his recovery with

(08:41):
a performance of today Um, a hymn based on the
Apostles creed. Composers such as Mozart and Verde had done
their own renditions, but only lullies ended with a bang.
He conducted with gusto, bringing his staff down hard on
the floor beneath him. It rang out among the royal
courts like thunder. Now I think we can all agree

(09:02):
that music is special. It can consume us unlike anything else.
It is all encompassing. Our other senses take a back
seat as we listen to the melodies that churn our
emotions inside us. Perhaps that's what happened to Lally. He
got lost in his music as he banged his staff
pointed and down onto the floor, but instead of striking

(09:23):
the floor, the sharp staff pierced something else, his own foot.
In the heat of the moment. Consumed by the music,
he had accidentally impaled himself with his conducting staff. Before long,
an abscessed formed, which turned into gang green. Lally was
given one of two options. He could either have his
leg amputated to save his life, or he could let

(09:44):
the illness take him. Lally refused the amputation, telling doctors
that he would rather die than give up what he
called his dancing leg. Two months later, he got his wish.
The gang Green spread throughout the rest of his body
into his brain, eventually killing him. His death wasn't in vain, though,
as the incident helps spawn the search for alternatives to

(10:05):
the heavy and now deadly conducting staff. Small sticks, sheets
of paper rolled into thin tubes, and even bare hands
were used in lieu of the instrument that had killed
Jean Baptiste Lali. Lali's death might have been tragic, but
one thing is clear. At least he died doing what
he loved. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of

(10:29):
the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
and television show, and you can learn all about it

(10:51):
over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious.