October 27, 2022 • 9 mins
Sometimes the most curious thing about us is our clothing—a target that today's featured stories aim straight at the heart of.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed. Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosity is 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. Anyone who has seen a production of West
Side Story knows two things about real gangs. One, they
don't dance, and too, they certainly don't sing. And even
though the sharks and the Jets were known to leap
(00:48):
and pirouette through city streets, they were still violent in nature,
starting rumbles with knives and guns and ending each act
with a death or two. But the theater is not
real life, or is it. While no real gangs have
ever been reported dancing, one Parisian gang was considered the
best dressed in Europe maybe in the world. They were
(01:08):
known as the Apaches, a brutal gang that prowled the
streets of Paris during the turn of the twentieth century.
They were known for two things, their violent nature and
their fashion sense. It was the press that gave them
their name. One journalist reported on a particular heinous crime
in which a victim had been stabbed in the face
with a hat pin and sliced with a knife. The
(01:30):
reporter was something of a Wild West fanatic and believed
that the brutality of this crime was similar to the
misinformation and stereotypes they had heard about the indigenous people
over in America. This reporter may not have known much
about indigenous people's but they did know how to brand
their stories, and the moniker stuck. In fact, the cops
had already been using the Apache name inappropriately to describe
(01:54):
the brutality of other crimes they were investigating. You wouldn't
think that a violent gang would become popular or exciting, though,
but that's exactly what happened with the Apaches. They're catching name,
combined with their penchant for butting heads and strangling people
with their scarves, made them infamous among Parisian society. One
of their signature moves involved one gang member strangling a
(02:16):
mark from behind and hoisting them up so they couldn't
fight back. Meanwhile, another gang member would go through the
victim's pockets for money, as a third kept watch for
the authorities. Well, the goal wasn't to kill the person
being strangled. Sometimes the act took so long the victim
died anyway, And scarves weren't the only weapons in their
arsenal either. These apaches had their own special weapon to
(02:39):
set themselves apart from other street gangs. It was a
type of revolver with a handle made from brass knuckles
with a short blade that extended past the barrel. Most
of the gang members were young men and women, teenagers
and adults barely into their twenties, and from shop owners
to aristocrats, two cops and firemen. Nobody was safe from
(02:59):
their hot headed compulsions. But they weren't special because of
their ages, or their guns, or even their headbutting. The
apaches were special because they were apparently really snappy dressers.
A top there perfectly coffed hair thick with palmaide sat
a hat known as a deaf cap. It bore a
strong resemblance to the newsboy caps worn by kids and
teens in America around the same time. The women, however,
(03:22):
didn't wear hats at all. Instead, they tied a black
ribbon around their necks. And although they were often poor,
Apaches didn't let their lack of funds stop them from slain,
both literally and in the fashion forward. Since they often
wore vests and waistcoats over striped sailor shirts and never
walked around in scuffed shoes, it was important for their
footwear to be polished and pristine at all times. Gang
(03:44):
members had a blue dot tattooed under their left eye
to identify their membership, and the looks of the gang
members became so iconic elements of their wardrobes started to
seep into the closets of the wealthy, and so did
their sling. It was called the green tongue, and it
became so popular it was taught to those willing to
pay to learn it. But the gang members themselves didn't
(04:05):
make it that long. After the outbreak of World War One,
the age of the dandie gang member died out, yet
their influence did linger on for years to come in
plays and in movies. Even legendary actors such as Marlon
Brando and James Dean were known to sports Apache style
clothing when they were out on the town. They may
not have dance stub sung in the streets of Paris,
(04:27):
but the Apaches certainly left their mark on French history
and on the runway. History is fraught with strange mercurial
(04:49):
things called cursed objects, physical items that have attracted a
bit of notoriety over the years, like a dark cloud
of painful stories that seemed to follow the item wherever
it goes. One such example might be the clock atop
the Palace of Versailles in France. Its hands have remained
at eight fifteen am, the exact hour and minute when
King Louis the fourteenth was pronounced dead ever since. But
(05:12):
one cursed object came from much humbler beginnings, and it
seemed to collect the tragic tales and coincidences of one
family in particular, the Spicers, lived in Massachusetts during the
late seventeen hundreds. Daniel Spicer was killed in seventeen eighty
four when two musket balls passed straight through his coat.
His younger brother, Jabez, then inherited the coat. After his
(05:34):
brother's death. Three years later, in seventeen eighty seven, Jabez
Spicer took up a fight of his own. He was
one of many in Massachusetts who were fed up with
what they believed was government overreach in its collection of
taxes on the poor. A decade earlier, during the Revolutionary war,
the economy was mostly based on the agricultural output of
local farms. Farmers towards the center of the states often
(05:56):
had little money and would either barter with neighbors or
ask pliers for credits until they could pay them back.
Times were tough, and folks were doing everything they could
to prevent themselves from going under. The Massachusetts coasts, however,
were run by a merchant class that had no problem
paying for the supplies they needed with cold, hard cash.
This kept the economy afloat and made collecting taxes much easier.
(06:19):
The state government preferred things this way. After the war,
the idea of credit lines all but disappeared, even for
the farming communities that could not afford to pay outright
for what they needed. Vendors wanted money, and they didn't
want to wait to be paid. As a result of
the change, farmers couldn't afford to pay off their debts
nor their taxes. They started having their land repossessed. This
(06:41):
led to animosity towards the courts and the tax collectors.
When the legal routes to fix their situations stopped working,
the people took matters into their own hands. In Sight two,
for example, one citizen of Massachusetts, a guy named Job
Shattuck started organizing his community to hold protests and stopped
the tax collector from fulfilling their duties. From there, things
(07:02):
only grew more heated until a mass protest in August
of seventeen eighty six effectively shut down the courts from
Northampton to Worcester. Mobs of people prevented the Massachusetts legislature
from getting back to work. Even when militias were sent
to stop the demonstrations, they refused to act. The troops
actually sided with the farmers. Eventually, two of the rebellions ringleaders,
(07:25):
Daniel Schayes and Luke Day, organized a full scale assault
against the government and its forces. On the other side
of the equation was the Massachusetts militia, led by former
Revolutionary War general Benjamin Lincoln. He marched into Worcester on
January nineteenth of seventeen eighty seven with three thousand troops
behind him. They managed to quell the rebellion in a
(07:46):
matter of weeks, with fewer than ten casualties on either side. However,
one of those casualties happened to be Jabez Spicer, the
brother of the late Daniel Spicer. During an attack on
the Springfield Arsenal. Jabez, who was wearing the coat his
brother had died in, was shot twice. The two musket
balls that killed him happened to travel straight through the
(08:08):
exact same bullet holes that had taken out his brother
Daniel three years before. Was it an unfathomable coincidence, a
case of bad luck or fate coming to finish what
it had started in It's hard to say for sure,
but maybe things might have turned out differently if Jabez
hadn't been trying to ride his brother's coattails. I hope
(08:35):
you've enjoyed today's guided tour of 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
(08:57):
you can learn all about it over at the World
of Lure dot Come and until next time, stay curious.
H
Welcomed. Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosity is 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. Anyone who has seen a production of West
Side Story knows two things about real gangs. One, they
don't dance, and too, they certainly don't sing. And even
though the sharks and the Jets were known to leap
(00:48):
and pirouette through city streets, they were still violent in nature,
starting rumbles with knives and guns and ending each act
with a death or two. But the theater is not
real life, or is it. While no real gangs have
ever been reported dancing, one Parisian gang was considered the
best dressed in Europe maybe in the world. They were
(01:08):
known as the Apaches, a brutal gang that prowled the
streets of Paris during the turn of the twentieth century.
They were known for two things, their violent nature and
their fashion sense. It was the press that gave them
their name. One journalist reported on a particular heinous crime
in which a victim had been stabbed in the face
with a hat pin and sliced with a knife. The
(01:30):
reporter was something of a Wild West fanatic and believed
that the brutality of this crime was similar to the
misinformation and stereotypes they had heard about the indigenous people
over in America. This reporter may not have known much
about indigenous people's but they did know how to brand
their stories, and the moniker stuck. In fact, the cops
had already been using the Apache name inappropriately to describe
(01:54):
the brutality of other crimes they were investigating. You wouldn't
think that a violent gang would become popular or exciting, though,
but that's exactly what happened with the Apaches. They're catching name,
combined with their penchant for butting heads and strangling people
with their scarves, made them infamous among Parisian society. One
of their signature moves involved one gang member strangling a
(02:16):
mark from behind and hoisting them up so they couldn't
fight back. Meanwhile, another gang member would go through the
victim's pockets for money, as a third kept watch for
the authorities. Well, the goal wasn't to kill the person
being strangled. Sometimes the act took so long the victim
died anyway, And scarves weren't the only weapons in their
arsenal either. These apaches had their own special weapon to
(02:39):
set themselves apart from other street gangs. It was a
type of revolver with a handle made from brass knuckles
with a short blade that extended past the barrel. Most
of the gang members were young men and women, teenagers
and adults barely into their twenties, and from shop owners
to aristocrats, two cops and firemen. Nobody was safe from
(02:59):
their hot headed compulsions. But they weren't special because of
their ages, or their guns, or even their headbutting. The
apaches were special because they were apparently really snappy dressers.
A top there perfectly coffed hair thick with palmaide sat
a hat known as a deaf cap. It bore a
strong resemblance to the newsboy caps worn by kids and
teens in America around the same time. The women, however,
(03:22):
didn't wear hats at all. Instead, they tied a black
ribbon around their necks. And although they were often poor,
Apaches didn't let their lack of funds stop them from slain,
both literally and in the fashion forward. Since they often
wore vests and waistcoats over striped sailor shirts and never
walked around in scuffed shoes, it was important for their
footwear to be polished and pristine at all times. Gang
(03:44):
members had a blue dot tattooed under their left eye
to identify their membership, and the looks of the gang
members became so iconic elements of their wardrobes started to
seep into the closets of the wealthy, and so did
their sling. It was called the green tongue, and it
became so popular it was taught to those willing to
pay to learn it. But the gang members themselves didn't
(04:05):
make it that long. After the outbreak of World War One,
the age of the dandie gang member died out, yet
their influence did linger on for years to come in
plays and in movies. Even legendary actors such as Marlon
Brando and James Dean were known to sports Apache style
clothing when they were out on the town. They may
not have dance stub sung in the streets of Paris,
(04:27):
but the Apaches certainly left their mark on French history
and on the runway. History is fraught with strange mercurial
(04:49):
things called cursed objects, physical items that have attracted a
bit of notoriety over the years, like a dark cloud
of painful stories that seemed to follow the item wherever
it goes. One such example might be the clock atop
the Palace of Versailles in France. Its hands have remained
at eight fifteen am, the exact hour and minute when
King Louis the fourteenth was pronounced dead ever since. But
(05:12):
one cursed object came from much humbler beginnings, and it
seemed to collect the tragic tales and coincidences of one
family in particular, the Spicers, lived in Massachusetts during the
late seventeen hundreds. Daniel Spicer was killed in seventeen eighty
four when two musket balls passed straight through his coat.
His younger brother, Jabez, then inherited the coat. After his
(05:34):
brother's death. Three years later, in seventeen eighty seven, Jabez
Spicer took up a fight of his own. He was
one of many in Massachusetts who were fed up with
what they believed was government overreach in its collection of
taxes on the poor. A decade earlier, during the Revolutionary war,
the economy was mostly based on the agricultural output of
local farms. Farmers towards the center of the states often
(05:56):
had little money and would either barter with neighbors or
ask pliers for credits until they could pay them back.
Times were tough, and folks were doing everything they could
to prevent themselves from going under. The Massachusetts coasts, however,
were run by a merchant class that had no problem
paying for the supplies they needed with cold, hard cash.
This kept the economy afloat and made collecting taxes much easier.
(06:19):
The state government preferred things this way. After the war,
the idea of credit lines all but disappeared, even for
the farming communities that could not afford to pay outright
for what they needed. Vendors wanted money, and they didn't
want to wait to be paid. As a result of
the change, farmers couldn't afford to pay off their debts
nor their taxes. They started having their land repossessed. This
(06:41):
led to animosity towards the courts and the tax collectors.
When the legal routes to fix their situations stopped working,
the people took matters into their own hands. In Sight two,
for example, one citizen of Massachusetts, a guy named Job
Shattuck started organizing his community to hold protests and stopped
the tax collector from fulfilling their duties. From there, things
(07:02):
only grew more heated until a mass protest in August
of seventeen eighty six effectively shut down the courts from
Northampton to Worcester. Mobs of people prevented the Massachusetts legislature
from getting back to work. Even when militias were sent
to stop the demonstrations, they refused to act. The troops
actually sided with the farmers. Eventually, two of the rebellions ringleaders,
(07:25):
Daniel Schayes and Luke Day, organized a full scale assault
against the government and its forces. On the other side
of the equation was the Massachusetts militia, led by former
Revolutionary War general Benjamin Lincoln. He marched into Worcester on
January nineteenth of seventeen eighty seven with three thousand troops
behind him. They managed to quell the rebellion in a
(07:46):
matter of weeks, with fewer than ten casualties on either side. However,
one of those casualties happened to be Jabez Spicer, the
brother of the late Daniel Spicer. During an attack on
the Springfield Arsenal. Jabez, who was wearing the coat his
brother had died in, was shot twice. The two musket
balls that killed him happened to travel straight through the
(08:08):
exact same bullet holes that had taken out his brother
Daniel three years before. Was it an unfathomable coincidence, a
case of bad luck or fate coming to finish what
it had started in It's hard to say for sure,
but maybe things might have turned out differently if Jabez
hadn't been trying to ride his brother's coattails. I hope
(08:35):
you've enjoyed today's guided tour of 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
(08:57):
you can learn all about it over at the World
of Lure dot Come and until next time, stay curious.
H
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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