On the Job

Crime and punishment are the centerpiece of our tour through the Cabinet today.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Nke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
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 of Curiosities. If you know a writer,

(00:37):
odds are that they've complained to you about how hard
it is to find time to actually write. Crafting stories
requires concentration, discipline, and often a decent amount of peace
and quiet. This has remained true ever since the first
scholar put pen to paper, and it's always remarkable where
throughout history people have found the time and space to

(00:58):
record their thoughts. One of the most commonplaces is in prison.
In the thirteenth century, for example, a Venetian man was
captured by the Republic of Genoa and thrown into a cell.
The man in question, who had allegedly fought on the
side of their enemies, was an explorer who had spent
twenty four years traveling from Europe to Asia. During the

(01:20):
months of his imprisonment, he told stories of his travels
to fellow inmates. One of whom was Rosticello the Pisa,
an Italian scholar and author who'd been responsible for the
first Italian versions of several Arthurian legends, and together the
two inmates began to produce the first record of all
the sites the Venetian had seen, the people he'd met,

(01:41):
cultural knowledge that he had gained. The subsequent work became
a best seller, an extremely influential work of travel writing.
Although the authenticity of its stories are often dubious, the
explorer himself is still a household name, Marco Polo now
his co author Rosticello was not the only writer of
Arthurian myths who spent significant time behind bars. In fifteenth

(02:05):
century England, a largely unknown man worked quietly behind bars
while writing the most famous version of the Tales of
King Arthur, the one that collates all the disparate stories
into one grand narrative. It would be called Lamorte de Arthur,
and within its pages it would contain scant hints of
the author's identity. A handful of asides referred to the author,

(02:27):
Sir Thomas Mallory, as a Knight prisoner who was fluent
in both English and French. These asides contain pleas for
his health and safe deliverance, presumably from the prison in
which he was being held. Curiously, most of the pleas
are in the third person, implying that they were added
by the publisher, William Caxton prior to printing. Scholars still

(02:49):
debate who Sir Thomas Mallory actually was, what kind of
knights would find himself in prison yet still respected enough
to publish a work while behind bars, and whether he
was never able to leave this prison is something that
no historian has ever been able to definitively prove. It's
because of this mysterious man that every King Arthur's story

(03:10):
involves ex caliber, a quest to find the Holy Grail
and the doomed fall of Camelot chivalry, it seems, would
be on the mind of many a man behind bars.
One hundred years later, in the late sixteenth century, in
a prison in Algier, a Spaniard sat quietly waiting to
be ransom back home to his country. He had served

(03:30):
in the Christian Spanish Navy, participated in Famasya battles against
the Ottomans. He had lost all movement in his left
arm due to a battle wound, earning him the nickname
the one handed Man of Lepanto. His navy career had
been cut short when he'd been captured by pirates, and
while in prison, he attempted to escape four times, and

(03:51):
each time he was unsuccessful. But while his body remained
in prison, his mind wandered far back to Spain, where
he envisioned an the obelman who had a break with
reality and decided to become a knight errant, define reality
and seeking to live a life of chivalry. And upon
his release, Miguel de Cervantes went on to transcribe these

(04:12):
ideas with his one good hand. The resulting book, Don Quixote,
is often referred to as the first modern novel. Now,
with all of that said, not every book written behind
bars has been as universally beloved as these three works
that I've just described.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Prison is also where the Marquise de Sade wrote his
controversial book about hedonism. It's also where Adolf Hitler wrote
the bitter manifesto Mindkompf, the text that inspired the Nazi
Party and its atrocities. But all this speaks to a
strange paradox. Prison is where we put people to isolate
them from society, whether justly or in justly. The punishment

(04:49):
is to be removed from community with your fellow people,
and yet culture happens behind bars as well. Even if
they don't attempt to physically escape, a human being will
always attempt in a emotional escape from the cruelty and
dehumanization of a penal institution. The pen, it seems, is
not just mightier than the sword, it's also a lot

(05:09):
more flexible. If you've applied for a job recently, you
know that there can be a lot of hoops to
jump through, several rounds of interviews, mock pitches, and proposals,

(05:32):
sometimes waiting weeks at a time to hear back from
a recruiter. Willie was put to the test when he
went looking for a job as well. He needed work
and was eager to find something that played to his
skill set. The problem was that he was an unusual
candidate for his job at the time, so his hiring
managers gave him a test. But it was a little

(05:52):
more dangerous than you might expect. If he passed, he
would get the job, but if he failed, he wouldn't
just miss out on the job, would end up dead
in the street. It was eighteen seventy four in a
small mining town called Yankee Hill, Colorado, a man named
Willie Kennard stood outside the local saloon, his hand wrapped
around the gun in his holster. He took a deep

(06:14):
breath and swaggered through the double doors that led into
the main parlor. Inside, the tables were full of men
playing cards and drinking whiskey. Someone plunked out a melody
on a piano in the corner, but as people noticed Willy,
the entire room fell silent. Willie was a stranger in
town and a black man, two things that made him

(06:36):
an oddity in Yankee Hill, but he didn't care. He
had a job to do. But first, let's back up
Earlier that day, you see, Willie rode into town to
ask about a posting that he had seen printed in
an issue of the Rocky Mountain News. He was pointed
to the local restaurant, Fat Sarah Palmer's Cafe, where four
city councilmen were having their morning coffee. Willie told the

(06:59):
men that he saw their ad saying that Yankee Hill
was in need of a new town marshal. The man
looked Willy up and down, one smirked and said that
he was surprised that Willy could read. The others burst
out laughing. The message was clear, though, this must be
some kind of joke. When they finally collected themselves, the
councilmen realized that Willy was serious, so they made him

(07:20):
a deal. He could have the job, but first he
would need to arrest an outlaw named Barney Kasewitz. Now
Willy was vaguely familiar with Casewit. He'd been terrorizing Yankee
Hill for the last two years, and just a few
months before he had sexually assaulted a fifteen year old
girl named Bertie. Her father tried to avenge her, but
Ksewit shot first, killing the man. After that, the town

(07:43):
marshall tried to arrest Casewit, but Casewit killed him too,
so Yankee Hill got a new marshal. It only took
three months for him to lock horns with Ksewit, and
pretty soon the new marshal was added to his growing
list of victims. Yankee Hill got assigned a third marshal,
who promptly turned in him badge and ran out of town.
So at this point it was proving difficult for the

(08:04):
councilmen to fill the open position. What they needed was
someone who could successfully wrangle Barney. Willie narrowed his eyes
on a scruffy card player at a back table. He
knew it was Barney, and he walked over to his
table to announce that he was under arrest. Barney and
his table full of cronies just cackled at him. Barney
almost choked on his own spit as he asked, I'm

(08:27):
just supposed to come with you. Where are we going?
Willie had been laughed at enough for one day. He
told Barney that he could choose either jail or hell.
Now those were fighting words. K Switt jumped up to
his feet and quick as lightning, he moved to grab
his Colt forty five, but just before he could draw
the gun, Willie Kennard made an impossible shot. He fired

(08:48):
a bullet into Casewitz's still unholstered gun. The impact knocked
the butt out of Barney's hand and rendered the weapon useless.
Two of kse Switz's cronies tried to reach for their gun,
but they were too slow as well. Willie fired two
more shots and hit both of them right between the eyes.
After that, nobody else came to Kayeswit's defense, and Willie

(09:11):
made his arrest. When he delivered the prisoner to the councilmen,
they were shocked, to say the least, and when word
got around about his expert gunslinging, the whole town wanted
to know Willie's story. He told them that he had
been a corporal in the Civil War and in a
company made up entirely of black volunteers. After the war,
he served in the army for another five years, and

(09:33):
during that time he was an arms instructor and built
a reputation for being one of the best gun slingers
in the West. It was enough to convince the councilman
that Willie deserved the job. He became Colorado's first black marshal,
and by most accounts, was well respected by the people
of Yankee Hill. After all, Willie had ended a two

(09:53):
year reign of terror, and his new neighbors were forever
grateful to the man who freed them from Barney kasewick.
I hope 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.

(10:15):
The show was created by me Aaron Mankey, 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 over at
theworldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.