February 7, 2025 • 16 mins
Tracy shares how much she loves the work of Helen McNicoll and how the gaps in her biography posed a challenge during research. Holly talks about Harry Craddock and his efforts to combat prohibition in Britain.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And Happy Friday. I'm Tracy B.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson, and I'm Holly Frye. Boy did I love talking
about Helen McNichol this week?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah? I number one.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I think it's probably clear to listeners that have been
listening for a long time. I love impressionist art. I
love it, and I love the women artists, and I
love that she and Dorothea Sharp made a space for
themselves in a world that was not really amenable to
women living on their own without husbands or you know,
(00:51):
outside of their family life for you know, specifically white
middle class, upper middle class in the case of Helen
McNicol women. I love all of that. It was a
challenging episode to work on because there's just a not
(01:12):
a lot of information about details that would be really
helpful to know more about. For an episode like this,
those are always tricky because it's like you can know
what people have said about them, particularly you know, in
the intervening years. We are recording one coming up that
I researched. It's very similar in that regard, and it's like,
(01:35):
but what.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
What was she like? Right? Right? Well, and she lived.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I mean, she she died more than a century ago,
but that's still recent enough. Uh. And her you know,
family was large enough that there may be you know,
other remembrances, maybe even letters and diaries and things that
just haven't been made available to historians or art historians.
(02:07):
So it's like it's possible that there is more information
about her, but having kind of a big gap in
things like what she was like as a person, what
her thoughts were on things like the suffrage movement. There
was also a ton of stuff that we could have
gotten into in this episode but didn't, like the role
(02:33):
of the railroads and Canadian Pacific Railway in particular in
Canadian history, like hugely monumentally impactful on Canada as a
nation and on the indigenous peoples of Canada, and like
that was so far removed from the episode's core that
(02:54):
I just did. I did not get into a really
at all. But boy, I love all of her art,
and I I wish I had a little time machine
and could have gone to that, Uh that exhibit that
just closed a couple of weeks before researching this episode.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
All was a trick. All was a trick. Oh, Yes, definitely.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
So there are some really lovely, you know, exhibition catalogs
that have you know, lovely re recreation representations, recreations prints.
What am I sign reprints of? Yes, I just lost
all ability to have language.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Sometimes it happens.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I don't have much to say beyond just sort of
gushing that I love her, I love her artwork. I
love looking at pictures of the same essential scene h
that she did and that Dorothy Sharp did, and kind
of comparing how they're similar and how they're different. Yeah,
(03:58):
one of the things that I've really liked. We only
talked about it briefly, but it is important to remember,
particularly when studying really anything historical, but it does specifically
relate a lot to things like art history and similar
creative histories. Is that we ten when discussing history, and
(04:20):
I say we meaning like humans in general, when we're
talking about particularly once it gets past a certain point,
it's like we lose our ability to recognize the wiggliness
of the timeline, and it'll be like the Renaissance happened
from this to this, and it's like well in some places,
but other places were still working it out right like
(04:43):
well after it, or they came into it later, And
this is a good example of how, you know, Impressionism
was kind of like cool hoo, cool, we got it
in France and in Canada it was still like this
is new.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I always think that's important to remember when you're like
looking at anybody's work, is where they're from is a
really important part of where they fit into that bigger
artistic timeline, right right, anytime we're talking about things like
Impressionism or the Renaissance, like in some cases there's been
(05:19):
you know, a sort of manifesto of artists saying this.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Is what we are doing as artists.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
That becomes kind of a foundational text to the movement,
but sometimes it's the process of looking back onto that
time and trying to make sense of it and having
a name for something as a movement, and that means
there's a whole lot of stuff that was going on
at that time that doesn't fit into that descriptor similarly
(05:49):
to what you were saying, and the fact that Impressionism
became popularized in Canada so much later than in France,
that's one of the articles that I was reading about
It was like, I'm not trying to characterize Canadian art
as like a sleepy backwater, right because there was other like,
(06:13):
there was other stuff happening in Canadian art, other other people,
other movements. Canada itself a young nation as a nation
at that point. But it did, you know, become kind
of a later entry into this movement than a lot
of other similarly connected to you know, the art world
(06:36):
of Europe and specifically Paris. So anyway, art we always
love it, we do. I will also confess that when
I was deciding about things to cover on Unearthed, I
had no concept of what the BBC TV show Fake
or Fortune is about beyond the title and the fact
(07:00):
that they authenticated this painting. It is not like a
British counterpart to Antiques Roadshow, And I think there is
an Antiques Roadshow.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
In didn't it start in Britain? I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
My association with Antique Roadshow is watching it at my parents' house.
But Fake Your Fortune is more like it's all about
art authentication. It is not people finding a piece of
art in their attic and saying authenticate this. And a
lot of cases, a lot of cases like looking back
at big questions about the authenticity of different pieces of artwork.
(07:41):
So my ignorance about this TV show was a part
of my decision about whether to put this find into Unearthed.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
But the bigger piece was I just want.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
To do a whole episode about Helen McNichol, because I
was immediately captivated. Okay, I'm gonna get it out of
the way and get the yucky thing out so we
can get to talking about other stuff. In that nineteen
(08:15):
oh five report from the Joint Committee on the Employment
of Barmaids, they do the thing that we have talked
about many times on the show that I absolutely hate
and you do too. I know I'm paraphrasing, but it
basically is like white barmaids actually have it much worse
than black enslaved people because they don't have it. They're
(08:38):
just stuck in this job and they're going to age
out of it and those people get treated better. It's
like one of those horrible things. Just as a reminder
to any of our listeners, anytime you see that in
a document, whether modern or old, please know it's wrong.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
That's all.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
It just meane my blood boil when I was reading
and I was like sewing. I didn't even want to
put it in the episode. There are a lot of
cool things about American Bar and the Savoy, one of
which is that it was incredibly popular during World War
Two because Winston Churchill would kind of like a headquarter
(09:19):
there a little bit. Because the Savoy, we talked about
how it was ultra modern and had electricity before buildings
normally did, et cetera. They had built their own power supply,
so when there were bombing raids and you know, the
Germans bombed London, it was more likely to maintain power
than any of the other buildings, which is very cool. Yeah, listen,
(09:44):
I trash talked Cratic a little bit here. He's very
interesting in his own right. Heaven nose. I've made a
lot of his drinks. He really did a lot to
promote the idea of drinking mixed drinks and cocktails as
an elevated experience and not about drunkenness. He literally wrote
(10:09):
papers about it. He would write newspaper articles about it.
He would offer himself up for interviews. And one of
the things that kept happening we mentioned eight is four
L's the people that would not allow the Temperance movement
to pass any loss in England at the time, but
there were people in England that wanted temperance laws, and
Kratick would always do this challenge and say like, come
(10:31):
to the bar, I will make you a cocktail along
with you know, whatever meal you order, and if you
can honestly tell me that it did not enhance your
enjoyment of the meal and of life, he would say,
then we can have a talk about temperance, but I
guarantee you're gonna love it. And almost and as far
as I know, every time they did or they didn't
take the challenge because they probably knew, but it was
(10:52):
just kind of interesting. He was a big proponent of it.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
I am very delighted to see that.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
American bars current menu, and I haven't gone back through
all of their previous menus, but there are not all
of the drinks, but a lot of their drinks. They're like,
here's the alcoholic version, here's the mocktail version. Nice, which
is really cool and something that I am a big
fan of, because not sometimes people want to have the
elevated experience of a delicious mixed beverage and they don't
(11:20):
drink alcohol for any number of completely fine reasons. So
it's nice to remember that those people deserve to have
fun times in a bar as well. It doesn't have
to be about being intox kid but tasting delicious things.
There is only one picture of Aticle then that I
know of, and it would have been fairly late in
her career, because she looks a bit more on the
(11:42):
mature side at that point.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And she looks so sweet.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
If I just she just has this great very She's
cute as a button, and she has this very pleasant expression,
and I can see why probably people immediately gravitated toward
her and wanted to spend time with her in addition
to being their bartender, but also as their friend. There
(12:06):
are a lot of stories of people who she served
becoming her friends and in some cases including her and
their wills and leaving her significant amounts of money, which
is pretty interesting. I'm always fascinated by the relationship between
bartenders and their patrons because often there's like a weird
(12:29):
parasocial thing that goes on.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
I just find the whole thing interesting.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
I want there to be a wild number of studies
done of it, which is probably not going to happen
to the degree I would desire. But I have not
been to American bar. It's on my list one more
excuse to go to London. I have only been to
places that were called American bar that are not that one. Yeah,
there are a number of them, and there were a
(12:56):
number of them in Europe, as we said in the show,
that did not rise to prominence. And some of them
were just like the way you would say you would
see noodle bar on a menu, right, that is not
the name of the establishment, but says what it is.
Some of them were like that that just said that,
And this one took on the name. I'm honestly not
(13:18):
one hundred percent clear if that was always intended to
be its name or not, but there it is one
of the most famous bars in the world.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
You can.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
I feel like we should also say we mentioned two
very pricey drinks that are on the menu. They have
their regular themed menu. The drinks are not cheap, but
they're not that exorbitant either. They're like in the I
think I feel like I'm going by memory here. The
mocktails tended to be in the eighteen pound range, which
(13:49):
is pricey, but you know, not five thousand, that's for sure.
And then the cocktails tended to be like in the
twenty seven to thirty five range depending on the spirit.
So expensive for sure, but also not like quite as
eye popping as a five thousand dollars drink. Yeah, this
was a very fun one to research because as much
(14:10):
as I hated how condescending that report was, I liked
picking it apart and reading it being like you digglings,
all of these problems are problems that are not caused
by the women in the marketding industry. Why are you
saying that women should get out rather than making laws
(14:31):
that would protect them. Why is that the way you
want to make legislation? Why not protective legislation? Obviously they
never passed that because women have stayed in the bartending
industry and in the bar made as they were called.
Then again, because they were usually aged out pretty when
they would you know, not be considered a young maid anymore.
(14:55):
But I'm glad we have aida to guide us. I
love love the eight O Coolebon project. I think it's
so cool. Yeah, so I will follow it in the
ongoing years and see how it does and see if
I can support it in some way anyway. That is
that if you are coming up on your weekend and
you like to have a cocktail, or mocktail. I hope
(15:18):
you find one that is absolutely delicious and delights your
palette and taste buds. If you don't have time on
maybe you can still sneak in something yummy to drink,
whether that contains alcohol or not. But we hope that
you do get some rest and relaxation and that everyone
is kind to one another. We will be right back
here tomorrow with a classic story, and then on Monday
(15:39):
we will have a brand new episode. Stuff you Missed
in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And Happy Friday. I'm Tracy B.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson, and I'm Holly Frye. Boy did I love talking
about Helen McNichol this week?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah? I number one.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I think it's probably clear to listeners that have been
listening for a long time. I love impressionist art. I
love it, and I love the women artists, and I
love that she and Dorothea Sharp made a space for
themselves in a world that was not really amenable to
women living on their own without husbands or you know,
(00:51):
outside of their family life for you know, specifically white
middle class, upper middle class in the case of Helen
McNicol women. I love all of that. It was a
challenging episode to work on because there's just a not
(01:12):
a lot of information about details that would be really
helpful to know more about. For an episode like this,
those are always tricky because it's like you can know
what people have said about them, particularly you know, in
the intervening years. We are recording one coming up that
I researched. It's very similar in that regard, and it's like,
(01:35):
but what.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
What was she like? Right? Right? Well, and she lived.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I mean, she she died more than a century ago,
but that's still recent enough. Uh. And her you know,
family was large enough that there may be you know,
other remembrances, maybe even letters and diaries and things that
just haven't been made available to historians or art historians.
(02:07):
So it's like it's possible that there is more information
about her, but having kind of a big gap in
things like what she was like as a person, what
her thoughts were on things like the suffrage movement. There
was also a ton of stuff that we could have
gotten into in this episode but didn't, like the role
(02:33):
of the railroads and Canadian Pacific Railway in particular in
Canadian history, like hugely monumentally impactful on Canada as a
nation and on the indigenous peoples of Canada, and like
that was so far removed from the episode's core that
(02:54):
I just did. I did not get into a really
at all. But boy, I love all of her art,
and I I wish I had a little time machine
and could have gone to that, Uh that exhibit that
just closed a couple of weeks before researching this episode.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
All was a trick. All was a trick. Oh, Yes, definitely.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
So there are some really lovely, you know, exhibition catalogs
that have you know, lovely re recreation representations, recreations prints.
What am I sign reprints of? Yes, I just lost
all ability to have language.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Sometimes it happens.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I don't have much to say beyond just sort of
gushing that I love her, I love her artwork. I
love looking at pictures of the same essential scene h
that she did and that Dorothy Sharp did, and kind
of comparing how they're similar and how they're different. Yeah,
(03:58):
one of the things that I've really liked. We only
talked about it briefly, but it is important to remember,
particularly when studying really anything historical, but it does specifically
relate a lot to things like art history and similar
creative histories. Is that we ten when discussing history, and
(04:20):
I say we meaning like humans in general, when we're
talking about particularly once it gets past a certain point,
it's like we lose our ability to recognize the wiggliness
of the timeline, and it'll be like the Renaissance happened
from this to this, and it's like well in some places,
but other places were still working it out right like
(04:43):
well after it, or they came into it later, And
this is a good example of how, you know, Impressionism
was kind of like cool hoo, cool, we got it
in France and in Canada it was still like this
is new.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I always think that's important to remember when you're like
looking at anybody's work, is where they're from is a
really important part of where they fit into that bigger
artistic timeline, right right, anytime we're talking about things like
Impressionism or the Renaissance, like in some cases there's been
(05:19):
you know, a sort of manifesto of artists saying this.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Is what we are doing as artists.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
That becomes kind of a foundational text to the movement,
but sometimes it's the process of looking back onto that
time and trying to make sense of it and having
a name for something as a movement, and that means
there's a whole lot of stuff that was going on
at that time that doesn't fit into that descriptor similarly
(05:49):
to what you were saying, and the fact that Impressionism
became popularized in Canada so much later than in France,
that's one of the articles that I was reading about
It was like, I'm not trying to characterize Canadian art
as like a sleepy backwater, right because there was other like,
(06:13):
there was other stuff happening in Canadian art, other other people,
other movements. Canada itself a young nation as a nation
at that point. But it did, you know, become kind
of a later entry into this movement than a lot
of other similarly connected to you know, the art world
(06:36):
of Europe and specifically Paris. So anyway, art we always
love it, we do. I will also confess that when
I was deciding about things to cover on Unearthed, I
had no concept of what the BBC TV show Fake
or Fortune is about beyond the title and the fact
(07:00):
that they authenticated this painting. It is not like a
British counterpart to Antiques Roadshow, And I think there is
an Antiques Roadshow.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
In didn't it start in Britain? I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
My association with Antique Roadshow is watching it at my parents' house.
But Fake Your Fortune is more like it's all about
art authentication. It is not people finding a piece of
art in their attic and saying authenticate this. And a
lot of cases, a lot of cases like looking back
at big questions about the authenticity of different pieces of artwork.
(07:41):
So my ignorance about this TV show was a part
of my decision about whether to put this find into Unearthed.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
But the bigger piece was I just want.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
To do a whole episode about Helen McNichol, because I
was immediately captivated. Okay, I'm gonna get it out of
the way and get the yucky thing out so we
can get to talking about other stuff. In that nineteen
(08:15):
oh five report from the Joint Committee on the Employment
of Barmaids, they do the thing that we have talked
about many times on the show that I absolutely hate
and you do too. I know I'm paraphrasing, but it
basically is like white barmaids actually have it much worse
than black enslaved people because they don't have it. They're
(08:38):
just stuck in this job and they're going to age
out of it and those people get treated better. It's
like one of those horrible things. Just as a reminder
to any of our listeners, anytime you see that in
a document, whether modern or old, please know it's wrong.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
That's all.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
It just meane my blood boil when I was reading
and I was like sewing. I didn't even want to
put it in the episode. There are a lot of
cool things about American Bar and the Savoy, one of
which is that it was incredibly popular during World War
Two because Winston Churchill would kind of like a headquarter
(09:19):
there a little bit. Because the Savoy, we talked about
how it was ultra modern and had electricity before buildings
normally did, et cetera. They had built their own power supply,
so when there were bombing raids and you know, the
Germans bombed London, it was more likely to maintain power
than any of the other buildings, which is very cool. Yeah, listen,
(09:44):
I trash talked Cratic a little bit here. He's very
interesting in his own right. Heaven nose. I've made a
lot of his drinks. He really did a lot to
promote the idea of drinking mixed drinks and cocktails as
an elevated experience and not about drunkenness. He literally wrote
(10:09):
papers about it. He would write newspaper articles about it.
He would offer himself up for interviews. And one of
the things that kept happening we mentioned eight is four
L's the people that would not allow the Temperance movement
to pass any loss in England at the time, but
there were people in England that wanted temperance laws, and
Kratick would always do this challenge and say like, come
(10:31):
to the bar, I will make you a cocktail along
with you know, whatever meal you order, and if you
can honestly tell me that it did not enhance your
enjoyment of the meal and of life, he would say,
then we can have a talk about temperance, but I
guarantee you're gonna love it. And almost and as far
as I know, every time they did or they didn't
take the challenge because they probably knew, but it was
(10:52):
just kind of interesting. He was a big proponent of it.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
I am very delighted to see that.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
American bars current menu, and I haven't gone back through
all of their previous menus, but there are not all
of the drinks, but a lot of their drinks. They're like,
here's the alcoholic version, here's the mocktail version. Nice, which
is really cool and something that I am a big
fan of, because not sometimes people want to have the
elevated experience of a delicious mixed beverage and they don't
(11:20):
drink alcohol for any number of completely fine reasons. So
it's nice to remember that those people deserve to have
fun times in a bar as well. It doesn't have
to be about being intox kid but tasting delicious things.
There is only one picture of Aticle then that I
know of, and it would have been fairly late in
her career, because she looks a bit more on the
(11:42):
mature side at that point.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And she looks so sweet.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
If I just she just has this great very She's
cute as a button, and she has this very pleasant expression,
and I can see why probably people immediately gravitated toward
her and wanted to spend time with her in addition
to being their bartender, but also as their friend. There
(12:06):
are a lot of stories of people who she served
becoming her friends and in some cases including her and
their wills and leaving her significant amounts of money, which
is pretty interesting. I'm always fascinated by the relationship between
bartenders and their patrons because often there's like a weird
(12:29):
parasocial thing that goes on.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
I just find the whole thing interesting.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
I want there to be a wild number of studies
done of it, which is probably not going to happen
to the degree I would desire. But I have not
been to American bar. It's on my list one more
excuse to go to London. I have only been to
places that were called American bar that are not that one. Yeah,
there are a number of them, and there were a
(12:56):
number of them in Europe, as we said in the show,
that did not rise to prominence. And some of them
were just like the way you would say you would
see noodle bar on a menu, right, that is not
the name of the establishment, but says what it is.
Some of them were like that that just said that,
And this one took on the name. I'm honestly not
(13:18):
one hundred percent clear if that was always intended to
be its name or not, but there it is one
of the most famous bars in the world.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
You can.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
I feel like we should also say we mentioned two
very pricey drinks that are on the menu. They have
their regular themed menu. The drinks are not cheap, but
they're not that exorbitant either. They're like in the I
think I feel like I'm going by memory here. The
mocktails tended to be in the eighteen pound range, which
(13:49):
is pricey, but you know, not five thousand, that's for sure.
And then the cocktails tended to be like in the
twenty seven to thirty five range depending on the spirit.
So expensive for sure, but also not like quite as
eye popping as a five thousand dollars drink. Yeah, this
was a very fun one to research because as much
(14:10):
as I hated how condescending that report was, I liked
picking it apart and reading it being like you digglings,
all of these problems are problems that are not caused
by the women in the marketding industry. Why are you
saying that women should get out rather than making laws
(14:31):
that would protect them. Why is that the way you
want to make legislation? Why not protective legislation? Obviously they
never passed that because women have stayed in the bartending
industry and in the bar made as they were called.
Then again, because they were usually aged out pretty when
they would you know, not be considered a young maid anymore.
(14:55):
But I'm glad we have aida to guide us. I
love love the eight O Coolebon project. I think it's
so cool. Yeah, so I will follow it in the
ongoing years and see how it does and see if
I can support it in some way anyway. That is
that if you are coming up on your weekend and
you like to have a cocktail, or mocktail. I hope
(15:18):
you find one that is absolutely delicious and delights your
palette and taste buds. If you don't have time on
maybe you can still sneak in something yummy to drink,
whether that contains alcohol or not. But we hope that
you do get some rest and relaxation and that everyone
is kind to one another. We will be right back
here tomorrow with a classic story, and then on Monday
(15:39):
we will have a brand new episode. Stuff you Missed
in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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