October 17, 2022 • 38 mins
Rose Mackenberg spent decades working to uncover fraud taking place in the name of Spiritualism, first working for Houdini, and then on her own. In her work, she said she received messages from 1,000 dead husbands that never existed.
Research:
- “Says Lawmakers Consult Mediums.” New York Times. Feb. 27, 1926. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1926/02/27/98846926.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
- “Houdini to Appear.” Evening Star. Feb. 21, 1926. https://www.newspapers.com/image/618515204/?fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjYxODUxNTIwNCwiaWF0IjoxNjYzNTk5MzU4LCJleHAiOjE2NjM2ODU3NTh9.B3_XUq4J-qd4aqWqqKe1SI5DVkQq6h7mOHCD_T8D-LY
- Edwards, Gavin. “Overlooked No More: Rose Mackenberg, Houdini’s Secret ‘Ghost-Buster.’” New York Times. Dec. 6, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/obituaries/rose-mackenberg-overlooked.html
- Williamson, E.W. “Spirit Fakers of City Fatten on War Grief.” Chicago Tribune. Aug. 5, 1945. https://www.newspapers.com/image/371848849
- Mackenberg, Rose. “Her Business Is Exposing Spirit Fakers.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Sept. 12, 1937. https://www.newspapers.com/image/legacy/138984895/?clipping_id=81525804&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjEzODk4NDg5NSwiaWF0IjoxNjYzNTk4NjcxLCJleHAiOjE2NjM2ODUwNzF9.9dPqyrWvZ5eDs0bMQcmYOXPCMJwJQN1mN2tz1KdgctQ
- “Houdini Urges Bill to Curb Mediums.” Evening Star. Feb. 26, 1926. https://www.newspapers.com/image/618515404/?clipping_id=81527215
- Hartman, William C. “Hartmann’s Who’s Who in Occult, Psychic and Spiritual Realms.” 1925. http://www.ehbritten.org/docs/1925_hartmann_whos_who_in_occult_psychic_and_spiritual_realms_r.pdf
- “Christ Coming in 2,000, Says Pastor.” Inidianapolis Star. Dec. 1, 1924. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/46052740/christ-coming-in-2000-says-pastor/
- Lee, Karen. “The Astonishing Adventures of Houdini’s Favorite Detective.” Newspapers.com. July 20, 2021. https://blog.newspapers.com/astonishing-adventures-of-houdinis-favorite-detective/
- Welshimer, Helen. “Made a Frump out of Herself to Expose the Fake Mediums.” Ogden Standard Examiner. Aug. 15, 1937. https://www.newspapers.com/image/596893320/?terms=Rose%20Mackenberg&match=1
- “Pastor Defends Klan.” Indianapolis News. Oct. 2, 1922. https://www.newspapers.com/image/39565036/?
- “HINTS OF SEANCES AT WHITE HOUSE.” New York Times. May 19, 1926. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1926/05/19/98379175.html?pageNumber=26
- “Magician Pulls Local Minister Out of Audience.” Indianapolis Star. October 13, 1925. https://www.newspapers.com/image/104820857/?terms=%22Magician%20Pulls%20Local%20Minister%22&match=1
- “’Not Interested,” Say Coolidges of Spiritualism.” Atlanta Constitution. May 19, 1926. https://www.newspapers.com/image/397965606
- Mackenberg, Rose. “When Crime Poses as Spiritualism.” San Francisco Examiner. March 12, 1939. https://www.newspapers.com/image/458113189/
- Polidoro, Massimo. “Final Seance: The Strange Friendship Between Houdini and Conan Doyle.” Prometheus Books. 2010.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Halloween season
is in full swing. It's the best time of year,
(00:22):
both in life and the podcast. Uh And today we're
going to talk about a woman whose story is very
intertwined with someone who has come up on the show before,
but today's subject, Rose Macknburgh, never has, to the best
of my knowledge, I sure like her. She's one of
those historical figures I think I would love to have
a drink with and hang out with because she's funny.
(00:42):
She spent decades working to uncover fraud taking place in
the name of spiritualism. So today we're going to talk
about a few of the more high profile moments in
that career and how she turned to educating the public
about her work so that they would not be taken
in by Charlatan's. We've talked before about Harry Judini and
(01:03):
his relationship with spiritualism. That came up recently in brief
in our episode on Helen Duncan. If you were there
for our live streaming event in March of this year,
you heard us talk about his disagreement on all of
this with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in more detail and
how that ultimately damaged their once close friendship. Additionally, previous
(01:27):
hosts Katie and Sarah did an episode on Houdini way
back in two thousand nine. We had that as a
Saturday Classics. So we're not going to rehash his whole
entire life story, but we will do a very quick
refresher because his rise to fame and eventual shift in
how he viewed spiritualism is really important to Rose Makenburgh's story.
(01:49):
So Houdini, who was sometimes um believed by people to
have had some sort of supernatural ability, spent several decades
himself studying spiritualism and psychic phenomena. He amassed a really
impressive collection of literature on the subject, dating he claimed
all the way back to fot nine. He also attended
(02:10):
hundreds I would even guess possibly thousands of seances, and
he always said that he kept an open mind, but
that no mystical happening had ever been recreated under test conditions,
And he really did seem to want to have some
shred of hope regarding the afterlife and a possible way
to connect to it. Part of his initial draw to
(02:32):
seances was a desire to communicate with his dead parents,
and as he came to the conclusion that most, if
not all, mediums were just fakers who were trying to
cash in on the sorrows of desperate people, Houdini made
it a personal mission to expose these kinds of frauds.
(02:52):
In Judini published the book A Magician among Spirits, which
exposed a lot of the tricks that were being used
to fake seances, as well as other tricks that were
used by people claiming to be mediums. He wanted to
gather even more evidence of slight of hands being sold
to people as actual supernatural events. Now we don't have
(03:16):
a whole lot of information about Rose Mackenburg's early life.
We know she was born in Brooklyn, New York, on
July tenth, eight two. Her childhood isn't really particularly well documented.
That's not that unusual. Her parents were Louis and Anna Mackenburg,
and they were Russian immigrants. Once she was an adult,
she worked for a little while as a young woman
(03:38):
as a law office stenographer, and then we know that
by the time Harry Houdini had turned his attention to
debunking mediums. Rose was working as a private investigator, and
a friend is said to have introduced Mackenburg to Houdini.
When Rose was investigating a medium who one of her
clients believed was a swindler, and Houdini consulted with her
(04:00):
about how she might expose the man. But he also
was pretty impressed with Rose, so he then asked her
if she might be interested in doing similar work for
him on a regular basis. That request would change the
course of Rosa's life, but she really wasn't sure she
wanted to accept this famous magician's offer at first. She
(04:20):
later recounted an interviews that when she met Harry Udini,
she really believed in spiritualism and the ability of some
people to connect to and communicate with people in the afterlife.
She was frank with Hudini about this. She had no
interest in taking on a smear campaign against spiritualism. Judini
(04:42):
reassured her that he wanted only to expose frauds and
that if there were a real medium out there, she
could not be in a better position to find them.
So she became his advance agent and investigator. She joined
a team that the magician had hired that heartedly included
twenty people. Yeah, those were just his people that were
(05:04):
like working on this project of his to debunk fraudulent
mediums and for her investigations, Makenburg often wore disguises in
her early assignments. This was part just of assuming an
identity of someone who had a backstory that usually involved
the type of loss that would normally send someone to
a psychic for help, like contacting a lost loved one.
(05:27):
But as her career went on, Rose also ended up
needing disguises just to keep people from recognizing her, because
as she uncovered frauds, those frauds started sharing information about
who she was and what she looked like with other
people in their industry. There is a very funny photo spread,
they're actually several that have been published in her career,
(05:50):
in which she demonstrates some of the personas and costumes
that she would use to go undercover, and these are
quite charming. They included her posing as in her words,
us smartly garbed widow, a rustic school teacher, a small
town matron, a credulous servant girl, a believing semi invalid,
a woman seeking lost, relatives of vamp from the country,
(06:13):
and my personal favorite, a tipsy consultant um. That picture,
if you ever find it, is quite funny. She looks
like she is costumed in what you would stereotypically think
someone like a fortune teller would be, but when she
had her picture taken, she made sure to look like
she was a little intoxicated, and it is a very
(06:33):
funny picture. Rose had a pretty unique face, so she
doesn't actually look all that different as a person from
photo to photo, but her outfit and her physical demeanor
are different enough for each of these disguises and others
that for someone working only from a written description, she
probably wouldn't have garnered attention. In addition, Rose was pretty
(06:56):
deliberate in crafting her various looks. She told a reporter
in the late nineteen thirties that she normally visit the
local department store of any town that she was sent to.
She would just watch the women shopping in there to
make sure that she was buying clothes that matched and
blended in with the styles that were favored by the locals,
and she would take as much as a week to
(07:17):
really learn the way people from the area spoke and
interacted with each other. Only after she really felt like
she had this whole thing down would she start visiting
the town's mediums. And in addition to faux seances, Rose
also uncovered a lot of inappropriate behavior on the part
of men claiming to be mediums. She noted in many
(07:39):
of her reports that men would grope her or even
try to coerce her into undressing or allowing them to
access her body in various ways under the guise of
doing their work. It was always clearly sort of sexual
and kind of gross in nature that would eventually become
so common and so troubling in these reports that Harry
Hudini suggested that Rose start carrying a gun in case
(08:03):
things ever got to a point where she felt she
was in danger, and she refused. The sexual harassment, though,
started right from the beginning, and it persisted throughout her career.
One of the most significant investigations that Rose conducted in
her early career as a debunker involved a man who
claimed to be a medium. He was named the Reverend
(08:24):
Charles H. Gunzulis. Gun Soulis was operating out of Indianapolis, Indiana,
in the early nineteen twenties and Rose was sent to
visit him. That was six weeks before Houdini was scheduled
to have a performance in Indianapolis, and for this visit
to Gonzolos, Rose took on those guys of a mother
(08:44):
whose baby had recently died. She told Charles Gounzulis that
she was consumed by grief and she wanted more than
anything to just make sure that her baby was happy
in the spirit realm, and gun Soulis began his act.
There were two spirit characters that Gonzulis claimed he connected
with in the afterlife to help him in his quest.
(09:06):
One was a woman named Ella, who he referred to
as his spirit wife. The other was a Hindu guide
that Gonzulis told Macknburg was eight hundred years old. This
fake medium then told Macknburg that he would teach her
to contact the afterlife by using a bowl of water
as a scrying glass for the low price of twenty
(09:27):
five dollars. She took that offer and she had several
lessons with Gonzlis. He told her quote, I see you
were going to have three guides, a Jewish, German and Italian.
Does this mean anything to you shalom aleckum, and that
mentioned that we made of sexually predatory behavior that Rose
frequently ran into. Well, here it is. Gonzlis also told her,
(09:50):
after she had presented herself, remember as a grieving mother,
that this whole process was going to work better if
she took off her clothes. Rose did not do that,
but she did write a very detailed report of this
entire experience for Harry Hudini, in which she described Gonzulis's
manner as quote, Oily, We're gonna pause here for a
(10:12):
quick sponsor break, and when we get back, we will
talk more about Gonzulis and his relationship to both Spiritualism
and to Hudini. So this particular assignment to visit Charles
Gonzulis have been given to Rose because Houdini had a
(10:34):
bit of history with Gonzolas. Gonzulis was to be frank
a piece of work. In the early nineteen twenties, he
had preached sermons in defense of the Ku Klux Klan,
claiming that quote, the ku Klux Klan is putting the
church back on its feet. Christ was the first klansman
and was crucified for saying what he believed if Christ
(10:55):
were here this morning, the chances are he would speak
on the same thing I am speaking about. So gross.
He often boasted about being the first Indiana minister to
join the clan, but by the time he got the
attention of Houdini, he had moved on from the clan
because they had mocked his interest in spiritualism. And then
(11:15):
he quickly became a rising star in the spiritualist movement.
He was listed in the edition of Hartmann's Who's Who
in Occult, Psychic and Spiritual Realms, which was published by
the Occult Press. In addition to making very strange claims
as a spiritualist minister, including that Jesus was visiting other
planets and would come back to Earth in the year
(11:37):
two thousand, Gonzolis also made threats. Weeks before Rosa's visit,
Gonzlis had written to Harry Houdini proclaiming himself to be
one of the country's leading spiritualists, and Gonsulis very much
did not appreciate Houdini's efforts to expose fraud in the
spiritualist community. He wrote, quote, it might be of interest
(11:58):
to you when I tell you that I know how
all of your tricks are performed while you are making
an exposure of spiritualism. It might be interesting if we
made an exposure of your tricks and published in the papers.
That's what interest the public and other magicians, don't you
think so? This really did not scare Houdini, and he
(12:19):
dispatched Rose. And when Houdini then gave his Indianapolis performance
at them or A Theater six weeks after Rose Macknburgh's
visit with Charles Gonzoliz, Gonzolis was in the audience, Harry
Houdini took the opportunity to expose the local medium. He
gave details to the audience about what had happened during
(12:39):
Rosa's visit. He had Rose joined him on stage to
give details of her interactions with Gonzolas and how he
had connected to her husband and children on the other side,
even though in reality she had never been married and
she had no children. Rose was not the only detective
that Houdini had sent to Gonzolis, and others were brought
forth during the performance to share their stories as well.
(13:02):
This included one from the National Detective Agency who had
done a lot of research on the man and had
assembled a detailed dossier about his entire life. Gudini asked
Gonzolis if he'd like to respond to the accusations. So
this incident was also written up in local papers and
describes what happens. Quote. Mr Gunzlis declared that he is
(13:24):
with Houdini in his effort to drive out fraudulent mediums,
and that he admitted that out of mediums are fraudulent.
Mr Gunzulis evidently concluded he was outnumbered when none in
the audience rallied to his support, so he finally offered
Mr Houdini his hand, which was taken and bowed himself out.
(13:44):
It was after eleven o'clock before the controversy was over,
so basically he did not defend himself. This same pattern
of Makenburg traveling ahead of Houdini to towns on his
tours and then visiting mediums and cataloging their every interaction
with her so that Whodini could use those details on
stage to reveal the frauds during his shows was something
(14:05):
that played out over and over that was really their
like whole approach. Another approach that Rosen Houdini took to
expose frauds was for Rose to attend a seance and
watch carefully for how the medium involved was tricking their clients.
During those seances, she'd alert Houdini. He would help her
arrange to have another seance appointment, this time with members
(14:27):
of the press surreptitiously attending as spiritualists. The reporters would
be briefed ahead of time on the way that given
mediums act played out, so that one of them could
take a flash photo at exactly the right moment to
capture their deception. Yeah, they outed a lot of people
doing these two things. Rose's work did not only expose
(14:51):
self proclaimed medium she also exposed services that would certify
mediums as clergy of spiritualist churches. Rose paid so many
used for the certifications of ordination that among Houdini's staff
she started to be called by the nickname the Rev.
Her name even occasionally appeared in print as the Reverend
Rose Makenburgh. She wrote of her ordinations quote, I have myself,
(15:15):
in my several investigations, been regularly ordained a spiritualistic minister,
not once but six times. At the most. It took
me three days to be ordained, and once I was
ordained in twenty minutes. All that I required besides a
five dollar to five dollar fee was the claim that
I could hear and see, which means in spiritualistic circles,
(15:37):
the ability to hear spirit voices and see spirit forms.
Those who ordained me were so incurious once they got
their fee that they paid no attention to the ridiculous
names I had assumed for the occasions, the Reverend Alicia
Bunk all Is Bunk and the Reverend f Rod Fraud
(15:59):
I love her. She also encountered a really particularly gross
instance of sexual harassment that I would say borders on
sexual assault during one of her ordinations, in which your Reverend,
who she only ever named publicly as Reverend X, told
her that to be ordained as a woman, she would
first have to be purified by the man who ordained her.
(16:22):
He fondled her ankles, which she described as completely revolting,
although she stuck it out to get more evidence of
his fakeery. He then attempted to pull her close to him,
and things got a little out of hand, and that
is when she extricated herself from the situation. In n
Houdini famously appeared before the House District of Columbia committee
(16:45):
as part of an investigation into mediums and fortune telling
while legislation against it was being considered. That legislation, introduced
by Senators Royal S. Copeland and Saul Bloom, both of
New York, would have made fortune telling in the Strick
of Columbia subject to a quote penalty not to exceed
two hundred fifty dollars or imprisonment not to exceed six months.
(17:08):
Houdini was adamant that anyone billing themselves as a clairvoyant
was a sham, just trying to make a buck, and
that stance brought a lot of people who made their
livings as mediums to the hearings to defend themselves. There
were actually two hearings. One was in February, it was
just one day, and then there were several days later
(17:29):
in May, and during these Houdini gave demonstrations of how
spirit mediums tricked people into believing they had been speaking
with spirits. In one demonstration, he used a long trumpet.
This was something that a lot of mediums were using,
and he had different people hold that trumpet up to
their ear, and although no one ever detected Houdini saying anything,
(17:51):
the participants in the demonstration each reported that they had
clearly heard sentences spoken by seeming spirits through the trumpet.
Kudini also offered ten thousand dollars cash to anyone who
could prove during these hearings that they were a true medium.
One of the tests was for someone who claimed they
could speak with spirits to come forward and tell him
(18:13):
what nickname his mother had called him by as a boy.
No one ever did it. Kudini declared in his testimony, quote,
this is the only place in the United States of
America where a crook or clairvoyant is licensed for twenty
five dollars and under that can blackmail or commit any
crime under the calendar and get away with it. There
(18:34):
are millions of dollars stolen by clairvoyants and mediums every year,
and I can prove it. He declared palmistry a fraud,
and when asked about astrology, noted that sometimes astrologers make
good guesses, but that quote, I don't believe that chunks
of mud a million miles away can tell me what
will happen to me or mine. Yeah. He famously also
(18:55):
had made this scroll out of all the ordination certificates
that rose in. Other agents of his had acquired in
the course of their investigations, and he unrolled this entire
huge scroll out um. It was very theatrical his testimony,
and in addition to giving that testimony, Harry Judini also
cross examined witnesses testifying in defense of spiritualist mediums, and
(19:19):
he also called his own witnesses. Remember this is not
like a court of law, it's a hearing, so it
doesn't work quite the same. In case that sounded weird
to you. Rose was one of the people that Houdini
asked to testify, and the most pertinent of her experiences
regarding this investigation was a visit she had with a
woman named Jane Coates. Coats was a very popular medium
(19:43):
in Washington, d c. And she had, according to Macknburg,
divulged some rather sensitive information about the ongoing debate over
spiritualism and this law proposed to outlaw it in the
nation's capital. Rose testified that Coates had told her that
there were too many believers in office for the law
to ever come to fruition. And Rose said that Coates
(20:04):
had told her quote, I know for a fact that
table tipping seances are held in the White House with
President Coolidge and his family. Coats also named three senators
who had she told Rose visited her for psychic readings
and frequently consulted mediums. Those were James Eli. Watson of Indiana,
Arthur Capper of Kansas, Clearance Dill of Washington State, and
(20:27):
Duncan Upshaw Fletcher of Florida. Rose's testimony was explosive, as
in Jane Coates stood up and started yelling denials of
Makenburgh's account almost immediately. Coats, in another medium known as
Madame Marcia, had asked to stand close to Macknburg as
she testified, so when these outbursts happened, Coates was yelling
(20:49):
right next to her. These things quickly escalated, and assume
there was so much yelling and even raised fists that
the committee lost control of the hearing and had to
call in a journment. Even after the session was cleared,
the argument carried on as people were shuffled into the hallway.
The New York Times account of the proceedings read quote,
Today's session was unusually disorderly and came near winding up
(21:13):
in a free for all fistfight. Cries of liar, fake,
and producer were exchanged by Houdini and his assailants, and
the din reached such a point that members of the
committee demanded the police be called. When speaking with reporters
after leaving the hearing, Jane Coates said that Rose Macknburg
had distorted what she actually told her. Coats clarified that
(21:36):
she had never told Rose that seances were held at
the White House, but that they took place quote under
the shadow of the White House. She also clarified that
while she had been consulted by senators, she had not
ever had a meeting with a member of the President's cabinet.
She also insisted that she had known Mackenburg was an
(21:56):
investigator the entire time that she was with her. There
is a whole secondary reason that Jane Coates would have
been really upset about Rose's testimony. That had nothing to
do with exposing her as a fraud, but it was
about upsetting the president. Probably nobody would want to do that,
But in this case there was a very specific reason.
(22:16):
According to The New York Times, Mrs Coates was quote
interested in a claim bill that had passed Congress and
was before President Coolidge for signature, from which she was
to receive twenty five thousand dollars for eighty five cows
killed by the government on her family's farm in Maryland
several years ago. Of course, she would not have wanted
(22:38):
to do anything or have anything said in that hearing
that might cause the President to veto that bill instead
of signing. And she claimed that she was going to
clean up the spiritualism community with the money once she
got it, and, according to the Times quote, put it
on a high plane. The Coolidge administration was eager to
stay away from all those kinds of claims and heart
(23:00):
because the preceding Herding administration had been associated with mediums
and it was an embarrassment. Houdini wrote President Coolidge an
apology letter, insisting that he had never wanted to embarrass
the president, only to expose Charlatan's The White House gave
no official denial of the claims that seances had been
held with members of the Coolidge family present, but there
(23:23):
was an informal statement that the Coolidges were not interested
in spiritualism. Despite Houdini's compelling evidence, including Makenburgh's testimony. This
bill did not become law, but the whole event expanded
public awareness of fraudulent mediums. Yeah, it got written up
nationally in the papers, so people were suddenly a lot
(23:44):
more aware that there was an entire industry of fake mediums.
In just a moment, we're going to talk about Rose's
life beyond her work with Houdini, but first we will
pause for a sponsor break. If you are familiar with
(24:06):
Harry Judini's story, you may have already done some quick
math and realized that by the time he hired Rose Macknburg,
he only had a couple of years left in his life.
He died in ninety six. That was later the same
year that the hearings before Congress took place, of paritonitis
caused by a rupture appendix. But though her boss died, Rose,
(24:28):
who was still just in her early thirties at this time,
stayed on the path that he had opened up for her.
She continued to investigate fraudulent claims of psychic abilities and spiritualism,
and she had new clients for this, primarily insurance companies,
the better business bureau, banks, and sometimes even police. And
while she and Harry had a pact similar to the
(24:48):
one that he had made with his wife, it's often
famously talked about that if there was a way to
communicate from the afterlife, whoever died first would reach out.
Rose said she never heard from Houdini after his death.
In the nineteen thirties, Makenburg went to visit a medium
in Chicago named Herman E. Parker, after being privately commissioned
to do so. She claimed to be a widow Mrs
(25:11):
Rosalind Richards, still in a state of fresh grief from
only recently losing her husband. She later recounted that in
disguises of grief like this one quote, a touch of
onion at the eyes gave me the proper facial appearance.
Rose's disguise was one of plainness, and Parker clearly thought
she was poor. He charged her only a dollar for
(25:33):
her seance. He said that he had made contact with
her husband, and that the deceased was there in the
room with him, and that he was okay, and then
he started wrapping up the proceedings. But then Rose bated
Parker by telling him that she had hoped to ask
her husband about the three thousand dollars she had been
offered in a settlement. She noted in writing after the
(25:55):
fact that it was really comical to see Parker suddenly
become a lot more invested in helping her, but that
if she had been a real grieving widow, it would
have been tragic and frightening. After having learned that the
fictional Mrs Richards not only had three thousand dollars coming
to her, but also had fifteen hundred dollars in the bank,
(26:17):
something that he learned by insisting her dead husband wanted
to know the details of her finances in order to
advise her. Parker told Rose he was receiving messages from
the beyond to invest one thousand dollars with a man
named Wilcox. Of course, Parker knew a man named Wilcox
who owned a transportation company, so Rose wrote Wilcox a
(26:39):
deposit check for twenty five dollars, for which she got
a receipt That was evidence she was very purposely collecting,
and then she went to the Investors Protective Bureau and
relayed the entire series of events in her report. Both
Parker and Wilcox were, according to Rose, tried and found guilty.
While she continued to conduct investigations herself, she also became
(27:02):
an educator. She gave lectures and wrote articles detailing the
tricks that fraud psychics use so that lay people could
spot them and not be taken in by these simple tricks.
One message that she always included, Justice Houdini had was
that she had no problem with people who believed in spiritualism.
She only wanted to expose fraudulent mediums who exploited those
(27:24):
beliefs for financial game. She wrote about widows who were
cheated out of everything they had, and how even men
who seemed worldly were drawn in by the promise of
information that would lead them to riches. In an article
titled when Crime Poses as Spiritualism, Rose wrote, quote, after
(27:44):
ten years experience as a private detective working with commercial agencies, lawyers,
and district attorneys, it is my considered opinion, although I
have worked on gambling, robbery, blackmail, and murder cases, that
the most vicious criminals in America are the Charlatans who
betray and plunder their heartsick victims in the name of
(28:05):
the dear departed dead. She went on to say, quote,
My work has often led me into the squalid dens
where the cheapest and most despicable of these criminals practice.
Third rate magicians whose skill in deception is so little
that their prey, by necessity, must be the uninformed and
unprotected poor. One of the lessons that Makenburg tried to
(28:27):
impart to people was that spiritualist fraud tends to rise
in times of strife and uncertainty. That has become like
an accidental theme of our October episodes this year. It
was not planned, but it keeps coming up. She noted
that during wars and economic downturns, psychics seem to pop
(28:47):
up everywhere because people who are in a state of
uncertainty are desperate for something to give them hope or solace.
She wrote of this problem in nineteen one, quote, to
these Charlottean's who take a cruel and vantage of human
grief and anxiety. War brings boom times. The anguish of
friends and relatives of dead, wounded, or missing servicemen offers
(29:11):
a fertile field for heartless deception. Fathers, mothers, wives, sweethearts,
and others close to those the Armed Service flocked to
the seances of those counterfeit dealers in the occult. During
the late stages of World War Two, Rose even had
Chicago journalist E. W. Williamson go with her on her
investigations also undercover, of course, and that experience became a
(29:35):
series for the Chicago Tribune in which Williamson relayed all
the same kinds of stories that Rose had been telling
since the nineteen twenties, covering mediums who were claiming to
have contacted dead relatives that were purely made up. On
April tenth, Rose died in her apartment at three ten
West twenty four Street in Manhattan. That is in Chelsea,
(29:58):
in case you're trying to men really make a picture
of where she was at. During her time as a
spiritual investigator, she had taken part in thousands of investigations,
and while some fake mediums once exposed claimed that they
had known who she was, she had never been questioned
by any of them during any of their interactions. Rose
was very widely in her approach and she always managed
(30:20):
to get her evidence. She once famously said of her
work quote, I smell a rat before I smell the incense.
Rose was very witty and a very funny writer. She
wrote an autobiography titled So You Want to Attend a Seance,
but that was never published. She did leave a lot
of great quotes and the articles that she wrote an
interviews that she gave seven she was quoted as saying,
(30:44):
I never married, but I have received messages from a
thousand husbands and twice as many children in the world
to come. Invariably, they told me they were happy where
they were, which was not entirely flattering to me. I
love that quote. But though her wit can be cutting
and she was incredibly sharp, she was also always, as
(31:06):
we've said, incredibly careful to assure believers and spiritualism that
she was not out to get them, just as Houdini had.
She wrote in one of her articles, quote, although I
am skeptical of the claims advanced by spiritualism, I have
only the greatest respect for those who genuinely believe that
communication with the debt is possible. The attempts I have
(31:27):
seen to materialize spirits from the Great Beyond must be
numbered in the thousands. But I have never been convinced
that any message received was genuine. Yet, although I am
skeptical of the claims made even by genuine spiritualists, let
me confess now that I can find it in me
to hope they are right. We all of us, I believe,
(31:47):
must share that hope in some measure what a comfort
it would be. And that is Rose Macknburgh, who I adore.
She's such a fun one and I really I hope
people will seek out photos of her and her various disguises,
some as the art that will appear on social media,
(32:09):
but there are lots of them and they are very
very funny. Since the social media art nowadays is pretty
much always square, it's only a couple of them because
that what fits, that's what fits in a square. Oh,
she's so good. If you just do an internet search
on Google or any other search engine of her name
and do an image search, you're going to find lots
(32:29):
of pictures of her because she for those kinds of
pictures for newspapers. She would like do the whole pose
an expression, and it's very very entertaining. I have a
listener mail from our listeners Sarah about um baby kissing
and pasts and sewing, so it's it's covering lots of vases.
(32:50):
Sarah writes, Dear Holly and Tracy, I want to thank
you so much for having absolutely fabulous programming. First and foremost,
I'm almost all the way through the archive, and it
gets me through driving around and running errands. I had
to stop folding laundry to shoot off this quick message
before I forget is I'm basically a squirrel with shiny
objects too. She writes, you brought up kissing babies, which
absolutely makes me bonkers. But your comments on Today's Behind
(33:13):
the Scenes about the campaign to kiss your baby to
check for cystic fibrosis really struck a chord. My best
friend's daughter, in fact, has cystic fibrosis, and I remember
she called me when the baby was about three months
old after her checkup and she was categorized as failure
to thrive. In to note, she had a very intense
burst situation where she um was actually born in the
(33:34):
front seat of the car in the hospital parking lot.
That sounds absolutely harrowing to me. Labor and Delivery kept
arguing with the emergency department that it was an emergency
situation since the baby was already born. Labor and Delivery
didn't want to admit her. So after some time and
back and forth, they finally got into the emergency department.
But a lot of the testing that normally gets done
right after birth did not happen. We have talked about
(33:56):
that testing before on our show. In the Virginia apcar episode.
She was categorized as an accidental home birth, and we
knew that mom's family was a carrier for the cystic
fibrosis gene, but when they tested Dad, they did not
do a big enough spectrum and the baby ended up
with a rarer genetic mutation of cystic fibrosis that was
outside of the scope of the test they had done.
(34:16):
I remember getting a phone call, which was funny because
we don't call each other. We text, so I knew
something was up, and she said to me that the
baby might have cystic fibrosis, and I had no idea
what that was. So she was giving me a quick rundown,
and I said, did you lick her? Is she's salty?
And my best friend said no, And then she did,
in fact proceed to lick the baby and declared to
(34:37):
me she tastes like a potato chip. A couple of
a couple of weeks of genetic testing and specialist appointments
and back and forth to doctor's offices, she does have
systic fibrosis. And now she is a vivacious nine year
old who was absolutely amazing in every single way and
very healthy, in part due to my best friend's absolute
militant sanitation and medication regiment, in part by a few
(34:59):
medical breakthroughs that's happened in the last ten years. This
is a fascinating version of that. Right, we talked about
how that is not normally the thing that people would
do anymore to test in that way, But this is
one of those rare situations where like things have fallen
through the cracks, right, I mean, at least here in
the US, where most people give birth in a hospital.
(35:22):
Not everyone, but most people give give birth in a hospital,
And like in a hospital, there's a a collection of
screening stuff that's supposed to happen immediately after birth or
shortly after, which isn't how it works in the whole
entire rest of the world. But yeah, yeah, I had not.
I had certainly not considered like those strange outlier scenarios
where those tests might not happen in the corporate timeline.
(35:44):
But that's interesting. Sarah also goes on to say, I,
in fact, am also not a hugger. I've become much
more relaxed and better about this in the last ten years,
especially after I started playing roller Derby. You get a
little bit touch desensitized, and I'm better about knowing if
their people are huggers, and so I can accommodate and
mentally prepare. I still don't appreciate a full frontal hug
(36:05):
unless I know you very well. I'd prefer a crisp pie. Five.
We were out of state doing the arduous task of
cleaning out my mom's apartment after she had passed, and
my best friend came with me. She is also not
a hugger. We were sorting things and donating piles, and
my friend is in my mom's room sorting through clothing.
I'm in the living room, where We've had a few
neighbors come by to give their condolences, which I very
much appreciated, and one neighbor came in, mind you, I
(36:29):
am absolutely filthy. I'm sweating. It's hot. We're moving boxes.
In the last year of my mom's life, her mobility
really went down, so there's a lot of cleaning that
just didn't get done. One of the neighbors starts moving
forward towards me with arms a kimbo, and I won
a jump back, put my arms up in a defensive
motion and screech. I'm not a hugger. I can hear
my best friend in the bedroom of this tiny apartment
(36:50):
suppressing a cackle as I start to word vomit apologies
trying to explain to the stranger I don't like hugging.
Thank you so much for coming by. I do appreciate
the sentiment, all a slightly panic tone. We still laugh
about that day. It was one of the highlights of
an otherwise difficult weekend. Holly. I also want to send
a specific thank you for encouraging me to not be
afraid of zippers. I finally started learning to sew after many,
(37:13):
many years of threatening to learn how to sew into
all the Halloween fabric out right now. I was inspired
to make some simple gathered skirts, but I am not
a fan of elastic waistband hey me either, uh, and
I knew that I would have to learn how to
use my zipper foot. After many many YouTube videos, I
plucked up the courage and installed a zipper and realized
it really, in fact, was not that hard. And now
(37:34):
I have three fabulous skirts that I can can't wait
to wear all year long, and hopefully we'll have time
soon to figure out how to transition the skill into dresses. Uh.
There are pictures of these skirts are very cute. I
also don't like an elastic waistband. It's just not very
flattering for a lot of people. Uh. And then there
are pictures Lord Hamish, the cat who's adorable uh and
(37:58):
likes to sleep on top of projects. Black fabric always
a favorite. I know that dance bark Vader. It's a
very good boy and does not care, likes the couch
all to himself. So we get cat and dog pictures
and they are so cute. Um, Sarah, this is adorable.
So thank you for sharing all of this because you
hit so many points of things we've talked about. Those
skirts are very very cute. You're gonna look fabulous all
(38:20):
season long and all year long. Kiss those cute pets
for us. If you would like to write to us,
you can do so at History Podcast at i heart
radio dot com. You can also find us on social
media as Missed in History And if you haven't subscribed yet,
go ahead and do that. It's so easy. You can
do it on the I heart Radio app or wherever
it is you are listening to your favorite shows. Stuff
(38:46):
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Halloween season
is in full swing. It's the best time of year,
(00:22):
both in life and the podcast. Uh And today we're
going to talk about a woman whose story is very
intertwined with someone who has come up on the show before,
but today's subject, Rose Macknburgh, never has, to the best
of my knowledge, I sure like her. She's one of
those historical figures I think I would love to have
a drink with and hang out with because she's funny.
(00:42):
She spent decades working to uncover fraud taking place in
the name of spiritualism. So today we're going to talk
about a few of the more high profile moments in
that career and how she turned to educating the public
about her work so that they would not be taken
in by Charlatan's. We've talked before about Harry Judini and
(01:03):
his relationship with spiritualism. That came up recently in brief
in our episode on Helen Duncan. If you were there
for our live streaming event in March of this year,
you heard us talk about his disagreement on all of
this with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in more detail and
how that ultimately damaged their once close friendship. Additionally, previous
(01:27):
hosts Katie and Sarah did an episode on Houdini way
back in two thousand nine. We had that as a
Saturday Classics. So we're not going to rehash his whole
entire life story, but we will do a very quick
refresher because his rise to fame and eventual shift in
how he viewed spiritualism is really important to Rose Makenburgh's story.
(01:49):
So Houdini, who was sometimes um believed by people to
have had some sort of supernatural ability, spent several decades
himself studying spiritualism and psychic phenomena. He amassed a really
impressive collection of literature on the subject, dating he claimed
all the way back to fot nine. He also attended
(02:10):
hundreds I would even guess possibly thousands of seances, and
he always said that he kept an open mind, but
that no mystical happening had ever been recreated under test conditions,
And he really did seem to want to have some
shred of hope regarding the afterlife and a possible way
to connect to it. Part of his initial draw to
(02:32):
seances was a desire to communicate with his dead parents,
and as he came to the conclusion that most, if
not all, mediums were just fakers who were trying to
cash in on the sorrows of desperate people, Houdini made
it a personal mission to expose these kinds of frauds.
(02:52):
In Judini published the book A Magician among Spirits, which
exposed a lot of the tricks that were being used
to fake seances, as well as other tricks that were
used by people claiming to be mediums. He wanted to
gather even more evidence of slight of hands being sold
to people as actual supernatural events. Now we don't have
(03:16):
a whole lot of information about Rose Mackenburg's early life.
We know she was born in Brooklyn, New York, on
July tenth, eight two. Her childhood isn't really particularly well documented.
That's not that unusual. Her parents were Louis and Anna Mackenburg,
and they were Russian immigrants. Once she was an adult,
she worked for a little while as a young woman
(03:38):
as a law office stenographer, and then we know that
by the time Harry Houdini had turned his attention to
debunking mediums. Rose was working as a private investigator, and
a friend is said to have introduced Mackenburg to Houdini.
When Rose was investigating a medium who one of her
clients believed was a swindler, and Houdini consulted with her
(04:00):
about how she might expose the man. But he also
was pretty impressed with Rose, so he then asked her
if she might be interested in doing similar work for
him on a regular basis. That request would change the
course of Rosa's life, but she really wasn't sure she
wanted to accept this famous magician's offer at first. She
(04:20):
later recounted an interviews that when she met Harry Udini,
she really believed in spiritualism and the ability of some
people to connect to and communicate with people in the afterlife.
She was frank with Hudini about this. She had no
interest in taking on a smear campaign against spiritualism. Judini
(04:42):
reassured her that he wanted only to expose frauds and
that if there were a real medium out there, she
could not be in a better position to find them.
So she became his advance agent and investigator. She joined
a team that the magician had hired that heartedly included
twenty people. Yeah, those were just his people that were
(05:04):
like working on this project of his to debunk fraudulent
mediums and for her investigations, Makenburg often wore disguises in
her early assignments. This was part just of assuming an
identity of someone who had a backstory that usually involved
the type of loss that would normally send someone to
a psychic for help, like contacting a lost loved one.
(05:27):
But as her career went on, Rose also ended up
needing disguises just to keep people from recognizing her, because
as she uncovered frauds, those frauds started sharing information about
who she was and what she looked like with other
people in their industry. There is a very funny photo spread,
they're actually several that have been published in her career,
(05:50):
in which she demonstrates some of the personas and costumes
that she would use to go undercover, and these are
quite charming. They included her posing as in her words,
us smartly garbed widow, a rustic school teacher, a small
town matron, a credulous servant girl, a believing semi invalid,
a woman seeking lost, relatives of vamp from the country,
(06:13):
and my personal favorite, a tipsy consultant um. That picture,
if you ever find it, is quite funny. She looks
like she is costumed in what you would stereotypically think
someone like a fortune teller would be, but when she
had her picture taken, she made sure to look like
she was a little intoxicated, and it is a very
(06:33):
funny picture. Rose had a pretty unique face, so she
doesn't actually look all that different as a person from
photo to photo, but her outfit and her physical demeanor
are different enough for each of these disguises and others
that for someone working only from a written description, she
probably wouldn't have garnered attention. In addition, Rose was pretty
(06:56):
deliberate in crafting her various looks. She told a reporter
in the late nineteen thirties that she normally visit the
local department store of any town that she was sent to.
She would just watch the women shopping in there to
make sure that she was buying clothes that matched and
blended in with the styles that were favored by the locals,
and she would take as much as a week to
(07:17):
really learn the way people from the area spoke and
interacted with each other. Only after she really felt like
she had this whole thing down would she start visiting
the town's mediums. And in addition to faux seances, Rose
also uncovered a lot of inappropriate behavior on the part
of men claiming to be mediums. She noted in many
(07:39):
of her reports that men would grope her or even
try to coerce her into undressing or allowing them to
access her body in various ways under the guise of
doing their work. It was always clearly sort of sexual
and kind of gross in nature that would eventually become
so common and so troubling in these reports that Harry
Hudini suggested that Rose start carrying a gun in case
(08:03):
things ever got to a point where she felt she
was in danger, and she refused. The sexual harassment, though,
started right from the beginning, and it persisted throughout her career.
One of the most significant investigations that Rose conducted in
her early career as a debunker involved a man who
claimed to be a medium. He was named the Reverend
(08:24):
Charles H. Gunzulis. Gun Soulis was operating out of Indianapolis, Indiana,
in the early nineteen twenties and Rose was sent to
visit him. That was six weeks before Houdini was scheduled
to have a performance in Indianapolis, and for this visit
to Gonzolos, Rose took on those guys of a mother
(08:44):
whose baby had recently died. She told Charles Gounzulis that
she was consumed by grief and she wanted more than
anything to just make sure that her baby was happy
in the spirit realm, and gun Soulis began his act.
There were two spirit characters that Gonzulis claimed he connected
with in the afterlife to help him in his quest.
(09:06):
One was a woman named Ella, who he referred to
as his spirit wife. The other was a Hindu guide
that Gonzulis told Macknburg was eight hundred years old. This
fake medium then told Macknburg that he would teach her
to contact the afterlife by using a bowl of water
as a scrying glass for the low price of twenty
(09:27):
five dollars. She took that offer and she had several
lessons with Gonzlis. He told her quote, I see you
were going to have three guides, a Jewish, German and Italian.
Does this mean anything to you shalom aleckum, and that
mentioned that we made of sexually predatory behavior that Rose
frequently ran into. Well, here it is. Gonzlis also told her,
(09:50):
after she had presented herself, remember as a grieving mother,
that this whole process was going to work better if
she took off her clothes. Rose did not do that,
but she did write a very detailed report of this
entire experience for Harry Hudini, in which she described Gonzulis's
manner as quote, Oily, We're gonna pause here for a
(10:12):
quick sponsor break, and when we get back, we will
talk more about Gonzulis and his relationship to both Spiritualism
and to Hudini. So this particular assignment to visit Charles
Gonzulis have been given to Rose because Houdini had a
(10:34):
bit of history with Gonzolas. Gonzulis was to be frank
a piece of work. In the early nineteen twenties, he
had preached sermons in defense of the Ku Klux Klan,
claiming that quote, the ku Klux Klan is putting the
church back on its feet. Christ was the first klansman
and was crucified for saying what he believed if Christ
(10:55):
were here this morning, the chances are he would speak
on the same thing I am speaking about. So gross.
He often boasted about being the first Indiana minister to
join the clan, but by the time he got the
attention of Houdini, he had moved on from the clan
because they had mocked his interest in spiritualism. And then
(11:15):
he quickly became a rising star in the spiritualist movement.
He was listed in the edition of Hartmann's Who's Who
in Occult, Psychic and Spiritual Realms, which was published by
the Occult Press. In addition to making very strange claims
as a spiritualist minister, including that Jesus was visiting other
planets and would come back to Earth in the year
(11:37):
two thousand, Gonzolis also made threats. Weeks before Rosa's visit,
Gonzlis had written to Harry Houdini proclaiming himself to be
one of the country's leading spiritualists, and Gonsulis very much
did not appreciate Houdini's efforts to expose fraud in the
spiritualist community. He wrote, quote, it might be of interest
(11:58):
to you when I tell you that I know how
all of your tricks are performed while you are making
an exposure of spiritualism. It might be interesting if we
made an exposure of your tricks and published in the papers.
That's what interest the public and other magicians, don't you
think so? This really did not scare Houdini, and he
(12:19):
dispatched Rose. And when Houdini then gave his Indianapolis performance
at them or A Theater six weeks after Rose Macknburgh's
visit with Charles Gonzoliz, Gonzolis was in the audience, Harry
Houdini took the opportunity to expose the local medium. He
gave details to the audience about what had happened during
(12:39):
Rosa's visit. He had Rose joined him on stage to
give details of her interactions with Gonzolas and how he
had connected to her husband and children on the other side,
even though in reality she had never been married and
she had no children. Rose was not the only detective
that Houdini had sent to Gonzolis, and others were brought
forth during the performance to share their stories as well.
(13:02):
This included one from the National Detective Agency who had
done a lot of research on the man and had
assembled a detailed dossier about his entire life. Gudini asked
Gonzolis if he'd like to respond to the accusations. So
this incident was also written up in local papers and
describes what happens. Quote. Mr Gunzlis declared that he is
(13:24):
with Houdini in his effort to drive out fraudulent mediums,
and that he admitted that out of mediums are fraudulent.
Mr Gunzulis evidently concluded he was outnumbered when none in
the audience rallied to his support, so he finally offered
Mr Houdini his hand, which was taken and bowed himself out.
(13:44):
It was after eleven o'clock before the controversy was over,
so basically he did not defend himself. This same pattern
of Makenburg traveling ahead of Houdini to towns on his
tours and then visiting mediums and cataloging their every interaction
with her so that Whodini could use those details on
stage to reveal the frauds during his shows was something
(14:05):
that played out over and over that was really their
like whole approach. Another approach that Rosen Houdini took to
expose frauds was for Rose to attend a seance and
watch carefully for how the medium involved was tricking their clients.
During those seances, she'd alert Houdini. He would help her
arrange to have another seance appointment, this time with members
(14:27):
of the press surreptitiously attending as spiritualists. The reporters would
be briefed ahead of time on the way that given
mediums act played out, so that one of them could
take a flash photo at exactly the right moment to
capture their deception. Yeah, they outed a lot of people
doing these two things. Rose's work did not only expose
(14:51):
self proclaimed medium she also exposed services that would certify
mediums as clergy of spiritualist churches. Rose paid so many
used for the certifications of ordination that among Houdini's staff
she started to be called by the nickname the Rev.
Her name even occasionally appeared in print as the Reverend
Rose Makenburgh. She wrote of her ordinations quote, I have myself,
(15:15):
in my several investigations, been regularly ordained a spiritualistic minister,
not once but six times. At the most. It took
me three days to be ordained, and once I was
ordained in twenty minutes. All that I required besides a
five dollar to five dollar fee was the claim that
I could hear and see, which means in spiritualistic circles,
(15:37):
the ability to hear spirit voices and see spirit forms.
Those who ordained me were so incurious once they got
their fee that they paid no attention to the ridiculous
names I had assumed for the occasions, the Reverend Alicia
Bunk all Is Bunk and the Reverend f Rod Fraud
(15:59):
I love her. She also encountered a really particularly gross
instance of sexual harassment that I would say borders on
sexual assault during one of her ordinations, in which your Reverend,
who she only ever named publicly as Reverend X, told
her that to be ordained as a woman, she would
first have to be purified by the man who ordained her.
(16:22):
He fondled her ankles, which she described as completely revolting,
although she stuck it out to get more evidence of
his fakeery. He then attempted to pull her close to him,
and things got a little out of hand, and that
is when she extricated herself from the situation. In n
Houdini famously appeared before the House District of Columbia committee
(16:45):
as part of an investigation into mediums and fortune telling
while legislation against it was being considered. That legislation, introduced
by Senators Royal S. Copeland and Saul Bloom, both of
New York, would have made fortune telling in the Strick
of Columbia subject to a quote penalty not to exceed
two hundred fifty dollars or imprisonment not to exceed six months.
(17:08):
Houdini was adamant that anyone billing themselves as a clairvoyant
was a sham, just trying to make a buck, and
that stance brought a lot of people who made their
livings as mediums to the hearings to defend themselves. There
were actually two hearings. One was in February, it was
just one day, and then there were several days later
(17:29):
in May, and during these Houdini gave demonstrations of how
spirit mediums tricked people into believing they had been speaking
with spirits. In one demonstration, he used a long trumpet.
This was something that a lot of mediums were using,
and he had different people hold that trumpet up to
their ear, and although no one ever detected Houdini saying anything,
(17:51):
the participants in the demonstration each reported that they had
clearly heard sentences spoken by seeming spirits through the trumpet.
Kudini also offered ten thousand dollars cash to anyone who
could prove during these hearings that they were a true medium.
One of the tests was for someone who claimed they
could speak with spirits to come forward and tell him
(18:13):
what nickname his mother had called him by as a boy.
No one ever did it. Kudini declared in his testimony, quote,
this is the only place in the United States of
America where a crook or clairvoyant is licensed for twenty
five dollars and under that can blackmail or commit any
crime under the calendar and get away with it. There
(18:34):
are millions of dollars stolen by clairvoyants and mediums every year,
and I can prove it. He declared palmistry a fraud,
and when asked about astrology, noted that sometimes astrologers make
good guesses, but that quote, I don't believe that chunks
of mud a million miles away can tell me what
will happen to me or mine. Yeah. He famously also
(18:55):
had made this scroll out of all the ordination certificates
that rose in. Other agents of his had acquired in
the course of their investigations, and he unrolled this entire
huge scroll out um. It was very theatrical his testimony,
and in addition to giving that testimony, Harry Judini also
cross examined witnesses testifying in defense of spiritualist mediums, and
(19:19):
he also called his own witnesses. Remember this is not
like a court of law, it's a hearing, so it
doesn't work quite the same. In case that sounded weird
to you. Rose was one of the people that Houdini
asked to testify, and the most pertinent of her experiences
regarding this investigation was a visit she had with a
woman named Jane Coates. Coats was a very popular medium
(19:43):
in Washington, d c. And she had, according to Macknburg,
divulged some rather sensitive information about the ongoing debate over
spiritualism and this law proposed to outlaw it in the
nation's capital. Rose testified that Coates had told her that
there were too many believers in office for the law
to ever come to fruition. And Rose said that Coates
(20:04):
had told her quote, I know for a fact that
table tipping seances are held in the White House with
President Coolidge and his family. Coats also named three senators
who had she told Rose visited her for psychic readings
and frequently consulted mediums. Those were James Eli. Watson of Indiana,
Arthur Capper of Kansas, Clearance Dill of Washington State, and
(20:27):
Duncan Upshaw Fletcher of Florida. Rose's testimony was explosive, as
in Jane Coates stood up and started yelling denials of
Makenburgh's account almost immediately. Coats, in another medium known as
Madame Marcia, had asked to stand close to Macknburg as
she testified, so when these outbursts happened, Coates was yelling
(20:49):
right next to her. These things quickly escalated, and assume
there was so much yelling and even raised fists that
the committee lost control of the hearing and had to
call in a journment. Even after the session was cleared,
the argument carried on as people were shuffled into the hallway.
The New York Times account of the proceedings read quote,
Today's session was unusually disorderly and came near winding up
(21:13):
in a free for all fistfight. Cries of liar, fake,
and producer were exchanged by Houdini and his assailants, and
the din reached such a point that members of the
committee demanded the police be called. When speaking with reporters
after leaving the hearing, Jane Coates said that Rose Macknburg
had distorted what she actually told her. Coats clarified that
(21:36):
she had never told Rose that seances were held at
the White House, but that they took place quote under
the shadow of the White House. She also clarified that
while she had been consulted by senators, she had not
ever had a meeting with a member of the President's cabinet.
She also insisted that she had known Mackenburg was an
(21:56):
investigator the entire time that she was with her. There
is a whole secondary reason that Jane Coates would have
been really upset about Rose's testimony. That had nothing to
do with exposing her as a fraud, but it was
about upsetting the president. Probably nobody would want to do that,
But in this case there was a very specific reason.
(22:16):
According to The New York Times, Mrs Coates was quote
interested in a claim bill that had passed Congress and
was before President Coolidge for signature, from which she was
to receive twenty five thousand dollars for eighty five cows
killed by the government on her family's farm in Maryland
several years ago. Of course, she would not have wanted
(22:38):
to do anything or have anything said in that hearing
that might cause the President to veto that bill instead
of signing. And she claimed that she was going to
clean up the spiritualism community with the money once she
got it, and, according to the Times quote, put it
on a high plane. The Coolidge administration was eager to
stay away from all those kinds of claims and heart
(23:00):
because the preceding Herding administration had been associated with mediums
and it was an embarrassment. Houdini wrote President Coolidge an
apology letter, insisting that he had never wanted to embarrass
the president, only to expose Charlatan's The White House gave
no official denial of the claims that seances had been
held with members of the Coolidge family present, but there
(23:23):
was an informal statement that the Coolidges were not interested
in spiritualism. Despite Houdini's compelling evidence, including Makenburgh's testimony. This
bill did not become law, but the whole event expanded
public awareness of fraudulent mediums. Yeah, it got written up
nationally in the papers, so people were suddenly a lot
(23:44):
more aware that there was an entire industry of fake mediums.
In just a moment, we're going to talk about Rose's
life beyond her work with Houdini, but first we will
pause for a sponsor break. If you are familiar with
(24:06):
Harry Judini's story, you may have already done some quick
math and realized that by the time he hired Rose Macknburg,
he only had a couple of years left in his life.
He died in ninety six. That was later the same
year that the hearings before Congress took place, of paritonitis
caused by a rupture appendix. But though her boss died, Rose,
(24:28):
who was still just in her early thirties at this time,
stayed on the path that he had opened up for her.
She continued to investigate fraudulent claims of psychic abilities and spiritualism,
and she had new clients for this, primarily insurance companies,
the better business bureau, banks, and sometimes even police. And
while she and Harry had a pact similar to the
(24:48):
one that he had made with his wife, it's often
famously talked about that if there was a way to
communicate from the afterlife, whoever died first would reach out.
Rose said she never heard from Houdini after his death.
In the nineteen thirties, Makenburg went to visit a medium
in Chicago named Herman E. Parker, after being privately commissioned
to do so. She claimed to be a widow Mrs
(25:11):
Rosalind Richards, still in a state of fresh grief from
only recently losing her husband. She later recounted that in
disguises of grief like this one quote, a touch of
onion at the eyes gave me the proper facial appearance.
Rose's disguise was one of plainness, and Parker clearly thought
she was poor. He charged her only a dollar for
(25:33):
her seance. He said that he had made contact with
her husband, and that the deceased was there in the
room with him, and that he was okay, and then
he started wrapping up the proceedings. But then Rose bated
Parker by telling him that she had hoped to ask
her husband about the three thousand dollars she had been
offered in a settlement. She noted in writing after the
(25:55):
fact that it was really comical to see Parker suddenly
become a lot more invested in helping her, but that
if she had been a real grieving widow, it would
have been tragic and frightening. After having learned that the
fictional Mrs Richards not only had three thousand dollars coming
to her, but also had fifteen hundred dollars in the bank,
(26:17):
something that he learned by insisting her dead husband wanted
to know the details of her finances in order to
advise her. Parker told Rose he was receiving messages from
the beyond to invest one thousand dollars with a man
named Wilcox. Of course, Parker knew a man named Wilcox
who owned a transportation company, so Rose wrote Wilcox a
(26:39):
deposit check for twenty five dollars, for which she got
a receipt That was evidence she was very purposely collecting,
and then she went to the Investors Protective Bureau and
relayed the entire series of events in her report. Both
Parker and Wilcox were, according to Rose, tried and found guilty.
While she continued to conduct investigations herself, she also became
(27:02):
an educator. She gave lectures and wrote articles detailing the
tricks that fraud psychics use so that lay people could
spot them and not be taken in by these simple tricks.
One message that she always included, Justice Houdini had was
that she had no problem with people who believed in spiritualism.
She only wanted to expose fraudulent mediums who exploited those
(27:24):
beliefs for financial game. She wrote about widows who were
cheated out of everything they had, and how even men
who seemed worldly were drawn in by the promise of
information that would lead them to riches. In an article
titled when Crime Poses as Spiritualism, Rose wrote, quote, after
(27:44):
ten years experience as a private detective working with commercial agencies, lawyers,
and district attorneys, it is my considered opinion, although I
have worked on gambling, robbery, blackmail, and murder cases, that
the most vicious criminals in America are the Charlatans who
betray and plunder their heartsick victims in the name of
(28:05):
the dear departed dead. She went on to say, quote,
My work has often led me into the squalid dens
where the cheapest and most despicable of these criminals practice.
Third rate magicians whose skill in deception is so little
that their prey, by necessity, must be the uninformed and
unprotected poor. One of the lessons that Makenburg tried to
(28:27):
impart to people was that spiritualist fraud tends to rise
in times of strife and uncertainty. That has become like
an accidental theme of our October episodes this year. It
was not planned, but it keeps coming up. She noted
that during wars and economic downturns, psychics seem to pop
(28:47):
up everywhere because people who are in a state of
uncertainty are desperate for something to give them hope or solace.
She wrote of this problem in nineteen one, quote, to
these Charlottean's who take a cruel and vantage of human
grief and anxiety. War brings boom times. The anguish of
friends and relatives of dead, wounded, or missing servicemen offers
(29:11):
a fertile field for heartless deception. Fathers, mothers, wives, sweethearts,
and others close to those the Armed Service flocked to
the seances of those counterfeit dealers in the occult. During
the late stages of World War Two, Rose even had
Chicago journalist E. W. Williamson go with her on her
investigations also undercover, of course, and that experience became a
(29:35):
series for the Chicago Tribune in which Williamson relayed all
the same kinds of stories that Rose had been telling
since the nineteen twenties, covering mediums who were claiming to
have contacted dead relatives that were purely made up. On
April tenth, Rose died in her apartment at three ten
West twenty four Street in Manhattan. That is in Chelsea,
(29:58):
in case you're trying to men really make a picture
of where she was at. During her time as a
spiritual investigator, she had taken part in thousands of investigations,
and while some fake mediums once exposed claimed that they
had known who she was, she had never been questioned
by any of them during any of their interactions. Rose
was very widely in her approach and she always managed
(30:20):
to get her evidence. She once famously said of her
work quote, I smell a rat before I smell the incense.
Rose was very witty and a very funny writer. She
wrote an autobiography titled So You Want to Attend a Seance,
but that was never published. She did leave a lot
of great quotes and the articles that she wrote an
interviews that she gave seven she was quoted as saying,
(30:44):
I never married, but I have received messages from a
thousand husbands and twice as many children in the world
to come. Invariably, they told me they were happy where
they were, which was not entirely flattering to me. I
love that quote. But though her wit can be cutting
and she was incredibly sharp, she was also always, as
(31:06):
we've said, incredibly careful to assure believers and spiritualism that
she was not out to get them, just as Houdini had.
She wrote in one of her articles, quote, although I
am skeptical of the claims advanced by spiritualism, I have
only the greatest respect for those who genuinely believe that
communication with the debt is possible. The attempts I have
(31:27):
seen to materialize spirits from the Great Beyond must be
numbered in the thousands. But I have never been convinced
that any message received was genuine. Yet, although I am
skeptical of the claims made even by genuine spiritualists, let
me confess now that I can find it in me
to hope they are right. We all of us, I believe,
(31:47):
must share that hope in some measure what a comfort
it would be. And that is Rose Macknburgh, who I adore.
She's such a fun one and I really I hope
people will seek out photos of her and her various disguises,
some as the art that will appear on social media,
(32:09):
but there are lots of them and they are very
very funny. Since the social media art nowadays is pretty
much always square, it's only a couple of them because
that what fits, that's what fits in a square. Oh,
she's so good. If you just do an internet search
on Google or any other search engine of her name
and do an image search, you're going to find lots
(32:29):
of pictures of her because she for those kinds of
pictures for newspapers. She would like do the whole pose
an expression, and it's very very entertaining. I have a
listener mail from our listeners Sarah about um baby kissing
and pasts and sewing, so it's it's covering lots of vases.
(32:50):
Sarah writes, Dear Holly and Tracy, I want to thank
you so much for having absolutely fabulous programming. First and foremost,
I'm almost all the way through the archive, and it
gets me through driving around and running errands. I had
to stop folding laundry to shoot off this quick message
before I forget is I'm basically a squirrel with shiny
objects too. She writes, you brought up kissing babies, which
absolutely makes me bonkers. But your comments on Today's Behind
(33:13):
the Scenes about the campaign to kiss your baby to
check for cystic fibrosis really struck a chord. My best
friend's daughter, in fact, has cystic fibrosis, and I remember
she called me when the baby was about three months
old after her checkup and she was categorized as failure
to thrive. In to note, she had a very intense
burst situation where she um was actually born in the
(33:34):
front seat of the car in the hospital parking lot.
That sounds absolutely harrowing to me. Labor and Delivery kept
arguing with the emergency department that it was an emergency
situation since the baby was already born. Labor and Delivery
didn't want to admit her. So after some time and
back and forth, they finally got into the emergency department.
But a lot of the testing that normally gets done
right after birth did not happen. We have talked about
(33:56):
that testing before on our show. In the Virginia apcar episode.
She was categorized as an accidental home birth, and we
knew that mom's family was a carrier for the cystic
fibrosis gene, but when they tested Dad, they did not
do a big enough spectrum and the baby ended up
with a rarer genetic mutation of cystic fibrosis that was
outside of the scope of the test they had done.
(34:16):
I remember getting a phone call, which was funny because
we don't call each other. We text, so I knew
something was up, and she said to me that the
baby might have cystic fibrosis, and I had no idea
what that was. So she was giving me a quick rundown,
and I said, did you lick her? Is she's salty?
And my best friend said no, And then she did,
in fact proceed to lick the baby and declared to
(34:37):
me she tastes like a potato chip. A couple of
a couple of weeks of genetic testing and specialist appointments
and back and forth to doctor's offices, she does have
systic fibrosis. And now she is a vivacious nine year
old who was absolutely amazing in every single way and
very healthy, in part due to my best friend's absolute
militant sanitation and medication regiment, in part by a few
(34:59):
medical breakthroughs that's happened in the last ten years. This
is a fascinating version of that. Right, we talked about
how that is not normally the thing that people would
do anymore to test in that way, But this is
one of those rare situations where like things have fallen
through the cracks, right, I mean, at least here in
the US, where most people give birth in a hospital.
(35:22):
Not everyone, but most people give give birth in a hospital,
And like in a hospital, there's a a collection of
screening stuff that's supposed to happen immediately after birth or
shortly after, which isn't how it works in the whole
entire rest of the world. But yeah, yeah, I had not.
I had certainly not considered like those strange outlier scenarios
where those tests might not happen in the corporate timeline.
(35:44):
But that's interesting. Sarah also goes on to say, I,
in fact, am also not a hugger. I've become much
more relaxed and better about this in the last ten years,
especially after I started playing roller Derby. You get a
little bit touch desensitized, and I'm better about knowing if
their people are huggers, and so I can accommodate and
mentally prepare. I still don't appreciate a full frontal hug
(36:05):
unless I know you very well. I'd prefer a crisp pie. Five.
We were out of state doing the arduous task of
cleaning out my mom's apartment after she had passed, and
my best friend came with me. She is also not
a hugger. We were sorting things and donating piles, and
my friend is in my mom's room sorting through clothing.
I'm in the living room, where We've had a few
neighbors come by to give their condolences, which I very
much appreciated, and one neighbor came in, mind you, I
(36:29):
am absolutely filthy. I'm sweating. It's hot. We're moving boxes.
In the last year of my mom's life, her mobility
really went down, so there's a lot of cleaning that
just didn't get done. One of the neighbors starts moving
forward towards me with arms a kimbo, and I won
a jump back, put my arms up in a defensive
motion and screech. I'm not a hugger. I can hear
my best friend in the bedroom of this tiny apartment
(36:50):
suppressing a cackle as I start to word vomit apologies
trying to explain to the stranger I don't like hugging.
Thank you so much for coming by. I do appreciate
the sentiment, all a slightly panic tone. We still laugh
about that day. It was one of the highlights of
an otherwise difficult weekend. Holly. I also want to send
a specific thank you for encouraging me to not be
afraid of zippers. I finally started learning to sew after many,
(37:13):
many years of threatening to learn how to sew into
all the Halloween fabric out right now. I was inspired
to make some simple gathered skirts, but I am not
a fan of elastic waistband hey me either, uh, and
I knew that I would have to learn how to
use my zipper foot. After many many YouTube videos, I
plucked up the courage and installed a zipper and realized
it really, in fact, was not that hard. And now
(37:34):
I have three fabulous skirts that I can can't wait
to wear all year long, and hopefully we'll have time
soon to figure out how to transition the skill into dresses. Uh.
There are pictures of these skirts are very cute. I
also don't like an elastic waistband. It's just not very
flattering for a lot of people. Uh. And then there
are pictures Lord Hamish, the cat who's adorable uh and
(37:58):
likes to sleep on top of projects. Black fabric always
a favorite. I know that dance bark Vader. It's a
very good boy and does not care, likes the couch
all to himself. So we get cat and dog pictures
and they are so cute. Um, Sarah, this is adorable.
So thank you for sharing all of this because you
hit so many points of things we've talked about. Those
skirts are very very cute. You're gonna look fabulous all
(38:20):
season long and all year long. Kiss those cute pets
for us. If you would like to write to us,
you can do so at History Podcast at i heart
radio dot com. You can also find us on social
media as Missed in History And if you haven't subscribed yet,
go ahead and do that. It's so easy. You can
do it on the I heart Radio app or wherever
it is you are listening to your favorite shows. Stuff
(38:46):
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio 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
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.