January 29, 2025 • 27 mins
Mary Todd Lincoln embarks on a scheme to make money: selling her old clothes. And she gets her friend and dressmaker Elizabeth Keckley involved.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. Hello, my filthy little filth heads. Did
you enjoy the last episode with a bit of a cliffhanger? Wow,
wasn't that fun? But let me do a little bit
of a recap in case you forgot any of the
important details. In the last episode, I talked about Mary
(00:28):
Todd Lincoln. You guys know, she was the first Lady.
She was the wife of Abraham Lincoln. He was a
guy who did the Emancipation Proclamation and I also thought
that he was a little big a. I talked about
Mary Todd and then I also talked about her modiste
turned friend, Elizabeth Keckley. Elizabeth was a formerly enslaved woman
(00:48):
who bought her own freedom, moved to Washington, d c.
And became the dressmaker of the society elites. And you
guys know that I love to see if someone's gay
or nay. Well, a couple of scholars have sensed a
bit of queerness between Mary Todd and Elizabeth Keckley. You
(01:09):
know they're like, well, they hung out a lot, they
do a lot of things together. Also, Elizabeth said that
Mary Todd had a nice neck. Here go must be
a little gay. But you know, I also want to
be honest right, And I'm kind of non tally convinced
that they were in a gay relationship at all. You know,
(01:29):
I think more of what was going on is that
Mary Todd is extremely mentally ill, needy and codependent, and
Elizabeth was one of her few friends. She was disliked
by a lot of DC society people, and so she
was latching on to Elizabeth. She needed her all the
time to deal with her moods. At her every whim,
(01:50):
Mary Todd would have a meltdown and then request Elizabeth's company,
even though Elizabeth, as a dressmaker, had a business to run. Also,
is it really just a request when it's the first lady?
You kind of have to just do what she says,
which a bit of a power imbalance in their relationship.
But I'm not saying that Elizabeth didn't enjoy Mary Todd's company.
(02:12):
You know, they were friends. She clearly cared about her,
as we see in the book that Elizabeth Keckley wrote.
This book called Behind the Scenes, came out in eighteen
sixty eight, and she didn't necessarily want to write this book,
but she was encouraged to write it by some publishers.
(02:32):
They strongly suggested it they were like, hey, Elizabeth Keckley,
this would be a good idea, you know, because you
got to defend Mary Todd, defend her against what you
might ask. Well. The year before, in eighteen sixty seven,
Mary Todd Lincoln's reputation had been basically destroyed, and the
publishers were like, if you write about her and what
(02:55):
happened in your perspective, it might improve the whole scenario.
Maybe people will like her again. Unfortunately, though, when Elizabeth
published this book actually made everything worse. Whoops. There was
significant backlash, not just because the book talked about the
intimate life of President Lincoln and Mary Todd, but also
(03:16):
because most of the book is Keckley talking about her
own life. People hated that. They're like, we don't care
about you, We want to hear about Mary Todd. I
gotta wait until the last chapter to know what happened.
And you might be wondering, well, what was it that
happened in eighteen sixty seven that was so bad? Well,
(03:38):
you're not gonna believe this, but Mary Todd was running
low on money, so she tried to sell her old clothes.
I know, isn't that the worst thing you've ever heard
scandalous a woman trying to sell her clothes for money.
Of all things, she had to stoop so low to
(04:02):
thrifting her goods. And of course when she did this,
when she came up with this scheme to sell her clothes,
she dragged her friend Elizabeth Keckley into the mess. Cue
the theme song. This is American filth and I'm Gabby Watts.
(04:24):
Every week I tell you a filthy story from American history.
In this week's episode, the Old Clothes Scandal.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I was out of tune.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
In eighteen sixty seven, Mary Todd Lincoln was living in
Chicago and she was on the brink of poverty. You know,
she couldn't have for at her house, her other expenses.
While Abraham Lincoln was president, she had run up a
lot of debts at various stores. She had spent too
much money, and then he passed away and she didn't
have enough money to live off of. Even when Congress
(05:20):
was like, we'll give you Abraham Lincoln's salary for the
year because obviously he's not going to use it because
you know, as I said last week, he was dead,
but then she ran out of that money. She just
didn't have enough money for her life, and she was like,
oh God, oh God, what am I gonna do? What
am I gonna do? And so she wrote a letter
to her friend Elizabeth Keckley, who was still in Washington,
(05:41):
d c. That said, I have not the means to
meet the expenses of even the first class boarding house,
and must sell out and secure cheap rooms at some
place in the country. It will not be startling news
to you, my dear Lizzie, to learn that I must
sell a portion of my wardrobe to add to my
resources so as to enable me to live decently. I
(06:06):
have many costly things which I shall never wear. I
might as well turn them into money and thus add
to my income and make my circumstances easier. It is
humiliating to be placed in such a position. Now, Lizzie,
I want to ask a favor of you. It is
imperative that I should do something for my relief, and
I want you to meet me in New York between
(06:26):
the thirtieth of August and the fifth of September, to
assist me in disposing of a portion of my wardrobe. Yes,
that's right, folks, Marry time Lincoln was in such dire
circumstances two years after her husband's death, that she was
going to have to do something embarrassing, sell her clothes,
(06:50):
And here she is demanding that her friend meet her
in New York to be humiliated alongside her. And indeed,
unfortunately for Missus Lincoln, all of this would end up
being very embarrassing for her. Elizabeth Keckley understood this from
(07:10):
the beginning. When she received this letter, she felt that
something would go awry. She wrote, I thought at the
time that Missus Lincoln was borrowing trouble from the future,
and little dreamed that the event which she so dimly
foreshadowed would ever come to pass. But Elizabeth Keckley agreed
(07:31):
she went along with it, and her book she talked
about how she felt indebted to marry Todd because of
everything her husband had done for Black Americans. And also,
again this is when some people bring up the whole
gay argument that Elizabeth was acting out of romantic love
instead of just being married Todd's friend. Again, am I
(07:52):
convinced by this idea? Absolutely not? But is it fun
to think about? Absolutely yes. So Elizabeth, being the good
friend that she was, left her shop, closed it up
up and got ready to go to New York City
to meet up with Mary Todd, and indeed him was
a disaster. Keckley found Mary Todd staying at this shabby
(08:19):
hotel and Mary Todd was there incognito under a fake name,
Missus Clark, and when Elizabeth arrived, Mary Todd came down
into the lobby and a tizzy. She had been worried
that Elizabeth might not arrive. She said, why did you
not come to me yesterday? I was almost crazy when
(08:39):
I reached here last night and found you had not arrived.
Mary Todd, under the guise of missus Clark, immediately asked
the clerk to get Elizabeth the room next to hers.
But this clerk was a bitch, was like, I'm sorry,
there's no room for her on the third floor where
you're staying. She's gonna have to say somewhere else, which
was just the clerk being a dumbass racist, being like,
(09:02):
this woman is black, she can't be on the third
floor with you. Mary Todd was aghast. She was incredulous.
Racism in eighteen sixty seven unbelievable. So Mary Todd instead
moved her room to the attic, where Elizabeth was allowed
to stay. When they got to their adjoining rooms. Mary
(09:23):
Todd sat down in a huff. She said, I never
saw such unaccommodating people. I will give them a regular
going over in the morning. And then Keckley had to
remind her that this would do nothing. She was like, hey,
Mary Todd, you're in disguise. They don't know who you are.
She said, quote, they don't know you. Missus Lincoln would
(09:44):
be treated differently from Missus Clark. And see, that was
the whole problem with this old clothes scheme. Mary Todd
didn't want people to know who she was to save
her from the embarrassment of having to sell off her wares.
But the value of the clothes came from the fact
that they belonged to Mary Todd Lincoln, the former First Lady.
(10:07):
Before Keckley had arrived, Mary Todd had tried to hawk
some of her jewelry and the buyers were like, you
must be bananas if you want that much money for
these pieces, you random woman named Missus Clark. We don't
want this. And you might be wondering, how did these
people not recognize her? She was a former first Lady
after all. Well, not only was she going by Missus Clark,
(10:29):
she was also wearing a thick veil. Wow, what a disguise.
She was also speaking in a Gollum voice. Oh almostusk
Croslas martusup. Sorry, that wasn't a good accent. I do apologize,
and she wasn't doing that, if you can believe it.
(10:54):
But unfortunately, her disguise didn't last long because when she
was showing her jewelry to yet another potential customer, he
saw Mary Todd Lincoln engraved on one of the rings.
He was like, hey, are you Mary Todd? And she
was like, oh no, I've been discovered already. The next day,
(11:16):
the day that Elizabeth had arrived, this man, mister Keys
and his associate mister Brady, came to visit Mary Todd.
They listened to her tale of woe and they were like, yes, girl,
the government is treating you badly by not giving you
more money. If you put your clothes and jewelry in
our hands, we will quickly raise you a sum of
one hundred thousand dollars. That's basically one billion put jrillion
(11:43):
dillion badillion in today's money. Elizabeth Keckley was suspicious of
them from the jump. She didn't trust these guys. She
was like, who are they? Where did they come from?
And Mary Todd wasn't all the way convinced either. So
over the next couple of days, Mary Todd and Elizabeth
drove around to various clothing dealers, but nobody wanted to
(12:05):
buy these clothes, especially because look, they just belonged to
some random lady named missus Clark. They didn't know it
was Mary Todd. And Mary Todd was mad. She was like,
these are great old clothes, why are they buying them?
Mary Todd was being desperate even on this trip. She
was running out of money, so she eventually agreed to
(12:27):
mister Keys and mister Brady because she was like, well,
maybe their plan will be better than mine and will
help me get one gazillion dollars. Keys and Brady's first
plan was to guilt people into buying her clothes. They
were like, Mary Todd, I think you should reveal who
(12:47):
you are. Write some letters that detail all the terrible
things that have happened to you and how you don't
have any money. We'll show those letters around and then
people will certainly want to buy your clothes because they
feel bad for you, Like you won't be an embarrassment
they'll be an embarrassment for living in a country that
(13:08):
won't support the former First Lady. Elizabeth Keckley was like,
that plan is literally insane.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I think it's a bad idea.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
But Mary Todd was like, too bad, I'm gonna do it.
I need money. And so mister Keys and mister Brady
they took these letters. They showed them around town, but
still no one wanted to buy anything. They're like, pishposh.
You know the First Lady, she should figure something out.
(13:38):
I don't need to help her. And oh god, was
Mary Todd getting even more desperate. This is how desperate
she got. She was the one who came up with
this idea. She was like, hey, well, if these people
(14:00):
you're showing the letters to aren't trying to give me
any money, what if we just publish them in the
newspaper so everyone can see them. Mister Keys and mister
Brady were like, freakin genius, let's do that. And then
mister Brady and mister Keys came back and they're like, hey,
Mary Todd, we have then another idea. What if we
(14:21):
publish these letters, but we use them as like an
advertisement for an auction where we sell all of your clothes.
We put all your clothes on display. People can come through,
people can see them and get a dress that was
worn by the former First Lady. And Mary Todd, even
though she knew this would be embarrassing to have all
(14:43):
these people ogling her clothes, she was like, yeah, I
guess this is what we gotta do. It's dire and
so they put the plan in action and it was
really bad. Be back after these soothing advertisements. Elizabeth Keckley
(15:08):
thought this whole publishing the letters in a newspaper and
then having a sale of the clothes was a bad idea.
She's like, then everybody's gonna know about your plight. They're
gonna make fun of you, and then they're gonna come
look at your clothes and be like, ho hum, this
stupid little lady doesn't have any money. He haw ha ha.
(15:31):
Elizabeth hated it, and then it got even worse for
her because after the letters were published in the newspaper,
Mary Todd was like, I gotta get out of here.
I'm gonna go back to Chicago. But Elizabeth, you stay here.
You deal with the sale of the clothes, not demanding
at all. This is crazy because Elizabeth Keckley had a
(15:53):
business in DC she needed to get back to, but
Mary Todd was like, no, no, no, deal with my shit,
and I'm going to go to Chicago. First of all,
the letters in the newspaper did not have the intended
to fact. People didn't really seem to feel that bad
for her. But it did get people to come out
to the auction. It was at a hotel, and let's
(16:15):
just say it was the talk of the town, the country,
but not in a good way. In her book Behind
the Scenes, Elizabeth included an article from the New York
Evening Express that detailed the events of the auction. It reads,
the publicity given to the articles on exhibition and for
(16:36):
sale has excited the public curiosity, and hundreds of people,
principally women with considerable leisure, daily thronged the rooms of
mister Brady. Twenty five dresses, folded or tossed about by
frequent examinations, lie exposed upon a closed piano and upon
a lounge. Shawls rich and rare are displayed upon the
(16:59):
backs of chairs. Furs, laces, and jewelry are in a
glass case. The feeling of the majority of visitors is
adverse to the course Missus Lincoln has thought proper to pursue,
and the criticisms are as severe as the quality of
some of the dresses. Some of them have been worn much.
(17:22):
They are jagged under the arms and at the bottom
of the skirt. Stains are on the lining. The peculiarity
of the dresses is that most of them are cut
low necked, a taste which some ladies attribute to Missus
Lincoln's appreciation of her own bust. Wow, they are dragging
(17:46):
her in this article. They're like, some of these dresses
are dirty, they're stained, they're kind of gross. A lot
of them are also out of fashion. She's also trying
to sell them for basically the same price she bought
them for. And then they say that whole thing about
the revealing neckline a little slut shame, is it not.
(18:08):
There were so many articles at the time about this sale.
Most of them ridiculed Mary Todd for the whole affair,
for the fact that she tried to beat incognito in disguise,
that she let her letters get published in the newspaper,
that the dresses weren't up to snuff. Meanwhile, it was
Elizabeth Keckley who had to set everything up, and some
(18:30):
of the dresses on display were actually some of her
own work, Like, can you imagine having to display these
gowns and then all these people walking by muttering complaints
about the dresses must have been horrible. Elizabeth Keckley, though,
was a good friend. She was seeing all these criticisms,
(18:52):
all of these editorials about Mary Todd, and she was like,
why don't they have any sympathy for her? She wrote
a letter to the editor of the New York Evening
News defending Mary Todd, and one of the points she
made it was like, the Empress of France frequently disposes
of her cast off wardrobe and publicly too, without being
(19:13):
subjected to any of these unkind remarks. Elizabeth's just like, yeah,
the Empress of France can do this and to get
rid of her clothes, Mary Todd should be allowed to
do it as well. And here's the extra sad, embarrassing
thing for Mary Todd, this auction, this sale wasn't worth it.
(19:39):
She actually lost money, very few items sold, and it
was more expensive to set everything up. Mary Todd obviously
was very upset that this all happened. Also, Elizabeth sent
her a letter saying that mister Brady and mister Keys
weren't very quote energetic at the sale, and after talking
(20:01):
to a few people, Mary Todd and Elizabeth realized that
no one really knew who they were. They're just some
random guys. Mary Todd felt tricked by at the same time,
maybe she should have done some fact checking before, uh,
just going along with what they suggested. I'm just gonna
say that now, is just like, if two random guys
(20:23):
kind of approach you, like, don't listen to them. That's
just like some advice in general. The sale was obviously
a failure, but then mister Brady and mister Keyes went
a little crazy. They briefly stole Mary Todd's clothes. They
were like, Hey, since we couldn't get anyone to buy
(20:44):
this stuff, what if we make it a traveling exhibition.
Come and see crazy Mary Todd's clothes. So yeah, they
took her clothes without her consent and brought them to Providence,
Rhode Island. Luckily for Mary Todd's reputation, though the authority
(21:04):
is Improvidence didn't allow mister Brady and mister Keys to
put these clothes on display, so they returned the wardrobe
back to New York. Elizabeth Cackley ended up staying in
New York for two months doing Mary Todd's bidding. I
really disliked Mary Todd's treatment of Elizabeth in this situation,
(21:28):
especially because Mary Todd never ended up paying Elizabeth. Elizabeth
wrote in her book quote Missus Lincoln's venture proved so
disastrous that she was unable to reward me for my services,
and I was compelled to take in sewing to pay
for my daily bread. My New York expedition has made
me richer in experience but poorer in purse. During the
(21:51):
entire winter, I have worked early and late, and practiced
the closest economy. Missus Lincoln's business demanded much of my time,
and it was a constant source of trouble to me.
After everything in New York was wrapped up, Keckley returned
to DC. Mary Todd was still in Chicago living with
(22:12):
one of her sons and Elizabeth. She was feeling really
bad for her friend, even though her friend ruined her
life for a little bit. And so when Elizabeth Keckley
was fretting over Mary Todd's reputation, these publishers approached her
and were like hey, you should write a book about
the whole thing. And that's when we got behind the
(22:32):
scenes the account. They were like, hey, if you tell
her story, you know, people can really sympathize with her
and understand what she was going through where she was
coming from. Though, you know, their publishers and they were
probably just like, this is a great way we could
make some money. Money, mon no money. So she wrote
the book and at the very end of it, there's
(22:54):
an appendix which includes some of Mary Todd's personal letters
to Elizabeth Keckley. Now, Elizabeth was probably pressured to include
these or simply not told that they would be featured
in the book, and then when behind the scenes came out, unfortunately,
it had the exact opposite effect of fixing Mary Todd's reputation.
(23:18):
Mary Todd looked even worse and also kind of dumb,
trusting these guys she didn't know, and also selling her
clothes in general. There was also a lot of personal
details about her and her husband's relationship. There were these
letters Elizabeth Keckley wrote about some of her emotional outbursts.
(23:39):
Mary Todd was mortified. Mary Todd's son tried to buy
up as many books as possible, and eventually he was
able to get these publishers to stop printing the book.
And then, guys, this is really terrible. After the book
(24:01):
came out, Mary Todd, Lincoln, and Elizabeth Keckley I first
spoke again. That's the real bad thing about the Old
Clothes scandal. It ended a beautiful female friendship. And by
beautiful I mean kind of imbalanced, and uh, Mary Todd
definitely took advantage of Elizabeth. But anyway, after all of this,
(24:25):
Mary Todd traveled around Europe for a bit and when
she got back to the United States, her son Tad died.
That was two of her sons gone, and her husband.
She started having these hallucinations and her other son, Robert,
thought she should be committed to an asylum. The only
problem is that the only way you commit somebody is
you have to basically sue them, put them on trial,
(24:48):
and determine whether or not they're crazy enough to be
sent to one. And that's what happened. Mary Todd one
day was just like, oh, I'm in a court room,
what's going on? And then they were all like, you're crazy,
and they committed her. She didn't stay very long. By
this point, she was in poor health. She had bad vision,
she had pain, some people think she might have had diabetes,
(25:10):
and at the age of sixty three, she died of
a stroke. Elizabeth Keckley fared even worse when she got
back to DC. She lost all of her clients. She
had been involved with the scandal and nobody wanted to
be associated with her, and she died destitute at a
boarding house for black women. Isn't that depressing? Very sad?
(25:39):
Two girl bosses suffering. Some people believe that Mary Todd
Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckley did rekindle their friendship in later years.
There's no proof of that, but sometimes you just want
two girl bosses to reconcile. And you guys know this
that every episode of American Filth we learn a lesson,
(26:00):
And I think the lesson here is that you should
buy vintage clothes because maybe it'll do some good. For example,
it might help two women remain friends. So if you
don't buy that musty card again, you hate women and
female friendship. Cue the credits. American Filth is a production
(26:28):
of School of Humans and iHeart Podcast. This episode was
produce rent and hosted by me Gbby Watts and Our
theme song is by Jesse Niswanger. Our executive producers are
or Jenny Prescott, Elsie Croley, and Brandon Barr And you
can follow along with the pod on Instagram at American
filth Pod. Also, you know, give the show review on
whatever platform that you're listening to it on. Give it
(26:48):
some comments, give us some stars, Send it to a friend,
send it to an enemy, and I'll talk with you
next time. School of Humans
School of Humans. Hello, my filthy little filth heads. Did
you enjoy the last episode with a bit of a cliffhanger? Wow,
wasn't that fun? But let me do a little bit
of a recap in case you forgot any of the
important details. In the last episode, I talked about Mary
(00:28):
Todd Lincoln. You guys know, she was the first Lady.
She was the wife of Abraham Lincoln. He was a
guy who did the Emancipation Proclamation and I also thought
that he was a little big a. I talked about
Mary Todd and then I also talked about her modiste
turned friend, Elizabeth Keckley. Elizabeth was a formerly enslaved woman
(00:48):
who bought her own freedom, moved to Washington, d c.
And became the dressmaker of the society elites. And you
guys know that I love to see if someone's gay
or nay. Well, a couple of scholars have sensed a
bit of queerness between Mary Todd and Elizabeth Keckley. You
(01:09):
know they're like, well, they hung out a lot, they
do a lot of things together. Also, Elizabeth said that
Mary Todd had a nice neck. Here go must be
a little gay. But you know, I also want to
be honest right, And I'm kind of non tally convinced
that they were in a gay relationship at all. You know,
(01:29):
I think more of what was going on is that
Mary Todd is extremely mentally ill, needy and codependent, and
Elizabeth was one of her few friends. She was disliked
by a lot of DC society people, and so she
was latching on to Elizabeth. She needed her all the
time to deal with her moods. At her every whim,
(01:50):
Mary Todd would have a meltdown and then request Elizabeth's company,
even though Elizabeth, as a dressmaker, had a business to run. Also,
is it really just a request when it's the first lady?
You kind of have to just do what she says,
which a bit of a power imbalance in their relationship.
But I'm not saying that Elizabeth didn't enjoy Mary Todd's company.
(02:12):
You know, they were friends. She clearly cared about her,
as we see in the book that Elizabeth Keckley wrote.
This book called Behind the Scenes, came out in eighteen
sixty eight, and she didn't necessarily want to write this book,
but she was encouraged to write it by some publishers.
(02:32):
They strongly suggested it they were like, hey, Elizabeth Keckley,
this would be a good idea, you know, because you
got to defend Mary Todd, defend her against what you
might ask. Well. The year before, in eighteen sixty seven,
Mary Todd Lincoln's reputation had been basically destroyed, and the
publishers were like, if you write about her and what
(02:55):
happened in your perspective, it might improve the whole scenario.
Maybe people will like her again. Unfortunately, though, when Elizabeth
published this book actually made everything worse. Whoops. There was
significant backlash, not just because the book talked about the
intimate life of President Lincoln and Mary Todd, but also
(03:16):
because most of the book is Keckley talking about her
own life. People hated that. They're like, we don't care
about you, We want to hear about Mary Todd. I
gotta wait until the last chapter to know what happened.
And you might be wondering, well, what was it that
happened in eighteen sixty seven that was so bad? Well,
(03:38):
you're not gonna believe this, but Mary Todd was running
low on money, so she tried to sell her old clothes.
I know, isn't that the worst thing you've ever heard
scandalous a woman trying to sell her clothes for money.
Of all things, she had to stoop so low to
(04:02):
thrifting her goods. And of course when she did this,
when she came up with this scheme to sell her clothes,
she dragged her friend Elizabeth Keckley into the mess. Cue
the theme song. This is American filth and I'm Gabby Watts.
(04:24):
Every week I tell you a filthy story from American history.
In this week's episode, the Old Clothes Scandal.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I was out of tune.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
In eighteen sixty seven, Mary Todd Lincoln was living in
Chicago and she was on the brink of poverty. You know,
she couldn't have for at her house, her other expenses.
While Abraham Lincoln was president, she had run up a
lot of debts at various stores. She had spent too
much money, and then he passed away and she didn't
have enough money to live off of. Even when Congress
(05:20):
was like, we'll give you Abraham Lincoln's salary for the
year because obviously he's not going to use it because
you know, as I said last week, he was dead,
but then she ran out of that money. She just
didn't have enough money for her life, and she was like,
oh God, oh God, what am I gonna do? What
am I gonna do? And so she wrote a letter
to her friend Elizabeth Keckley, who was still in Washington,
(05:41):
d c. That said, I have not the means to
meet the expenses of even the first class boarding house,
and must sell out and secure cheap rooms at some
place in the country. It will not be startling news
to you, my dear Lizzie, to learn that I must
sell a portion of my wardrobe to add to my
resources so as to enable me to live decently. I
(06:06):
have many costly things which I shall never wear. I
might as well turn them into money and thus add
to my income and make my circumstances easier. It is
humiliating to be placed in such a position. Now, Lizzie,
I want to ask a favor of you. It is
imperative that I should do something for my relief, and
I want you to meet me in New York between
(06:26):
the thirtieth of August and the fifth of September, to
assist me in disposing of a portion of my wardrobe. Yes,
that's right, folks, Marry time Lincoln was in such dire
circumstances two years after her husband's death, that she was
going to have to do something embarrassing, sell her clothes,
(06:50):
And here she is demanding that her friend meet her
in New York to be humiliated alongside her. And indeed,
unfortunately for Missus Lincoln, all of this would end up
being very embarrassing for her. Elizabeth Keckley understood this from
(07:10):
the beginning. When she received this letter, she felt that
something would go awry. She wrote, I thought at the
time that Missus Lincoln was borrowing trouble from the future,
and little dreamed that the event which she so dimly
foreshadowed would ever come to pass. But Elizabeth Keckley agreed
(07:31):
she went along with it, and her book she talked
about how she felt indebted to marry Todd because of
everything her husband had done for Black Americans. And also,
again this is when some people bring up the whole
gay argument that Elizabeth was acting out of romantic love
instead of just being married Todd's friend. Again, am I
(07:52):
convinced by this idea? Absolutely not? But is it fun
to think about? Absolutely yes. So Elizabeth, being the good
friend that she was, left her shop, closed it up
up and got ready to go to New York City
to meet up with Mary Todd, and indeed him was
a disaster. Keckley found Mary Todd staying at this shabby
(08:19):
hotel and Mary Todd was there incognito under a fake name,
Missus Clark, and when Elizabeth arrived, Mary Todd came down
into the lobby and a tizzy. She had been worried
that Elizabeth might not arrive. She said, why did you
not come to me yesterday? I was almost crazy when
(08:39):
I reached here last night and found you had not arrived.
Mary Todd, under the guise of missus Clark, immediately asked
the clerk to get Elizabeth the room next to hers.
But this clerk was a bitch, was like, I'm sorry,
there's no room for her on the third floor where
you're staying. She's gonna have to say somewhere else, which
was just the clerk being a dumbass racist, being like,
(09:02):
this woman is black, she can't be on the third
floor with you. Mary Todd was aghast. She was incredulous.
Racism in eighteen sixty seven unbelievable. So Mary Todd instead
moved her room to the attic, where Elizabeth was allowed
to stay. When they got to their adjoining rooms. Mary
(09:23):
Todd sat down in a huff. She said, I never
saw such unaccommodating people. I will give them a regular
going over in the morning. And then Keckley had to
remind her that this would do nothing. She was like, hey,
Mary Todd, you're in disguise. They don't know who you are.
She said, quote, they don't know you. Missus Lincoln would
(09:44):
be treated differently from Missus Clark. And see, that was
the whole problem with this old clothes scheme. Mary Todd
didn't want people to know who she was to save
her from the embarrassment of having to sell off her wares.
But the value of the clothes came from the fact
that they belonged to Mary Todd Lincoln, the former First Lady.
(10:07):
Before Keckley had arrived, Mary Todd had tried to hawk
some of her jewelry and the buyers were like, you
must be bananas if you want that much money for
these pieces, you random woman named Missus Clark. We don't
want this. And you might be wondering, how did these
people not recognize her? She was a former first Lady
after all. Well, not only was she going by Missus Clark,
(10:29):
she was also wearing a thick veil. Wow, what a disguise.
She was also speaking in a Gollum voice. Oh almostusk
Croslas martusup. Sorry, that wasn't a good accent. I do apologize,
and she wasn't doing that, if you can believe it.
(10:54):
But unfortunately, her disguise didn't last long because when she
was showing her jewelry to yet another potential customer, he
saw Mary Todd Lincoln engraved on one of the rings.
He was like, hey, are you Mary Todd? And she
was like, oh no, I've been discovered already. The next day,
(11:16):
the day that Elizabeth had arrived, this man, mister Keys
and his associate mister Brady, came to visit Mary Todd.
They listened to her tale of woe and they were like, yes, girl,
the government is treating you badly by not giving you
more money. If you put your clothes and jewelry in
our hands, we will quickly raise you a sum of
one hundred thousand dollars. That's basically one billion put jrillion
(11:43):
dillion badillion in today's money. Elizabeth Keckley was suspicious of
them from the jump. She didn't trust these guys. She
was like, who are they? Where did they come from?
And Mary Todd wasn't all the way convinced either. So
over the next couple of days, Mary Todd and Elizabeth
drove around to various clothing dealers, but nobody wanted to
(12:05):
buy these clothes, especially because look, they just belonged to
some random lady named missus Clark. They didn't know it
was Mary Todd. And Mary Todd was mad. She was like,
these are great old clothes, why are they buying them?
Mary Todd was being desperate even on this trip. She
was running out of money, so she eventually agreed to
(12:27):
mister Keys and mister Brady because she was like, well,
maybe their plan will be better than mine and will
help me get one gazillion dollars. Keys and Brady's first
plan was to guilt people into buying her clothes. They
were like, Mary Todd, I think you should reveal who
(12:47):
you are. Write some letters that detail all the terrible
things that have happened to you and how you don't
have any money. We'll show those letters around and then
people will certainly want to buy your clothes because they
feel bad for you, Like you won't be an embarrassment
they'll be an embarrassment for living in a country that
(13:08):
won't support the former First Lady. Elizabeth Keckley was like,
that plan is literally insane.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I think it's a bad idea.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
But Mary Todd was like, too bad, I'm gonna do it.
I need money. And so mister Keys and mister Brady
they took these letters. They showed them around town, but
still no one wanted to buy anything. They're like, pishposh.
You know the First Lady, she should figure something out.
(13:38):
I don't need to help her. And oh god, was
Mary Todd getting even more desperate. This is how desperate
she got. She was the one who came up with
this idea. She was like, hey, well, if these people
(14:00):
you're showing the letters to aren't trying to give me
any money, what if we just publish them in the
newspaper so everyone can see them. Mister Keys and mister
Brady were like, freakin genius, let's do that. And then
mister Brady and mister Keys came back and they're like, hey,
Mary Todd, we have then another idea. What if we
(14:21):
publish these letters, but we use them as like an
advertisement for an auction where we sell all of your clothes.
We put all your clothes on display. People can come through,
people can see them and get a dress that was
worn by the former First Lady. And Mary Todd, even
though she knew this would be embarrassing to have all
(14:43):
these people ogling her clothes, she was like, yeah, I
guess this is what we gotta do. It's dire and
so they put the plan in action and it was
really bad. Be back after these soothing advertisements. Elizabeth Keckley
(15:08):
thought this whole publishing the letters in a newspaper and
then having a sale of the clothes was a bad idea.
She's like, then everybody's gonna know about your plight. They're
gonna make fun of you, and then they're gonna come
look at your clothes and be like, ho hum, this
stupid little lady doesn't have any money. He haw ha ha.
(15:31):
Elizabeth hated it, and then it got even worse for
her because after the letters were published in the newspaper,
Mary Todd was like, I gotta get out of here.
I'm gonna go back to Chicago. But Elizabeth, you stay here.
You deal with the sale of the clothes, not demanding
at all. This is crazy because Elizabeth Keckley had a
(15:53):
business in DC she needed to get back to, but
Mary Todd was like, no, no, no, deal with my shit,
and I'm going to go to Chicago. First of all,
the letters in the newspaper did not have the intended
to fact. People didn't really seem to feel that bad
for her. But it did get people to come out
to the auction. It was at a hotel, and let's
(16:15):
just say it was the talk of the town, the country,
but not in a good way. In her book Behind
the Scenes, Elizabeth included an article from the New York
Evening Express that detailed the events of the auction. It reads,
the publicity given to the articles on exhibition and for
(16:36):
sale has excited the public curiosity, and hundreds of people,
principally women with considerable leisure, daily thronged the rooms of
mister Brady. Twenty five dresses, folded or tossed about by
frequent examinations, lie exposed upon a closed piano and upon
a lounge. Shawls rich and rare are displayed upon the
(16:59):
backs of chairs. Furs, laces, and jewelry are in a
glass case. The feeling of the majority of visitors is
adverse to the course Missus Lincoln has thought proper to pursue,
and the criticisms are as severe as the quality of
some of the dresses. Some of them have been worn much.
(17:22):
They are jagged under the arms and at the bottom
of the skirt. Stains are on the lining. The peculiarity
of the dresses is that most of them are cut
low necked, a taste which some ladies attribute to Missus
Lincoln's appreciation of her own bust. Wow, they are dragging
(17:46):
her in this article. They're like, some of these dresses
are dirty, they're stained, they're kind of gross. A lot
of them are also out of fashion. She's also trying
to sell them for basically the same price she bought
them for. And then they say that whole thing about
the revealing neckline a little slut shame, is it not.
(18:08):
There were so many articles at the time about this sale.
Most of them ridiculed Mary Todd for the whole affair,
for the fact that she tried to beat incognito in disguise,
that she let her letters get published in the newspaper,
that the dresses weren't up to snuff. Meanwhile, it was
Elizabeth Keckley who had to set everything up, and some
(18:30):
of the dresses on display were actually some of her
own work, Like, can you imagine having to display these
gowns and then all these people walking by muttering complaints
about the dresses must have been horrible. Elizabeth Keckley, though,
was a good friend. She was seeing all these criticisms,
(18:52):
all of these editorials about Mary Todd, and she was like,
why don't they have any sympathy for her? She wrote
a letter to the editor of the New York Evening
News defending Mary Todd, and one of the points she
made it was like, the Empress of France frequently disposes
of her cast off wardrobe and publicly too, without being
(19:13):
subjected to any of these unkind remarks. Elizabeth's just like, yeah,
the Empress of France can do this and to get
rid of her clothes, Mary Todd should be allowed to
do it as well. And here's the extra sad, embarrassing
thing for Mary Todd, this auction, this sale wasn't worth it.
(19:39):
She actually lost money, very few items sold, and it
was more expensive to set everything up. Mary Todd obviously
was very upset that this all happened. Also, Elizabeth sent
her a letter saying that mister Brady and mister Keys
weren't very quote energetic at the sale, and after talking
(20:01):
to a few people, Mary Todd and Elizabeth realized that
no one really knew who they were. They're just some
random guys. Mary Todd felt tricked by at the same time,
maybe she should have done some fact checking before, uh,
just going along with what they suggested. I'm just gonna
say that now, is just like, if two random guys
(20:23):
kind of approach you, like, don't listen to them. That's
just like some advice in general. The sale was obviously
a failure, but then mister Brady and mister Keyes went
a little crazy. They briefly stole Mary Todd's clothes. They
were like, Hey, since we couldn't get anyone to buy
(20:44):
this stuff, what if we make it a traveling exhibition.
Come and see crazy Mary Todd's clothes. So yeah, they
took her clothes without her consent and brought them to Providence,
Rhode Island. Luckily for Mary Todd's reputation, though the authority
(21:04):
is Improvidence didn't allow mister Brady and mister Keys to
put these clothes on display, so they returned the wardrobe
back to New York. Elizabeth Cackley ended up staying in
New York for two months doing Mary Todd's bidding. I
really disliked Mary Todd's treatment of Elizabeth in this situation,
(21:28):
especially because Mary Todd never ended up paying Elizabeth. Elizabeth
wrote in her book quote Missus Lincoln's venture proved so
disastrous that she was unable to reward me for my services,
and I was compelled to take in sewing to pay
for my daily bread. My New York expedition has made
me richer in experience but poorer in purse. During the
(21:51):
entire winter, I have worked early and late, and practiced
the closest economy. Missus Lincoln's business demanded much of my time,
and it was a constant source of trouble to me.
After everything in New York was wrapped up, Keckley returned
to DC. Mary Todd was still in Chicago living with
(22:12):
one of her sons and Elizabeth. She was feeling really
bad for her friend, even though her friend ruined her
life for a little bit. And so when Elizabeth Keckley
was fretting over Mary Todd's reputation, these publishers approached her
and were like hey, you should write a book about
the whole thing. And that's when we got behind the
(22:32):
scenes the account. They were like, hey, if you tell
her story, you know, people can really sympathize with her
and understand what she was going through where she was
coming from. Though, you know, their publishers and they were
probably just like, this is a great way we could
make some money. Money, mon no money. So she wrote
the book and at the very end of it, there's
(22:54):
an appendix which includes some of Mary Todd's personal letters
to Elizabeth Keckley. Now, Elizabeth was probably pressured to include
these or simply not told that they would be featured
in the book, and then when behind the scenes came out, unfortunately,
it had the exact opposite effect of fixing Mary Todd's reputation.
(23:18):
Mary Todd looked even worse and also kind of dumb,
trusting these guys she didn't know, and also selling her
clothes in general. There was also a lot of personal
details about her and her husband's relationship. There were these
letters Elizabeth Keckley wrote about some of her emotional outbursts.
(23:39):
Mary Todd was mortified. Mary Todd's son tried to buy
up as many books as possible, and eventually he was
able to get these publishers to stop printing the book.
And then, guys, this is really terrible. After the book
(24:01):
came out, Mary Todd, Lincoln, and Elizabeth Keckley I first
spoke again. That's the real bad thing about the Old
Clothes scandal. It ended a beautiful female friendship. And by
beautiful I mean kind of imbalanced, and uh, Mary Todd
definitely took advantage of Elizabeth. But anyway, after all of this,
(24:25):
Mary Todd traveled around Europe for a bit and when
she got back to the United States, her son Tad died.
That was two of her sons gone, and her husband.
She started having these hallucinations and her other son, Robert,
thought she should be committed to an asylum. The only
problem is that the only way you commit somebody is
you have to basically sue them, put them on trial,
(24:48):
and determine whether or not they're crazy enough to be
sent to one. And that's what happened. Mary Todd one
day was just like, oh, I'm in a court room,
what's going on? And then they were all like, you're crazy,
and they committed her. She didn't stay very long. By
this point, she was in poor health. She had bad vision,
she had pain, some people think she might have had diabetes,
(25:10):
and at the age of sixty three, she died of
a stroke. Elizabeth Keckley fared even worse when she got
back to DC. She lost all of her clients. She
had been involved with the scandal and nobody wanted to
be associated with her, and she died destitute at a
boarding house for black women. Isn't that depressing? Very sad?
(25:39):
Two girl bosses suffering. Some people believe that Mary Todd
Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckley did rekindle their friendship in later years.
There's no proof of that, but sometimes you just want
two girl bosses to reconcile. And you guys know this
that every episode of American Filth we learn a lesson,
(26:00):
And I think the lesson here is that you should
buy vintage clothes because maybe it'll do some good. For example,
it might help two women remain friends. So if you
don't buy that musty card again, you hate women and
female friendship. Cue the credits. American Filth is a production
(26:28):
of School of Humans and iHeart Podcast. This episode was
produce rent and hosted by me Gbby Watts and Our
theme song is by Jesse Niswanger. Our executive producers are
or Jenny Prescott, Elsie Croley, and Brandon Barr And you
can follow along with the pod on Instagram at American
filth Pod. Also, you know, give the show review on
whatever platform that you're listening to it on. Give it
(26:48):
some comments, give us some stars, Send it to a friend,
send it to an enemy, and I'll talk with you
next time. School of Humans
Host
Gabbie Watts
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