Lucky

Timothy Dexter was many things — at least to himself. But mostly, he was lucky in the strangest of ways.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart
Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. Marie and

(00:25):
Charles welcomed their son Aunton Joseph in eighteen fourteen, but
they called him Adolph. Marie cared for the home and
the children, while Charles worked as a carpenter. His gift
for woodworking made him highly sought after among wealthy Belgian clients.
Oh William the First, the reigning monarch of the Netherlands,
commissioned to Charles to make musical instruments for the military.

(00:46):
His father's work that Adolph spent plenty of time around music.
He watched his father carefully shaped the wood into fine instruments.
Adolph's love of this art and craft led him to
learn to play the clarinet and the flute. As a teen,
Adolph helped his father make improvements to wind instruments. When
he wasn't studying music or watching his father, Adolf spent

(01:07):
his youth doing one more thing, keeping himself alive. The
only thing that overshadowed young Adolph's musical talent was his
ability to skirt death. In his mother's words, her son
was condemned to misfortune. When Adolf was just three, he
tumbled down three flights of stairs before his head smartly
met the stone floor. Reports of his recovery vary from

(01:29):
a week's bed rest to a temporary coma. As many
a parent might commisserate. Toddlers and young children sometimes eat
things that they shouldn't, and Adolf was no exception, and
not long after his fall, he swallowed a large needle.
Fortunately it passed without incident. Miraculously, he also survived after
drinking a combination of arsenic white, lead, and copper oxide.

(01:53):
All of this would be enough to age any parent,
but Adolph was just getting started. He suffered from severe
burns after falling onto a hot stove. Although the incident
left him with scars on his side, he avoided infection.
At ten, he fell into a nearby river. A stranger
passing the mill saw him floating face down and rescued him.
On another occasion, he was enjoying a walk down the

(02:15):
street when a chunk of slate broke loose from a
rooftop and struck him in the head. He made a
full recovery. Adolf had one more brush with debt. He
happened to be in his father's workshop when a container
of gunpowder ignited from a nearby flame. Though the blast
threw him across the workshop, Adolf survived. The fact that
he lived to see adulthood surprised everyone. He followed in

(02:37):
his father's footsteps in making musical instruments, and Adolf presented
nine musical inventions for the eighteen forty Belgian Exhibition. Due
to his age, the judges snubbed his submissions. He moved
to Paris and entered another competition. He might have won,
but someone destroyed his new invention, the saxophone. Undaunted, he
made another. In fact, he made six other variations by

(03:00):
eighteen forty six, including the sex Traumba and in eighteen
forty nine the sax tuba. If you've never heard of them,
it's because only the saxophone ever made him any money.
People either liked the saxophone or hated it, and mostly
the saxophone found a following with the military, but it
wouldn't be until World War One, when U S soldiers
and the era of jazz and blues made the saxophone famous. Sadly,

(03:23):
Adolph Sax's luck ran out. He died in eighteen seventy
decades before his invention became popular. If history has taught
us anything about luck, it would be that sometimes it's
fickle other times, though it has a strange sense of humor.
I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, Welcome to American Shadows. Nothing sums up

(03:53):
Timothy Dexter's life more than the phrase it's smarter to
be lucky than it's lucky to be smart, a light
many others living in Ireland during the seventeen hundreds. His
parents immigrated to the Americas in the hopes of escaping
British tyranny. England had stripped them of their land, religion,
and culture, among other atrocities. The Dexters settled in Malden, Massachusetts,

(04:15):
where Timothy was born in seventeen forty seven. While the
Irish were still not wholly welcome in the colonies. The
family squeezed out of life as farmers, and they considered
themselves lucky. Other Irish immigrants were forced into indentured servitude
with little hope of escaping, a system that kept them subservient,
and Dexter and his siblings attended school and helped around

(04:36):
the farm with the daily chores in the house, field
and barn. During certain growing seasons, crops became more important
than schooling. The family was poor, and to help keep
them fed and clothed, Dexter left school at eight years
old to find outside employment. He worked as a laborer
for larger, more profitable farms before eventually finding an apprenticeship. Essentially,

(04:59):
family would send their sons to live with a tradesmen
who agreed to house, feed, and teach his young apprentice
say valuable trade in exchange for free labor. Other times
the parents paid a small fee. Poor farming children didn't
have much schooling. They were offered only the most basic
education in reading, writing, and some math. By age nine,

(05:19):
their schooling was considered complete. College for boys like Dexter
was mostly limited to Latin colleges, requiring them to train
as ministers of the Christian faith. Alternatively, parents could opt
to keep their sons at home to learn their father's
trade or find them an apprenticeship. The colonies were new
and tradesmen and workers were in short supply. A Dexter

(05:41):
began his apprenticeship at a tannery to learn how to
make leather goods when he turned sixteen. The job was
far from glamorous. The due to the smell of the
animal hides. Tanneries usually existed on the outskirts of towns.
The tanners used every type of animal skin, from wild
to domestic. The colonies needed every amount norble leather product,
including shoes, boots, and hats, as well as carriage tops,

(06:04):
harnesses and saddles. Dexter's apprenticeship lasted for five years. In
seventeen sixty eight, he opened his own shop and dreamed
of becoming wealthy. But as good as his products might be,
they would never build the wealth he wanted. So he
did the next best thing. He married into money. He
met Elizabeth Frothingham, a widow ten years his senior. She

(06:26):
had money, a home, and four children. In seventeen sixty nine,
he married Elizabeth while continuing his business selling gloves and
moose hide trousers. As you might imagine, with his available
inventory and the British blockade of Boston Harbor, Dexter mostly
lived off his wife's fortune. At first, Dexter hoped that
his wife's social status meant he would be invited to

(06:48):
high society functions. He was not. Many looked down on him.
He came across as nothing more than a vain, poor,
uneducated man who had managed to marry his way into money.
The slights infuriated Dexter, and he set out to prove
his equality and rightful place among Boston's and Charles Town's elite.

(07:09):
Aside from making his own wealth, he had two other options.
He could join the army and work his way through
the ranks, or run for public office. He set his
sights on an appointment in the town of Malden, and
if at first he didn't succeed, Dexter tried again and again.
He applied and harassed council members so much that at

(07:30):
long last they relented. They created a position just for
him informer of deer and the appointment required him to
track the deer population in Malden, even though no one
had seen a deer in the town limits for nearly
twenty years. Some townsfolk thought the position was ridiculous, but
Dexter was content he had achieved his goal of having

(07:51):
an official public office appointment. Now all he needed to
gain social status was to make a lot of money
in the most unusual way possible. During the Revolutionary War,
the British pound had value, while the Continental dollar was

(08:13):
practically worthless. Congress printed approximately two hundred and fifty million
in Continental dollars, but merchants were reluctant to accept it
with good reason. They were worth pennies compared to the
British pound. Congress printed more bills, causing the dollar to
depreciate even more. The value dropped so drastically the colonists
took to saying that items of low value weren't worth

(08:35):
a continental. Congress paid the military with Continental dollars, leaving
most soldiers destitute after the war, and John Hancock purchased
some of the bills from soldiers at full value to
help drive up the Continental's were the good deed raised
Hancock's popularity inspired Dexter believed that if he purchased more
dollars than Hancock, kid finally be accepted among societies elite.

(08:57):
Dexter went about it a little differently than Hancock. He
used his wife's money to buy the bills for pennies
on the dollar instead of full value. A Dexter purchased
so many bills that he and his wife went bankrupt,
and townsfolks shook their heads and whispered among themselves. The
Dexter was an idiot and had dragged his respectable wife
down with him. When the Colonies won the war, a

(09:18):
few things happened. They signed the Constitution and throughout the
British tax and monetary systems, the founding Fathers added a
provision promising to trade treasury bonds for continental dollars. Suddenly
Dexter was exceptionally wealthy. Neighbors scratched their heads. No one
could argue that Dexter was undoubtedly lucky, and while none

(09:40):
would ever call him intelligent, some thought he might be shrewd,
and Dexter was delighted. Finally his wealk would grant him
a place among the powerful and elite. It did not.
He continued with his rude interruptions and vulgar comments. Coupled
with his crude behavior, he remained an outcast, feeling they
just needed to warm up to him a bit. Dexter

(10:02):
continued being Dexter. All he had to do, in his mind,
was hold on to the money and not go bankrupt again.
When things didn't improve to his liking, he moved his
family to Newburyport. The problem wasn't him, he insisted, The
people in Boston were just uptight and stuffy, Newburyport, on
the other hand, was nearly perfect, a rich and poor intermingled.

(10:24):
The town was smaller than Boston, and Dexter felt confident
he would stand out. Immediately after arriving, he bought ships
for his next venture, exporting food. The residents in Newburyport
found Dexter as uncouth as those in Boston had. The
wealthy wondered how someone is crude and illiterate. As Dexter
had become a millionaire, his personality and business decisions made

(10:47):
them speculate about his mental stability. Dexter claimed that the
other wealthy merchants disliked him because he was a rival. Still,
he wanted to become part of Newburyport's upper society, so
he took their business advice to heart. He didn't realize
that they wanted to destroy his fortune so that he
would move out of Newburyport. One businessman advised Dexter to

(11:07):
get into the bed warmer trade. Though the device was
popular in cold New England winters, the businessman suggested Dexter
sell it in a new market the Caribbean. Convinced he
would make a tidy profit, Dexter sent forty two bed
warmers to the Caribbean. Unsurprisingly, the bedwarmers didn't sell oh well,
not as their intended use anyway. The sugarcane industry was

(11:31):
huge in the Caribbean. The serrupy sugarcane byproduct molasses, was
also wildly popular. Plantation owners found the long handled bedwarmers
made perfect molasses ladles. Soon plantation owners scrambled to buy
more bedwarmers. Dexter raised the price by nearly eight percent
and made his second fortune. The joke the Newburyport businessmen

(11:53):
played had backfired, but that didn't mean they were about
to give up. They urged him to expand into the
coal business, though much needed. New England already had plenty
of coal, especially in the England mining town of Newcastle,
and still Dexter shipped coal to the town as suggested.
When his ships arrived laden with coal, the miners were

(12:14):
on stripe. Residents bought the coal for a markup, making
Dexter even wealthier. The merchants put their heads together to
come up with something even more outlandish. They had to
do something to run him out of town, and certainly
Dexter's luck couldn't hold forever. While various advisers handed Dexter

(12:38):
some pretty outrageous business ideas. A Dexter himself came up
with a few so outlandish that the townspeople were sure
they would bankrupt him. All they had to do was
sit back and watch. Dexter decided to send gloves to
Polynesia Again. His idea worked. Portuguese traders arrived and bought
the gloves to sell in China. For his next endeavor,

(12:58):
Dexter traveled back to Austin, where he purchased an enormous
quantity of whalebone. This material isn't actually bone, but rather
the strong, flexible filtering teeth of bailen whales. A whalebone
was used in corsets, toys, and caller stays. He had
purchased enough that he controlled the market and set his
own price. Dexter raked in more money, thinking wealth alone

(13:22):
would win over his wealthy neighbors, and he bragged about
buying bibles at wholesale for less than half price. Then
sent the bibles to port cities. His captains carried a
poorly written note from Dexter, complete with frequent misspellings. The
note stated that anyone who didn't have at least one
Bible in the house would go to hell. Of course,
he had plenty of bibles for sale to help save

(13:44):
their souls. Dexter made another handsome profit, much to the
town's dismay, and yet they swore his next scheme would
surely be his last. You see, Dexter took it upon
himself to reduce the town's overpopulation of stray cat He
offered to buy the cats, and of course people brought
him plenty of strays. Unsure what he planned to do

(14:07):
with them, Dexter sent them to the plantation owners in
the Caribbean. As it turned out, their warehouses had a
rodent problem, and they were willing to pay a tidy
sum for the cats. With all his wealth, Dexter purchased
a mansion alongside some of the town's most prominent families.
While everyone avoided him, they enjoyed the company of his wife.
This angered Dexter. He became so jealous of Elizabeth that

(14:30):
he treated her poorly. He had always been a heavy drinker,
which was bad enough, and now he started to ignore her,
calling her a ghost and pretending as though she weren't
a living, breathing human being. He cheated on her more
than once. It's not clear if he had affairs with
married women are not but at some point someone gave
Dexter a serious beating. He promptly sold the mansion and

(14:53):
bought a new home in a different part of town.
He didn't treat his children much better than his wife.
In turn, his and Samuel became an alcoholic as well.
His daughter Nancy made poor choices in men. She married
one who took to beating her, and she returned home
and she also began drinking heavily. Still trying to impress

(15:13):
the town, Dexter furnished his home with the largest and
gaudiest objects. He called his new home the Princely Chateau.
Forty statues, each costing two thousand dollars, sat in the
front yard. Alongside statues of people like Washington and Jefferson.
Stood Dexter's own statue at the base. The inscription bragg
that he was the greatest philosopher in the Western world.

(15:36):
Dexter furnished his home with an impressive library, though he
never read a single book. He collected a gallery of
paintings to adorn the walls. With the house and gardens complete,
Dexter awaited his wealthy neighbor's lavish praise and attention. None
of that happened. Still rude and obnoxious and unable to
see the real problem, he had alienated everyone, including his

(15:59):
wife and shul Drin. Determined that his greatness would not
be denied, Dexter decided he'd find new friends, one's equally
as strange an outcast as himself. One such friend, a
former teacher named John, had come from a respectable family.
John's undoing had been to open his own school to
teach students on subjects in which he had no formal training.

(16:22):
His teachings were so bizarre that John's family disowned him.
A Dexter found another friend and Madam Hooper, a wealthy
widow turned fortune teller. Hooper offered dexter astrology advice and
took her payment in tea. But even his new friends
couldn't fill Dexter's desire to be loved and admired. If
no one else would give him compliments, he'd pay them.

(16:45):
Dexter hired a twenty year old selling halibut from a
wheelbarrow to be his poet laureate. In Dexter wrote and
published A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, a nonsensical book
in which he ranted about his wife, religion, and politics.
A Dexter could barely read much less right. Complaints about
his spelling and grammar rolled in. To solve the issue,

(17:07):
Dexter printed an extra page of commas in his next edition,
with a note telling the reader to put commas wherever
they liked. The book got plenty of attention, though maybe
not the way he intended, since he had to give
away the copies. Still, Timothy Dexter considered the book a success.
He managed to give away enough copies for eight printings.

(17:33):
Newberry Port took solace the Dexter couldn't do anything more
ridiculous or absurd, and they'd be wrong about that. Aside
from his bizarre behavior and business dealings, Dexter had started
to demand Newburyport residents address him as the Earl of Chester.
When the demands failed to produce results, Dexter took to
paying them in a pickle For the knowing ones, Dexter

(17:55):
wrote that he was the first Lord of the United States,
a titled bestowed upon him by the Blick. He claimed
the people of America had spoken and he was helpless
to do anything other than allow them to grant him
the title. He paid children who called him Lord Dexter
a quarter. Adults were paid with dinner and drinks. His
gaudy statues brought spectators to look at his house. While

(18:16):
Dexter might have thought they appreciated his fine art, they
were more likely curious about the tawdry outdoor museum in
such a fancy neighborhood, and Dexter continued to chase after
younger women. Drinking remained a favorite pastime, and he often
took two walks while drunk, his little dog walking beside him.
And No one lives forever, and Dexter began planning for

(18:38):
his eventual death. For years, he worked at building a
magnificent tomb. Peep even arranged to the funeral. Dexter wrote
a will making ample provisions for his family and friends,
though after years of neglect and abuse, it took bribery
to convince his wife and children to promise that they
would show up at the funeral. Dexter was fifty nine

(18:59):
when the day he had planned for finally came. Nearly
three thousand people turned up. Guests greeted his widow and
paid their respects. Elizabeth accepted their well wishes politely enough
and occasionally laughed with a few of the guests. Given
Dexter's treatment of her, none were surprised that she never
shed a tear. Well, everyone except Dexter, who had planned

(19:21):
and faked the funeral. He had wanted to see how
everyone would react to his death, especially friends who he
worried had remained at his company for the money. Dexter
got up from where he had been pretending to lie
in state. Furious, he began to be rate and beat
his wife in front of the spectators for not properly
mourning him. His actual death occurred shortly after the faith one.

(19:45):
He passed on October six of eighteen o six. This
time he made provisions to leave his fortune to the poor,
in addition to the wife and children he had treated
so poorly. There is no record of whether anyone attended
the second funeral. The mass of tomb he had created
was declared a hazard, and his family laid him in
a standard coffin and had him buried in a small

(20:06):
hillside cemetery. No one visited, and no one maintained the site.
Grass eventually overtook his grave. Dexter may have been exceptionally
lucky in business, but was unsuccessful in the areas he
wanted the most love and respect. There's more to this story.

(20:27):
Stick around after this brief sponsored break to hear all
about it. Everyone agreed that little Violet Jessip was lucky.
During the eighteen hundreds, a diagnosis of tuberculosis generally meant

(20:48):
to death sentence. She was just a child when the
doctors delivered the news to her parents a Violet would
probably die within a couple of months. She surprised them though,
beating the odds and sir driving this highly contagious and
often fatal disease. However, Violet's luck did not transfer to
her father. He did die, leaving his wife and six

(21:10):
remaining children in a dire financial situation. The family had
immigrated from Ireland to Argentina, where Joseph Jessup had worked
as a sheep farmer. Without a way to earn a living,
Katherine Jessop moved the family to England and found employment
aboard ships as a stewardess. The work took Catherine away
for extended periods, leaving Violet to care for her siblings.

(21:33):
When Katherine fell ill, Violet needed to join the workforce
to feed and care for the family. She also applied
for jobs as a ship stewardess. She was young and
strikingly beautiful, which promptly earned her rejection. After rejection, employers
shied away from hiring young girls with extraordinary looks. In
their opinion, such beauty distracted the crew and male passengers.

(21:56):
Jobs that paid enough for women to support a family
were rare. A viole, it had to get creative. She
wore clothes that made her look older and reapplied, this
time without wearing makeup. Her creativity paid off. Violet found
work on the Orinoco Royal Mail steamer. In night, she
found a better job with the White Star Line, one

(22:17):
of the largest ship companies of the time. The ships
carried cargo and passengers, and Violet's job was to cater
to the wealthy passengers every need. Additionally, she cleaned cabins,
arranged flowers, and ran errands on the ship. The Violet
proved to be a reliable and hard worker and was
well liked by passengers and staff. Although the White Star

(22:38):
Line paid slightly better, she earned every pound sterling. She
worked seventeen hours a day on ships that frequently traveled
rough seas and bad weather to compete with other large
shipping companies, the White Star Line launched three luxury ships,
offering wealthy passengers and experience and service that rivaled the
world's finest hotels and resorts. A Violet worked on all

(23:00):
three ships that she had worked on the first ship,
the Olympic, for a year, and everything ran smoothly until
September of nineteen eleven. As bad luck would have it,
the ship crossed paths with the HMS Hawk, a combat ship. Fortunately,
the Olympic didn't sink and no one was injured. It
limped back to port, where everyone disembarked. The company offered

(23:22):
her a job aboard second ship, designed to cater to
the world's most elite. The Violet was hesitant. A while
American passengers treated her well, rich Britons treated her poorly.
The job would be more prestigious, the company promised, and
the ship, though it had yet to sail, had captured
everyone's attention. Without better prospects, Violet accepted. She kept a

(23:45):
journal and made notes on the passengers. Some of the
world's most wealthy and prominent passengers had booked a trip,
and many were as pretentious and rude to the staff
as she had anticipated. Violet had just returned to her
bed when the Titanic struck the Iceberg. The captain ordered
all the staff on deck. She stood with the other
stewardesses while staff loaded children and women passengers onto lifeboats.

(24:09):
A ship officer ordered Violet and a handful of other
stewardesses onto lifeboat number sixteen to show a few of
the remaining women that the boats were safe. The officer
called to Violet and handed her a small bundle. Here,
miss jessup, look after this baby. The lifeboats floated away
from the sinking ship. They drifted for eight hours until
the crew aboard the Carpathia rescued them. Violet still clutched

(24:32):
the infant close to her on the deck when the
mother grabbed the baby and ran off without so much
as a thank you. A Violet returned to work aboard
the newly repaired Olympic until World War One broke out
in nineteen fourteen, when she served as a nurse above
the White Star Lines third ship, the Britannic. The ship
hit a German mine in the Aegean Sea. Violet been

(24:52):
several shipmates made it to a lifeboat, only to realize
the sinking ship's propellers were as surface level and pulling
them in. They abandoned the ship and tried to swim away.
Violet's head struck the keel. Luckily, someone on another boat
pulled her to safety. Though she did return to work
as a stewardess, Violet eventually decided to not press her

(25:13):
luck any further. She found work on land, where she
remained until she died in at the age of eighty four.
American Shadows is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was
written by Michelle Muto, researched by Ali Steed, and produced

(25:35):
by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show,
visit Grim and Mild dot com. From more podcasts from
iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.