May 26, 2026 • 46 mins
There are quacks and then there is Linda Hazzard. Not only did she starve her patients to death, but she took their family fortunes as she did it. This is the story of Starvation Heights.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's
here two. Jerry's here too, and I'm here too. That's
me Josh, And this is Stuff you Should.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Know, the We're All Three Feeling Weird edition.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, yeah, and that's strange. So yeah, I said that
I was just feeling kind of off today and you
said me too, and Jerry said me three.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yeah, what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I don't know, but I mean that is very That's
remarkable to me that all three of us, I mean,
we all have three different personalities. Ye, we don't like
you know, we don't live together, despite what most people think.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yeah, not anymore.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
No, So I don't know what it is. Maybe something's
in retrograde and something's house or something like that.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
That whole thing. Yeah, stuff you should Know is in retrograde,
whatever that means.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
So, yeah, we'll do our best with this. I'll do
my best not to break out in tears.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
No, I think would be okay. And big thanks to
Julia for helping us put together this episode on one
of the quacks of all quacks. I feel like we
have covered quite a few quacks over the years.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, this one know isn't as bad as that one
guy that we did though, But she's up there for sure.
I mean I think she still has her supporters, Like
you can still buy her books online. Yeah, but most
people who are familiar with their case are like, she
was a serial killer, right, she just had a strange,
strange method of murder.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah, of bleeding people of their money.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah, yeah, for sure and their life force.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
As Toby Hooper might put it, that's right. So, yeah,
we're talking about a woman named Linda Burfield Perry Hazard.
There's at least two hyphens in there. Yeah, And she
was born in the nineteenth century, but was doing most
of her work in the late nineteenth early twentieth century.
And she was a person who was vehemently opposed, like
(02:13):
from what I could tell, like very seriously, like this
was her personal philosophy against what would be called modern
medicine today, but at the time was you know, just
starting out as we'll see.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, for sure, she was a self described fasting specialist.
She had no medical degree. She did have wealthy patients
and I was about to say patrons, but I guess
they were patients and she said she was the only
fasting specialist in the world. You know, this was sort
of the time of the sanitarium sanatorium world, where you
(02:50):
could go off and practice some very questionable methods of
healing people.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, like the Kellogg brothers in Battle Creek.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, exactly, because you know that we had not in
the United States yet set up sort of rules around
the medical world at this point.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
No, but it's coming. It's like right around that time,
and in part because of so much quackery that was
going on the same time. A lot of this stuff
is what you would call alternative medicine today or just
sensible stuff. Like the Kellogg brothers had a bunch of
weird stuff, and their whole jam was fairly weird, But
(03:27):
if you boiled everything down to what they were saying,
a lot of it was like diet and exercise, which
is just great advice today as far as health is concerned.
The problem is is like some people took this to
terrible extremes. Other people were peddling just like outright fake
and dangerous medicines, Like yeah, there were the outliers were
(03:49):
so bad that they were ruining it for everybody who
actually had some legitimate stuff that they were doing, and
Linda Hazard was an outlier. Although again I think she
was a true believer in herself and her cure.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, for sure. But you know, to be clear, she
was not serving up bowls of granula. She was killing
people like I think fifteen patients starved to death under
her watch. Yes, and she would eventually go to trial
for the murder of one.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah, it was a sensation in nineteen.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Twelve, a real sensation.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Let's talk about Linda Burfield Perry Hazard, who we're just
going to call Linda Hazard from here on out. But
she was born Linda Burfield in Minnesota in eighteen sixty seven,
as most people in eighteen sixty seven were born what
really rurally, and a lot of them in Minnesota. I
think something like ninety eight percent of births in eighteen
(04:46):
sixty seven took pres Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
That's incredible.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
She actually had an experience, she said, she wrote again
a bunch of books, eleven by my count. Oh well,
and so she said, according to herself, that she had
been she had run into modern medicine as a child,
and this doctor had given her some pills blue mass
pills that are essentially mercury pills, and they were like
(05:14):
fairly regularly used at the time, but they did not
sit very well with her.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
No, it made her really sick, like this again, this
is the day when they would, you know, a doctor
would say like, here, take this thing, because it'll cure
basically anything you have. And that's always the red flag,
even if it's not pure snake oil, the sort of
cure all thing. And it made it really sick, very memorably,
so like digestively for the most part. But after that
(05:42):
she was like, I'm done with doctors and I'm going
to eventually be my own doctor and be a doctor
to other people. She married a guy named Edwin Perry
in eighteen eighty six, had a couple of kids, got divorced,
and apparently I don't know if that led to her
divorce when she just sort of went center of left
(06:03):
as far as her care goes. Do you think that
was it.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
It's possible that was the impression. I have too, but
I'm not sure. There's so much just random stuff that
people say about her that may or may not be true.
There's a lot of surmising.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I think it said center of left too, by the way, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
The thing is, Chuck, is everyone knew what you meant,
so that counts as communication. You know, don't be such
a prescriptionist.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
That's right left of center. But she married Perry, got divorced,
and then fell into the care of doctor Edward Dewey,
who was a a faster. He preached fasting. He basically
said that, you know, every disease that we have comes
from habitual eating and excess. Basically like you're out eating
(06:46):
what your stomach and your gastric juices can handle.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, that's the sum total of Linda Hazard's whole thing.
I mean, she had a three prong approach, which was
intense fasting ama anema an I've read that that her
enemas lasted for hours sometimes.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
I think that was also the title of your second LP, right, it.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Was my cover songs of William Shatner's cover r that's right, Yeah,
that's actually appropriate title for that. Or lobotomy lobotomy lobotomy. Yeah.
And then the other one was powerful massage that I
think calling a massage is fairly genous. Yes, she would
pound on her patients and apparently shall eliminate, eliminate because
(07:34):
again she's trying to get undigested food and poop that's
left over out of the body. And by fasting, you're
not introducing more food, You're letting the body rest while
getting rid of the food that's been undigested. That's the
source of all of your diseases.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, like you drank the colon clints before your first
colonoscopy kind of empty.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yes, yeah, Oh, she would have loved that stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, probably, so. She did take a few nursing classes.
You know, we have to mention that I'm not trying
to legitimize he or anything, but she did take a
few osteopathic nursing classes. She opened a fasting therapy practice
in Minneapolis. There this is when she went by doctor
(08:21):
Linda Burfield Perry, even though she was divorced from Edwin Perry.
And yeah, she said, like, come on in, I'll beat
on you. I will. I will not let you eat anything,
like really not at all. As we'll see, let's hold
on to that little factoid like how little these people
are eating. But she would find love again in nineteen
oh three, or find something in the way of a
(08:42):
swindler named Samuel Hazzard, who was a He would go
to jail for bigamy because he was already married and
I guess did not get divorced and also married Linda Burfield,
and so he went to jail for a couple of years. Yeah,
and then got out of jail and they're like, all right,
we're good to go. Let's go to Seattle.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, And that's where her practice really started. The two
of them together like really kind of established this.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Well.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
They call it Wilderness Heights, and it was supposed to
be like a sanitarium or retreat where you went and
got this fasting cure. And it's just like you said,
you have to be wary of cures that cure everything,
and that was very much the case with her. She
apparently was saying like, once you go through the fasting
(09:28):
cure and you get all this crowd out, you're set
like everything from you can go have a kid and
have no pain during childbirth. You're not going to get
toothaches anymore. If you're an alcoholic, you won't be an
alcoholic anymore. If you're depressed, no more depression, Like it's
a cure all from her stance, that's how she basically
(09:51):
advertised it. I guess.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, So she's the main player here, Samuel. Her husband
is a little bit in the background, but he'll pop
up here and there when it comes to the financials.
And then our other couple of players are Claire and
Dora Williamson. They were English. They were daughters of an
English military person, Evelyn Dorothy. Her name was Dora. She
(10:13):
went by Dora Williamson. She was born in India in
eighteen seventy three, and then her sister Enid Lily and
Claire Williamson was born in London in eighteen seventy seven.
And they were basically from teenagers on. Had no parents.
I think their father died after Claire was born and
then their mom died about sixteen years later. So they were,
(10:35):
you know, they were orphaned teens who were really really
rich and really really tight, very close with one another,
and seemed to be like adventurous, not in a hurry
to get married, which is what you would think for
the time period to get married right away. They kind
of like to travel the world and go on adventures
and not follow the prescribed method.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah, they were independent women of the nineties, eighteen nineties,
that's right. So they also though they weren't entirely orphan,
I mean as far as like biological parents, maybe you're concerned,
But they had a governess who took care of them
as well, and I think kind of was part of
their life long before their mother died. But I have
(11:17):
the impression that she was like an additional mom or
an additional grandmother or something to them, Right, So.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
I think that's how the richies do it, Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
So just keep that in mind that these women are
slightly outside of the norm. They have no problem with
being slightly outside of the norm. And they are very
interesting and interested people, are very curious, and one of
the things that they are focused on is natural health.
Like they're just super into that kind of thing. And
(11:50):
by the time they cross paths with Linda Hazzard, they've
done like all sorts of stuff, like any kind of
cure you can think of. They've traveled to some sanitarium
or some notorium, they've traveled to some health clinic, and
they've just done this whole thing. It's like basically what
they were interested.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
In, Yeah, for sure. And you know, they did some
kind of brave things at the time. For the time
period they were like, I don't want to wear corsets anymore.
They're super uncomfortable, and don't I think they're probably bad
for us. Sure, so they didn't wear corsets anymore. They
gave up meat. Eating meat was or being vegetarian, I
guess at the very least was a pretty weird thing
(12:28):
back then. So they were definitely following their own path.
And then in nineteen ten they were in their thirties.
At this point they were in the beautiful Empress Hotel
in Victoria, British Columbia.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
You sounded like you're an announcer for the Price's right.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
It looks really nice. I mean it's still around from
what I can tell, at least the pictures of modern.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, it's a fairmunt now, Oh, of course it is.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
And I didn't mean that snarkily, like there are some
very nice Fearmonts.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Sure you said that because they're a huge sponsor stuff.
Should know they're not, are they?
Speaker 1 (13:02):
I don't think it's like, why am I not getting
any free juice there? So at the time it was
like the nicest hotel in North America. And they saw
an ad in the local paper from doctor Hazard and
I guess we can call her a doctor but mentally
easing scare quotes, and they wrote her a letter and said, Hey,
(13:23):
we're two sisters. We'd like to visit Wilderness Heights and
we're coming to Seattle.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Nice. I think that's a great place to leave off
for an.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Ad break, coming to Seattle. What could be better?
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Not much? Man, all right, we'll be right back. So
(14:02):
before we get back to Claire and Dora and Linda Hazard,
we should probably make like a little side note here that, like,
although Linda Hazard's stuff was bizarre like this, the extremes
she took it to, like, alternative medicine was still very
much a thing. We did that whole episode on the
(14:22):
Flexner Report which basically said from now on in the
United States and Europe, it's just like medical science. That's it.
Anything outside of that is cuckoo quackery and should be
persecuted and run out of town on a rail essentially.
And that so this was the time when you could
(14:43):
still be an alternative medicine practitioner. You could still be
an out and out quack. Yeah, And there was no
law against that yet. And this was definitely the like
the gray area that Linda Hazard fell in.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yeah, And I think her case, and especially the case
with these two sisters in particular. Like, it wasn't the
leading reason, but it was definitely evidence as they move
forward with stuff like the Flexner report of like changes
is needed. Their fasting had been around for a long
long time. Obviously, people fasted in the Bible, people fasted
(15:20):
in ancient Greece. I think Hippocrates and Pythagoras both were
into fasting, So that was not a new thing. Fasting
is still a thing, and detoxes and cleanses, and you know,
we've done our fair share of podcasting on that kind
of stuff, So none of this is new or old.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
No, we did one on courses too. I just remembered,
that's right. Yeah. One of the other things that is
definitely old about this is that whole idea of undigested
food being the source of all disease. That's ir vedic
in nature too. Ancient Asian Indian medic goal practice basically
(16:01):
says if you have underjust of food or build up
a poop or whatever in your system, all disease emanates
from that. So even doctor Edward Dewey was not exactly
like groundbreaking with that idea.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, and people are like it all comes from the
poop and They're like, have you smelled the stuff? There's
no way that's good.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
It's gee ross.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
What if poop not you know, I guess we're going there.
I'm going there. Okay, what if poop didn't smell like
that at all? And I'm not saying, oh, what if
it smelled like, you know, something great? Like what if
it just literally had no odor and that was it?
Like would the world be really a better place? H
I say, yes, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
I guess sure. I guess I don't smell enough poop
in any given day that it really ruins the world
for me.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Well, I mean you have your outhouse.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Sure, but I see yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
I was just curious at like on the like the
divorce rate, like what all would change air airports? Airports happens?
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Okay, yes, airports. That's a really good point right there.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah that's the worst.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, it really is really bad. Like that's a good
reason not to fly before like ten am.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Like it's one thing to be married to somebody, but
you don't want to smell the poop of twelve strangers.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
No, no you don't. That's why no one should poop
in public bathrooms. They shouldn't even have toilets in there,
all urinals all the time.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah, they should have urals, urinals and signs that say
hold it.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Right, just hold it, have a poop, go to jail.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
All right. So sorry to get to go off on
a tangent there about poop. I was just kind of
I've never done that particular thought experiment.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Okay, Well I liked it all right.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
So she had her her big, big book. I mean,
she had eleven of them, but I feel like the one,
as far as this goes, this most relevant is the
one from nineteen oh eight. It's called Fasting for the
Cure of Disease, ease, and that's where she laid out,
you know, the program which is just those three things really,
you know, fast to get beaten on and get those
(18:10):
as Josh says, m enema. And the first person to
die from this treatment. She wrote the book after six
years after this, which is pretty disturbing. But in nineteen
oh two at her Minneapolis practice, there was a woman
who was partially paralyzed, and very sadly, she died on
day thirty seven of a forty day fast and Linda Hazzard,
(18:31):
as the doctor said, cause of death paralysis.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah, that would be a recurring theme, as we'll see, right,
because she also she was declaring the cause of death
for her patients as a physician, even though she wasn't
really a physician. And I guess still even at this time,
under circumstances like this, the local coroner would still take
(18:55):
a look at any dead body. Saw the body of
this woman, Gertrude Jon and was like, I don't know
that this was paralysis that did this, because she's pretty emaciated.
Let's perform an autopsy and see what happens. Looked inside
of poor Gertrude Young and said, yep, she died of starvation,
just as I suspected.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
That's right. And as we'll see later, Linda Hazard didn't
think that was a viable way of dying. She's basically like,
you can't starve some of the death. It's not possible, right,
So she's wrong about that. But she did not have
a medical license, so she could not be like brought
up on charges or anything. It's she was telling this
(19:36):
woman to fast, and the woman was fasting. She didn't
have her, you know, locked up and chained to a
bed or anything like that. She was just following the
advice of the wrong.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Person exactly, and yeah, Linda Hazard could just like shrug
and be like, you know, what are you gonna do? Yeah,
this was like years after when she and her husband
Samuel moved to Seattle and started their practice together. So
that's not why she moved. This was just the first
(20:06):
body in her long body count essentially.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah, I mean bodies. You know, people started dying at
her practice in Washington as well. And there in Washington
at the time, you could be grandfathered in as far
as what kind of alternative medicine you were practicing, so
she was kind of all good there. In nineteen oh
seven is when she started treating patients in Washington, and
(20:31):
you know, right away, again this wasn't like the weirdest
stuff at the time, so she had some of the
elite of Washington, like state legislators coming there. It was
it wasn't like that weird lady in the woods that's
killing people. It was you know, it was sort of
of the fashion of the day in some ways.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah. Also, there was a real deference to her from
the local population, which were typically Swedish immigrants who were
not necessarily formally educated. They didn't have a lot of money.
So this was like she made a lot of money,
we should say, multiple times throughout her career, so she
(21:11):
was wealthy. She had a lot of land. She was
a doctor, so she said, she was much more highly
educated than anyone else in the area that they knew.
So she was popular and people just kind of respected
her in this area too. So in addition to these
wealthy and kind of elite you know, alternative medicine file
(21:35):
patrons and customers, just the local people who had nothing
to do with this still thought fairly highly of her too.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yeah, for sure, even though people were dying. I think
by the time the Williamson's sisters arrived in nineteen eleven,
seven patients had died under her care, six from starvation
what looked to be starvation. And what was also learned was,
like you said, she performed all the autopsies herself. And
it was also revealed that the estates of these people
(22:06):
were left to the sanatorium, So she was also taking
their money, even though it was, you know, from the outside,
under the guise of like they believed in her so
much they wanted her practice to continue.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yes, exactly, and this is where it really becomes murdery.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
You know, yeah, like the super nefarious.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Something else that was gross that I found was so
the Wilderness Heights was like a few like a handful
of primitive cabins and then her cottage, and her cottage
still stood until like twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah, and you could go into her cottage and it
was still there was still furnishings in it and including
her bathtub, and the bathtub of her cottage is where
she was performing her autopsies.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
So that to me kind of like really gets across
like this is not like a super polished outfit, you
know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
And I think that's important to keep in mind too.
She basically built some rough fused cabins in the woods
in Washington and called this like her sanitarium.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Yeah. And this is by the way in Alala Woods, Washington.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yes, so close to Walla Walla, so close.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
So Claire and Dora get there in February of nineteen
eleven and she was like, hey, we're not going to
stay here in Wilderness Heights. I'm not sure why she
did this. I have a feeling that she knew that
she had some big fish on the line. So she
took them to Seattle instead, and she basically lied to
them and said that the Alala Woods Retreat wasn't completed yet,
(23:44):
even though I think it clearly was. And so they
they put them up in some apartments in downtown Seattle,
started their fasting treatment and the vigorous massage, and they
were eating two cups of vegetable broth sounds like basically
canned tomato juice a day.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
I also saw I think Dora later said that they
were made from asparagus tips, spinach, and lettuce. A broth
made from that, yeah, veggie broth. Yeah, so not anything
that you could possibly even remotely get full off of yet,
like you said, I think a cup twice a day, Yeah,
that's just yeah, So you're going to lose weight very quickly.
(24:24):
And this was like forty plus days of fasting. That
hazard was prescribing to her patients, right, And so I
think both of the Williamson sisters made it to fifty
days before they were transferred to Wilderness Heights. They didn't walk,
they were on stretchers. That's how they got to Wilderness
(24:46):
Heights from their apartments in downtown Seattle.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Yeah, and I mean from what I can tell. They
weren't screaming on the way like get me help. Like
it feels like they were either all in still on
this or just so out of it at this point
they didn't know any better, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Yes, or they were asking for help, but they were
asking for it, like Stevie from Malcolm in the Middle,
where they were like, get help.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
It was pretty good, Stevie.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Did you watch the reboot of that?
Speaker 2 (25:21):
No reboot. I can't give me one reboot that was
as good as the original or even close.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah. I can't bring any reboots to mine at all,
so I don't know. But you're you're pretty much right,
like even the great Kids in the Hall, Like it
was just okay, right. I kind of want to watch
the Malcolm in the Middle one though, Oh oh, you
haven't seen it either, No, but I heard it was
pretty good.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Actually all right, But is Frankie Munis has his voice changed?
Speaker 1 (25:51):
No, it's exactly the same. And so it was what's
his face?
Speaker 2 (25:55):
What was his name, Stevie, Stevie, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, I couldn't remember. I just remember Cranston was so great.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah, and his daughter's great too. We've said it before.
We'll say it again on the Pit. Doctor mel Is
Brian Cranston's daughter, and she does it great to him.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Yeah, I think we said that live on stage. I
don't think the listening public knows that you are now
on the pit.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yeah, but apparently it just stopped, like they just stopped
putting out episodes. But that last episode does not end
in any way that anyone would ever end the season
of TV. Oh you think, Yeah, Like, Noah Wiley didn't
leave yet. I don't even think as Buddy fully agreed
to getting the treatment he's supposed to get. What's going
(26:40):
on with Ali? Sheemi? Like the last thing we saw
is she just kind of had a meltdown in her car.
There's just all the stuff's up in the air.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
But oh, I think that was the purpose. I think
it just was cliffhanger after cliffhanger.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Okay, yes, I can get cliffhangers. But it's almost like
it just petered out rather than cut it, like they
just cut all right, disagree? All right, Well, I was
surprised that that was how they ended it.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
We just spoiled some stuff, by the way.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Oh yeah, we should probably Well, we.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Didn't say anything huge. No Wiley didn't leave, big deal. Okay,
all right, does he ever leave?
Speaker 2 (27:18):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
That's what I just need to go, like, he's never
he never leaves, he comes over, he overstays, is welcome.
Everyone's like, when's this guy gonna get on SMO and
drive out of Here's true? All right, I feel like
we're really off the rails now. We should take a
break and come back. Yes, yeah, all right, we'll be
right back all right where we left you. So, Noah
(28:00):
Wiley had not left yet the pit. No, I'm sorry.
We left the sisters in pretty bad condition. It was
about fifty days into their treatment. They were obviously in really,
really bad shape, having traveled by stretcher to Alaala Woods
and Claire died seventeen days after they got to the compound.
(28:21):
There in the forest. She and this is like very
triggering and super upsetting, so I'm issuing a warning here.
But she weighed less than fifty pounds when she passed,
and Hazard's own autopsy once again determined she died of
a liver disease that came from a childhood medical treatment
that caused her organs to shrink, and when her the
(28:43):
governess showed up, Margaret Conway, you know, finally arrived. She
told her that and she was like, I basically raised
these kids and she didn't have any childhood medical treatment
that caused her organs to shrink.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Yeah, and we should just say that Margaret Conway, her governess,
who we talked about earlier, she got a cable from
one of them. I can't remember if it was Dora
or Claire.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Probably Dora, I think it was Dora.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Yeah, it just basically saying like, please come, here's the
ship you want to take, here's where we are. Just
get here. And Margaret Conway just dropped everything. And within
a month she had traveled from Australia to Seattle. That's
how long it took.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah, but I mean she was welcomed. I mean Samuel
met her in Seattle and said, all right, let's get
on the train. We're going to show you this operation.
Like it's pretty sad what's happening, but like we have
a top notch practice here. And they brought her to
the mortuary to see Claire and she was like, that's
(29:41):
not Claire, whoever this body is. And I get the
impression that it wasn't like she so emaciated. I didn't
recognize her like I think they tried to pull the
fast one on her.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yeah, there was rumors, I guess that the local mortuary
was in cahoots with the Hazards and that they would
switch out bodies that weren't amazing heated who had nothing
to do with Wilderness Heights. Yeah, the emaciated bodies of
their victims so that family wouldn't be like, I think
you starved my mom to death. Right, So Margaret Conway
(30:14):
was not in any way, shape or form put off
by Samuel Hazzard's charm or Linda Hazard's authority, like she
realized like that they had killed Claire. One of the
dead giveaways was that Linda Hazard was wearing one of
Claire's robes and her favorite hat when she received Margaret
(30:35):
Conway at the at the Wilderness Heights at their cottage,
and that I think immediately rubbed Margaret Conway the wrong way.
And she was like, I give me Dora. I'm taking
Dora home and Linda and Samuel said not so fast.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Yeah, while Dora was in the same shape, she weighed
about fifty pounds, was barely alive at this point, and
so yeah, she asked for and the hazards are like,
actually where the executor of her estate. She is under
our legal guardianship forever, and my husband Samuel has power
of attorney over all of her in the family's financial matters.
(31:14):
And not only that is you've got a medical bill
you need to pay. You owe us two grand.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
It's about seventy k today.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Margaret Conway is like, well, I don't have seventy grand.
I have no idea how to overturn a legal guardianship.
But it just so happened that Claire and Dora's uncle,
John Herbert, was just up in Portland, not very far away,
even back in nineteen eleven, nineteen ten, down in Portland. Yeah,
(31:43):
oh yeah, you're sorry. Go to be right, No, one
hundred percent, it is I have which show we did backwards?
Usually we do Seattle first and then Portland. Right, yeah, okay,
So anyway, John Herbert was down in Portland, and Margaret
Conway got in touch with him as I need your help,
like these Claire's been killed and Dora was in big trouble,
(32:05):
She's about to die, and these two hucksters have like
all sorts of legal mumbo jumbo going on. And John
Herbert got involved. He's like, I'm a man and this
is the Edwardian era. So everybody listened to me, and
that's when things started moving.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yeah, for sure, Samuel Hazard did produce a document. It
was a typewritten statement that he said, Claire, you know,
dictated this to us on her deathbed, but she didn't
sign it because she was too weak to sign it.
Because of the whole you know, liver issue. I said
to my relatives and friends, I'm writing the statement to
say that Dora and I entered on this course of
treatment only after thorough investigation, that we have continued it voluntarily,
(32:45):
and that if death occurs, I believe that it is
inevitable that it would have come in any circumstances, which
is like, I mean, it sounds like a child wrote
that to get out of being in trouble, you.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Know, right exactly. So, I mean, just that last line
about if she dies it was inevitable anyway, just so
smacks of Linda Hazard's philosophy that you can't starve to death. Yeah,
it was just very clearly fake. So John Herbert gets involved.
Thanks to Margaret Conway, they find get this. The vice
(33:18):
counsel of the British embassy in Tacoma. Let all that
sink in for a second. They get them involved, and
they get the guardianship overturned. Herbert gets the two thousand
dollars unpaid bill negotiated down to one thousand dollars and
essentially pays a ransom for Door to be released. And
(33:42):
in the meantime, once he has Dora back, he starts
looking into some of these other patients and finds like
Dora and Claire were far from the only victims who
were essentially had been exploited financially while they were out
of their minds from starvation.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Yeah, for sure. So it's, you know, just like the
movie scene is starting to sort of add up in
his head, and he brings this evidence into the authorities
there in the county and they investigate obviously, and Linda
Hazard was arrested for murder for I think murder in
the first degree of Claire Williamson and for obvious financial fraud.
(34:19):
And it was a you know, you said earlier, it
was sensational. It was a big deal, international press. You know,
first they had to find out where the Olala Woods
was and then they came there and started covering this case,
and she was known as the Starvation Doctor. I think
they started calling her place Starvation Heights instead.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Of what was it, Wilderness Heights.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Yeah, Wilderness Heights, Yes, it's pretty good one. And they
you know, there's a lot of speculation flying around, like
you know that she had this hold over people, that
was rumors that she may have been hypnotizing them to
keep them under her hold. But like you mentioned earlier,
there still are and certainly back then had people their
former patients or wealthy benefactors or other naturopaths that were like, hey,
(35:05):
you know, she's a woman practicing outside the box medicine
and that's why she's being prosecuted.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yes, we should say that it actually took a lot
of leaning on the Kitsap County prosecutor where Wilderness Heights
was located, to actually prosecute this crime, because again, she
had a lot of local support and there were a
lot of people who are like, she's being persecuted by
these Brits who are like total out of towners, and
(35:35):
they're being supported by vocal people from the American Medical
Association who want only doctors to practice their way and
basically this woman's being persecuted that as a witch essentially,
so she did have a lot of supporters, but she
had a lot of detractors too. It seems like, on balance,
(35:57):
at least as far as the press is concerned, she
was generally viewed as a murderer and a grifter. I guess,
a grifting murderer, terrible combination.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah. I think the first thing she said was this,
the first guy that came at me was an ambassador
stationed in Tacoma, Tacoma. Everyone does that sound remotely believable?
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Right? It does sound kind of made up.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
So January fifteenth, nineteen twelve, the trial starts. They lay
out their evidence basically, which was all pretty obvious, like
she's trying to fleece these people of money when they
have no control over their own senses. And I think
I had about one hundred people testify for the prosecution.
There were lots of doctors, you know, being paraded up
(36:44):
there as expert witnesses. And Dora even took the stand
and talked about this scene basically near the end where
she was bedside and Claire is trying to whisper Stevie
style something to Dora like her sister as she's passing essentially,
(37:04):
and every time she tried to speak miss Hazard or
missus Hazzard as as she called him, she kept talking
and I couldn't hear. Like she would lean in and
she'd say Dory, and she would interrupt and say how
did you spell that name again, and like she would
not let her. I mean, this is one of the
most upsetting parts. Like she wouldn't even let her sister
(37:26):
perhaps even say goodbye. Who knows what she was trying
to say.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Yeah, and apparently also, I guess doctor Hazard cut in
and was like, I'm going to give Claire one of
my famous massagists and pressed down so hard that Claire
lost consciousness. And shortly after that, Dora was told that
Claire had died. And so, yeah, those probably would have
been her last words to her that Linda Hazzard basically
(37:51):
interrupted on purpose.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Yeah, I think she actually died, Dora. I found out
she died the next morning, so she didn't get that chance.
Later either, the defensive course comes in and said that
you know it wasn't the treatment. She didn't die of starvation.
That's when Linda Hazard very famously says, you know, it's
not possible to starve someone to death. And you know,
(38:15):
Trot's out her book in the middle of court and
says here, read this, and this is the quote from
the book. Death in the fast never results from deprivation
of food, but is the inevitable consequence of vitality sapped
to the last degree by organic imperfection. Right. I mean,
that's quackery, if like nineteenth century quackery, if I've ever
(38:36):
heard it, you know for sure.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
But I mean it is technically true, like you die
from your organs failing, but your organs get their vitality
from the food that you're not getting. So it's kind
of like potato potato essentially. Yes, it is. It's a
pretty glib workaround, I guess. But she stood by that.
She was like, now, you can't die from starvation. That's
(38:59):
why she said. And Claire died from liver disease. That's
why her first patient, Gertrude Young, a first patient to die,
she died from paralysis. It's whatever was wrong with you
ahead of time, that's what killed you, not starvation. I
don't know if Linda Hazard truly believed that there's actually
some evidence at the very end that we'll see, but
(39:22):
that's just so dumb that and I have the impression
that Linda Hazard was not a dumb person at all.
I just can't believe that she believed that.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
I feel like, given the financial piece, I feel like
she knew what she was doing. Okay, that's just my
take on it.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Right. So again, there were some supporters who are like, hey,
you know, like she's being persecuted, and the jury said,
you know what, we're going to split the middle here.
We're going to find her guilty on a charge of
manslaughter not murder, so everybody can be unhappy.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah, basically, she was sentenced to two to twenty hard
labor at Walla Walla Penitentiaria.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
And that wasn't it though, because she appealed the case
and appealed it and appealed it all the way up
to the United States or was it the state Supreme Court?
Speaker 2 (40:19):
No, the US Supreme Court.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
From what I am seen, the US Supreme Court took
about eighteen months to get there, and you know, she
had supporter sending in letters the whole time saying to
release her. The state of Washington did revoke her license
to practice medicine, but she did continue to practice two
more deaths happened after Claire Williamson, and then she finally
(40:43):
goes to prison, eventually at Wallawalla.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yeah, so while she's appealing and is out and about
on bail, two more people die. She kills two more people.
That's just crazy. She finally gets to Walla Walla, like
you said, and that two to twenty years. It's what's
known as an indeterminate sentence, like you have to serve
at least a minimum, but you're not going to serve
beyond twenty right. So she was in there for I
(41:08):
think less than two years before she was paroled. She
very famously knitted ponchos for the other inmates. And when
she did get out, I think within six months she
had been pardoned by the governor of Washington.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Yeah, and you know, it's kind of hard to get
super accurate information for this old time stuff, but I
did see in the Washington archives there was a stipulation
that she had to leave the country if they were
going to let her out. So, regardless of whether or
not that's true, she did leave the country. We'll get
to that in a second. Dora also left the country.
She went back to England and settled down in Gloucester
(41:46):
and you know, lived sounds like a pretty great full
life after that. She got married in nineteen fourteen to
Reverend Wyndham Allen Chaplin and lived to be seventy one
years old. Died in nineteen forty five. So she fully
recovered from her quote unquote treatment, right, and Linda Hazard
went to New Zealand to Hawker Wares.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah, and was very well received there during the trial.
One of her vocal supporters was the Sydney Morning Herald,
I think, or at least some columnists in there. And
she made a ton of money again when she showed
up in New Zealand, Like people just flocked to her
for her treatment. And I think she long said like, hey, yeah,
(42:30):
fifteen people died in my care from the fasting, but
you know I've had hundreds of other patients, So is
that really that bad? And people are like, yeah, it
is kind of bad. But also, you know, most doctors
who lose patients don't also fleece them of their estate.
Like that's really what took it. Like, murder is bad,
(42:53):
murder for profit is really bad.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Yeah, I agree, we're going to rank murder.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Sure, let's just face it. Murder for profit is really bad.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
I agree. I think the piece that you were talking about,
the one additional little piece of information that maybe she
did believe fully believe this stuff, yeh, is that she
herself died from her own treatment June twenty fourth, nineteen
thirty eight, self administering of fasting cure. So you know,
I don't think it was pure hocum in her mind.
I think she probably did believe it to a certain degree,
(43:26):
but I think she took it to extremes to fleece
people for sure.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, that's Linda Hazard.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yeah. There's a book that a lots came from from
nineteen ninety seven. It's called Starvation Heights by a local
named Greg Olsen. So shout out to Greg Olsen in
that book.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
If you can't find it at a sec or a
third g, I guess to the end of Greg Olsen's
name and it should.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Come up that was it, g R e Gg.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Yeah, probably won't come up on a search that's just
g R. E g in Starvation Heights nineteen ninety seven,
but if you add that extra ge, it will definitely
come up.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Yeah, And if you just google greg Olsen, you'll probably
come up with the Atlanta Braves Catcher from the nineteen
nineties or.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Early about him. Yeah, he was a catcher. Huh yeah, Okay,
you got anything else about Greg Olsen, whether you're talking
about the author or the catcher.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
I know he was not a belly scratcher.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
You belly itcher.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
I think scratcher a picture, not a belly atcher. Catcher,
not a belly scratcher.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Oh okay, I've never heard that second part. He just
blew my mind. Buddy. Well, since we started talking about
braves pictures and childhood rhymes, I think it's time for
listener mail.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
That's right. This is from Daniel. Hey, guys, love the
episode of Maple Syrup and all your episodes. You want
to let you know something similar In Australia, there's a
tree called the side agum or the eucalytus gunny nice,
and it produces a similar sweet sap. Guys. I couldn't
find any evidence of it being eaten as is, but
the local Paalawa people of Tasmania let it naturally ferment
(45:13):
to turn it into a cider like drink called Why Elena.
Of course, the tree is now incredibly rare, mostly confined
to one valley in Tasmania due to all the usual
good things I sent sarcasm there. As a white Australian,
I would love for you to do an episode on
bush Tucker. So much knowledge was lost due to colonization
(45:34):
and genocide, but there's still so much amazing information out there.
And that is from Daniel.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Nice. Daniel, thank you have not heard of cidergum tree
no or bushtucker no. So those are really great ideas
and thanks a lot for that. I cannot wait till
we get back to Australia so we can try that
cider bush Tucker?
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Is it food apparently?
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Oh? I think bush tucker is like knowledge. That was
the impression I have.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Well I just look it up and it's called it's
a food, So.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
You know, thanks for that. He just gave me the rope,
didn't you.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Well, I mean I tried to tell you those food.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
Well, I hadn't realized that you looked anything up. I
thought we always discussed before we look things up.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Oh sorry, click any click type type.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Here you go now. I know. If you want to
be like Daniel and send us a great email, we
would love that. You can send it off to Stuff
Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's
here two. Jerry's here too, and I'm here too. That's
me Josh, And this is Stuff you Should.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Know, the We're All Three Feeling Weird edition.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, yeah, and that's strange. So yeah, I said that
I was just feeling kind of off today and you
said me too, and Jerry said me three.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yeah, what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I don't know, but I mean that is very That's
remarkable to me that all three of us, I mean,
we all have three different personalities. Ye, we don't like
you know, we don't live together, despite what most people think.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yeah, not anymore.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
No, So I don't know what it is. Maybe something's
in retrograde and something's house or something like that.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
That whole thing. Yeah, stuff you should Know is in retrograde,
whatever that means.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
So, yeah, we'll do our best with this. I'll do
my best not to break out in tears.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
No, I think would be okay. And big thanks to
Julia for helping us put together this episode on one
of the quacks of all quacks. I feel like we
have covered quite a few quacks over the years.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, this one know isn't as bad as that one
guy that we did though, But she's up there for sure.
I mean I think she still has her supporters, Like
you can still buy her books online. Yeah, but most
people who are familiar with their case are like, she
was a serial killer, right, she just had a strange,
strange method of murder.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah, of bleeding people of their money.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah, yeah, for sure and their life force.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
As Toby Hooper might put it, that's right. So, yeah,
we're talking about a woman named Linda Burfield Perry Hazard.
There's at least two hyphens in there. Yeah, And she
was born in the nineteenth century, but was doing most
of her work in the late nineteenth early twentieth century.
And she was a person who was vehemently opposed, like
(02:13):
from what I could tell, like very seriously, like this
was her personal philosophy against what would be called modern
medicine today, but at the time was you know, just
starting out as we'll see.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, for sure, she was a self described fasting specialist.
She had no medical degree. She did have wealthy patients
and I was about to say patrons, but I guess
they were patients and she said she was the only
fasting specialist in the world. You know, this was sort
of the time of the sanitarium sanatorium world, where you
(02:50):
could go off and practice some very questionable methods of
healing people.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, like the Kellogg brothers in Battle Creek.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, exactly, because you know that we had not in
the United States yet set up sort of rules around
the medical world at this point.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
No, but it's coming. It's like right around that time,
and in part because of so much quackery that was
going on the same time. A lot of this stuff
is what you would call alternative medicine today or just
sensible stuff. Like the Kellogg brothers had a bunch of
weird stuff, and their whole jam was fairly weird, But
(03:27):
if you boiled everything down to what they were saying,
a lot of it was like diet and exercise, which
is just great advice today as far as health is concerned.
The problem is is like some people took this to
terrible extremes. Other people were peddling just like outright fake
and dangerous medicines, Like yeah, there were the outliers were
(03:49):
so bad that they were ruining it for everybody who
actually had some legitimate stuff that they were doing, and
Linda Hazard was an outlier. Although again I think she
was a true believer in herself and her cure.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, for sure. But you know, to be clear, she
was not serving up bowls of granula. She was killing
people like I think fifteen patients starved to death under
her watch. Yes, and she would eventually go to trial
for the murder of one.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah, it was a sensation in nineteen.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Twelve, a real sensation.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Let's talk about Linda Burfield Perry Hazard, who we're just
going to call Linda Hazard from here on out. But
she was born Linda Burfield in Minnesota in eighteen sixty seven,
as most people in eighteen sixty seven were born what
really rurally, and a lot of them in Minnesota. I
think something like ninety eight percent of births in eighteen
(04:46):
sixty seven took pres Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
That's incredible.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
She actually had an experience, she said, she wrote again
a bunch of books, eleven by my count. Oh well,
and so she said, according to herself, that she had
been she had run into modern medicine as a child,
and this doctor had given her some pills blue mass
pills that are essentially mercury pills, and they were like
(05:14):
fairly regularly used at the time, but they did not
sit very well with her.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
No, it made her really sick, like this again, this
is the day when they would, you know, a doctor
would say like, here, take this thing, because it'll cure
basically anything you have. And that's always the red flag,
even if it's not pure snake oil, the sort of
cure all thing. And it made it really sick, very memorably,
so like digestively for the most part. But after that
(05:42):
she was like, I'm done with doctors and I'm going
to eventually be my own doctor and be a doctor
to other people. She married a guy named Edwin Perry
in eighteen eighty six, had a couple of kids, got divorced,
and apparently I don't know if that led to her
divorce when she just sort of went center of left
(06:03):
as far as her care goes. Do you think that
was it.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
It's possible that was the impression. I have too, but
I'm not sure. There's so much just random stuff that
people say about her that may or may not be true.
There's a lot of surmising.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I think it said center of left too, by the way, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
The thing is, Chuck, is everyone knew what you meant,
so that counts as communication. You know, don't be such
a prescriptionist.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
That's right left of center. But she married Perry, got divorced,
and then fell into the care of doctor Edward Dewey,
who was a a faster. He preached fasting. He basically
said that, you know, every disease that we have comes
from habitual eating and excess. Basically like you're out eating
(06:46):
what your stomach and your gastric juices can handle.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, that's the sum total of Linda Hazard's whole thing.
I mean, she had a three prong approach, which was
intense fasting ama anema an I've read that that her
enemas lasted for hours sometimes.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
I think that was also the title of your second LP, right, it.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Was my cover songs of William Shatner's cover r that's right, Yeah,
that's actually appropriate title for that. Or lobotomy lobotomy lobotomy. Yeah.
And then the other one was powerful massage that I
think calling a massage is fairly genous. Yes, she would
pound on her patients and apparently shall eliminate, eliminate because
(07:34):
again she's trying to get undigested food and poop that's
left over out of the body. And by fasting, you're
not introducing more food, You're letting the body rest while
getting rid of the food that's been undigested. That's the
source of all of your diseases.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, like you drank the colon clints before your first
colonoscopy kind of empty.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yes, yeah, Oh, she would have loved that stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, probably, so. She did take a few nursing classes.
You know, we have to mention that I'm not trying
to legitimize he or anything, but she did take a
few osteopathic nursing classes. She opened a fasting therapy practice
in Minneapolis. There this is when she went by doctor
(08:21):
Linda Burfield Perry, even though she was divorced from Edwin Perry.
And yeah, she said, like, come on in, I'll beat
on you. I will. I will not let you eat anything,
like really not at all. As we'll see, let's hold
on to that little factoid like how little these people
are eating. But she would find love again in nineteen
oh three, or find something in the way of a
(08:42):
swindler named Samuel Hazzard, who was a He would go
to jail for bigamy because he was already married and
I guess did not get divorced and also married Linda Burfield,
and so he went to jail for a couple of years. Yeah,
and then got out of jail and they're like, all right,
we're good to go. Let's go to Seattle.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, And that's where her practice really started. The two
of them together like really kind of established this.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Well.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
They call it Wilderness Heights, and it was supposed to
be like a sanitarium or retreat where you went and
got this fasting cure. And it's just like you said,
you have to be wary of cures that cure everything,
and that was very much the case with her. She
apparently was saying like, once you go through the fasting
(09:28):
cure and you get all this crowd out, you're set
like everything from you can go have a kid and
have no pain during childbirth. You're not going to get
toothaches anymore. If you're an alcoholic, you won't be an
alcoholic anymore. If you're depressed, no more depression, Like it's
a cure all from her stance, that's how she basically
(09:51):
advertised it. I guess.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, So she's the main player here, Samuel. Her husband
is a little bit in the background, but he'll pop
up here and there when it comes to the financials.
And then our other couple of players are Claire and
Dora Williamson. They were English. They were daughters of an
English military person, Evelyn Dorothy. Her name was Dora. She
(10:13):
went by Dora Williamson. She was born in India in
eighteen seventy three, and then her sister Enid Lily and
Claire Williamson was born in London in eighteen seventy seven.
And they were basically from teenagers on. Had no parents.
I think their father died after Claire was born and
then their mom died about sixteen years later. So they were,
(10:35):
you know, they were orphaned teens who were really really
rich and really really tight, very close with one another,
and seemed to be like adventurous, not in a hurry
to get married, which is what you would think for
the time period to get married right away. They kind
of like to travel the world and go on adventures
and not follow the prescribed method.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah, they were independent women of the nineties, eighteen nineties,
that's right. So they also though they weren't entirely orphan,
I mean as far as like biological parents, maybe you're concerned,
But they had a governess who took care of them
as well, and I think kind of was part of
their life long before their mother died. But I have
(11:17):
the impression that she was like an additional mom or
an additional grandmother or something to them, Right, So.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
I think that's how the richies do it, Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
So just keep that in mind that these women are
slightly outside of the norm. They have no problem with
being slightly outside of the norm. And they are very
interesting and interested people, are very curious, and one of
the things that they are focused on is natural health.
Like they're just super into that kind of thing. And
(11:50):
by the time they cross paths with Linda Hazzard, they've
done like all sorts of stuff, like any kind of
cure you can think of. They've traveled to some sanitarium
or some notorium, they've traveled to some health clinic, and
they've just done this whole thing. It's like basically what
they were interested.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
In, Yeah, for sure. And you know, they did some
kind of brave things at the time. For the time
period they were like, I don't want to wear corsets anymore.
They're super uncomfortable, and don't I think they're probably bad
for us. Sure, so they didn't wear corsets anymore. They
gave up meat. Eating meat was or being vegetarian, I
guess at the very least was a pretty weird thing
(12:28):
back then. So they were definitely following their own path.
And then in nineteen ten they were in their thirties.
At this point they were in the beautiful Empress Hotel
in Victoria, British Columbia.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
You sounded like you're an announcer for the Price's right.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
It looks really nice. I mean it's still around from
what I can tell, at least the pictures of modern.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, it's a fairmunt now, Oh, of course it is.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
And I didn't mean that snarkily, like there are some
very nice Fearmonts.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Sure you said that because they're a huge sponsor stuff.
Should know they're not, are they?
Speaker 1 (13:02):
I don't think it's like, why am I not getting
any free juice there? So at the time it was
like the nicest hotel in North America. And they saw
an ad in the local paper from doctor Hazard and
I guess we can call her a doctor but mentally
easing scare quotes, and they wrote her a letter and said, Hey,
(13:23):
we're two sisters. We'd like to visit Wilderness Heights and
we're coming to Seattle.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Nice. I think that's a great place to leave off
for an.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Ad break, coming to Seattle. What could be better?
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Not much? Man, all right, we'll be right back. So
(14:02):
before we get back to Claire and Dora and Linda Hazard,
we should probably make like a little side note here that, like,
although Linda Hazard's stuff was bizarre like this, the extremes
she took it to, like, alternative medicine was still very
much a thing. We did that whole episode on the
(14:22):
Flexner Report which basically said from now on in the
United States and Europe, it's just like medical science. That's it.
Anything outside of that is cuckoo quackery and should be
persecuted and run out of town on a rail essentially.
And that so this was the time when you could
(14:43):
still be an alternative medicine practitioner. You could still be
an out and out quack. Yeah, And there was no
law against that yet. And this was definitely the like
the gray area that Linda Hazard fell in.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yeah, And I think her case, and especially the case
with these two sisters in particular. Like, it wasn't the
leading reason, but it was definitely evidence as they move
forward with stuff like the Flexner report of like changes
is needed. Their fasting had been around for a long
long time. Obviously, people fasted in the Bible, people fasted
(15:20):
in ancient Greece. I think Hippocrates and Pythagoras both were
into fasting, So that was not a new thing. Fasting
is still a thing, and detoxes and cleanses, and you know,
we've done our fair share of podcasting on that kind
of stuff, So none of this is new or old.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
No, we did one on courses too. I just remembered,
that's right. Yeah. One of the other things that is
definitely old about this is that whole idea of undigested
food being the source of all disease. That's ir vedic
in nature too. Ancient Asian Indian medic goal practice basically
(16:01):
says if you have underjust of food or build up
a poop or whatever in your system, all disease emanates
from that. So even doctor Edward Dewey was not exactly
like groundbreaking with that idea.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, and people are like it all comes from the
poop and They're like, have you smelled the stuff? There's
no way that's good.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
It's gee ross.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
What if poop not you know, I guess we're going there.
I'm going there. Okay, what if poop didn't smell like
that at all? And I'm not saying, oh, what if
it smelled like, you know, something great? Like what if
it just literally had no odor and that was it?
Like would the world be really a better place? H
I say, yes, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
I guess sure. I guess I don't smell enough poop
in any given day that it really ruins the world
for me.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Well, I mean you have your outhouse.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Sure, but I see yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
I was just curious at like on the like the
divorce rate, like what all would change air airports? Airports happens?
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Okay, yes, airports. That's a really good point right there.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah that's the worst.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, it really is really bad. Like that's a good
reason not to fly before like ten am.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Like it's one thing to be married to somebody, but
you don't want to smell the poop of twelve strangers.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
No, no you don't. That's why no one should poop
in public bathrooms. They shouldn't even have toilets in there,
all urinals all the time.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Yeah, they should have urals, urinals and signs that say
hold it.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Right, just hold it, have a poop, go to jail.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
All right. So sorry to get to go off on
a tangent there about poop. I was just kind of
I've never done that particular thought experiment.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Okay, Well I liked it all right.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
So she had her her big, big book. I mean,
she had eleven of them, but I feel like the one,
as far as this goes, this most relevant is the
one from nineteen oh eight. It's called Fasting for the
Cure of Disease, ease, and that's where she laid out,
you know, the program which is just those three things really,
you know, fast to get beaten on and get those
(18:10):
as Josh says, m enema. And the first person to
die from this treatment. She wrote the book after six
years after this, which is pretty disturbing. But in nineteen
oh two at her Minneapolis practice, there was a woman
who was partially paralyzed, and very sadly, she died on
day thirty seven of a forty day fast and Linda Hazzard,
(18:31):
as the doctor said, cause of death paralysis.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah, that would be a recurring theme, as we'll see, right,
because she also she was declaring the cause of death
for her patients as a physician, even though she wasn't
really a physician. And I guess still even at this time,
under circumstances like this, the local coroner would still take
(18:55):
a look at any dead body. Saw the body of
this woman, Gertrude Jon and was like, I don't know
that this was paralysis that did this, because she's pretty emaciated.
Let's perform an autopsy and see what happens. Looked inside
of poor Gertrude Young and said, yep, she died of starvation,
just as I suspected.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
That's right. And as we'll see later, Linda Hazard didn't
think that was a viable way of dying. She's basically like,
you can't starve some of the death. It's not possible, right,
So she's wrong about that. But she did not have
a medical license, so she could not be like brought
up on charges or anything. It's she was telling this
(19:36):
woman to fast, and the woman was fasting. She didn't
have her, you know, locked up and chained to a
bed or anything like that. She was just following the
advice of the wrong.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Person exactly, and yeah, Linda Hazard could just like shrug
and be like, you know, what are you gonna do? Yeah,
this was like years after when she and her husband
Samuel moved to Seattle and started their practice together. So
that's not why she moved. This was just the first
(20:06):
body in her long body count essentially.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah, I mean bodies. You know, people started dying at
her practice in Washington as well. And there in Washington
at the time, you could be grandfathered in as far
as what kind of alternative medicine you were practicing, so
she was kind of all good there. In nineteen oh
seven is when she started treating patients in Washington, and
(20:31):
you know, right away, again this wasn't like the weirdest
stuff at the time, so she had some of the
elite of Washington, like state legislators coming there. It was
it wasn't like that weird lady in the woods that's
killing people. It was you know, it was sort of
of the fashion of the day in some ways.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah. Also, there was a real deference to her from
the local population, which were typically Swedish immigrants who were
not necessarily formally educated. They didn't have a lot of money.
So this was like she made a lot of money,
we should say, multiple times throughout her career, so she
(21:11):
was wealthy. She had a lot of land. She was
a doctor, so she said, she was much more highly
educated than anyone else in the area that they knew.
So she was popular and people just kind of respected
her in this area too. So in addition to these
wealthy and kind of elite you know, alternative medicine file
(21:35):
patrons and customers, just the local people who had nothing
to do with this still thought fairly highly of her too.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yeah, for sure, even though people were dying. I think
by the time the Williamson's sisters arrived in nineteen eleven,
seven patients had died under her care, six from starvation
what looked to be starvation. And what was also learned was,
like you said, she performed all the autopsies herself. And
it was also revealed that the estates of these people
(22:06):
were left to the sanatorium, So she was also taking
their money, even though it was, you know, from the outside,
under the guise of like they believed in her so
much they wanted her practice to continue.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yes, exactly, and this is where it really becomes murdery.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
You know, yeah, like the super nefarious.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Something else that was gross that I found was so
the Wilderness Heights was like a few like a handful
of primitive cabins and then her cottage, and her cottage
still stood until like twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah, and you could go into her cottage and it
was still there was still furnishings in it and including
her bathtub, and the bathtub of her cottage is where
she was performing her autopsies.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
So that to me kind of like really gets across
like this is not like a super polished outfit, you
know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
And I think that's important to keep in mind too.
She basically built some rough fused cabins in the woods
in Washington and called this like her sanitarium.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Yeah. And this is by the way in Alala Woods, Washington.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yes, so close to Walla Walla, so close.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
So Claire and Dora get there in February of nineteen
eleven and she was like, hey, we're not going to
stay here in Wilderness Heights. I'm not sure why she
did this. I have a feeling that she knew that
she had some big fish on the line. So she
took them to Seattle instead, and she basically lied to
them and said that the Alala Woods Retreat wasn't completed yet,
(23:44):
even though I think it clearly was. And so they
they put them up in some apartments in downtown Seattle,
started their fasting treatment and the vigorous massage, and they
were eating two cups of vegetable broth sounds like basically
canned tomato juice a day.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
I also saw I think Dora later said that they
were made from asparagus tips, spinach, and lettuce. A broth
made from that, yeah, veggie broth. Yeah, so not anything
that you could possibly even remotely get full off of yet,
like you said, I think a cup twice a day, Yeah,
that's just yeah, So you're going to lose weight very quickly.
(24:24):
And this was like forty plus days of fasting. That
hazard was prescribing to her patients, right, And so I
think both of the Williamson sisters made it to fifty
days before they were transferred to Wilderness Heights. They didn't walk,
they were on stretchers. That's how they got to Wilderness
(24:46):
Heights from their apartments in downtown Seattle.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Yeah, and I mean from what I can tell. They
weren't screaming on the way like get me help. Like
it feels like they were either all in still on
this or just so out of it at this point
they didn't know any better, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Yes, or they were asking for help, but they were
asking for it, like Stevie from Malcolm in the Middle,
where they were like, get help.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
It was pretty good, Stevie.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Did you watch the reboot of that?
Speaker 2 (25:21):
No reboot. I can't give me one reboot that was
as good as the original or even close.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah. I can't bring any reboots to mine at all,
so I don't know. But you're you're pretty much right,
like even the great Kids in the Hall, Like it
was just okay, right. I kind of want to watch
the Malcolm in the Middle one though, Oh oh, you
haven't seen it either, No, but I heard it was
pretty good.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Actually all right, But is Frankie Munis has his voice changed?
Speaker 1 (25:51):
No, it's exactly the same. And so it was what's
his face?
Speaker 2 (25:55):
What was his name, Stevie, Stevie, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, I couldn't remember. I just remember Cranston was so great.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah, and his daughter's great too. We've said it before.
We'll say it again on the Pit. Doctor mel Is
Brian Cranston's daughter, and she does it great to him.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Yeah, I think we said that live on stage. I
don't think the listening public knows that you are now
on the pit.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yeah, but apparently it just stopped, like they just stopped
putting out episodes. But that last episode does not end
in any way that anyone would ever end the season
of TV. Oh you think, Yeah, Like, Noah Wiley didn't
leave yet. I don't even think as Buddy fully agreed
to getting the treatment he's supposed to get. What's going
(26:40):
on with Ali? Sheemi? Like the last thing we saw
is she just kind of had a meltdown in her car.
There's just all the stuff's up in the air.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
But oh, I think that was the purpose. I think
it just was cliffhanger after cliffhanger.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Okay, yes, I can get cliffhangers. But it's almost like
it just petered out rather than cut it, like they
just cut all right, disagree? All right, Well, I was
surprised that that was how they ended it.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
We just spoiled some stuff, by the way.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Oh yeah, we should probably Well, we.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Didn't say anything huge. No Wiley didn't leave, big deal. Okay,
all right, does he ever leave?
Speaker 2 (27:18):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
That's what I just need to go, like, he's never
he never leaves, he comes over, he overstays, is welcome.
Everyone's like, when's this guy gonna get on SMO and
drive out of Here's true? All right, I feel like
we're really off the rails now. We should take a
break and come back. Yes, yeah, all right, we'll be
right back all right where we left you. So, Noah
(28:00):
Wiley had not left yet the pit. No, I'm sorry.
We left the sisters in pretty bad condition. It was
about fifty days into their treatment. They were obviously in really,
really bad shape, having traveled by stretcher to Alaala Woods
and Claire died seventeen days after they got to the compound.
(28:21):
There in the forest. She and this is like very
triggering and super upsetting, so I'm issuing a warning here.
But she weighed less than fifty pounds when she passed,
and Hazard's own autopsy once again determined she died of
a liver disease that came from a childhood medical treatment
that caused her organs to shrink, and when her the
(28:43):
governess showed up, Margaret Conway, you know, finally arrived. She
told her that and she was like, I basically raised
these kids and she didn't have any childhood medical treatment
that caused her organs to shrink.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Yeah, and we should just say that Margaret Conway, her governess,
who we talked about earlier, she got a cable from
one of them. I can't remember if it was Dora
or Claire.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Probably Dora, I think it was Dora.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Yeah, it just basically saying like, please come, here's the
ship you want to take, here's where we are. Just
get here. And Margaret Conway just dropped everything. And within
a month she had traveled from Australia to Seattle. That's
how long it took.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah, but I mean she was welcomed. I mean Samuel
met her in Seattle and said, all right, let's get
on the train. We're going to show you this operation.
Like it's pretty sad what's happening, but like we have
a top notch practice here. And they brought her to
the mortuary to see Claire and she was like, that's
(29:41):
not Claire, whoever this body is. And I get the
impression that it wasn't like she so emaciated. I didn't
recognize her like I think they tried to pull the
fast one on her.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yeah, there was rumors, I guess that the local mortuary
was in cahoots with the Hazards and that they would
switch out bodies that weren't amazing heated who had nothing
to do with Wilderness Heights. Yeah, the emaciated bodies of
their victims so that family wouldn't be like, I think
you starved my mom to death. Right, So Margaret Conway
(30:14):
was not in any way, shape or form put off
by Samuel Hazzard's charm or Linda Hazard's authority, like she
realized like that they had killed Claire. One of the
dead giveaways was that Linda Hazard was wearing one of
Claire's robes and her favorite hat when she received Margaret
(30:35):
Conway at the at the Wilderness Heights at their cottage,
and that I think immediately rubbed Margaret Conway the wrong way.
And she was like, I give me Dora. I'm taking
Dora home and Linda and Samuel said not so fast.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Yeah, while Dora was in the same shape, she weighed
about fifty pounds, was barely alive at this point, and
so yeah, she asked for and the hazards are like,
actually where the executor of her estate. She is under
our legal guardianship forever, and my husband Samuel has power
of attorney over all of her in the family's financial matters.
(31:14):
And not only that is you've got a medical bill
you need to pay. You owe us two grand.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
It's about seventy k today.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Margaret Conway is like, well, I don't have seventy grand.
I have no idea how to overturn a legal guardianship.
But it just so happened that Claire and Dora's uncle,
John Herbert, was just up in Portland, not very far away,
even back in nineteen eleven, nineteen ten, down in Portland. Yeah,
(31:43):
oh yeah, you're sorry. Go to be right, No, one
hundred percent, it is I have which show we did backwards?
Usually we do Seattle first and then Portland. Right, yeah, okay,
So anyway, John Herbert was down in Portland, and Margaret
Conway got in touch with him as I need your help,
like these Claire's been killed and Dora was in big trouble,
(32:05):
She's about to die, and these two hucksters have like
all sorts of legal mumbo jumbo going on. And John
Herbert got involved. He's like, I'm a man and this
is the Edwardian era. So everybody listened to me, and
that's when things started moving.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yeah, for sure, Samuel Hazard did produce a document. It
was a typewritten statement that he said, Claire, you know,
dictated this to us on her deathbed, but she didn't
sign it because she was too weak to sign it.
Because of the whole you know, liver issue. I said
to my relatives and friends, I'm writing the statement to
say that Dora and I entered on this course of
treatment only after thorough investigation, that we have continued it voluntarily,
(32:45):
and that if death occurs, I believe that it is
inevitable that it would have come in any circumstances, which
is like, I mean, it sounds like a child wrote
that to get out of being in trouble, you.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Know, right exactly. So, I mean, just that last line
about if she dies it was inevitable anyway, just so
smacks of Linda Hazard's philosophy that you can't starve to death. Yeah,
it was just very clearly fake. So John Herbert gets involved.
Thanks to Margaret Conway, they find get this. The vice
(33:18):
counsel of the British embassy in Tacoma. Let all that
sink in for a second. They get them involved, and
they get the guardianship overturned. Herbert gets the two thousand
dollars unpaid bill negotiated down to one thousand dollars and
essentially pays a ransom for Door to be released. And
(33:42):
in the meantime, once he has Dora back, he starts
looking into some of these other patients and finds like
Dora and Claire were far from the only victims who
were essentially had been exploited financially while they were out
of their minds from starvation.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Yeah, for sure. So it's, you know, just like the
movie scene is starting to sort of add up in
his head, and he brings this evidence into the authorities
there in the county and they investigate obviously, and Linda
Hazard was arrested for murder for I think murder in
the first degree of Claire Williamson and for obvious financial fraud.
(34:19):
And it was a you know, you said earlier, it
was sensational. It was a big deal, international press. You know,
first they had to find out where the Olala Woods
was and then they came there and started covering this case,
and she was known as the Starvation Doctor. I think
they started calling her place Starvation Heights instead.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Of what was it, Wilderness Heights.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Yeah, Wilderness Heights, Yes, it's pretty good one. And they
you know, there's a lot of speculation flying around, like
you know that she had this hold over people, that
was rumors that she may have been hypnotizing them to
keep them under her hold. But like you mentioned earlier,
there still are and certainly back then had people their
former patients or wealthy benefactors or other naturopaths that were like, hey,
(35:05):
you know, she's a woman practicing outside the box medicine
and that's why she's being prosecuted.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Yes, we should say that it actually took a lot
of leaning on the Kitsap County prosecutor where Wilderness Heights
was located, to actually prosecute this crime, because again, she
had a lot of local support and there were a
lot of people who are like, she's being persecuted by
these Brits who are like total out of towners, and
(35:35):
they're being supported by vocal people from the American Medical
Association who want only doctors to practice their way and
basically this woman's being persecuted that as a witch essentially,
so she did have a lot of supporters, but she
had a lot of detractors too. It seems like, on balance,
(35:57):
at least as far as the press is concerned, she
was generally viewed as a murderer and a grifter. I guess,
a grifting murderer, terrible combination.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah. I think the first thing she said was this,
the first guy that came at me was an ambassador
stationed in Tacoma, Tacoma. Everyone does that sound remotely believable?
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Right? It does sound kind of made up.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
So January fifteenth, nineteen twelve, the trial starts. They lay
out their evidence basically, which was all pretty obvious, like
she's trying to fleece these people of money when they
have no control over their own senses. And I think
I had about one hundred people testify for the prosecution.
There were lots of doctors, you know, being paraded up
(36:44):
there as expert witnesses. And Dora even took the stand
and talked about this scene basically near the end where
she was bedside and Claire is trying to whisper Stevie
style something to Dora like her sister as she's passing essentially,
(37:04):
and every time she tried to speak miss Hazard or
missus Hazzard as as she called him, she kept talking
and I couldn't hear. Like she would lean in and
she'd say Dory, and she would interrupt and say how
did you spell that name again, and like she would
not let her. I mean, this is one of the
most upsetting parts. Like she wouldn't even let her sister
(37:26):
perhaps even say goodbye. Who knows what she was trying
to say.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Yeah, and apparently also, I guess doctor Hazard cut in
and was like, I'm going to give Claire one of
my famous massagists and pressed down so hard that Claire
lost consciousness. And shortly after that, Dora was told that
Claire had died. And so, yeah, those probably would have
been her last words to her that Linda Hazzard basically
(37:51):
interrupted on purpose.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Yeah, I think she actually died, Dora. I found out
she died the next morning, so she didn't get that chance.
Later either, the defensive course comes in and said that
you know it wasn't the treatment. She didn't die of starvation.
That's when Linda Hazard very famously says, you know, it's
not possible to starve someone to death. And you know,
(38:15):
Trot's out her book in the middle of court and
says here, read this, and this is the quote from
the book. Death in the fast never results from deprivation
of food, but is the inevitable consequence of vitality sapped
to the last degree by organic imperfection. Right. I mean,
that's quackery, if like nineteenth century quackery, if I've ever
(38:36):
heard it, you know for sure.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
But I mean it is technically true, like you die
from your organs failing, but your organs get their vitality
from the food that you're not getting. So it's kind
of like potato potato essentially. Yes, it is. It's a
pretty glib workaround, I guess. But she stood by that.
She was like, now, you can't die from starvation. That's
(38:59):
why she said. And Claire died from liver disease. That's
why her first patient, Gertrude Young, a first patient to die,
she died from paralysis. It's whatever was wrong with you
ahead of time, that's what killed you, not starvation. I
don't know if Linda Hazard truly believed that there's actually
some evidence at the very end that we'll see, but
(39:22):
that's just so dumb that and I have the impression
that Linda Hazard was not a dumb person at all.
I just can't believe that she believed that.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
I feel like, given the financial piece, I feel like
she knew what she was doing. Okay, that's just my
take on it.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Right. So again, there were some supporters who are like, hey,
you know, like she's being persecuted, and the jury said,
you know what, we're going to split the middle here.
We're going to find her guilty on a charge of
manslaughter not murder, so everybody can be unhappy.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah, basically, she was sentenced to two to twenty hard
labor at Walla Walla Penitentiaria.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
And that wasn't it though, because she appealed the case
and appealed it and appealed it all the way up
to the United States or was it the state Supreme Court?
Speaker 2 (40:19):
No, the US Supreme Court.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
From what I am seen, the US Supreme Court took
about eighteen months to get there, and you know, she
had supporter sending in letters the whole time saying to
release her. The state of Washington did revoke her license
to practice medicine, but she did continue to practice two
more deaths happened after Claire Williamson, and then she finally
(40:43):
goes to prison, eventually at Wallawalla.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yeah, so while she's appealing and is out and about
on bail, two more people die. She kills two more people.
That's just crazy. She finally gets to Walla Walla, like
you said, and that two to twenty years. It's what's
known as an indeterminate sentence, like you have to serve
at least a minimum, but you're not going to serve
beyond twenty right. So she was in there for I
(41:08):
think less than two years before she was paroled. She
very famously knitted ponchos for the other inmates. And when
she did get out, I think within six months she
had been pardoned by the governor of Washington.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Yeah, and you know, it's kind of hard to get
super accurate information for this old time stuff, but I
did see in the Washington archives there was a stipulation
that she had to leave the country if they were
going to let her out. So, regardless of whether or
not that's true, she did leave the country. We'll get
to that in a second. Dora also left the country.
She went back to England and settled down in Gloucester
(41:46):
and you know, lived sounds like a pretty great full
life after that. She got married in nineteen fourteen to
Reverend Wyndham Allen Chaplin and lived to be seventy one
years old. Died in nineteen forty five. So she fully
recovered from her quote unquote treatment, right, and Linda Hazard
went to New Zealand to Hawker Wares.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah, and was very well received there during the trial.
One of her vocal supporters was the Sydney Morning Herald,
I think, or at least some columnists in there. And
she made a ton of money again when she showed
up in New Zealand, Like people just flocked to her
for her treatment. And I think she long said like, hey, yeah,
(42:30):
fifteen people died in my care from the fasting, but
you know I've had hundreds of other patients, So is
that really that bad? And people are like, yeah, it
is kind of bad. But also, you know, most doctors
who lose patients don't also fleece them of their estate.
Like that's really what took it. Like, murder is bad,
(42:53):
murder for profit is really bad.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Yeah, I agree, we're going to rank murder.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Sure, let's just face it. Murder for profit is really bad.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
I agree. I think the piece that you were talking about,
the one additional little piece of information that maybe she
did believe fully believe this stuff, yeh, is that she
herself died from her own treatment June twenty fourth, nineteen
thirty eight, self administering of fasting cure. So you know,
I don't think it was pure hocum in her mind.
I think she probably did believe it to a certain degree,
(43:26):
but I think she took it to extremes to fleece
people for sure.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, that's Linda Hazard.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yeah. There's a book that a lots came from from
nineteen ninety seven. It's called Starvation Heights by a local
named Greg Olsen. So shout out to Greg Olsen in
that book.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
If you can't find it at a sec or a
third g, I guess to the end of Greg Olsen's
name and it should.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Come up that was it, g R e Gg.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Yeah, probably won't come up on a search that's just
g R. E g in Starvation Heights nineteen ninety seven,
but if you add that extra ge, it will definitely
come up.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Yeah, And if you just google greg Olsen, you'll probably
come up with the Atlanta Braves Catcher from the nineteen
nineties or.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Early about him. Yeah, he was a catcher. Huh yeah, Okay,
you got anything else about Greg Olsen, whether you're talking
about the author or the catcher.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
I know he was not a belly scratcher.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
You belly itcher.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
I think scratcher a picture, not a belly atcher. Catcher,
not a belly scratcher.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Oh okay, I've never heard that second part. He just
blew my mind. Buddy. Well, since we started talking about
braves pictures and childhood rhymes, I think it's time for
listener mail.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
That's right. This is from Daniel. Hey, guys, love the
episode of Maple Syrup and all your episodes. You want
to let you know something similar In Australia, there's a
tree called the side agum or the eucalytus gunny nice,
and it produces a similar sweet sap. Guys. I couldn't
find any evidence of it being eaten as is, but
the local Paalawa people of Tasmania let it naturally ferment
(45:13):
to turn it into a cider like drink called Why Elena.
Of course, the tree is now incredibly rare, mostly confined
to one valley in Tasmania due to all the usual
good things I sent sarcasm there. As a white Australian,
I would love for you to do an episode on
bush Tucker. So much knowledge was lost due to colonization
(45:34):
and genocide, but there's still so much amazing information out there.
And that is from Daniel.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Nice. Daniel, thank you have not heard of cidergum tree
no or bushtucker no. So those are really great ideas
and thanks a lot for that. I cannot wait till
we get back to Australia so we can try that
cider bush Tucker?
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Is it food apparently?
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Oh? I think bush tucker is like knowledge. That was
the impression I have.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Well I just look it up and it's called it's
a food, So.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
You know, thanks for that. He just gave me the rope,
didn't you.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Well, I mean I tried to tell you those food.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
Well, I hadn't realized that you looked anything up. I
thought we always discussed before we look things up.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Oh sorry, click any click type type.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Here you go now. I know. If you want to
be like Daniel and send us a great email, we
would love that. You can send it off to Stuff
Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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