December 14, 2023 • 48 mins
The Skeleton Army was a rowdy group of folks in England who battled, sometimes violently, with the Salvation Army - largely against their efforts to keep people from drinking and having a rowdy good time. Listen in today!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, we want to let you know that we
are doing our traditional Pacific Northwest Swing for our live
show next year, in fact, the end of January next year,
very early next year.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And we're starting out in Seattle, Washington on January twenty
fourth at the Paramount Theater. It's huge, that's right, and
then on to Portland on January twenty fifth at Revolution Hall,
the place we always are. It's kind of our home
away from home in Portland. And then we're gonna wrap
it all up at the thing that started the Pacific
Northwest Tour in the first place all those years back.
(00:34):
SF Sketch Fest will be at the Sydney Goldstein Theater
on Friday, January twenty sixth, right, Chuck, that's right.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
And remember you can go to stuff youshould Know dot
com click on tours in order to get to the
correct ticket link or go to the venue page only.
Do not go to scalper sites.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
That's right, and we'll see you guys in January.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Okay, welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Hey you, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck and well I was gonna say Jerry's here,
but that would be a dirty, filthy lie. True, it's here,
it's you and me, chuck.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, it's about to say just like the old days.
But Jerry was around from the beginning. I wasn't around
for the beginning, man.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
So I guess this is a periodical situation we find
ourselves in, just like the periodical situation.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Can I say a couple of quick things here?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
First of all, I want to congratulate listener Corey Wegner
because this topic is from Corey.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Nice way to go, Corey.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah, listener suggestion, which is great. And also want to
officially welcome mister Gibson Bryant into the family, the new puppy.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Oh yeah, he's cute.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
He's Gibson is a was being fostered through the Lifeline
organization that we work with a lot here in Atlanta,
and foster mom Rachel was just wonderful. And Gibson's a
little coonhound shepherd mix and he's awesome mm hm. And
it's great. So far, so good. He's just that he
and the cats they gotta they gotta work it out.
(02:20):
So far it's not great. Oh no, so it just
takes a little time. I figure, you know, a week
or two. Usually is as based on like when we've
dog sat other dogs, because the cats love dogs, are dogs.
But like a new dog comes in and they're like.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, they gotta he has to prove himself to them.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah, they just gotta. You know, they gotta work it out.
It'll take a little time. But he's a very sweet boy.
He's fitting right in.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
He looks like it. I guess you've posted pictures on
your Instagram page.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Uh, yeah, Gibson's on there. Uh, Chuck the podcaster if
you want to check out this handsome little leggy boy.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Nice. Well, welcome Gibson. Congratulations.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
To the stuff you should know family, the stuff you
should know army. I see where this is going. It is.
I normally would have just left it at yes, the
stuff you should know family. But the reason the stuff
you should know army ties into this because we're talking
about armies, but fake armies. When believe it or not,
the stuff you should know army is a fake army.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Oh really, there's not a lot.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Of like international conflict or killing or shooting of machine
guns with the stuff you should know armies. So yes,
I would say it's a fake army.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Well, what's the very definition of army? I don't even know.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
A group that engages in international conflicts and kills and
shoots machine guns.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Actually, well, no, it can be a large number of
people organized for a purpose, like an army of photographers.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
I guess, so I think those are called gaggles.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Though, Okay, he's in the photograph first.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Okay, no offensemen. Of course, who are great people at
the stuff you should know? Army because of course the greatest. Yeah,
so there are other armies that are who's patterns of
killing are questionable at best, And that includes both the
Salvation Army, but less so the Skeleton Army, because if
(04:20):
any of the groups I've just mentioned just now bore
the closest resemblance to an army, it would be the
Skeleton Army probably.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
And this is when I had not even heard of
until Cory Wegner sent this in same and so yeah,
I just thought we should dive in a little bit
on the Salvation Army first, probably right.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yeah, I'm sure people are like, well, guys, what are
you talking about with the Salvation Army? Just wait, hold
your horses please.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Yeah, you've probably heard of the Salvation Army. They are,
I mean, they're an international organization at this point, right.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yes, they have been doing it since the eighteen seventies,
believe late eighteen seventies, and their mission is to basically
combat poverty where it's at, like they go to where
poverty is at, and apparently in the United States alone
they serve twenty three million people a year, so they're
(05:15):
doing some significant work. And I don't want to walk
past the fact that they're also a pretty controversial organization,
especially today. They're a Christian organization, a Protestant Christian organization
at its core from their founding, so they have sometimes
unfriendly views or have held unfriendly views towards LGBTQ plus community.
(05:42):
And now they've kind of revised it to say like, yeah,
we don't mind, just don't tell us that you're gay.
You can come work with us anytime you want. And
that's not quite enough. But at the same time, there's
people who are on the conservative Christian right who are like,
that's too far. So the Salvation Army finds itself in
a very ticklish pause right now, and I just that
(06:02):
doesn't have anything to do with this particular episode, but
I think it'd be kind of disingenuous to just not
mention that at all.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah, they were founded by a gentleman named George Booth.
He was born in England and Nottingham in eighteen twenty
nine and was a Methodist preacher at first and was
you know, the picture I get of George Booth from
kind of reading up on him is that he kind
of from the start was a bit of a rabble
(06:30):
rouser within the church as far as, like, you know,
he was into street preaching. He was frustrated with the
sort of formalities of the church, the hierarchies of the church.
Probably felt like, you know, the church isn't helping the
people that are most in need. Was maybe a little
too disconnected from poverty and like the real people out
(06:54):
on the streets, and so that was sort of his
It seems like he was charged from the like within
himself to do something bigger than just be a standard
Methodist preacher.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I get the impression you kind of
touched on it that he probably viewed the church as
an institution as really detached from the people who needed
it's helped most. So he started an organization. He decided
to kind of go help people where they're at. So
he started street preaching, apparently based on American revivalists of
(07:28):
the early nineteenth century, and like he would just stand
on the street corner and preach, and so too would
his wife. This is a time where if you were
super religious like this and you said women can preach too,
and let's go help the poor directly. That was deeply
progressive at the time in England. England was so ridiculously
(07:49):
stodgy conservative that I read about a magazine that in
its inaugural edition promised that it would do nothing to
to help along this morbid desire for change, that they
were just going to keep things exactly the way that
they were and that's what the establishment wanted. People like
George Boother like, that's not working for a whole, huge
(08:12):
segment of society.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, his wife, Catherine Mumford when they married, played a
big part, played a big part in this whole story. Actually,
so you can kind of put a no, don't put
a pin in her. She's there.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
I can the skeleton army putting a pin on her.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
No pens or maybe flinging a dead rat her way.
So in eighteen as a story goes. At least in
eighteen seventy eight, he was dictating a letter and he said,
the Christian Mission is a volunteer army, capital C, capital M.
And then he said no, no, no, strike that and
perhaps struck it himself and crossed out volunteer and wrote
(08:51):
down Salvation a Salvation Army, And that was sort of
you know, Salvation Army is so ubiquitous, especially on Christmas
time in the United States when they you will people
I think generally sort of associate Salvation Army with either
dropping off clothes and toys that you don't want at
(09:11):
a Salvation Army store, or buying things from a Salvation
Army store, or around Christmas when they have Santa claus
is ringing that bell with that kettle outside and they
are asking people to donate their spare change or what
have you.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Yes, And if you know, by Christmas time you get
annoyed at that ringing of the bell that you hear
all the time, count your lucky stars that you weren't
born in England in the eighteen seventies, because you would
have been super annoyed by the Salvation Army at that time.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Yeah. Absolutely, And that was sort of my deal with
the Salvation Army. That's how I knew them, and I
knew they did, you know, obviously a lot of charitable works.
But I didn't really ever stop to think about the
whole army thing, the military aspect, because when I earlier said,
like an army can be just a collection of people,
that wasn't how they meant it. Like they meant it
(10:06):
as in, you know, not we're going to take up arms.
But they gave themselves, they wore uniforms, they gave themselves
military ranks. Booth named himself the General, and it became like,
I think their newspaper was called the War Cry. Their
initiation creed were called the Articles of War. So they
really sort of, I don't want to say, leaned into.
(10:27):
I'm really trying to stop.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Saying that they were army forward.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah, they were very army forward in a sort of
militaristic sense, but again not like hey, we're gonna, you know,
start a real war. But they were just like we're
warriors for Christ. Basically.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yeah, to be initiated, you had to kill a man
with your bare hands. They were pretty serious about the
army thing. Yeah, But the reason that they were so
into the army. That was part of the zeitgeist at
the time. This is the Victorian Age, the English at
its peak at the time, and the English Empire got
that way because of the military. So the military is
(11:06):
highly regarded, so it kind of made sense to kind
of go with that. It'd be like today, Oh boy,
it'd be like fashioning yourself after the swifties. If you
were founding like a new rescue mission organization, I would
messle them. No, you would, you would not. So he
(11:27):
had he established this in pretty short order. He started
to use the Salvation Army to just it was set
up to achieve his aims. And his aims we've kind
of touched on a little bit, but they're pretty straightforward.
The biggest one really is if you want to help
poor people, go to the poor people and help them directly.
(11:50):
That's how you help poor people. That's just what you
have to do. You have to get your hands dirty.
As it was, that was pretty much the foundation of
the Salvation Army and it can tell. It's a big
part of it still today.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah, absolutely, which is great. Their mantra was soup soap salvation.
In other words, you know, help feed the poor, help
I mean soap. I don't think they literally meant to
help clean them, but they may have just sort of to.
I think that sort of stood for lift people out
(12:23):
of poverty and and also bring them to Christ. I
mean that was a big part of it. We can't
ignore that. And as who say, what.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Bring them to? Who?
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Christ? Jesus Christ?
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Oh, oh Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
I got to do you think I met Jimmy Christ, Billy,
I don't think so. I think Christ would be run
out of town on a rail.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
House pronounced people would say Christ these days? Right?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Sure? Sure?
Speaker 1 (12:51):
I mean that that's got to be a last name.
See h R I S T.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Yes. If we have any listeners out there, who that's
your last name and you go by Christ, please right in.
We want to hear all about your life.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, especially if it's Jimmy Christ. I would love to
know you. And another big part is, especially as it
pertains to the Skeleton Army, who will learn about here
in a minute, is that alcohol is bad. They were
way way into the Temperance movement and alcohol was just
a big, big evil and that would factor really, really
(13:23):
heavily into the goings on between the Salvation Army and
the Skeleton Army.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yes, they also well, like we said, women can preach.
That was very radical, very progressive at the time. And
they also were super into music. I don't I know,
I didn't see why. I guess General Booth himself was
particularly into music, because again, this whole, this whole organization
seems like an extension of him and his wife as well.
(13:50):
I don't want to just call her that. Catherine. Yeah, yeah,
Catherine's views as well. I think they kind of jibed
really well together.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
But they're into the same bands exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
There was a quote that's often attributed to George Booth
that may or may not have been said by him,
but it fits. It's why should the devil have all
the best tunes? And I'm pretty sure he was making
a failed reference to Black.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Sabbath right and eventually Striper. No, he would have been
way into Striper.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
I was reading about them the other day. I can't
believe I didn't tell you this, did you? How far
did you follow them? When did you leave off from Striper?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
When did I leave the Striper Army? Yesh? I you know,
as I sort of transitioned out of going to church,
So that would have been like middle high school.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
So they were still doing like the Black and Yellow.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yellow and Black Attack. Yes, I think that was the
name of one of their records. Yeah, I mean they
were still around. I think this was right before they
had their They had a like a secular ballad hit.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Okay, yes, so that's yes. They they you transition and
shortly after that they transitioned, and they left all that
god stuff behind and released a couple of albums and
if they did not do very well, and I think
they were pretty surprised. They thought, well, we'll just go
more mainstream, and it didn't work. They were more successful
(15:18):
mainstream wise as a Christian Christian forward metal band than
they were as like a regular metal band.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah. The Sweet Brothers is that who they were? Yeah,
Michael and Matthew Sweet.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Like Matthew Sweet, I want you to be my girlfriend,
Matthew Sweet.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
No, in fact, maybe it wasn't Matthew. Maybe I'm conflating,
but I know Michael Sweet was.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
I think he was the singer, Okay, Michael Sweet and
then I think the drummer was Jimmy.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Christ Actually, oh man, I remember some of those names
I don't remember, or maybe the drummer was the other brother.
I remember he played sideways. Oh that's awesome, which is interesting.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Do you still have the action figures?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
No, I don't know if I still have that record,
I'll have to look through my vinyl.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Yeah, I was into that for a little while.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Okay, well, at any rate, I don't Yeah, I just
I don't remember how I was reading about Stripper, but
I was reading all about their career the other day.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
How easy to fall into a Striper rabbit hole.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah, so, yeah, they were into music. The thing is
is and they wanted to use music, not Striper. We're
talking back about the Salvation Army. Although they Striper wanted
to do the same thing. They wanted to use music
to get God's message across. Absolutely unlike Striper, they had
zero musical talent, but were very happy to be as
(16:40):
loud as possible. So you know the image you have
of like temperance people and like kind of old, like
goody two shoes Christians in the nineteenth century banging on
a huge drum, singing songs about Jesus and all that. Sure,
that is based in reality. That was a Salvation Army
and everyone who wasn't in the Salvation Army loathed them
(17:03):
for that.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yeah, it was pretty annoying if you were enjoying a
pint in a pub and the Salvation Army came around.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, because in addition to going to the poor, where
the poor were, they figured, if you want to save sinners,
go to where the sinners are. So they would storm
into pubs and start singing religious hymns at the top
of their lungs, banging drums like telling people they were
going to hell. And these people are just trying to unwind,
you know, after a hard day's work at the docks,
(17:30):
or who knows.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Well, they had no job and they were just getting loaded.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, or they're celebrating a promotion at the docks. I
don't know. The thing is they did not want to
hear that at the time, and even if you weren't
in the pubs, just hearing them go down the street
preaching all day Sundays sometimes during the week too. They
really purposefully made a nuisance of themselves because they were
really assertive and hostile almost and shoving their message about
(17:58):
salvation down everyone throat, whether they wanted to hear it
or not.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
All right, I think that sets the stage time for
a break. Yes, for sure, all right, for sure, we'll
be right back after this, you bet, all right. So
(18:45):
the stage is set, the Salvation Army is firmly in place,
and they are going around. Aside from doing great things
for the poor, they are going around and go into
pubs and banging their pots and pans and their drums,
and they're singing all these religious songs and the people
do not like it. So that is the sort of
(19:08):
the position that they're in at this point. So what
forms is what's called the Skeleton Army to literally combat
the Salvation Army. Ed helped us out with this one.
And there's I would argue that there aren't two origins.
There's one origin. But the sort of second part of
(19:28):
the origin story we'll get to. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 2 (19:32):
It's fair but confusing? Sure?
Speaker 1 (19:34):
All right. Well, the first, you know, basically how they
formed is what we've been talking about. They were literally
just annoyed at the Salvation Army coming around telling them
not to drink, singing songs and loudly preaching and disrupting
their pub time. And so the initial sort of response
(19:55):
was just jeering at them, won't you sit down and
have a be that kind of thing, being very sarcastic,
and then things started just to escalate, sort of little
by little, because these were drunks basically, and when you're
someone engaging a drunk and telling them not to drink,
(20:15):
that's not going to go over too well, and timpers
will genuinely flare at some point.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, for sure. I think we said the Salvation Army
set itself up in eighteen seventy eight. By eighteen seventy nine,
the first newspaper account of a clash between the Salvation
Army and people who hated the Salvation Army made it
into a newspaper. I think there was an incident in Liverpool,
and this is not the first incident. This is just
the first incident that got written up in the paper.
(20:43):
And the reason it got written up is because there
was a riot. A riot. People hated what the Salvation
Army was doing so much that they would often trigger
riots whenever they started doing their marches, and they were
roundly blamed for this like at the time, as we'll see,
it kind of came out differently in the end, but
(21:04):
everyone blamed them for just existing and doing what they
were doing. They felt that the Salvation Army was responsible
for the riots that the people who were against the
Salvation Army would carry out when the Salvation Army came around.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, exactly. So seventy nine, like you said, was the
first noted one in Liverpool, and then you know, if
you read contemporaneous accounts, which we did of the time,
they just started popping up here and there. In March
of eighty one in the East End of London there
were some guys leaving a pub and they beat up
(21:41):
a bunch of Salvation Army I guess what would they
be called soldiers?
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Okay. There were some Salvationist women which they were called
Hallelujah lasses was a nickname, that were entrapped with some
rope by the crowd. They were getting hot coals thrown
at them, and this sort of played out how it
played out in most places. Things got pretty ugly. When
I joked about throwing dead rats at them, I wasn't kidding.
(22:10):
That was a real thing that they did. Apparently dead
rats and live cats in at least one instance.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yeah, there was another instance where there was a guy
who was testifying during a Salvation Army meeting and forty
people with chamber pots stormed the meeting and dumped urine
all over the man. Yeah, that happened. They were in
their own meeting. They weren't even out on the street
or in a pub. That's how hated these people were.
(22:37):
They would be physically assaulted, they would have they would
have just all sorts of stuff thrown at them, in
addition to dead rats, dead fish, and there were plenty
of accounts of not just men, but also women and
even children being assaulted by the crowds. Like you said,
the Hallelujah lasses were basically roped with hot coals thrown
(22:58):
at them. There was a count somewhere that said between
twelve months. This would have been in the probably the
early eighteen eighties. Across England, six hundred and sixty nine Salvationists,
two hundred and fifty one of those were women, were
quote knockdown, kicked or brutally assaulted. Fifty six buildings of
the army were stormed and partially wrecked. That was another
(23:19):
thing that people against the Salvation Army they like to do.
They like to try to burn down their meeting halls,
sometimes while they were in it. And then eighty six Salvationists.
Fifteen of them women were thrown in prison. So like
it was a it was a really like hardcore thing
to go out and do as a Salvation Army soldier.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Yeah, oh absolutely, and so yeah, I hope he didn't
paint it as too light of a brush like Oh
they would just sort of you know, yell at them
and jeer at them and throw dead rats and things.
They got physically violent. It was not a good scene
the Salvation Army for their part, when you mentioned the music,
one thing that they were fond of and they still
(24:01):
do that today in England, is they take popular songs
and change the words at like soccer games, at their
football games, like these old school like pub sing alongs,
they would change it to their local pub or their
local football team or whatever. And so the history of
just changing lyrics, I mean, I say, it's a little
lazy quite honestly. Maybe write a new song altogether, but
(24:24):
that's okay, sure, But they would do that. The Salvation
Army would do that. So they would take popular pub songs,
change up the lyrics to suit them and their Christian message.
Ed dug up some of the titles that were pretty great.
Oh every Land is filled with sin is not bad.
My favorite is the Devil in Me. We can't agree.
(24:44):
I hate him and he hates me.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
It sounds like agreement, so you know that's true now
that to think about it.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
But this is what's going on. Like this only angered
the people in the pubs even more because they're like,
those are our songs, and there are, hey, let's get drunk,
so songs that we sing together. Don't change them around
and sing them in our face because you know I
might assault you or dump urine on your head.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yeah. There was another song that kind of gets across
the Salvation Army sentiments about the places they were visiting.
It's called out of the Gutters, we Pick Them. And
I read that there was resentment among a lot of
the lower working class groups who were getting visited by
these people being helped out with their poverty strickenness, who
(25:29):
were like, this is my neighborhood that you're talking about
and singing about is the gutter. So they offend They
managed to offend an annoy essentially everybody. And yet what
was really interesting about this is that they started to grow,
Like each Sunday there'd be more and more of them
and more and more of them, and they would like
(25:51):
their meeting halls would get bigger and bigger because there
were more Salvation Army members who had joined, who had
been picked out of the gutter, or who had said
I'm giving up the devil drink or whatever reason, had
decided to join the Salvation Army and were now the
very people who were annoying their former.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Selves, yeah, or their friends.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Man, I'll bet that was uncomfortable, oh man.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
So they had other tactics. The Salvation Army had white uniforms,
so they would try and mar those uniforms in a
number of ways. One is there was a narrow alley
leading to one of their meeting halls, and they would
paint a sticky tar on the alley walls. They would
throw eggs that had blue paint in them. They would then,
(26:38):
in turn, sometimes take the original pub songs that they
had changed Salvation Army into Christian songs back into more
body versions of their Christian songs and sing them back
into them and even mess with their old sort of motto,
which was soup soap. What was the third one? Salvation
(26:59):
soup soap, Salvation to beer, beef, beer and bacca, which
is tobacco.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Which is pretty hilarious.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
So yeah, so people were getting creative, but it was
also truly violent at times.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
It was. And even if it wasn't violent, think about
how annoyed you'd be if you weren't on either side.
Because the people who would give the greatest resistance and
in hostility toward the Salvation Army were the exact same
people that would do this in a pub today, twenty
somethings who are like already feeling pretty rowdy, probably the
(27:33):
drunkest of the people in the pub. Yeah, imagine just
being like us, Chuck, We're just trying to have like
a beer in a booth, and not only is the
Salvation Army going off, but now it's being doubly amplified
because the other people, these hooligans, are essentially pushing back
just as loud, if not louder, I would just be like,
shut up.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Well, that's why we end up in a coffee house.
And then we've lost all credibility as cool guys.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Could we end up in a coffeehouse and we just
bring our own flasks?
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Right? Oh, there you go. We just regained some credibility.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Did we ever have credibility as cool guys, I did.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
How about you?
Speaker 2 (28:11):
I did not. Yeah, I did not.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah, I'm a cool guy, and I know other cool guys.
You've always been a cool guy.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Man, I did not.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
So we should talk a little bit about Susannah Beattie.
She was a captain in the Salvation Army who died
in either eighteen eighty one or eighteen eighty two. And
the Salvation Army will say, and there are some contemporaneous
accounts too that we saw in newspapers and stuff, where
(28:41):
she was essentially killed by the Skeleton Army. She was beaten.
I saw in one of the newspapers that said she
was kicked in her wound.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
I was hoping you weren't going to say that. That
is so tough to hear even.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
It is well. And I don't know if that implies
that she was pregnant, because I didn't see that.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
I don't know. I think that what they were saying
is she probably internal bleeding from the inter abdomen from
those injuries.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
I couldn't quite tell. But at the you know, at
the end of the day, she was killed by this
Skeleton Army, which is you know, horrific, and the Salvation
Army today names her and celebrates her as their first martyr. Also,
some Skeleton Army member was killed by a cop I
think was cracked in the head with a baton.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
That's a Skeleton Army guy, right.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Yeah, a Skeleton Army guy. But this sort of thing
didn't happen much in terms of the Skeleton Army and
the police, because it seems like the police in almost
every case was anti Salvation Army, and it looks like it,
depending on where you were and what was going on
and who the particular cop was, may have even sort
(29:49):
of helped things along or you know, let the Skeleton
Army go and maybe aided them a little bit in
a lot of these riots.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah, we kind of touched on it earlier that the
establishment wanted things just as they were. They didn't like
this progressive, hostile Christian group like organizing the working classes, right,
so they were since they were already in charge, they
were basically, if not directly, informing the courts and the
(30:19):
police like not to intervene against the Skeleton Army. And certainly,
if anything, if you're going to arrest anybody, arrest those
rabbele rousers the Salvation Army. So they had no formal
structural protection. Essentially, the cops is if they did anything,
they usually arrested the Salvation Army members. Most of the
time they didn't do anything because the power structure in
(30:42):
each town was pretty much diametrically opposed to the Salvation Army.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah. Absolutely. And then in that one article that you
sent from back then, it seems like a lot of
these counter protests, if you want to call them that,
or these were either brewery owners or brewery owners and
their employees. So it kind of became like a literal
(31:10):
war against like temperance and alcohol. It was so heavily
intertwined because these brewers were like, we don't want these
people come in here, and you know the writings on
the wall of what's going on in America, and we're
not going to have a prohibition. So the brewers and
their employees are like fighting back against these people preaching
against alcohol.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yeah, and again I don't want to like underestimate the
impact that these the idea that they were organizing the
working class had on scaring the upper class as well,
because at the time, if you were you know, wealthy,
if you had a title like you were in charge,
(31:50):
if you were working class, you were not in charge.
You could just the best you could hope for is
that the wealthy would look out for you when they
were making laws, which probably didn't work out very much.
So that was a big part of it too. And
then also even Protestants didn't like them, because remember George
Booth was like, I don't like this church hierarchy stuff.
I'm just going to go start preaching on the coroner.
(32:12):
That was very much carried into the Salvation Army. So
the Protestant churches, the Methodists in particular, were like, we
don't like you. The Catholic really didn't like them because
there was that whole Catholic Protestant division that dated all
the way back to the sixteenth century. So basically no
one liked the Salvation Army and everyone was essentially working
(32:32):
against them.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Yeah, for sure, depending on I mean, it depends on
kind of where you were and who was there as
to how violent this could get. If there was like
a sort of a younger, more rabble rousing preacher. A
lot of times, especially if it was a woman that
was coming in and leading the charge, things could escalate
(32:55):
a little more quickly. I know, there was a twenty
three year old woman and a captain in the Salvation
Army named Ada Smith, who was really enthusiastic and really
liked to get in the faces of these dudes in
the pubs and other times. You know, it was someone
who maybe wasn't quite as in your face and things
(33:17):
didn't go quite as sideways. Apparently if it was a
tourist town or a port town had a lot to
do with it too, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
For sure, because if it was a tourist town, you
don't want like the Salvation Army running around telling everybody
they're going to hell. That's not good for tourism, so
they're actually directly affecting people's livelihoods. That's one. If the
support town, there's probably a lot of drinking going on,
so the people in the town don't want to hear
that it was. If it was a like say a
(33:47):
country town suburb of London, it was probably a little
more genteel. I get the impression that the more rough
and tumble the populace, the more incidents of violence the
Salvation Army faced. But also I don't want to make
it sound like they weren't triggering people. They definitely were
(34:09):
that Captain Ata Smith. You mentioned she was in Worthing,
and Worthing was essentially ground zero for riots that took
place in the mid eighteen eighties, like straight up riots
where the people were attacking the town hall because they're
so upset about the Salvation Army being around. Like they
were provoking people. For sure, I'm not blaming them for
(34:33):
riots like as we'll see in a minute that they were,
but they definitely were provoking people intentionally as well.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Should we take another break, Yeah,
all right, we'll take our second break, and we'll talk
about the sort of where these guys might have come
from on the Skeleton Army side to begin with.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
So, skeleton Army is kind of this formalized term for
the groups of people who essentially organized to try to
beat the Salvation Army out of town, do whatever they
could to get rid of them, including lots and lots
of violence, and again trying to burn down their meeting
halls and stuff. And there's a historian named, I think
(35:53):
John Hare who wrote an article in nineteen eighty eight
and folklore that ed found where he basically as there's
a really high likelihood that the Skeleton Armies actually grew
out of what are called the bonfire boys or bonfire clubs,
(36:13):
who would celebrate the fifth of November, not the fifth
of May, but the fifth of November in the same
way that people used to celebrate Devil's Night in Detroit
by just burning down everything in sight and marching and
just causing trouble and getting super drunk.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Yes, and as a we'll probably do one on this
in full at some point, but remember, remember the fifth
of May. We're laughing because Josh said May, and we
cut it out or did we leave it in?
Speaker 2 (36:45):
I think we cut it out.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
I guess we'll see. The fifth of November goes back
to if anyone has ever seen the movie v for Vendetta,
so good with Natalie Portman. Good movie peers, Yeah, of course, no, yeah,
it was Sky Pierce right.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
No, it was the weird clone guy from the Matrix him.
Oh he was, Yeah, he was the dude.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
The mister Unders. Yes, yeah, what's Hugh? What's the guy's name?
In sixteen oh five, there were Catholic conspirators who tried
to blow up Parliament because that would have killed the
Protestant King James the First and hope that there would
(37:31):
be a Catholic king to fill that role, to fill
that power vacuum, and England would be, you know, back
to being a Catholic nation after the split from in
fifteen thirty four that you talked about earlier, that King
Henry the Eighth brought about.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
So remember remember the fifth of November. Every November fifth
there was, and I believe still is, just a lot
of sort of celebrations, big parties, big bonds. They would
light tar barrels on fire. It got pretty rowdy, and
like you said, they were called the Bonfire Clubs. And
there are historians and namely that one guy you talked about,
(38:12):
who basically say these guys were still around in the
eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties, and there's a lot of
evidence that kind of shows that they were probably also like, hey,
we've got pitchforks, we've got torches, we have the same
sort of anti establishment attitude, so we'll just sort of
(38:32):
start doing skeleton army stuff as well.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Right. There was actually an eighteen eighty five article in
the Sussex Coast Mercury newspaper that basically said that they
were watching the Skeleton Club, the new Skeleton Club there
in Worthing that had been formed March, and they were
actually using the old bonfire club banner. Like they didn't
even bother to create a new one. They just basically
(38:57):
slapped Skeleton over Bonfire Club. Just to get the point
across here that like these were the exact same people essentially,
they just took their Bonfire Club thing and actually directed
it toward a purpose. It was purposeless before, it was
all celebratory rabble rousing. Now it was we're actually going
to use those same tactics to get the Salvation Army
(39:18):
out of town.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
Yeah, exactly. They the Skeleton Army would usually black their faces.
Sometimes they did wear masks, but to let each other
other know like who they were, they would wear the
color yellow somewhere a lot of times with like a
like a ribbon or some kind or a sunflower to
identify one another. And yeah, it seems like that they
(39:41):
were just basically the same people discuss well not you know,
kind of thinly disguised as the Skeleton Army. And these
things would just happen all over the place in England
until someone would come in read the Riot Act literally
and break it up and say, you know you have
to disperse. Now, sometimes that went okay and sometimes it didn't.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Yeah, so the Riot Act. I didn't actually know the
origin of it, did you. Yeah, Oh, you didn't know
English major, So I didn't realize that. So I'm going
to explain it to people who didn't realize it either. Okay, no,
you should. So when you read somebody the Riot Act,
you're basically like telling them that you don't like how
they're acting, and you give them a warning about if
they act that way any further, they're going to have
(40:26):
their iPhone taken away or something. Right that there is
actually a riot Act from seventeen fourteen, the British Riot Act.
And what you would do is if you were, you know, rioting,
if you were breaking stuff, if you were a rowdy crowd,
the army would come out and read the Riot Act
that basically said you got to stop what you're doing
and disperse or the army's going to make you disperse. Yeah,
(40:47):
and if you didn't disperse after reading the Riot Act,
then the army would be forced to make you disperse.
And these the skeleton armies throughout England, I think more
than once had the Riot Act read and had the
Army called out on them because they were rioting so
hard against the Salvation Army.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Riot Hard is a great album title for Striper, right, yeah,
maybe for the new Striper. Are they still together? Did
you find that out in your deep dive.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
I don't remember where the last album was, but I'm
pretty sure it was in the two thousands, so they
might be. I'm not sure, I don't remember. Sorry.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
I could see them still playing shows with like less
teased hair, but still sort of long and maybe like
a half shaven beard kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Yeah, do you remember when we saw D Snyder? Oh?
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
I can imagine that they probably look a lot like
D Snyder these days compared to how D Snyder used
to look.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Yeah, we were on a talk show. This is back
when people used to call us for some stuff like that. Weirdly,
early on we got way more press and like invites
to be on TV than we do now. With that,
I like it now, Oh no, I totally am. I
don't want to go.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
I like being put out to pasture.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Yeah I do too, But yeah, D Snyder was also
a guest on the show and we and we met
him like not in the green room, but like backstage
or something.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
I would say in passing. Yeah, he was going one way.
We're like, hey, d Snyder just kind of gave us
like a heads up. If I remember correctly.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
I think, and we were on first and I think
our joke at the time was that we opened up
for Twisted Sister. Yeah, this last part that we're going
to talk about, I don't fully fully understand, to be honest.
It has to do with the court system and whether
or not and peaceful assembly and whether or not you
(42:42):
can say, hey, it's a peaceful assembly. If you know
you're going there and you're going to egg on people
that will react in violence, is that still a peaceful assembly?
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Yeah. It ties into what I was saying earlier that
people used to blame the Salvation Army, including the courts,
for inciting riots just from doing their thing. So while
they were loud and they were singing off key and
they were in your face about how you were going
to hell, they were still under English law assembling peaceably.
(43:17):
They weren't breaking stuff, they weren't breaking they weren't breaking
any laws. They weren't hurting anybody like physically or anything
like that. So technically it was a peaceable assembly, but
because almost invariably in some of these towns, when they
showed up and did their thing, a riot would break out.
The Salvation Army was held responsible in the courts for
(43:37):
triggering riots, and they're like, you can't assemble anymore because
you incite riots your very presence. And finally, some appellate
court in the United Kingdom was like, that don't quite
track right. They said something like, what has happened here
is that an unlawful organization has assumed to itself the
right to prevent the appellants and others from lawfully assembling together.
(44:01):
Basically saying that a man may be convicted for doing
a lawful act if he knows that his doing it
may cause another to do an unlawful act. And the
extent of that is that you're not responsible for the
act of another person. It's like, if you trigger somebody
they punch you in the face, they're in trouble for
punching you in the face. You're not in trouble for
triggering them. As much as you despise what the person
(44:24):
might be saying, and they might be saying it right
in your face, you can't hit them. That's breaking the law.
Telling somebody that they're going to hell right in their face,
it's not breaking the law. And so that actually established
precedent in the English speaking world, and I think eighteen
sixty eighteen eighty two Beatty versus Gilbanks established that the
(44:46):
Salvation Army had the right to peaceably assemble even if
it triggered riots. And that really kind of led to
the idea that you can peaceably assemble even if the
people don't want to hear what you have to say
and will riot. It's on the rioters, not on you,
the person provoking them.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Yeah, And I think the question since then has been
the sort of gray area of what constitutes a peaceful assembly?
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Yeah, which is I mean, yeah, if you're like a
young anarchist, are you going to sue the government for
breaking up your peaceable assembly? Probably not, So you're really
kind of at the mercy of whatever mayor police chief
who runs the town that you're assembling in. But there's
a law in or there's a case that's set precedent.
In nineteen seventy seven, National Socialist Party of America versus
(45:36):
Village of Skokie, there was a bunch of Chicago Nazis
that wanted to march in Skokie where that which had
a huge population of Jewish Holocaust survivors, and Skokey said, no,
you can't do that here in The Nazis sued them
and won. They didn't actually ever march, but they won
that case. And it is established that no matter how
reprehensible your views, you have a right to say them America.
(46:00):
It's part of your First Amendment rights. And that that
is what the Blues Brothers are referencing when they said
they hate Illinois Nazis and they drive through that bandstand
and make Henry Gibson and his Nazi friends jump into
the river. That's what they're talking about, is that? Yeah,
that case, that's pretty cool. I thought it was pretty
(46:21):
cool too. Are you got anything else?
Speaker 1 (46:24):
I got nothing else? This is good.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
I thought it was good too. Who was it, Corey?
Speaker 1 (46:29):
That was from Corey? A great suggestion, Corey.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Great suggestion, Corey. And yes, this was a good one, Chuck.
Since Chuck said this was a good one, and I agreed,
I think it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
I'm gonna call this a nice little additional nugget of
info from John. Hey, guys, I was listening to the
episode on the Franklin Expedition. Longtime listener, first time writer.
By the way, in the episode, you collaborated to make
up the pun name for a bad sailor, leadfoot mccan't swim.
I didn't remember that until he wrote it. That was
(47:02):
pretty funny, and it brought up a nugget of effect
I learned a few months ago. I'm not sure if
you were making this joke because of this that you
knew a lot of sailors back in that time couldn't swim,
But you were right. Many sailors back in the day
couldn't swim for a number of reasons. They ranged from
a lack of resources such as warm water and time
in which to learn, to the desire of not to
(47:23):
prolonged suffering, which might happen if you were to find
yourself overboard, like, huh, just go go down. I guess
it's pretty hardcore, pretty hardcore. Sadly, stopping a ship or
going back to save a sailor did not or could
not have happened very often, so drowning might be the
fastest and easiest way to go. Picked up this nugget
from Peter Stark's book a Storia that covered the origins
(47:46):
of Astoria, Oregon being set up as a private trading
colony by John jacob Astor in an attempt to monopolize
the Pacific fur trade. If you're every running low on topics,
this would be a great episode. But I don't expect
your low, so I plan on hearing about it in
about twenty years.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
Yeah, you never know, You never know. Who is great.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
That's from John, He says, thanks for the knowledge.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Yeah, you never know, John, thank you for the knowledge.
We appreciate you a big time.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
That's a good one. Non swimming sailors.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Yeah, I did not see Oregon fur trading coming into
that story, but here we are.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Well, if you want to be like John and get
in touch with us and make a suggestion for an episode,
we'd love that kind of thing. You wrap it up,
spank it on the bottom, and send it off to
Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Dot Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, we want to let you know that we
are doing our traditional Pacific Northwest Swing for our live
show next year, in fact, the end of January next year,
very early next year.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And we're starting out in Seattle, Washington on January twenty
fourth at the Paramount Theater. It's huge, that's right, and
then on to Portland on January twenty fifth at Revolution Hall,
the place we always are. It's kind of our home
away from home in Portland. And then we're gonna wrap
it all up at the thing that started the Pacific
Northwest Tour in the first place all those years back.
(00:34):
SF Sketch Fest will be at the Sydney Goldstein Theater
on Friday, January twenty sixth, right, Chuck, that's right.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
And remember you can go to stuff youshould Know dot
com click on tours in order to get to the
correct ticket link or go to the venue page only.
Do not go to scalper sites.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
That's right, and we'll see you guys in January.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Okay, welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Hey you, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck and well I was gonna say Jerry's here,
but that would be a dirty, filthy lie. True, it's here,
it's you and me, chuck.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, it's about to say just like the old days.
But Jerry was around from the beginning. I wasn't around
for the beginning, man.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
So I guess this is a periodical situation we find
ourselves in, just like the periodical situation.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Can I say a couple of quick things here?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
First of all, I want to congratulate listener Corey Wegner
because this topic is from Corey.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Nice way to go, Corey.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah, listener suggestion, which is great. And also want to
officially welcome mister Gibson Bryant into the family, the new puppy.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Oh yeah, he's cute.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
He's Gibson is a was being fostered through the Lifeline
organization that we work with a lot here in Atlanta,
and foster mom Rachel was just wonderful. And Gibson's a
little coonhound shepherd mix and he's awesome mm hm. And
it's great. So far, so good. He's just that he
and the cats they gotta they gotta work it out.
(02:20):
So far it's not great. Oh no, so it just
takes a little time. I figure, you know, a week
or two. Usually is as based on like when we've
dog sat other dogs, because the cats love dogs, are dogs.
But like a new dog comes in and they're like.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, they gotta he has to prove himself to them.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah, they just gotta. You know, they gotta work it out.
It'll take a little time. But he's a very sweet boy.
He's fitting right in.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
He looks like it. I guess you've posted pictures on
your Instagram page.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Uh, yeah, Gibson's on there. Uh, Chuck the podcaster if
you want to check out this handsome little leggy boy.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Nice. Well, welcome Gibson. Congratulations.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
To the stuff you should know family, the stuff you
should know army. I see where this is going. It is.
I normally would have just left it at yes, the
stuff you should know family. But the reason the stuff
you should know army ties into this because we're talking
about armies, but fake armies. When believe it or not,
the stuff you should know army is a fake army.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Oh really, there's not a lot.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Of like international conflict or killing or shooting of machine
guns with the stuff you should know armies. So yes,
I would say it's a fake army.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Well, what's the very definition of army? I don't even know.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
A group that engages in international conflicts and kills and
shoots machine guns.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Actually, well, no, it can be a large number of
people organized for a purpose, like an army of photographers.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
I guess, so I think those are called gaggles.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Though, Okay, he's in the photograph first.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Okay, no offensemen. Of course, who are great people at
the stuff you should know? Army because of course the greatest. Yeah,
so there are other armies that are who's patterns of
killing are questionable at best, And that includes both the
Salvation Army, but less so the Skeleton Army, because if
(04:20):
any of the groups I've just mentioned just now bore
the closest resemblance to an army, it would be the
Skeleton Army probably.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
And this is when I had not even heard of
until Cory Wegner sent this in same and so yeah,
I just thought we should dive in a little bit
on the Salvation Army first, probably right.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yeah, I'm sure people are like, well, guys, what are
you talking about with the Salvation Army? Just wait, hold
your horses please.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Yeah, you've probably heard of the Salvation Army. They are,
I mean, they're an international organization at this point, right.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yes, they have been doing it since the eighteen seventies,
believe late eighteen seventies, and their mission is to basically
combat poverty where it's at, like they go to where
poverty is at, and apparently in the United States alone
they serve twenty three million people a year, so they're
(05:15):
doing some significant work. And I don't want to walk
past the fact that they're also a pretty controversial organization,
especially today. They're a Christian organization, a Protestant Christian organization
at its core from their founding, so they have sometimes
unfriendly views or have held unfriendly views towards LGBTQ plus community.
(05:42):
And now they've kind of revised it to say like, yeah,
we don't mind, just don't tell us that you're gay.
You can come work with us anytime you want. And
that's not quite enough. But at the same time, there's
people who are on the conservative Christian right who are like,
that's too far. So the Salvation Army finds itself in
a very ticklish pause right now, and I just that
(06:02):
doesn't have anything to do with this particular episode, but
I think it'd be kind of disingenuous to just not
mention that at all.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah, they were founded by a gentleman named George Booth.
He was born in England and Nottingham in eighteen twenty
nine and was a Methodist preacher at first and was
you know, the picture I get of George Booth from
kind of reading up on him is that he kind
of from the start was a bit of a rabble
(06:30):
rouser within the church as far as, like, you know,
he was into street preaching. He was frustrated with the
sort of formalities of the church, the hierarchies of the church.
Probably felt like, you know, the church isn't helping the
people that are most in need. Was maybe a little
too disconnected from poverty and like the real people out
(06:54):
on the streets, and so that was sort of his
It seems like he was charged from the like within
himself to do something bigger than just be a standard
Methodist preacher.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I get the impression you kind of
touched on it that he probably viewed the church as
an institution as really detached from the people who needed
it's helped most. So he started an organization. He decided
to kind of go help people where they're at. So
he started street preaching, apparently based on American revivalists of
(07:28):
the early nineteenth century, and like he would just stand
on the street corner and preach, and so too would
his wife. This is a time where if you were
super religious like this and you said women can preach too,
and let's go help the poor directly. That was deeply
progressive at the time in England. England was so ridiculously
(07:49):
stodgy conservative that I read about a magazine that in
its inaugural edition promised that it would do nothing to
to help along this morbid desire for change, that they
were just going to keep things exactly the way that
they were and that's what the establishment wanted. People like
George Boother like, that's not working for a whole, huge
(08:12):
segment of society.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, his wife, Catherine Mumford when they married, played a
big part, played a big part in this whole story. Actually,
so you can kind of put a no, don't put
a pin in her. She's there.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
I can the skeleton army putting a pin on her.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
No pens or maybe flinging a dead rat her way.
So in eighteen as a story goes. At least in
eighteen seventy eight, he was dictating a letter and he said,
the Christian Mission is a volunteer army, capital C, capital M.
And then he said no, no, no, strike that and
perhaps struck it himself and crossed out volunteer and wrote
(08:51):
down Salvation a Salvation Army, And that was sort of
you know, Salvation Army is so ubiquitous, especially on Christmas
time in the United States when they you will people
I think generally sort of associate Salvation Army with either
dropping off clothes and toys that you don't want at
(09:11):
a Salvation Army store, or buying things from a Salvation
Army store, or around Christmas when they have Santa claus
is ringing that bell with that kettle outside and they
are asking people to donate their spare change or what
have you.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Yes, And if you know, by Christmas time you get
annoyed at that ringing of the bell that you hear
all the time, count your lucky stars that you weren't
born in England in the eighteen seventies, because you would
have been super annoyed by the Salvation Army at that time.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Yeah. Absolutely, And that was sort of my deal with
the Salvation Army. That's how I knew them, and I
knew they did, you know, obviously a lot of charitable works.
But I didn't really ever stop to think about the
whole army thing, the military aspect, because when I earlier said,
like an army can be just a collection of people,
that wasn't how they meant it. Like they meant it
(10:06):
as in, you know, not we're going to take up arms.
But they gave themselves, they wore uniforms, they gave themselves
military ranks. Booth named himself the General, and it became like,
I think their newspaper was called the War Cry. Their
initiation creed were called the Articles of War. So they
really sort of, I don't want to say, leaned into.
(10:27):
I'm really trying to stop.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Saying that they were army forward.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah, they were very army forward in a sort of
militaristic sense, but again not like hey, we're gonna, you know,
start a real war. But they were just like we're
warriors for Christ. Basically.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yeah, to be initiated, you had to kill a man
with your bare hands. They were pretty serious about the
army thing. Yeah, But the reason that they were so
into the army. That was part of the zeitgeist at
the time. This is the Victorian Age, the English at
its peak at the time, and the English Empire got
that way because of the military. So the military is
(11:06):
highly regarded, so it kind of made sense to kind
of go with that. It'd be like today, Oh boy,
it'd be like fashioning yourself after the swifties. If you
were founding like a new rescue mission organization, I would
messle them. No, you would, you would not. So he
(11:27):
had he established this in pretty short order. He started
to use the Salvation Army to just it was set
up to achieve his aims. And his aims we've kind
of touched on a little bit, but they're pretty straightforward.
The biggest one really is if you want to help
poor people, go to the poor people and help them directly.
(11:50):
That's how you help poor people. That's just what you
have to do. You have to get your hands dirty.
As it was, that was pretty much the foundation of
the Salvation Army and it can tell. It's a big
part of it still today.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah, absolutely, which is great. Their mantra was soup soap salvation.
In other words, you know, help feed the poor, help
I mean soap. I don't think they literally meant to
help clean them, but they may have just sort of to.
I think that sort of stood for lift people out
(12:23):
of poverty and and also bring them to Christ. I
mean that was a big part of it. We can't
ignore that. And as who say, what.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Bring them to? Who?
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Christ? Jesus Christ?
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Oh, oh Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
I got to do you think I met Jimmy Christ, Billy,
I don't think so. I think Christ would be run
out of town on a rail.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
House pronounced people would say Christ these days? Right?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Sure? Sure?
Speaker 1 (12:51):
I mean that that's got to be a last name.
See h R I S T.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Yes. If we have any listeners out there, who that's
your last name and you go by Christ, please right in.
We want to hear all about your life.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, especially if it's Jimmy Christ. I would love to
know you. And another big part is, especially as it
pertains to the Skeleton Army, who will learn about here
in a minute, is that alcohol is bad. They were
way way into the Temperance movement and alcohol was just
a big, big evil and that would factor really, really
(13:23):
heavily into the goings on between the Salvation Army and
the Skeleton Army.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yes, they also well, like we said, women can preach.
That was very radical, very progressive at the time. And
they also were super into music. I don't I know,
I didn't see why. I guess General Booth himself was
particularly into music, because again, this whole, this whole organization
seems like an extension of him and his wife as well.
(13:50):
I don't want to just call her that. Catherine. Yeah, yeah,
Catherine's views as well. I think they kind of jibed
really well together.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
But they're into the same bands exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
There was a quote that's often attributed to George Booth
that may or may not have been said by him,
but it fits. It's why should the devil have all
the best tunes? And I'm pretty sure he was making
a failed reference to Black.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Sabbath right and eventually Striper. No, he would have been
way into Striper.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
I was reading about them the other day. I can't
believe I didn't tell you this, did you? How far
did you follow them? When did you leave off from Striper?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
When did I leave the Striper Army? Yesh? I you know,
as I sort of transitioned out of going to church,
So that would have been like middle high school.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
So they were still doing like the Black and Yellow.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yellow and Black Attack. Yes, I think that was the
name of one of their records. Yeah, I mean they
were still around. I think this was right before they
had their They had a like a secular ballad hit.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Okay, yes, so that's yes. They they you transition and
shortly after that they transitioned, and they left all that
god stuff behind and released a couple of albums and
if they did not do very well, and I think
they were pretty surprised. They thought, well, we'll just go
more mainstream, and it didn't work. They were more successful
(15:18):
mainstream wise as a Christian Christian forward metal band than
they were as like a regular metal band.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah. The Sweet Brothers is that who they were? Yeah,
Michael and Matthew Sweet.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Like Matthew Sweet, I want you to be my girlfriend,
Matthew Sweet.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
No, in fact, maybe it wasn't Matthew. Maybe I'm conflating,
but I know Michael Sweet was.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
I think he was the singer, Okay, Michael Sweet and
then I think the drummer was Jimmy.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Christ Actually, oh man, I remember some of those names
I don't remember, or maybe the drummer was the other brother.
I remember he played sideways. Oh that's awesome, which is interesting.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Do you still have the action figures?
Speaker 1 (16:00):
No, I don't know if I still have that record,
I'll have to look through my vinyl.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Yeah, I was into that for a little while.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Okay, well, at any rate, I don't Yeah, I just
I don't remember how I was reading about Stripper, but
I was reading all about their career the other day.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
How easy to fall into a Striper rabbit hole.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah, so, yeah, they were into music. The thing is
is and they wanted to use music, not Striper. We're
talking back about the Salvation Army. Although they Striper wanted
to do the same thing. They wanted to use music
to get God's message across. Absolutely unlike Striper, they had
zero musical talent, but were very happy to be as
(16:40):
loud as possible. So you know the image you have
of like temperance people and like kind of old, like
goody two shoes Christians in the nineteenth century banging on
a huge drum, singing songs about Jesus and all that. Sure,
that is based in reality. That was a Salvation Army
and everyone who wasn't in the Salvation Army loathed them
(17:03):
for that.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yeah, it was pretty annoying if you were enjoying a
pint in a pub and the Salvation Army came around.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, because in addition to going to the poor, where
the poor were, they figured, if you want to save sinners,
go to where the sinners are. So they would storm
into pubs and start singing religious hymns at the top
of their lungs, banging drums like telling people they were
going to hell. And these people are just trying to unwind,
you know, after a hard day's work at the docks,
(17:30):
or who knows.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Well, they had no job and they were just getting loaded.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, or they're celebrating a promotion at the docks. I
don't know. The thing is they did not want to
hear that at the time, and even if you weren't
in the pubs, just hearing them go down the street
preaching all day Sundays sometimes during the week too. They
really purposefully made a nuisance of themselves because they were
really assertive and hostile almost and shoving their message about
(17:58):
salvation down everyone throat, whether they wanted to hear it
or not.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
All right, I think that sets the stage time for
a break. Yes, for sure, all right, for sure, we'll
be right back after this, you bet, all right. So
(18:45):
the stage is set, the Salvation Army is firmly in place,
and they are going around. Aside from doing great things
for the poor, they are going around and go into
pubs and banging their pots and pans and their drums,
and they're singing all these religious songs and the people
do not like it. So that is the sort of
(19:08):
the position that they're in at this point. So what
forms is what's called the Skeleton Army to literally combat
the Salvation Army. Ed helped us out with this one.
And there's I would argue that there aren't two origins.
There's one origin. But the sort of second part of
(19:28):
the origin story we'll get to. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 2 (19:32):
It's fair but confusing? Sure?
Speaker 1 (19:34):
All right. Well, the first, you know, basically how they
formed is what we've been talking about. They were literally
just annoyed at the Salvation Army coming around telling them
not to drink, singing songs and loudly preaching and disrupting
their pub time. And so the initial sort of response
(19:55):
was just jeering at them, won't you sit down and
have a be that kind of thing, being very sarcastic,
and then things started just to escalate, sort of little
by little, because these were drunks basically, and when you're
someone engaging a drunk and telling them not to drink,
(20:15):
that's not going to go over too well, and timpers
will genuinely flare at some point.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, for sure. I think we said the Salvation Army
set itself up in eighteen seventy eight. By eighteen seventy nine,
the first newspaper account of a clash between the Salvation
Army and people who hated the Salvation Army made it
into a newspaper. I think there was an incident in Liverpool,
and this is not the first incident. This is just
the first incident that got written up in the paper.
(20:43):
And the reason it got written up is because there
was a riot. A riot. People hated what the Salvation
Army was doing so much that they would often trigger
riots whenever they started doing their marches, and they were
roundly blamed for this like at the time, as we'll see,
it kind of came out differently in the end, but
(21:04):
everyone blamed them for just existing and doing what they
were doing. They felt that the Salvation Army was responsible
for the riots that the people who were against the
Salvation Army would carry out when the Salvation Army came around.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, exactly. So seventy nine, like you said, was the
first noted one in Liverpool, and then you know, if
you read contemporaneous accounts, which we did of the time,
they just started popping up here and there. In March
of eighty one in the East End of London there
were some guys leaving a pub and they beat up
(21:41):
a bunch of Salvation Army I guess what would they
be called soldiers?
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Okay. There were some Salvationist women which they were called
Hallelujah lasses was a nickname, that were entrapped with some
rope by the crowd. They were getting hot coals thrown
at them, and this sort of played out how it
played out in most places. Things got pretty ugly. When
I joked about throwing dead rats at them, I wasn't kidding.
(22:10):
That was a real thing that they did. Apparently dead
rats and live cats in at least one instance.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yeah, there was another instance where there was a guy
who was testifying during a Salvation Army meeting and forty
people with chamber pots stormed the meeting and dumped urine
all over the man. Yeah, that happened. They were in
their own meeting. They weren't even out on the street
or in a pub. That's how hated these people were.
(22:37):
They would be physically assaulted, they would have they would
have just all sorts of stuff thrown at them, in
addition to dead rats, dead fish, and there were plenty
of accounts of not just men, but also women and
even children being assaulted by the crowds. Like you said,
the Hallelujah lasses were basically roped with hot coals thrown
(22:58):
at them. There was a count somewhere that said between
twelve months. This would have been in the probably the
early eighteen eighties. Across England, six hundred and sixty nine Salvationists,
two hundred and fifty one of those were women, were
quote knockdown, kicked or brutally assaulted. Fifty six buildings of
the army were stormed and partially wrecked. That was another
(23:19):
thing that people against the Salvation Army they like to do.
They like to try to burn down their meeting halls,
sometimes while they were in it. And then eighty six Salvationists.
Fifteen of them women were thrown in prison. So like
it was a it was a really like hardcore thing
to go out and do as a Salvation Army soldier.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Yeah, oh absolutely, and so yeah, I hope he didn't
paint it as too light of a brush like Oh
they would just sort of you know, yell at them
and jeer at them and throw dead rats and things.
They got physically violent. It was not a good scene
the Salvation Army for their part, when you mentioned the music,
one thing that they were fond of and they still
(24:01):
do that today in England, is they take popular songs
and change the words at like soccer games, at their
football games, like these old school like pub sing alongs,
they would change it to their local pub or their
local football team or whatever. And so the history of
just changing lyrics, I mean, I say, it's a little
lazy quite honestly. Maybe write a new song altogether, but
(24:24):
that's okay, sure, But they would do that. The Salvation
Army would do that. So they would take popular pub songs,
change up the lyrics to suit them and their Christian message.
Ed dug up some of the titles that were pretty great.
Oh every Land is filled with sin is not bad.
My favorite is the Devil in Me. We can't agree.
(24:44):
I hate him and he hates me.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
It sounds like agreement, so you know that's true now
that to think about it.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
But this is what's going on. Like this only angered
the people in the pubs even more because they're like,
those are our songs, and there are, hey, let's get drunk,
so songs that we sing together. Don't change them around
and sing them in our face because you know I
might assault you or dump urine on your head.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yeah. There was another song that kind of gets across
the Salvation Army sentiments about the places they were visiting.
It's called out of the Gutters, we Pick Them. And
I read that there was resentment among a lot of
the lower working class groups who were getting visited by
these people being helped out with their poverty strickenness, who
(25:29):
were like, this is my neighborhood that you're talking about
and singing about is the gutter. So they offend They
managed to offend an annoy essentially everybody. And yet what
was really interesting about this is that they started to grow,
Like each Sunday there'd be more and more of them
and more and more of them, and they would like
(25:51):
their meeting halls would get bigger and bigger because there
were more Salvation Army members who had joined, who had
been picked out of the gutter, or who had said
I'm giving up the devil drink or whatever reason, had
decided to join the Salvation Army and were now the
very people who were annoying their former.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Selves, yeah, or their friends.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Man, I'll bet that was uncomfortable, oh man.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
So they had other tactics. The Salvation Army had white uniforms,
so they would try and mar those uniforms in a
number of ways. One is there was a narrow alley
leading to one of their meeting halls, and they would
paint a sticky tar on the alley walls. They would
throw eggs that had blue paint in them. They would then,
(26:38):
in turn, sometimes take the original pub songs that they
had changed Salvation Army into Christian songs back into more
body versions of their Christian songs and sing them back
into them and even mess with their old sort of motto,
which was soup soap. What was the third one? Salvation
(26:59):
soup soap, Salvation to beer, beef, beer and bacca, which
is tobacco.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Which is pretty hilarious.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
So yeah, so people were getting creative, but it was
also truly violent at times.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
It was. And even if it wasn't violent, think about
how annoyed you'd be if you weren't on either side.
Because the people who would give the greatest resistance and
in hostility toward the Salvation Army were the exact same
people that would do this in a pub today, twenty
somethings who are like already feeling pretty rowdy, probably the
(27:33):
drunkest of the people in the pub. Yeah, imagine just
being like us, Chuck, We're just trying to have like
a beer in a booth, and not only is the
Salvation Army going off, but now it's being doubly amplified
because the other people, these hooligans, are essentially pushing back
just as loud, if not louder, I would just be like,
shut up.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Well, that's why we end up in a coffee house.
And then we've lost all credibility as cool guys.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Could we end up in a coffeehouse and we just
bring our own flasks?
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Right? Oh, there you go. We just regained some credibility.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Did we ever have credibility as cool guys, I did.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
How about you?
Speaker 2 (28:11):
I did not. Yeah, I did not.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah, I'm a cool guy, and I know other cool guys.
You've always been a cool guy.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Man, I did not.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
So we should talk a little bit about Susannah Beattie.
She was a captain in the Salvation Army who died
in either eighteen eighty one or eighteen eighty two. And
the Salvation Army will say, and there are some contemporaneous
accounts too that we saw in newspapers and stuff, where
(28:41):
she was essentially killed by the Skeleton Army. She was beaten.
I saw in one of the newspapers that said she
was kicked in her wound.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
I was hoping you weren't going to say that. That
is so tough to hear even.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
It is well. And I don't know if that implies
that she was pregnant, because I didn't see that.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
I don't know. I think that what they were saying
is she probably internal bleeding from the inter abdomen from
those injuries.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
I couldn't quite tell. But at the you know, at
the end of the day, she was killed by this
Skeleton Army, which is you know, horrific, and the Salvation
Army today names her and celebrates her as their first martyr. Also,
some Skeleton Army member was killed by a cop I
think was cracked in the head with a baton.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
That's a Skeleton Army guy, right.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Yeah, a Skeleton Army guy. But this sort of thing
didn't happen much in terms of the Skeleton Army and
the police, because it seems like the police in almost
every case was anti Salvation Army, and it looks like it,
depending on where you were and what was going on
and who the particular cop was, may have even sort
(29:49):
of helped things along or you know, let the Skeleton
Army go and maybe aided them a little bit in
a lot of these riots.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah, we kind of touched on it earlier that the
establishment wanted things just as they were. They didn't like
this progressive, hostile Christian group like organizing the working classes, right,
so they were since they were already in charge, they
were basically, if not directly, informing the courts and the
(30:19):
police like not to intervene against the Skeleton Army. And certainly,
if anything, if you're going to arrest anybody, arrest those
rabbele rousers the Salvation Army. So they had no formal
structural protection. Essentially, the cops is if they did anything,
they usually arrested the Salvation Army members. Most of the
time they didn't do anything because the power structure in
(30:42):
each town was pretty much diametrically opposed to the Salvation Army.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah. Absolutely. And then in that one article that you
sent from back then, it seems like a lot of
these counter protests, if you want to call them that,
or these were either brewery owners or brewery owners and
their employees. So it kind of became like a literal
(31:10):
war against like temperance and alcohol. It was so heavily
intertwined because these brewers were like, we don't want these
people come in here, and you know the writings on
the wall of what's going on in America, and we're
not going to have a prohibition. So the brewers and
their employees are like fighting back against these people preaching
against alcohol.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yeah, and again I don't want to like underestimate the
impact that these the idea that they were organizing the
working class had on scaring the upper class as well,
because at the time, if you were you know, wealthy,
if you had a title like you were in charge,
(31:50):
if you were working class, you were not in charge.
You could just the best you could hope for is
that the wealthy would look out for you when they
were making laws, which probably didn't work out very much.
So that was a big part of it too. And
then also even Protestants didn't like them, because remember George
Booth was like, I don't like this church hierarchy stuff.
I'm just going to go start preaching on the coroner.
(32:12):
That was very much carried into the Salvation Army. So
the Protestant churches, the Methodists in particular, were like, we
don't like you. The Catholic really didn't like them because
there was that whole Catholic Protestant division that dated all
the way back to the sixteenth century. So basically no
one liked the Salvation Army and everyone was essentially working
(32:32):
against them.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Yeah, for sure, depending on I mean, it depends on
kind of where you were and who was there as
to how violent this could get. If there was like
a sort of a younger, more rabble rousing preacher. A
lot of times, especially if it was a woman that
was coming in and leading the charge, things could escalate
(32:55):
a little more quickly. I know, there was a twenty
three year old woman and a captain in the Salvation
Army named Ada Smith, who was really enthusiastic and really
liked to get in the faces of these dudes in
the pubs and other times. You know, it was someone
who maybe wasn't quite as in your face and things
(33:17):
didn't go quite as sideways. Apparently if it was a
tourist town or a port town had a lot to
do with it too, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
For sure, because if it was a tourist town, you
don't want like the Salvation Army running around telling everybody
they're going to hell. That's not good for tourism, so
they're actually directly affecting people's livelihoods. That's one. If the
support town, there's probably a lot of drinking going on,
so the people in the town don't want to hear
that it was. If it was a like say a
(33:47):
country town suburb of London, it was probably a little
more genteel. I get the impression that the more rough
and tumble the populace, the more incidents of violence the
Salvation Army faced. But also I don't want to make
it sound like they weren't triggering people. They definitely were
(34:09):
that Captain Ata Smith. You mentioned she was in Worthing,
and Worthing was essentially ground zero for riots that took
place in the mid eighteen eighties, like straight up riots
where the people were attacking the town hall because they're
so upset about the Salvation Army being around. Like they
were provoking people. For sure, I'm not blaming them for
(34:33):
riots like as we'll see in a minute that they were,
but they definitely were provoking people intentionally as well.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Should we take another break, Yeah,
all right, we'll take our second break, and we'll talk
about the sort of where these guys might have come
from on the Skeleton Army side to begin with.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
So, skeleton Army is kind of this formalized term for
the groups of people who essentially organized to try to
beat the Salvation Army out of town, do whatever they
could to get rid of them, including lots and lots
of violence, and again trying to burn down their meeting
halls and stuff. And there's a historian named, I think
(35:53):
John Hare who wrote an article in nineteen eighty eight
and folklore that ed found where he basically as there's
a really high likelihood that the Skeleton Armies actually grew
out of what are called the bonfire boys or bonfire clubs,
(36:13):
who would celebrate the fifth of November, not the fifth
of May, but the fifth of November in the same
way that people used to celebrate Devil's Night in Detroit
by just burning down everything in sight and marching and
just causing trouble and getting super drunk.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Yes, and as a we'll probably do one on this
in full at some point, but remember, remember the fifth
of May. We're laughing because Josh said May, and we
cut it out or did we leave it in?
Speaker 2 (36:45):
I think we cut it out.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
I guess we'll see. The fifth of November goes back
to if anyone has ever seen the movie v for Vendetta,
so good with Natalie Portman. Good movie peers, Yeah, of course, no, yeah,
it was Sky Pierce right.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
No, it was the weird clone guy from the Matrix him.
Oh he was, Yeah, he was the dude.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
The mister Unders. Yes, yeah, what's Hugh? What's the guy's name?
In sixteen oh five, there were Catholic conspirators who tried
to blow up Parliament because that would have killed the
Protestant King James the First and hope that there would
(37:31):
be a Catholic king to fill that role, to fill
that power vacuum, and England would be, you know, back
to being a Catholic nation after the split from in
fifteen thirty four that you talked about earlier, that King
Henry the Eighth brought about.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
So remember remember the fifth of November. Every November fifth
there was, and I believe still is, just a lot
of sort of celebrations, big parties, big bonds. They would
light tar barrels on fire. It got pretty rowdy, and
like you said, they were called the Bonfire Clubs. And
there are historians and namely that one guy you talked about,
(38:12):
who basically say these guys were still around in the
eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties, and there's a lot of
evidence that kind of shows that they were probably also like, hey,
we've got pitchforks, we've got torches, we have the same
sort of anti establishment attitude, so we'll just sort of
(38:32):
start doing skeleton army stuff as well.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Right. There was actually an eighteen eighty five article in
the Sussex Coast Mercury newspaper that basically said that they
were watching the Skeleton Club, the new Skeleton Club there
in Worthing that had been formed March, and they were
actually using the old bonfire club banner. Like they didn't
even bother to create a new one. They just basically
(38:57):
slapped Skeleton over Bonfire Club. Just to get the point
across here that like these were the exact same people essentially,
they just took their Bonfire Club thing and actually directed
it toward a purpose. It was purposeless before, it was
all celebratory rabble rousing. Now it was we're actually going
to use those same tactics to get the Salvation Army
(39:18):
out of town.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
Yeah, exactly. They the Skeleton Army would usually black their faces.
Sometimes they did wear masks, but to let each other
other know like who they were, they would wear the
color yellow somewhere a lot of times with like a
like a ribbon or some kind or a sunflower to
identify one another. And yeah, it seems like that they
(39:41):
were just basically the same people discuss well not you know,
kind of thinly disguised as the Skeleton Army. And these
things would just happen all over the place in England
until someone would come in read the Riot Act literally
and break it up and say, you know you have
to disperse. Now, sometimes that went okay and sometimes it didn't.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Yeah, so the Riot Act. I didn't actually know the
origin of it, did you. Yeah, Oh, you didn't know
English major, So I didn't realize that. So I'm going
to explain it to people who didn't realize it either. Okay, no,
you should. So when you read somebody the Riot Act,
you're basically like telling them that you don't like how
they're acting, and you give them a warning about if
they act that way any further, they're going to have
(40:26):
their iPhone taken away or something. Right that there is
actually a riot Act from seventeen fourteen, the British Riot Act.
And what you would do is if you were, you know, rioting,
if you were breaking stuff, if you were a rowdy crowd,
the army would come out and read the Riot Act
that basically said you got to stop what you're doing
and disperse or the army's going to make you disperse. Yeah,
(40:47):
and if you didn't disperse after reading the Riot Act,
then the army would be forced to make you disperse.
And these the skeleton armies throughout England, I think more
than once had the Riot Act read and had the
Army called out on them because they were rioting so
hard against the Salvation Army.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Riot Hard is a great album title for Striper, right, yeah,
maybe for the new Striper. Are they still together? Did
you find that out in your deep dive.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
I don't remember where the last album was, but I'm
pretty sure it was in the two thousands, so they
might be. I'm not sure, I don't remember. Sorry.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
I could see them still playing shows with like less
teased hair, but still sort of long and maybe like
a half shaven beard kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Yeah, do you remember when we saw D Snyder? Oh?
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
I can imagine that they probably look a lot like
D Snyder these days compared to how D Snyder used
to look.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Yeah, we were on a talk show. This is back
when people used to call us for some stuff like that. Weirdly,
early on we got way more press and like invites
to be on TV than we do now. With that,
I like it now, Oh no, I totally am. I
don't want to go.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
I like being put out to pasture.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Yeah I do too, But yeah, D Snyder was also
a guest on the show and we and we met
him like not in the green room, but like backstage
or something.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
I would say in passing. Yeah, he was going one way.
We're like, hey, d Snyder just kind of gave us
like a heads up. If I remember correctly.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
I think, and we were on first and I think
our joke at the time was that we opened up
for Twisted Sister. Yeah, this last part that we're going
to talk about, I don't fully fully understand, to be honest.
It has to do with the court system and whether
or not and peaceful assembly and whether or not you
(42:42):
can say, hey, it's a peaceful assembly. If you know
you're going there and you're going to egg on people
that will react in violence, is that still a peaceful assembly?
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Yeah. It ties into what I was saying earlier that
people used to blame the Salvation Army, including the courts,
for inciting riots just from doing their thing. So while
they were loud and they were singing off key and
they were in your face about how you were going
to hell, they were still under English law assembling peaceably.
(43:17):
They weren't breaking stuff, they weren't breaking they weren't breaking
any laws. They weren't hurting anybody like physically or anything
like that. So technically it was a peaceable assembly, but
because almost invariably in some of these towns, when they
showed up and did their thing, a riot would break out.
The Salvation Army was held responsible in the courts for
(43:37):
triggering riots, and they're like, you can't assemble anymore because
you incite riots your very presence. And finally, some appellate
court in the United Kingdom was like, that don't quite
track right. They said something like, what has happened here
is that an unlawful organization has assumed to itself the
right to prevent the appellants and others from lawfully assembling together.
(44:01):
Basically saying that a man may be convicted for doing
a lawful act if he knows that his doing it
may cause another to do an unlawful act. And the
extent of that is that you're not responsible for the
act of another person. It's like, if you trigger somebody
they punch you in the face, they're in trouble for
punching you in the face. You're not in trouble for
triggering them. As much as you despise what the person
(44:24):
might be saying, and they might be saying it right
in your face, you can't hit them. That's breaking the law.
Telling somebody that they're going to hell right in their face,
it's not breaking the law. And so that actually established
precedent in the English speaking world, and I think eighteen
sixty eighteen eighty two Beatty versus Gilbanks established that the
(44:46):
Salvation Army had the right to peaceably assemble even if
it triggered riots. And that really kind of led to
the idea that you can peaceably assemble even if the
people don't want to hear what you have to say
and will riot. It's on the rioters, not on you,
the person provoking them.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Yeah, And I think the question since then has been
the sort of gray area of what constitutes a peaceful assembly?
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Yeah, which is I mean, yeah, if you're like a
young anarchist, are you going to sue the government for
breaking up your peaceable assembly? Probably not, So you're really
kind of at the mercy of whatever mayor police chief
who runs the town that you're assembling in. But there's
a law in or there's a case that's set precedent.
In nineteen seventy seven, National Socialist Party of America versus
(45:36):
Village of Skokie, there was a bunch of Chicago Nazis
that wanted to march in Skokie where that which had
a huge population of Jewish Holocaust survivors, and Skokey said, no,
you can't do that here in The Nazis sued them
and won. They didn't actually ever march, but they won
that case. And it is established that no matter how
reprehensible your views, you have a right to say them America.
(46:00):
It's part of your First Amendment rights. And that that
is what the Blues Brothers are referencing when they said
they hate Illinois Nazis and they drive through that bandstand
and make Henry Gibson and his Nazi friends jump into
the river. That's what they're talking about, is that? Yeah,
that case, that's pretty cool. I thought it was pretty
(46:21):
cool too. Are you got anything else?
Speaker 1 (46:24):
I got nothing else? This is good.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
I thought it was good too. Who was it, Corey?
Speaker 1 (46:29):
That was from Corey? A great suggestion, Corey.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Great suggestion, Corey. And yes, this was a good one, Chuck.
Since Chuck said this was a good one, and I agreed,
I think it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
I'm gonna call this a nice little additional nugget of
info from John. Hey, guys, I was listening to the
episode on the Franklin Expedition. Longtime listener, first time writer.
By the way, in the episode, you collaborated to make
up the pun name for a bad sailor, leadfoot mccan't swim.
I didn't remember that until he wrote it. That was
(47:02):
pretty funny, and it brought up a nugget of effect
I learned a few months ago. I'm not sure if
you were making this joke because of this that you
knew a lot of sailors back in that time couldn't swim,
But you were right. Many sailors back in the day
couldn't swim for a number of reasons. They ranged from
a lack of resources such as warm water and time
in which to learn, to the desire of not to
(47:23):
prolonged suffering, which might happen if you were to find
yourself overboard, like, huh, just go go down. I guess
it's pretty hardcore, pretty hardcore. Sadly, stopping a ship or
going back to save a sailor did not or could
not have happened very often, so drowning might be the
fastest and easiest way to go. Picked up this nugget
from Peter Stark's book a Storia that covered the origins
(47:46):
of Astoria, Oregon being set up as a private trading
colony by John jacob Astor in an attempt to monopolize
the Pacific fur trade. If you're every running low on topics,
this would be a great episode. But I don't expect
your low, so I plan on hearing about it in
about twenty years.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
Yeah, you never know, You never know. Who is great.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
That's from John, He says, thanks for the knowledge.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Yeah, you never know, John, thank you for the knowledge.
We appreciate you a big time.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
That's a good one. Non swimming sailors.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Yeah, I did not see Oregon fur trading coming into
that story, but here we are.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Well, if you want to be like John and get
in touch with us and make a suggestion for an episode,
we'd love that kind of thing. You wrap it up,
spank it on the bottom, and send it off to
Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Dot Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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