April 7, 2024 • 28 mins
In this powerful return to New York’s Dark Side, Amanda dives deep into the untold story of Stephanie Saint Clair—a fierce, brilliant, and fearless woman of color who built a criminal empire in the heart of Harlem during the early 20th century.
Known as Madam Queen of Policy, Saint Clair battled not just poverty and racism, but corrupt cops, rival bankers, and even mafia boss Dutch Schultz. From her traumatic beginnings in the French Caribbean to her rise as a numbers game queen in Prohibition-era New York, this episode explores her harrowing experiences, sharp intellect, and unrelenting spirit that made her one of Harlem's most iconic underworld figures.
Despite enduring violence, betrayal, and imprisonment, Saint Clair emerged as a community advocate, civil rights champion, and living legend. This episode is a tribute to her legacy—and to the power of defiance.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
In 1920s Harlem, a young woman of color would make the fateful
decision to take the world of organized crime by storm.
She would build an empire that was unheard of for a woman, let
alone a woman of color. This badass woman would rise to
withstand not only the pressure from the corrupt New York City
Police Department, but also withstand the pressure of
(00:21):
Manhattan's white Mafia bosses. I'm Amanda Morgan, and this is
New York's dark side. Hi, I'm Hannah.
(00:57):
And I'm Jess. We're the hosts of the Wicked
Wanderings podcast. Join us.
Every Wednesday as we explore the mysteries of true crime.
The paranormal. And all things creepy.
We'll take you on a journey through well known cases.
And stories off the beaten path that are sure to leave an
impression. So stay curious.
Keep exploring. And always remember to keep on
(01:17):
wandering. Listen wherever you get your
podcasts. Hey everyone, welcome back to
the dark side. I'm going to start off with an
apology for my unexpected absence.
I've had a terrible respiratory thing, and for a good bit of the
(01:37):
last 2 1/2 weeks I have not had much of A voice, which made it
basically impossible for me to put out an episode, but I'm
excited to be back. My voice is still at times a
little bit wonky, but I am readyto pump out more content, so
today I'm covering Stephanie Saint Clair, a badass woman of
(01:58):
color who took no shit from anyone.
I came across her story when I was researching the Vivian
Gordon episode, and I was instantly intrigued.
Depending on what source you getyour information from, parts of
the story vary, so I'm going to do my best to tell it as
accurately as possible. All of my source material, as
always, can be found on the web page for this episode.
(02:20):
But what I want to highlight that I thought was pretty cool
was a graphic novel inspired by Stephanie Saint Clair titled
Queenie Godmother of Harlem, andit's by Elizabeth Columba and
Ora Lee Levy and it's just beautifully put together.
I recommend checking it out. I will link it in the episode
description below. And with that, let's dive in.
(02:44):
Stephanie Saint Clair's actual birthday is unknown.
She is believed to have been born around 1897 in the French
Caribbean town of Martinique. There are some sources that say
she actually might have been born in 1887, a full decade
earlier. Regardless, she chose to keep
her true birthday a mystery. She was born to a single mother
(03:05):
named Philistine, who worked herass off to put her through
school. Her mother wanted her to work as
a domestic servant of sorts, butStephanie had other ideas.
When her mother became I'll, Stephanie had to leave school,
and she began to work in the kitchen of a wealthy family to
help support herself and her mother while her mother was ill
While working with the family, things were not always great.
(03:28):
She would end up being sexually assaulted by a member of the
family, but she would also take advantage of opportunities while
the family was away to look through their vast library of
books. She found photos in one of New
York City and vowed that when the time came, she would go
there. Unfortunately, her mother would
come to pass from her illness and this is when she took that
(03:50):
opportunity to leave. Stephanie is believed to have
left the French Caribbean as part of a group of 100 women
brought from Guadalupe to Quebecto work as domestic workers, a
precursor to the West Indian domestic scheme that would occur
from 1955 to 1967. You know me, I had to look more
into this, so here goes. Canada had labor issues.
(04:13):
There was a shortage of Canadianborn workers who wanted to work
in domestic labor due to poor working conditions they often
found in maintaining someone else's household.
You know, doing the cooking, thecleaning, watching children and
elders. You know, the stuff that we hate
doing day-to-day. So to address this, the Canadian
government developed a few different labor schemes to gain
(04:36):
workers from Britain, America, Europe and the Caribbean.
After the first group of women was brought in from the
Caribbean in 1911, the government canceled bringing in
more women quote, mostly due to the racist public outcry from
the supposed physical and moral unsuitability of the women.
UN quote After bringing them to Canada, the government would
(04:58):
actually deport many of them during the recession of 1913 and
15 because they were concerned that they would become dependent
on government assistance. That's just a big fuck you in my
opinion. They uprooted themselves to come
for a better life, dealt with your shitty working conditions
and low pay to try to earn it, and then get kicked out of the
(05:19):
country that welcomed them in tomeet their own needs.
For the record, while this is kind of a dig at Canada, sorry
Canada, there are a lot of countries that are guilty of
this too, and I'm looking at America right here with that
comment. Anyway, Stephanie is believed to
have arrived in New York City in1912.
She started off residing with anIrish immigrant couple in Five
(05:41):
Points and she helped to supportthem by paying rent and for
groceries. She took up a job working with
the 40 Thieves gang where she did very well.
Stephanie had a gift for pickingup languages which made her very
useful to them and she was assigned to be undercover at
bars and nightclubs to help gaininformation on rival gang
(06:01):
members and other people of interest to her bosses.
One thing to know about Stephanie Saint Clair was she
had a fierce temper. She was often described as being
feisty and arrogant. She was able to spew scathing
profanity and multiple languageswhen she was angry and she meant
business. She did not tolerate
incompetence or deception. These qualities would serve her
(06:24):
well when she entered the numbers game, but cost her quite
a bit of trouble before she madeit big.
She would end up leaving the 40 Thieves gang after her boss
O'Reilly tried to force her intosex work.
When she refused, he started to beat her and she fought back.
She was able to get the advantage.
She knocked him to the ground and she castrated him in the
street. The 40 thieves would put a
(06:45):
bounty on her head after that and she took refuge with a woman
that she had been helping with for a few weeks until the heat
was off her. One of her first lovers that she
took in Harlem was a small time gangster named Duke.
Duke also tried to force her into sex work, which she again
refused after having an argumentone night about his proposition
for her, where he struck her across the face.
(07:07):
She bided her time for a bit until he started to make
advances on her, and she responded by stabbing him in the
right eye with a fork. She then fled the apartment with
nothing more than what she had on her at the time.
After hiding out for a night in a motel, Stephanie decided to
leave Harlem, boarding a bus shethought was heading for the
South with the plan to move to New Orleans, where she thought
(07:29):
she would fit in and be able to start a new life.
However, that first night on thebus, they were swarmed by
members of the Ku Klux Klan. All of the persons of color on
the bus were forced off. The men were killed either by
hanging or burning, and Stephanie, along with the other
young women passengers, were sexually assaulted by members of
the Klan while the white passengers sat in the bus and
(07:50):
watched everything unfold. When the Klansmen finished
torturing them, they reboarded the bus, which ended up stopping
in Ramsey, NJ, where all of the remaining passengers of color
were forced off. Stephanie would end up at the
local chapter of the N Double ACP, where they spent the next
four months taking care of her, and she ultimately decided to
return to New York City rather than going South.
(08:12):
When Stephanie returned to the city, she rented a room in North
Harlem and she laid low for a bit.
Did not draw attention from Dukeor any of his men.
Duke could move from small time gangster to big time bootlegger.
However, this came to bite him in the ass when he took some
bullets to the head during a shootout with a rival gang.
Now that Duke was gone, Stephanie decided this was prime
(08:34):
time for her to make her move. She wanted to enter the world of
organized crime and make a name for herself.
She decided she needed to gain some capital and then plan to
become a banker in the numbers game.
She came up with a plan. After being prescribed Jamaican
ginger extract to help her quit smoking, she realized that the
medicine had a large amount of alcohol in it and that this
could be used in a scheme to make some money.
(08:56):
She worked with a neighbor namedEd who had a thing for her to
hatch. The scheme they wood forest
doctors to write prescriptions for Jamaican ginger for people
that they chose. The people would pay for access
to the prescriptions. When Stephanie and Ed would make
a profit, the doctors would get a cut and the consumers would be
able to get alcohol. During the Prohibition.
What could go wrong? The scheme worked.
(09:18):
Stephanie and Ed made a killing.Stephanie knew though, that
prohibition wasn't going to lastforever and this was not going
to be a sustainable gig, so she began to put money off to the
side. She also took notice that many
of the people who were taking the Jamaican ginger were
suffering from paralysis. Jamaican ginger extract,
commonly called Jake, had been apopular medicine through the
(09:39):
1800s and early 1900s without any ill effect.
Jake Leg, A paralytic illness was caused because the company
Boston Hub Products intentionally started adding an
ingredient called Tri Ortho Cresal Phosphate T0 0CP.
The ingredient not only avoided prohibition detection, it made
(09:59):
the medicine taste better. The ingredient however ended up
being a slow acting neurotoxin that would cause numbness,
weakness, foot drop and eventually paralysis in the legs
weeks after consumption. This could also happen to the
arms many patients prescribed. The medication ended up with
permanent neurological damage. 10s of thousands of Americans
(10:20):
developed Jake Leg, with the number potentially as high as
100,000 people. The National Institute of Health
would end up getting involved and trace the product back to
Boston Hub in the 1930s. However, there weren't the same
laws as there are now around medication ingredients, so the
owners of the company couldn't be charged with literally
poisoning their consumers. They were charged, however, with
(10:41):
violations of the Prohibition Act and both the president of
the company, Harry Gross, and his brother-in-law, who was a
part owner, Max Reisman, would end up each receiving a $1000
fine and a suspended 2 year prison sentence.
And that really doesn't seem like enough of a punishment in
my book. But they were probably rich
(11:02):
white men. So after saving up $30,000, she
decided that now was the time topull out of the partnership with
Ed. Can we revel on that for a
second though? She put aside $30,000 in a
matter of months. That's amazing.
Anyway, Ed did not take the newsvery well.
He ended up attacking her first with a blow to the head and then
(11:22):
kicked her in the stomach. She gathered her strength to
fight back, grabbed his leg withsuch strength that she caused
him to fall, and on his way down, he struck his head against
the table, breaking his neck andkilling him.
Stephanie left the apartment andEd's body would be found three
days later. She didn't face any charges with
her death. I don't think she came forward.
I mean, he attacked her first, so he's kind of a shitty person.
(11:46):
Does that warrant killing? No, but it was an accident, so I
don't think she put that table there.
Oh, shut up, Amanda. Anyway, on April 12th, 1917,
Stephanie Saint Clair would invest $10,000 to start her
numbers game. She hired her own men to be our
bookies and runners. She also hired a man named
Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson to be her bodyguard and he would also
(12:10):
become a lover. Bumpy got his name from the
large bump he had on the back ofhis head.
Bumpy was arrogant and short tempered, not one to walk away
from a fight. He had been in and out of prison
most of his life and he started out his career in crime with
burglary, but it was also known to pimp out women and run drugs.
So let's talk about the numbers game for a second and what that
(12:32):
is. The numbers game, or the policy
game as it was sometimes called,was a part of everyday life in
Harlem for both the poor and more affluent people.
Given the time period, it was pretty much guaranteed that if
you were a person of color and try to access additional funding
from a bank, like through a bankloan or something, it was going
to be denied to you. This was also true for better
(12:53):
paying jobs, nice homes, obtaining political positions or
a spot to advance your education.
You know, anything they could doto to keep you down.
They did. The numbers game gave the
players the slight possibility of gaining some financial
relief, but the numbers were often fixed, so really it
benefited the bankers the most. How it worked was the players
could bet as little as a penny and they would select the three
(13:16):
digit number to place their bet on.
Numbers runners. The people who collected the
bets, were everywhere. Churches, salons, department
stores. They would even come to your
house to collect your bet. The numbers runners would have a
policy book and they would give the person betting a receipt
from the book, and then the runner would take the money and
the policy book to the bookies. The bookies would write
(13:37):
everything out nice and then take that to the bankers, and
the bankers were the people thatfunded the whole thing.
The person making the bet would win if the numbers that they
selected match the predeterminednumbers in the newspapers the
following day. And this was usually something
like a number reported from the New York Stock Exchange or a set
of numbers being reported from the US Treasury balance or some
(14:01):
numbers from results at a pre selected racetrack.
The rewards were high. If you won the payout you were
betting on was often 600 to 1. By 1925 there were 30 policy
banks running numbers in Harlem.One of them was Stephanie Saint
Clair. She was doing very, very well.
She was making a profit of up to$2000 a month, which in 2024
(14:25):
would equate to over $35,000 a month.
This was basically unheard of for a woman at this time, let
alone a woman of color. Stephanie Saint Clair would move
into an apartment at 409 Edgecombe in Harlem, a
prestigious apartment complex onSugar Hill with other affluent
members of the Harlem community.WEB Dubois, the sociologist and
(14:45):
civil rights activist who helpedfound the NWACP, was her
neighbor and friend. She was a promoter of the arts
during the Harlem Renaissance, helping to promote the likes of
Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk,Charles Alston, and James
Vanderzee. While she greatly benefited from
the hard earned money of the people of Harlem in a rigged
lottery game, she also did a lotto give and help the people of
(15:09):
Harlem. She would pay people's medical
expenses, she gave out free loans, she funded projects in
the community and more to help spur the economy of Harlem.
She would also use her power to help advocate for the people of
Harlem, which we'll get in a bit.
For all her success in the numbers game, it was not without
challenges as well. There were rival bankers,
corrupt police and government officials, white mafia bosses
(15:32):
who wanted to move in on the Harlem numbers game.
It was going to take all of her fierce energy, wit, and
ingenuity to continue to navigate through them.
Like many of the other bankers, Stephanie paid her dues to the
police for them to look the other way and leave her numbers
runners alone. In 1928, a rival Harlem banker
named Casper Holstein would end up being jumped by 4 white men
(15:53):
while he was out on his way to visit a girlfriend.
They demanded a $50,000 ransom for his release.
The fact that this ransom was able to be paid for a man of
color without much to do would catch the attention of Dutch
Schultz, a white mob boss with alegendary temper and violent
streak. Dutch Schultz was born Arthur
(16:14):
Flegenheimer in the Bronx on August 6th 19 O2 and he took his
alias from another old time Bronx gangster.
Schultz started out his career with burglaries but soon got
into bootlegging and racketeering.
When he got wind of the numbers game in Harlem, he decided that
he wanted in and this would end up being far more difficult than
(16:34):
he expected because of the network of bankers already
established. In retaliation of this, he began
to pressure his connections in the corrupt Police Department to
start pushing on the Harlem bankers by targeting their
runners, letting the white runners go free.
But the the runners of color, Itwas not good for them.
Even though the bankers had beenpaying their dues to the police
for their runners to be left alone, they started getting
(16:57):
arrested. Schultz also had the power of
Tammany Hall behind him. He had a man named James J
Hines, a Democratic Party boss who had a strong ties with
Tammany Hall on his payroll, which basically gave him
immunity from the crimes he was committing.
Schultz would also recruit some of Harlem's gangsters to work
for him, and this would lead to a short but extremely violent
(17:17):
gang war that left about 40 people dead and LED to multiple
kidnappings and basically destroyed the Harlem numbers
game. Many of the bankers either
caved, giving up their game to Dutch Schultz or were killed.
Stephanie Saint Clair, however, was not going to take this
laying down. She refused to cave.
She would end up organizing the remaining Harlem bankers to
(17:38):
fight against the takeover. She organized confrontations
with the white store owners who were collecting bets for the
Dutchman, as she called him, andthey would smash store cases,
destroy policy bets, and orderedthe white store owners to leave
Harlem. Stephanie would also utilize the
newspapers to help advocate for the Harlem bankers, encouraging
the people of Harlem to only play the numbers game from
(18:00):
organizers who are persons of color.
She called out the police for ignoring the white numbers
runners and targeting hers. She also used the newspaper
platform to inform Harlem citizens of their rights.
Things came further to a head when on December 30th, 1929,
police raided Stephanie's Edgecombe apartment.
They would steal over $400.00 incash and arrested her.
(18:24):
She would receive an indefinite sentence to a workhouse.
If you've listened to some of mypast episodes, you may know that
the late 1920s into the 1930s was the time of the Seabury
investigation, and this was an advantage for Stephanie Saint
Clair to give a quick overview of the Seabury Committee.
For anyone who doesn't know or needs a refresher, the Seabury
(18:45):
Committee came about due to somevery serious and legitimate
concerns about corruption in thegovernment of New York City.
Tammany Hall, one of the political powerhouses of the
time, was being run largely by the mob.
There were rumors flying around that high power positions were
being handed out to friends of people in power.
Bribes are being accepted like candy.
(19:05):
Property was being transferred between people.
It was a it was a fucking mess. On top of that, the police force
and judicial system was corrupt.For example, they were framing
women left and right for prostitution and charging them
hundreds of dollars to get the charges dropped.
The rumors caught the attention of New York's governor, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, who tasked theNew York legislature with
(19:27):
launching an investigation into the claims.
They formed a joint legislative committee that was headed by
Senator Samuel Hofstetter to look into it, and a democratic
Anti Tammany judge named Samuel Seabury was elected to be the
legal counsel on the investigation.
Stephanie Saint Clair reached out to the Seabury committee and
she cut a deal with them for herrelease from the workhouse.
(19:48):
She agreed to testify and was released after eight months.
Her testimony would send over a dozen people to prison.
This only further pissed off Dutch Schultz, and he decided it
was time to end the Queen of Harlem's reign.
He started calling Stephanie's home with threats against her
and her life. He started picking off her
numbers runners. He placed a contract out on her.
(20:09):
One day while out, she had to take refuge in a friend's cellar
under a pile of coal because shewas being pursued.
Another day, one of Schultz's men came into her home to try to
strong arm her, but she was ableto get the upper hand and got
him into a closet, which she then locked and ordered her men
to take care of him. In 1932, a white attorney friend
of Stephanie would be approachedby a man offering her $500 if
(20:32):
she would get Stephanie to come to her apartment where he would
be waiting to kill her. She refused and told Stephanie
about this request and they of course went to the police.
The police refused to intervene,so they went to the courthouse
where the judge also refused to offer her any protection and
threw her out. She then went to the mayor, but
the mayor's chief of staff turned her way without allowing
(20:54):
her to see the mayor. So Stephanie literally got on a
soapbox with a megaphone and started alerting the people of
Harlem to the situation. Dutch Schultz's arrogance and
violence would end up being his undoing.
His actions have garnered the attention of the New York State
special Prosecutor Thomas Dewey,who wanted to put an end to his
corrupt campaign. Schultz, in retaliation, wanted
(21:16):
to put a hit on Thomas Dewey andhe began to organize this plan.
Lucky Luciano found out about the planned hit on Dewey, and he
took that information to the heads of the Five Families, The
mob syndicates, I've seen it called a couple different
things. They all thought that this was a
terrible idea and decided that Dutch Schultz needed to be taken
(21:37):
care of. So a hit was placed on Dutch
Schultz On October 25th, 1935. Dutch Schultz was gunned down
while on the toilet of the Palace Chop House in Newark, NJ.
He took a bullet to the abdomen and was taken to the hospital.
I've seen conflicting stories onwhether Stephanie Saint Clair
came to see him at the hospital or whether she sent a telegram,
(21:58):
but either way he would receive a note from her stating as ye
sow, so shall you reap. Signed Madam Queen of Policy,
Schultz would die the day following the shooting,
effectively ending the standoff between Stephanie and the
Dutchman. Her note made headlines around
the nation. Anyway, Lucky Luciano.
(22:18):
However, he wanted in on the action that Dutch Schultz had in
Harlem. Bumpy, Stephanie's bodyguard,
saw this as an opportunity to further his own career.
He negotiated a meeting with Luciano and negotiated a
position for himself. He would help run the Harlem
numbers game, help get more of Harlem's bankers under Luciano,
and in exchange he got a percentage of the games and
(22:40):
Luciano reluctantly. He ended up agreeing to this
because he knew that the continued violence was bad for
his business. Without Bumpy as part of her
enterprise, Stephanie finally had to bow to the pressure and
give them a percentage of her empire.
She was still considerably wealthy and doing well for
herself, but things in Stephanie's life would take
another turn when she met a man named Sufi Abdul Hamid.
(23:03):
Hamid had approached her asking to fund a motion picture, which
she refused. He would negotiate another
meeting with her with the same request, which she again refused
because she was selective in what she invested her money
into. During the second meeting, Hamid
would request if he could start to call on her personally, and
she accepted. Hamid was a strange and
(23:23):
flamboyant character. He claimed to have been born in
the shadows of Egyptian pyramids.
A descendant of Pharaohs, he wore colorful outfits, had his
head wrapped with turbans and topped off the look with a lot
of jewelry and wearing a Gold Line Cape.
I've posted pictures of the couple on the web page for this
episode. In our social medias, Hamid was
(23:45):
known as the Black Hitler of Harlem.
He was born Eugene Brown in Lowell, MA in 19 O3, not under
the shadow of a pyramid. He lived in Chicago for a time,
where he portrayed himself as a Buddhist cleric by the name of
Bishop Conchenkin before eventually moving to New York
City in 1932. He would be one of the first
(24:07):
African American converts to Islam and would change his
persona to His Holiness Bishop Iramu Al MU meaning Sufi Abdul
Hamid. I hope I said that right.
I'm sorry if I didn't. When the Great Depression hit
and unemployment rates for persons of color in Harlem's
skyrocketed to about 50%, Hamid began to pick it and give grand
(24:28):
speeches while standing on stepladders on street corners
advocating for the white and Jewish business owners to employ
the same persons of color that they had no qualms taking money
from for their products. His activism and anti-Semitic
stance led to his nickname as the Black Hitler.
He would later recant his anti-Semitic stance and would
(24:48):
become founder of an organization called the
Universal Order of Tranquility where he tried to gain unity
between Christians, whites, blacks and the Jewish people.
After two months of dating, Stephanie, Saint Clair and Hamid
would enter a contract marriage in 1936.
Stephanie was in her late 40s atthe time and Hamid was in his
(25:09):
late 30s. I've seen varying stories on the
marriage. The contract was either for a
one year period, like a trial period to see how things went
and if they went well then the marriage would continue.
Or the other thing I saw was that the marriage was for a
period of 99 years where if it was dissolved early, Hamid would
get most of Stephanie's assets. Either way, it was a weird
(25:32):
circumstance. Things did not last long between
the two. Before their marriage exploded,
Hameed had a mistress named Dorothy Matthews, a woman of
color who claimed to be a psychic of Asian descent who
went by the name Madame Foo Fatom.
Stephanie considered Fatom to bea friend of hers until she
realized that Fatom was not onlyscamming her out of her money,
(25:52):
she also caught on to the affairone day in 1938 when Hameed was
visiting his lawyer's office. He was shot at multiple times
and was grazed by one of the bullets.
Stephanie would end up being charged with the attempted
murder of Hameed and sentenced to two to 10 years at Bedford
Correctional Facility for women.Hameed would end up marrying
Madame Fufa Tom not long after Stephanie went to prison and he
(26:15):
died shortly after when his private plane crashed in Long
Island. Apparently he had a private
plane and he tried to justify the luxury of having this
private plane to his followers by keeping it purposely low on
fuel, and that plan bit him in the ass because his plane
crashed due to running out of fuel.
Stephanie's Saint Clair would bereleased from prison in the
(26:37):
early 1940s. Oh wait, wait, wait.
I'm going to go back for a second.
Madame Fufa Tom kept their religious order going after his
death by claiming that he kept coming to see her in the night
daily. Anyway, Stephanie Saint Clair
would be released from prison inthe early 1940s.
She retired out of the numbers game and disappeared from the
(26:58):
spotlight. It's rumoured that she moved to
Long Island, where she lives in a mansion, living off the
fortune that she had made as theQueen of Harlem.
She continued to write articles for the paper advocating for
black rights and civil liberties.
Records show that she might havedied in 1969, and there are
unconfirmed rumors that she is buried in Trinity Cemetery.
(27:18):
As for Bumpy Johnson, he became the godfather of Harlem, making
a killing from the numbers game and running drugs.
The Harlem community both fearedand ultimately loved him.
He was known for having a givingnature.
He would give out free turkeys around Thanksgiving, as well as
providing other gifts for those in need.
He would end up spending severalyears in both Sing Sing and
(27:39):
Alcatraz for what he would claimto be beefed up federal charges.
He was sentenced to 15 years forconspiracy to sell heroin in New
York City. He would be released in 1963 and
then died in 1968 from a heart attack.
And that, my friends, was the story of Stephanie Saint Clair,
Madam Queen of Harlem, a bad asswoman who rose from the orphaned
(28:01):
immigrant to a queen of organized crime standing up to
the white mafia and the corruption in the government in
a time of prolific racism and misogyny.
I fucking love it man. It's good to be back to close
this out today. Don't forget you can follow the
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(28:22):
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(28:43):
I hope everyone has a great weekahead and I will be back next
week with more content. Stay curious, everyone.
In 1920s Harlem, a young woman of color would make the fateful
decision to take the world of organized crime by storm.
She would build an empire that was unheard of for a woman, let
alone a woman of color. This badass woman would rise to
withstand not only the pressure from the corrupt New York City
Police Department, but also withstand the pressure of
(00:21):
Manhattan's white Mafia bosses. I'm Amanda Morgan, and this is
New York's dark side. Hi, I'm Hannah.
(00:57):
And I'm Jess. We're the hosts of the Wicked
Wanderings podcast. Join us.
Every Wednesday as we explore the mysteries of true crime.
The paranormal. And all things creepy.
We'll take you on a journey through well known cases.
And stories off the beaten path that are sure to leave an
impression. So stay curious.
Keep exploring. And always remember to keep on
(01:17):
wandering. Listen wherever you get your
podcasts. Hey everyone, welcome back to
the dark side. I'm going to start off with an
apology for my unexpected absence.
I've had a terrible respiratory thing, and for a good bit of the
(01:37):
last 2 1/2 weeks I have not had much of A voice, which made it
basically impossible for me to put out an episode, but I'm
excited to be back. My voice is still at times a
little bit wonky, but I am readyto pump out more content, so
today I'm covering Stephanie Saint Clair, a badass woman of
(01:58):
color who took no shit from anyone.
I came across her story when I was researching the Vivian
Gordon episode, and I was instantly intrigued.
Depending on what source you getyour information from, parts of
the story vary, so I'm going to do my best to tell it as
accurately as possible. All of my source material, as
always, can be found on the web page for this episode.
(02:20):
But what I want to highlight that I thought was pretty cool
was a graphic novel inspired by Stephanie Saint Clair titled
Queenie Godmother of Harlem, andit's by Elizabeth Columba and
Ora Lee Levy and it's just beautifully put together.
I recommend checking it out. I will link it in the episode
description below. And with that, let's dive in.
(02:44):
Stephanie Saint Clair's actual birthday is unknown.
She is believed to have been born around 1897 in the French
Caribbean town of Martinique. There are some sources that say
she actually might have been born in 1887, a full decade
earlier. Regardless, she chose to keep
her true birthday a mystery. She was born to a single mother
(03:05):
named Philistine, who worked herass off to put her through
school. Her mother wanted her to work as
a domestic servant of sorts, butStephanie had other ideas.
When her mother became I'll, Stephanie had to leave school,
and she began to work in the kitchen of a wealthy family to
help support herself and her mother while her mother was ill
While working with the family, things were not always great.
(03:28):
She would end up being sexually assaulted by a member of the
family, but she would also take advantage of opportunities while
the family was away to look through their vast library of
books. She found photos in one of New
York City and vowed that when the time came, she would go
there. Unfortunately, her mother would
come to pass from her illness and this is when she took that
(03:50):
opportunity to leave. Stephanie is believed to have
left the French Caribbean as part of a group of 100 women
brought from Guadalupe to Quebecto work as domestic workers, a
precursor to the West Indian domestic scheme that would occur
from 1955 to 1967. You know me, I had to look more
into this, so here goes. Canada had labor issues.
(04:13):
There was a shortage of Canadianborn workers who wanted to work
in domestic labor due to poor working conditions they often
found in maintaining someone else's household.
You know, doing the cooking, thecleaning, watching children and
elders. You know, the stuff that we hate
doing day-to-day. So to address this, the Canadian
government developed a few different labor schemes to gain
(04:36):
workers from Britain, America, Europe and the Caribbean.
After the first group of women was brought in from the
Caribbean in 1911, the government canceled bringing in
more women quote, mostly due to the racist public outcry from
the supposed physical and moral unsuitability of the women.
UN quote After bringing them to Canada, the government would
(04:58):
actually deport many of them during the recession of 1913 and
15 because they were concerned that they would become dependent
on government assistance. That's just a big fuck you in my
opinion. They uprooted themselves to come
for a better life, dealt with your shitty working conditions
and low pay to try to earn it, and then get kicked out of the
(05:19):
country that welcomed them in tomeet their own needs.
For the record, while this is kind of a dig at Canada, sorry
Canada, there are a lot of countries that are guilty of
this too, and I'm looking at America right here with that
comment. Anyway, Stephanie is believed to
have arrived in New York City in1912.
She started off residing with anIrish immigrant couple in Five
(05:41):
Points and she helped to supportthem by paying rent and for
groceries. She took up a job working with
the 40 Thieves gang where she did very well.
Stephanie had a gift for pickingup languages which made her very
useful to them and she was assigned to be undercover at
bars and nightclubs to help gaininformation on rival gang
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members and other people of interest to her bosses.
One thing to know about Stephanie Saint Clair was she
had a fierce temper. She was often described as being
feisty and arrogant. She was able to spew scathing
profanity and multiple languageswhen she was angry and she meant
business. She did not tolerate
incompetence or deception. These qualities would serve her
(06:24):
well when she entered the numbers game, but cost her quite
a bit of trouble before she madeit big.
She would end up leaving the 40 Thieves gang after her boss
O'Reilly tried to force her intosex work.
When she refused, he started to beat her and she fought back.
She was able to get the advantage.
She knocked him to the ground and she castrated him in the
street. The 40 thieves would put a
(06:45):
bounty on her head after that and she took refuge with a woman
that she had been helping with for a few weeks until the heat
was off her. One of her first lovers that she
took in Harlem was a small time gangster named Duke.
Duke also tried to force her into sex work, which she again
refused after having an argumentone night about his proposition
for her, where he struck her across the face.
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She bided her time for a bit until he started to make
advances on her, and she responded by stabbing him in the
right eye with a fork. She then fled the apartment with
nothing more than what she had on her at the time.
After hiding out for a night in a motel, Stephanie decided to
leave Harlem, boarding a bus shethought was heading for the
South with the plan to move to New Orleans, where she thought
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she would fit in and be able to start a new life.
However, that first night on thebus, they were swarmed by
members of the Ku Klux Klan. All of the persons of color on
the bus were forced off. The men were killed either by
hanging or burning, and Stephanie, along with the other
young women passengers, were sexually assaulted by members of
the Klan while the white passengers sat in the bus and
(07:50):
watched everything unfold. When the Klansmen finished
torturing them, they reboarded the bus, which ended up stopping
in Ramsey, NJ, where all of the remaining passengers of color
were forced off. Stephanie would end up at the
local chapter of the N Double ACP, where they spent the next
four months taking care of her, and she ultimately decided to
return to New York City rather than going South.
(08:12):
When Stephanie returned to the city, she rented a room in North
Harlem and she laid low for a bit.
Did not draw attention from Dukeor any of his men.
Duke could move from small time gangster to big time bootlegger.
However, this came to bite him in the ass when he took some
bullets to the head during a shootout with a rival gang.
Now that Duke was gone, Stephanie decided this was prime
(08:34):
time for her to make her move. She wanted to enter the world of
organized crime and make a name for herself.
She decided she needed to gain some capital and then plan to
become a banker in the numbers game.
She came up with a plan. After being prescribed Jamaican
ginger extract to help her quit smoking, she realized that the
medicine had a large amount of alcohol in it and that this
could be used in a scheme to make some money.
(08:56):
She worked with a neighbor namedEd who had a thing for her to
hatch. The scheme they wood forest
doctors to write prescriptions for Jamaican ginger for people
that they chose. The people would pay for access
to the prescriptions. When Stephanie and Ed would make
a profit, the doctors would get a cut and the consumers would be
able to get alcohol. During the Prohibition.
What could go wrong? The scheme worked.
(09:18):
Stephanie and Ed made a killing.Stephanie knew though, that
prohibition wasn't going to lastforever and this was not going
to be a sustainable gig, so she began to put money off to the
side. She also took notice that many
of the people who were taking the Jamaican ginger were
suffering from paralysis. Jamaican ginger extract,
commonly called Jake, had been apopular medicine through the
(09:39):
1800s and early 1900s without any ill effect.
Jake Leg, A paralytic illness was caused because the company
Boston Hub Products intentionally started adding an
ingredient called Tri Ortho Cresal Phosphate T0 0CP.
The ingredient not only avoided prohibition detection, it made
(09:59):
the medicine taste better. The ingredient however ended up
being a slow acting neurotoxin that would cause numbness,
weakness, foot drop and eventually paralysis in the legs
weeks after consumption. This could also happen to the
arms many patients prescribed. The medication ended up with
permanent neurological damage. 10s of thousands of Americans
(10:20):
developed Jake Leg, with the number potentially as high as
100,000 people. The National Institute of Health
would end up getting involved and trace the product back to
Boston Hub in the 1930s. However, there weren't the same
laws as there are now around medication ingredients, so the
owners of the company couldn't be charged with literally
poisoning their consumers. They were charged, however, with
(10:41):
violations of the Prohibition Act and both the president of
the company, Harry Gross, and his brother-in-law, who was a
part owner, Max Reisman, would end up each receiving a $1000
fine and a suspended 2 year prison sentence.
And that really doesn't seem like enough of a punishment in
my book. But they were probably rich
(11:02):
white men. So after saving up $30,000, she
decided that now was the time topull out of the partnership with
Ed. Can we revel on that for a
second though? She put aside $30,000 in a
matter of months. That's amazing.
Anyway, Ed did not take the newsvery well.
He ended up attacking her first with a blow to the head and then
(11:22):
kicked her in the stomach. She gathered her strength to
fight back, grabbed his leg withsuch strength that she caused
him to fall, and on his way down, he struck his head against
the table, breaking his neck andkilling him.
Stephanie left the apartment andEd's body would be found three
days later. She didn't face any charges with
her death. I don't think she came forward.
I mean, he attacked her first, so he's kind of a shitty person.
(11:46):
Does that warrant killing? No, but it was an accident, so I
don't think she put that table there.
Oh, shut up, Amanda. Anyway, on April 12th, 1917,
Stephanie Saint Clair would invest $10,000 to start her
numbers game. She hired her own men to be our
bookies and runners. She also hired a man named
Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson to be her bodyguard and he would also
(12:10):
become a lover. Bumpy got his name from the
large bump he had on the back ofhis head.
Bumpy was arrogant and short tempered, not one to walk away
from a fight. He had been in and out of prison
most of his life and he started out his career in crime with
burglary, but it was also known to pimp out women and run drugs.
So let's talk about the numbers game for a second and what that
(12:32):
is. The numbers game, or the policy
game as it was sometimes called,was a part of everyday life in
Harlem for both the poor and more affluent people.
Given the time period, it was pretty much guaranteed that if
you were a person of color and try to access additional funding
from a bank, like through a bankloan or something, it was going
to be denied to you. This was also true for better
(12:53):
paying jobs, nice homes, obtaining political positions or
a spot to advance your education.
You know, anything they could doto to keep you down.
They did. The numbers game gave the
players the slight possibility of gaining some financial
relief, but the numbers were often fixed, so really it
benefited the bankers the most. How it worked was the players
could bet as little as a penny and they would select the three
(13:16):
digit number to place their bet on.
Numbers runners. The people who collected the
bets, were everywhere. Churches, salons, department
stores. They would even come to your
house to collect your bet. The numbers runners would have a
policy book and they would give the person betting a receipt
from the book, and then the runner would take the money and
the policy book to the bookies. The bookies would write
(13:37):
everything out nice and then take that to the bankers, and
the bankers were the people thatfunded the whole thing.
The person making the bet would win if the numbers that they
selected match the predeterminednumbers in the newspapers the
following day. And this was usually something
like a number reported from the New York Stock Exchange or a set
of numbers being reported from the US Treasury balance or some
(14:01):
numbers from results at a pre selected racetrack.
The rewards were high. If you won the payout you were
betting on was often 600 to 1. By 1925 there were 30 policy
banks running numbers in Harlem.One of them was Stephanie Saint
Clair. She was doing very, very well.
She was making a profit of up to$2000 a month, which in 2024
(14:25):
would equate to over $35,000 a month.
This was basically unheard of for a woman at this time, let
alone a woman of color. Stephanie Saint Clair would move
into an apartment at 409 Edgecombe in Harlem, a
prestigious apartment complex onSugar Hill with other affluent
members of the Harlem community.WEB Dubois, the sociologist and
(14:45):
civil rights activist who helpedfound the NWACP, was her
neighbor and friend. She was a promoter of the arts
during the Harlem Renaissance, helping to promote the likes of
Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk,Charles Alston, and James
Vanderzee. While she greatly benefited from
the hard earned money of the people of Harlem in a rigged
lottery game, she also did a lotto give and help the people of
(15:09):
Harlem. She would pay people's medical
expenses, she gave out free loans, she funded projects in
the community and more to help spur the economy of Harlem.
She would also use her power to help advocate for the people of
Harlem, which we'll get in a bit.
For all her success in the numbers game, it was not without
challenges as well. There were rival bankers,
corrupt police and government officials, white mafia bosses
(15:32):
who wanted to move in on the Harlem numbers game.
It was going to take all of her fierce energy, wit, and
ingenuity to continue to navigate through them.
Like many of the other bankers, Stephanie paid her dues to the
police for them to look the other way and leave her numbers
runners alone. In 1928, a rival Harlem banker
named Casper Holstein would end up being jumped by 4 white men
(15:53):
while he was out on his way to visit a girlfriend.
They demanded a $50,000 ransom for his release.
The fact that this ransom was able to be paid for a man of
color without much to do would catch the attention of Dutch
Schultz, a white mob boss with alegendary temper and violent
streak. Dutch Schultz was born Arthur
(16:14):
Flegenheimer in the Bronx on August 6th 19 O2 and he took his
alias from another old time Bronx gangster.
Schultz started out his career with burglaries but soon got
into bootlegging and racketeering.
When he got wind of the numbers game in Harlem, he decided that
he wanted in and this would end up being far more difficult than
(16:34):
he expected because of the network of bankers already
established. In retaliation of this, he began
to pressure his connections in the corrupt Police Department to
start pushing on the Harlem bankers by targeting their
runners, letting the white runners go free.
But the the runners of color, Itwas not good for them.
Even though the bankers had beenpaying their dues to the police
for their runners to be left alone, they started getting
(16:57):
arrested. Schultz also had the power of
Tammany Hall behind him. He had a man named James J
Hines, a Democratic Party boss who had a strong ties with
Tammany Hall on his payroll, which basically gave him
immunity from the crimes he was committing.
Schultz would also recruit some of Harlem's gangsters to work
for him, and this would lead to a short but extremely violent
(17:17):
gang war that left about 40 people dead and LED to multiple
kidnappings and basically destroyed the Harlem numbers
game. Many of the bankers either
caved, giving up their game to Dutch Schultz or were killed.
Stephanie Saint Clair, however, was not going to take this
laying down. She refused to cave.
She would end up organizing the remaining Harlem bankers to
(17:38):
fight against the takeover. She organized confrontations
with the white store owners who were collecting bets for the
Dutchman, as she called him, andthey would smash store cases,
destroy policy bets, and orderedthe white store owners to leave
Harlem. Stephanie would also utilize the
newspapers to help advocate for the Harlem bankers, encouraging
the people of Harlem to only play the numbers game from
(18:00):
organizers who are persons of color.
She called out the police for ignoring the white numbers
runners and targeting hers. She also used the newspaper
platform to inform Harlem citizens of their rights.
Things came further to a head when on December 30th, 1929,
police raided Stephanie's Edgecombe apartment.
They would steal over $400.00 incash and arrested her.
(18:24):
She would receive an indefinite sentence to a workhouse.
If you've listened to some of mypast episodes, you may know that
the late 1920s into the 1930s was the time of the Seabury
investigation, and this was an advantage for Stephanie Saint
Clair to give a quick overview of the Seabury Committee.
For anyone who doesn't know or needs a refresher, the Seabury
(18:45):
Committee came about due to somevery serious and legitimate
concerns about corruption in thegovernment of New York City.
Tammany Hall, one of the political powerhouses of the
time, was being run largely by the mob.
There were rumors flying around that high power positions were
being handed out to friends of people in power.
Bribes are being accepted like candy.
(19:05):
Property was being transferred between people.
It was a it was a fucking mess. On top of that, the police force
and judicial system was corrupt.For example, they were framing
women left and right for prostitution and charging them
hundreds of dollars to get the charges dropped.
The rumors caught the attention of New York's governor, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, who tasked theNew York legislature with
(19:27):
launching an investigation into the claims.
They formed a joint legislative committee that was headed by
Senator Samuel Hofstetter to look into it, and a democratic
Anti Tammany judge named Samuel Seabury was elected to be the
legal counsel on the investigation.
Stephanie Saint Clair reached out to the Seabury committee and
she cut a deal with them for herrelease from the workhouse.
(19:48):
She agreed to testify and was released after eight months.
Her testimony would send over a dozen people to prison.
This only further pissed off Dutch Schultz, and he decided it
was time to end the Queen of Harlem's reign.
He started calling Stephanie's home with threats against her
and her life. He started picking off her
numbers runners. He placed a contract out on her.
(20:09):
One day while out, she had to take refuge in a friend's cellar
under a pile of coal because shewas being pursued.
Another day, one of Schultz's men came into her home to try to
strong arm her, but she was ableto get the upper hand and got
him into a closet, which she then locked and ordered her men
to take care of him. In 1932, a white attorney friend
of Stephanie would be approachedby a man offering her $500 if
(20:32):
she would get Stephanie to come to her apartment where he would
be waiting to kill her. She refused and told Stephanie
about this request and they of course went to the police.
The police refused to intervene,so they went to the courthouse
where the judge also refused to offer her any protection and
threw her out. She then went to the mayor, but
the mayor's chief of staff turned her way without allowing
(20:54):
her to see the mayor. So Stephanie literally got on a
soapbox with a megaphone and started alerting the people of
Harlem to the situation. Dutch Schultz's arrogance and
violence would end up being his undoing.
His actions have garnered the attention of the New York State
special Prosecutor Thomas Dewey,who wanted to put an end to his
corrupt campaign. Schultz, in retaliation, wanted
(21:16):
to put a hit on Thomas Dewey andhe began to organize this plan.
Lucky Luciano found out about the planned hit on Dewey, and he
took that information to the heads of the Five Families, The
mob syndicates, I've seen it called a couple different
things. They all thought that this was a
terrible idea and decided that Dutch Schultz needed to be taken
(21:37):
care of. So a hit was placed on Dutch
Schultz On October 25th, 1935. Dutch Schultz was gunned down
while on the toilet of the Palace Chop House in Newark, NJ.
He took a bullet to the abdomen and was taken to the hospital.
I've seen conflicting stories onwhether Stephanie Saint Clair
came to see him at the hospital or whether she sent a telegram,
(21:58):
but either way he would receive a note from her stating as ye
sow, so shall you reap. Signed Madam Queen of Policy,
Schultz would die the day following the shooting,
effectively ending the standoff between Stephanie and the
Dutchman. Her note made headlines around
the nation. Anyway, Lucky Luciano.
(22:18):
However, he wanted in on the action that Dutch Schultz had in
Harlem. Bumpy, Stephanie's bodyguard,
saw this as an opportunity to further his own career.
He negotiated a meeting with Luciano and negotiated a
position for himself. He would help run the Harlem
numbers game, help get more of Harlem's bankers under Luciano,
and in exchange he got a percentage of the games and
(22:40):
Luciano reluctantly. He ended up agreeing to this
because he knew that the continued violence was bad for
his business. Without Bumpy as part of her
enterprise, Stephanie finally had to bow to the pressure and
give them a percentage of her empire.
She was still considerably wealthy and doing well for
herself, but things in Stephanie's life would take
another turn when she met a man named Sufi Abdul Hamid.
(23:03):
Hamid had approached her asking to fund a motion picture, which
she refused. He would negotiate another
meeting with her with the same request, which she again refused
because she was selective in what she invested her money
into. During the second meeting, Hamid
would request if he could start to call on her personally, and
she accepted. Hamid was a strange and
(23:23):
flamboyant character. He claimed to have been born in
the shadows of Egyptian pyramids.
A descendant of Pharaohs, he wore colorful outfits, had his
head wrapped with turbans and topped off the look with a lot
of jewelry and wearing a Gold Line Cape.
I've posted pictures of the couple on the web page for this
episode. In our social medias, Hamid was
(23:45):
known as the Black Hitler of Harlem.
He was born Eugene Brown in Lowell, MA in 19 O3, not under
the shadow of a pyramid. He lived in Chicago for a time,
where he portrayed himself as a Buddhist cleric by the name of
Bishop Conchenkin before eventually moving to New York
City in 1932. He would be one of the first
(24:07):
African American converts to Islam and would change his
persona to His Holiness Bishop Iramu Al MU meaning Sufi Abdul
Hamid. I hope I said that right.
I'm sorry if I didn't. When the Great Depression hit
and unemployment rates for persons of color in Harlem's
skyrocketed to about 50%, Hamid began to pick it and give grand
(24:28):
speeches while standing on stepladders on street corners
advocating for the white and Jewish business owners to employ
the same persons of color that they had no qualms taking money
from for their products. His activism and anti-Semitic
stance led to his nickname as the Black Hitler.
He would later recant his anti-Semitic stance and would
(24:48):
become founder of an organization called the
Universal Order of Tranquility where he tried to gain unity
between Christians, whites, blacks and the Jewish people.
After two months of dating, Stephanie, Saint Clair and Hamid
would enter a contract marriage in 1936.
Stephanie was in her late 40s atthe time and Hamid was in his
(25:09):
late 30s. I've seen varying stories on the
marriage. The contract was either for a
one year period, like a trial period to see how things went
and if they went well then the marriage would continue.
Or the other thing I saw was that the marriage was for a
period of 99 years where if it was dissolved early, Hamid would
get most of Stephanie's assets. Either way, it was a weird
(25:32):
circumstance. Things did not last long between
the two. Before their marriage exploded,
Hameed had a mistress named Dorothy Matthews, a woman of
color who claimed to be a psychic of Asian descent who
went by the name Madame Foo Fatom.
Stephanie considered Fatom to bea friend of hers until she
realized that Fatom was not onlyscamming her out of her money,
(25:52):
she also caught on to the affairone day in 1938 when Hameed was
visiting his lawyer's office. He was shot at multiple times
and was grazed by one of the bullets.
Stephanie would end up being charged with the attempted
murder of Hameed and sentenced to two to 10 years at Bedford
Correctional Facility for women.Hameed would end up marrying
Madame Fufa Tom not long after Stephanie went to prison and he
(26:15):
died shortly after when his private plane crashed in Long
Island. Apparently he had a private
plane and he tried to justify the luxury of having this
private plane to his followers by keeping it purposely low on
fuel, and that plan bit him in the ass because his plane
crashed due to running out of fuel.
Stephanie's Saint Clair would bereleased from prison in the
(26:37):
early 1940s. Oh wait, wait, wait.
I'm going to go back for a second.
Madame Fufa Tom kept their religious order going after his
death by claiming that he kept coming to see her in the night
daily. Anyway, Stephanie Saint Clair
would be released from prison inthe early 1940s.
She retired out of the numbers game and disappeared from the
(26:58):
spotlight. It's rumoured that she moved to
Long Island, where she lives in a mansion, living off the
fortune that she had made as theQueen of Harlem.
She continued to write articles for the paper advocating for
black rights and civil liberties.
Records show that she might havedied in 1969, and there are
unconfirmed rumors that she is buried in Trinity Cemetery.
(27:18):
As for Bumpy Johnson, he became the godfather of Harlem, making
a killing from the numbers game and running drugs.
The Harlem community both fearedand ultimately loved him.
He was known for having a givingnature.
He would give out free turkeys around Thanksgiving, as well as
providing other gifts for those in need.
He would end up spending severalyears in both Sing Sing and
(27:39):
Alcatraz for what he would claimto be beefed up federal charges.
He was sentenced to 15 years forconspiracy to sell heroin in New
York City. He would be released in 1963 and
then died in 1968 from a heart attack.
And that, my friends, was the story of Stephanie Saint Clair,
Madam Queen of Harlem, a bad asswoman who rose from the orphaned
(28:01):
immigrant to a queen of organized crime standing up to
the white mafia and the corruption in the government in
a time of prolific racism and misogyny.
I fucking love it man. It's good to be back to close
this out today. Don't forget you can follow the
show on any of our social media pages.
We are on Facebook, Twitter, andInstagram.
You can also check out some of the perks offered on our Patreon
(28:22):
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Shout out to Wicked Wanderings podcast for the promotion swap
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Darksiders can join our awesome community.
(28:43):
I hope everyone has a great weekahead and I will be back next
week with more content. Stay curious, everyone.
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