March 3, 2023 • 24 mins
Tracy and Holly talk about the way that the eugenics movement pops up almost any time there's research into late 19th and early 20th century figures. They also discuss the nature of chicken and dumplings in their experience.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy B. Wilson
and I'm Holly Friday. One of our episodes this week
was on Ellen Sweller Richards and as I said at
the end of the episode, I wish there had not
(00:23):
been so much eugenics in there. And there's just like
I just I have a hard time sometimes articulating just
how mainstream those ideas were. Like there were textbooks, your
regular high school textbook that just laid out eugenics as
though it was accepted fact, and like a lot of
(00:45):
the same groups that the movement targeted as inferior also
adopted those same ideas for their own improvement. Like no
group is a monolith. There were of course people in
every group that were like this is maybe not the
best plan, but it was just everywhere. And so there
(01:06):
are so many people that you will research, especially at
the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and
you'll be like, this person was really cool. Oh no eugenics,
and so much about euthenics was also like all about
preserving clean water and clean air and having adequate ventilation
(01:29):
and indoor spaces, which sure has revealed itself to be
incredibly important over the last years of a pandemic. But
then also like there's just a thread of like and
we're going to improve the race with this, and I
was like, what if what if we didn't? Right? I mean,
it's interesting because, as you said, it was very accepted,
(01:52):
but I think what we don't often acknowledge is that
it was also lauded for how smart and like progressive
it was. Is. Yeah, so I always think of things
like that when we tackle stuff today and we're like,
this is the new ideology. Let's go. I'm like, will
it be this way forever? Though, well, the most terrific
(02:13):
parts of the eugenics movement were after she had died. Yeah, So,
like I think that they're like there were some like
sterilization programs that I think did start before she died,
but it was really after it where after she had
(02:35):
died that like that became widespread and then obviously like
the whole Nazi race science and eugenics program was after
her death by a lot. But those core ideas that
like there are people who deserve to have children and
other people who shouldn't have children, like It's just we
(02:55):
could have instead spent so much time recognizing that humanity
has like we all have innate worth rights and and
maybe instead of thinking about like which people should be
having children and which people should not have children, like instead,
(03:16):
we could have been spending all of that time and
energy talking about how to make society accessible and welcoming
to everybody. But like that, Oh not icy, that's not
and like the same same idea is about like encouraging
the right people like that. You they still come up today,
like I remember, they're just being a big feurer. Maybe
(03:38):
twenty years ago that was about how the educated people
aren't having enough children, and I was just like, this
is eugenics, Like right, eugenics again, I mean that gets
said all the time. Yeah, still that's ongoing. Yeah, I
don't know how to how to help those people. No,
(04:00):
I did chuckle to myself when we talked about her
early learnings in maintaining an efficient, orderly and well kept home.
I'm like, what's that? Like, I don't Yeah, I was
sort of thinking. When I first lived in my own apartment,
(04:21):
I kept it very clean, and I would start Saturday morning.
I had like a cleaning ritual that I would clean
the rooms of my apartment, but I was also living
by myself, and it was like technically a two bedroom apartment,
but I used one bedroom as the bedroom and the
other bedroom was like a home office computer room type space.
(04:42):
And I'm mostly the thing. I just didn't have a
lot of stuff. Yeah, I was living on my own
for the first time, and I had like furniture that
had come out of my parents' basement or which some
generous neighbors sold to me for very cheap, and I
like that. They're just we're not a lot of possessions
in my home. And now you know, twenty seven years
(05:06):
have passed and there's just all this stuff everywhere. Yeah,
we have we have piles and we collect a lot
of stuff. So our house is like a crazy phone
house the time. Um, you described your house to me
one time when we were we had just met, as
if Sanford and Son were really creative. That's sort of accurate.
(05:29):
I mean, we've been really making like a more progressive
approach over the years to like, okay, but how do
we take this? Uh? And for me, I've realized, like
I tend to have a very all or nothing approach,
which doesn't work right, Like, you can't because then things
will like get set up, and the second they get
(05:51):
a little askew, I'm like, well that didn't work. I
don't it's ruined. Um. Right now, I am in the
middle of a fairly significant closet overhaul, which anyone who
knows me knows that's a lot. Yeah, where I'm trying to.
I'm I'm trying to I'm trying to cull the collection
(06:12):
because I have a lot of clothes. I mean, I
have clothes I've had since I was thirteen, sure, and
some of them I will keep, but others I'm like,
I got this T shirt at like a five K
that I dropped into like day before. I don't need
to Yeah, why do I have this shirt? But it's
I have realized though, that if I am a little
(06:34):
more generous with myself and go listen, just do a
little bit each day, you're fine. It's actually way easier
to just maintain things than if I were being quite
so stringent and like, no, you must do everything and
overhaul though, I'm like, all right, it's fine. Yeah, yeah.
Well that was one of the other things about that
first apartment is that I moved in in a process
(06:57):
that took like a couple trips with a pickup truck.
And the reason it took more than one trip was
because my parents let me take my old bedroom furniture
from my childhood bedroom and so like we didn't rent
a U haul or anything. Six couple trips in the
pickup to do it. Yeah, So that meant that, like,
once I was unpacked, everything was clean and it was
easy to keep it clean. Even with three cats in
(07:18):
that apartment, it was able to it was able to
pretty much keep it clean. Something that we didn't get
into you in this episode because we have gotten into
it in other episodes about home economics as a field
is that there's kind of multiple ways to look at
it in terms of the effect that it had on women,
because home economics programs made a college education a lot
(07:40):
more accessible to a lot more women, especially women whose
families would have objected to their idea of going to college,
but since they were going to college to study home economics, like,
it was more acceptable. But also there are arguments that
home economics as a field like further focused immen's lives
(08:01):
on the domestic field right like on the sphere of
homemaking and child rearing and things like that, and like
we didn't we didn't get into that as much in
this episode, both because we had talked about it and
in episodes that are still fairly new compared to the
Hall archive, but then also because like this was toward
(08:21):
the end of her career when she had spent so
much of her time focused on education for women outside
of that sphere of economics. Like, I loved the part
about her becoming head of the science section for correspondence
courses to make it possible for all kinds of people
to study that they would not have had otherwise. Yeah,
(08:44):
I love that. It also reminded me a bit of
when we did the interview about Sears and talked about
how mail order opened up like consumer purchasing to people
who had been discriminated against in stores. Yeah. I still
that's still probably the most mind blowing moment I've ever
had on this show. Yeah, because I just never thought
(09:04):
about it until Jared said, like, no, that's yeah. Why
That's why Sears was so popular with black customers for
so long, because it was the one place they knew
that like they had they could go for mail order
and not have to deal with being stared at or
treated as though they were unworthy or going to do
(09:25):
something wrong in the store, and I was like, oh,
my goodness, that is obviously my privileged white perspective. Ever
took that into account, makes all the sense on earth. Yeah. Yeah,
So anyway, keep picking people to talk about on the
show that turn out to be complicated, well, because that's
what humans are. Yeah. And I knew there was going
(09:48):
to be complications with Ellen Swaller Richards because I already
knew like how much of the whole economics movement was
connected to eugenics and other issues. But yeah, part of
me wanted to take a little field trip over to
her house on and Jamaica plane. But I'm pretty sure
it's just somebody's private residence now, and that felt creepy. Hi.
(10:18):
We talked about the frustrating story. I'm Eliza Fending. We
did on a lighter note because I always like to
talk about food. Huh, what is chicken and dumplings to you?
Or what do you called dumplings? Okay? Well I called
dumplings two different things. Okay. There are dumplings that are
a shell made of dough that is stuffed with something
(10:43):
and is steamed or fried right more in the Asian cuisine.
Yet dumplings are also yeah, this is what I were,
like a biscuity type thing that is like topped onto
like chicken and dumplings is like chicken and also like
(11:06):
these like peas and carrots and onions and stuff like that,
and also a broth and then these things that are
more like a Doughey, maybe biscuity is not like little
like but portions of dough put on top of that
and then it all goes into the oven so that
it's sort of simultaneously poached in the liquid and maybe
(11:29):
baked a little bit on the top. When my mom
would make chicken and dumplings when I was a kid,
the dumpling parts, I think were always like totally submerged
in the liquid during the cooking, and they just they
were doeier and not as delicious to me as when
(11:49):
my husband does it and they go on top not
exactly like a crust, but kind of I feel like
this is very a very long winded description. This is
like all I want all of this. It's uh. When
it gets to be really cold weather, I'm often like,
when are we having chicken and dumplings. What if you
(12:09):
made chicken and dumplings tonight? Um. Growing up, I think
my mom made up what chicken and dumplings were, okay,
because she would do them like in the pan, and
she would make like a very biscuity dough and the
same pan that she had fried chicken in. She would
just drop that dough in with them towards the end
(12:30):
and let them puff up, and you got these nice
like buttery heads of chicken grease in them like biscuits. Essentially,
that sounds really good and delicious, unlike anything, unlike anything
I've ever seen anybody else do. But that's what I
grew up with. And then we moved to the South,
(12:50):
and I remember being at a restaurant and seeing chicken
and dumplings on the menu, and I ordered it, and
when it came and it was like submerged dumplings and
what appeared to be a stew, I was just like,
what is this gloss? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. When Patrick does it,
it's like, uh, occasionally they come out heavy, which is
(13:14):
the term that's used in here. With the dumplings. They
were allegedly poisoned, like when something has gone not quite
right in the mixing process. Occasionally they will come out
of in a way that we both describe as too heavy.
But I find them to be really delicious because they
have like that more Doughey almost poached texture, but there's
often like a more biscuity, crispy top layer two. It delicious,
(13:38):
it's a it's I find it very very yummy. And
maybe I'm going to text him right now and when
when are we having chicken and dumplings? Yeah, there's you know,
if the yeast doesn't interact properly with the gluten or
any of the sugars in it, like it will get
really heavy. They won't puff up and be beautiful. And
there was a point where Eliza mentioned during one of
(14:00):
her statements that the yeast kind of left this weird
red residue which she thought was poisoned. But I think
like your yeast was just not active anymore. Yeah, the
other thing that gets me. Let me tell you about
the villain in this story in my book, because it
is Charlotte Turner. Yeah. I don't think Charlotte Turner did
the poisoning. I think Robert did it, but I think
(14:21):
Charlotte covered it up for him. And I was also
a witch because there's a whole thing that I didn't
include here where she just like hovered over Eliza, who
was a cook, she had been cooking professionally for like
years at this point, whereas Charlotte was not, and she
was like a newlywed wife hovering over her, telling her
(14:45):
how to do every step, and I'm like, I know
you're technically the boss would get out, yeah yeah. And
it was actually Charlotte that insisted that milk went into
the sauce because Eliza I was like, I'm making, I'm
not making that, We're doing like a gravy kind of sauce,
and She's like, no milk in the sauce, and so
(15:06):
I'm like suspicious. I make the Simpson's Dog suspicious eye face. Allegedly,
the doctor John Marshall did get John Joseph Hume, who
was developing ways to test for arsenic involved, and he
did in his test determined that it was arsenic, although
it seemed like John Marshall kind of like got there
(15:28):
before he had done any of the testing, like he
was kind of looking to support his assumed thesis instead
of really doing the scientific method where you try to
prove it by disproving it essentially, but yeah, that's a
little bit weird. John Marshall also wrote a pamphlet after
Eliza had been executed that is essentially a smear campaign
(15:50):
against her. It's completely opposite to the way most accounts
and recordings of things she has said and her letters
and like the way that press reporters found her. He
makes her sound like this really braddy shrew who just
(16:11):
barks at everybody, and it's like so discordant to every
other account we have of her behavior and her temperament
that it's like, dude, no, yeah, I haven't even gotten
(16:31):
to the gross part, okay, which is Sylvester the Judge
because he was known as a hanging judge. Yeah, he
just loved to prosecute people. There were a lot of
those in Britain during this era, yes for sure. And
he also had a really horrible reputation for demanding sexual
(16:56):
favors of women who came to him for help. And
I'm just like, you're the grossest of gross. Yeah. Yeah.
We've had a couple of episodes before and we've talked
about how the justice system worked in Britain over the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and other periods too, But like
we've we've talked about several things that have been related
(17:17):
to like how often it really was just stacked against
whoever was the defendant, Like the there was just a
presumption that this was rubber stamping the fact that the
person who had been accused was guilty. And this was
(17:37):
maybe fifty years or so prior to this was when
we talked about women being transported to Australia to try
to offset the gender imbalance in the convicted men that
were being transported to Australia, and like how many people
were being transported for and just incredibly minor alleged defense
(18:00):
is like stealing somebody's underwear off the clothesline like that
kind of stuff. So this is a way bigger case
because it's like possibly an attempted murder, right, But like
I saw just a lot of the same traits in
the way that the trial played out. Yeah, there is
also a detail that comes up in the most scant
(18:24):
mentions isn't focused on, at least in none of the
documents or information that was available to me, that Charlotte
Turner was apparently pregnant when all of this happened, and
it didn't impact her pregnancy negatively to the best of
our knowledge. But like you would think that would be
a huge focus, right, right, she tried to poison a
(18:46):
pregnant woman, but it never seems to come up or
it was just not recorded properly in court documents, because
that is also a thing. Yeah, that was very common. Yeah,
you know, they weren't getting everything word for word for sure,
and there there were mentions in some I read a
couple of different books that talked about this trial, and
there is like an acknowledgement that eventually, like between arraignment
(19:10):
and like the old Bailey trial, that people would have
eventually those documents would carry over, like the statements from
the arraignment would make their way to the trial. But
that wasn't always happening at this point, so it was
a lot harder to catch in consistencies, a lot harder
to have a basis to go off of on other
records to like prompt questions. So weird. One of the
(19:34):
other things that came up for me is we were
recording this, like it's clear that some of the things
that were done to determine whether there was arsenic present
were specious at best, and like, that's not over. There
continue to be all kinds of like forensic methods that
(19:56):
have been used to convict people and in some cases
execute people that turn out to just not hold up
at all. Like I remember a whole case where a
man had been convicted of arson in a fire that
killed his children, and there were all these things about
(20:16):
the burn patterns on the floor that the prosecution was like, you,
this is evidence that there was an accelerant drift in
all these places, and then they did the fire department
later did like a training burn of the house next door,
with part of the purpose being seeing if the same
(20:37):
thing held up when they knew for sure what was
used in the house, and it was like the exact
same burn patterns were present when no accelerant had been used.
And it's like they're just keep being things like that
coming up, where a lot of things that have been
sort of accepted as evidence work out to be like, oh,
(21:01):
that's not actually how that works, right. Yes, there is
some interesting speculation that was going on at the time
and has been expounded upon by some other writers right
up through you know, modern writing, that this whole thing
was actually kind of intended to send a message to
(21:23):
the servant class, like at a time when there was
starting to be some mobility going on of like stay
in your place, right, don't sess because we can literally
have you kilt, yeah, which is terrifying. And I also
wonder though, too, there's this whole other tertiary thing that
I found myself thinking about while I was making dinner
(21:44):
last night, of We've talked about it many times on
the show before. People can convince themselves of things that
are not true or real sure, and so I really
do part of me also wonders if this is not
a case where like or Labar introduced the idea of like,
I think we were all poisoned, and then they're all like,
(22:05):
Eliza must have poisoned us, and then they're just backing
that up in their head without even really consciously doing so,
where they're like, it does all make sense. This is
the only possible thing, and it's like, well, you've just
literally condemned a person because you got spun up on
an idea that someone introduced. There was also a something
(22:30):
that was pointed out in some of the writings of
the day that made me very very sad, which is
that you know, Eliza's father had been a soldier that
served with honor for the military, for the government, and
like he had no like no one seemed to care
about any of that or respect any of that as
he was fighting to like save his daughter, to pay
(22:52):
for his daughter's body, etc. It's just like a weird
you know, that kind of thing where people treat other
humans as like disposable, even if they have been very
integral to something they have done. It's frustrating anyway. I'm sorry.
I'm in a very murdery space in my research lately,
so there might be more things like this. This was
(23:15):
in case anyone is curious, a case that came up
when we were breaking the first season of Criminalia and
we were like, no, she's not actually a lady poisoner.
I don't think so, we can't. But I really really
was intrigued by her story, which is why we are
here just cross pollinating. It works out great. If this
(23:37):
is your weekend coming up, I hope that nothing horrible
happens to you or by you, and that you have
a RESTful time and you take care of yourself and
others as much as as possible. And if you don't
have time, off. I hope that you still manage to
carve out a little space for yourself to eat something
delicious and wholesome that has nothing tainted in it whatsoever,
(23:59):
and just to rest and relax and rejuvenate your mind,
body and spirit. We will be right back here tomorrow
with a classic episode, and then on Monday there'll be
another new one. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
(24:21):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy B. Wilson
and I'm Holly Friday. One of our episodes this week
was on Ellen Sweller Richards and as I said at
the end of the episode, I wish there had not
(00:23):
been so much eugenics in there. And there's just like
I just I have a hard time sometimes articulating just
how mainstream those ideas were. Like there were textbooks, your
regular high school textbook that just laid out eugenics as
though it was accepted fact, and like a lot of
(00:45):
the same groups that the movement targeted as inferior also
adopted those same ideas for their own improvement. Like no
group is a monolith. There were of course people in
every group that were like this is maybe not the
best plan, but it was just everywhere. And so there
(01:06):
are so many people that you will research, especially at
the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and
you'll be like, this person was really cool. Oh no eugenics,
and so much about euthenics was also like all about
preserving clean water and clean air and having adequate ventilation
(01:29):
and indoor spaces, which sure has revealed itself to be
incredibly important over the last years of a pandemic. But
then also like there's just a thread of like and
we're going to improve the race with this, and I
was like, what if what if we didn't? Right? I mean,
it's interesting because, as you said, it was very accepted,
(01:52):
but I think what we don't often acknowledge is that
it was also lauded for how smart and like progressive
it was. Is. Yeah, so I always think of things
like that when we tackle stuff today and we're like,
this is the new ideology. Let's go. I'm like, will
it be this way forever? Though, well, the most terrific
(02:13):
parts of the eugenics movement were after she had died. Yeah, So,
like I think that they're like there were some like
sterilization programs that I think did start before she died,
but it was really after it where after she had
(02:35):
died that like that became widespread and then obviously like
the whole Nazi race science and eugenics program was after
her death by a lot. But those core ideas that
like there are people who deserve to have children and
other people who shouldn't have children, like It's just we
(02:55):
could have instead spent so much time recognizing that humanity
has like we all have innate worth rights and and
maybe instead of thinking about like which people should be
having children and which people should not have children, like instead,
(03:16):
we could have been spending all of that time and
energy talking about how to make society accessible and welcoming
to everybody. But like that, Oh not icy, that's not
and like the same same idea is about like encouraging
the right people like that. You they still come up today,
like I remember, they're just being a big feurer. Maybe
(03:38):
twenty years ago that was about how the educated people
aren't having enough children, and I was just like, this
is eugenics, Like right, eugenics again, I mean that gets
said all the time. Yeah, still that's ongoing. Yeah, I
don't know how to how to help those people. No,
(04:00):
I did chuckle to myself when we talked about her
early learnings in maintaining an efficient, orderly and well kept home.
I'm like, what's that? Like, I don't Yeah, I was
sort of thinking. When I first lived in my own apartment,
(04:21):
I kept it very clean, and I would start Saturday morning.
I had like a cleaning ritual that I would clean
the rooms of my apartment, but I was also living
by myself, and it was like technically a two bedroom apartment,
but I used one bedroom as the bedroom and the
other bedroom was like a home office computer room type space.
(04:42):
And I'm mostly the thing. I just didn't have a
lot of stuff. Yeah, I was living on my own
for the first time, and I had like furniture that
had come out of my parents' basement or which some
generous neighbors sold to me for very cheap, and I
like that. They're just we're not a lot of possessions
in my home. And now you know, twenty seven years
(05:06):
have passed and there's just all this stuff everywhere. Yeah,
we have we have piles and we collect a lot
of stuff. So our house is like a crazy phone
house the time. Um, you described your house to me
one time when we were we had just met, as
if Sanford and Son were really creative. That's sort of accurate.
(05:29):
I mean, we've been really making like a more progressive
approach over the years to like, okay, but how do
we take this? Uh? And for me, I've realized, like
I tend to have a very all or nothing approach,
which doesn't work right, Like, you can't because then things
will like get set up, and the second they get
(05:51):
a little askew, I'm like, well that didn't work. I
don't it's ruined. Um. Right now, I am in the
middle of a fairly significant closet overhaul, which anyone who
knows me knows that's a lot. Yeah, where I'm trying to.
I'm I'm trying to I'm trying to cull the collection
(06:12):
because I have a lot of clothes. I mean, I
have clothes I've had since I was thirteen, sure, and
some of them I will keep, but others I'm like,
I got this T shirt at like a five K
that I dropped into like day before. I don't need
to Yeah, why do I have this shirt? But it's
I have realized though, that if I am a little
(06:34):
more generous with myself and go listen, just do a
little bit each day, you're fine. It's actually way easier
to just maintain things than if I were being quite
so stringent and like, no, you must do everything and
overhaul though, I'm like, all right, it's fine. Yeah, yeah.
Well that was one of the other things about that
first apartment is that I moved in in a process
(06:57):
that took like a couple trips with a pickup truck.
And the reason it took more than one trip was
because my parents let me take my old bedroom furniture
from my childhood bedroom and so like we didn't rent
a U haul or anything. Six couple trips in the
pickup to do it. Yeah, So that meant that, like,
once I was unpacked, everything was clean and it was
easy to keep it clean. Even with three cats in
(07:18):
that apartment, it was able to it was able to
pretty much keep it clean. Something that we didn't get
into you in this episode because we have gotten into
it in other episodes about home economics as a field
is that there's kind of multiple ways to look at
it in terms of the effect that it had on women,
because home economics programs made a college education a lot
(07:40):
more accessible to a lot more women, especially women whose
families would have objected to their idea of going to college,
but since they were going to college to study home economics, like,
it was more acceptable. But also there are arguments that
home economics as a field like further focused immen's lives
(08:01):
on the domestic field right like on the sphere of
homemaking and child rearing and things like that, and like
we didn't we didn't get into that as much in
this episode, both because we had talked about it and
in episodes that are still fairly new compared to the
Hall archive, but then also because like this was toward
(08:21):
the end of her career when she had spent so
much of her time focused on education for women outside
of that sphere of economics. Like, I loved the part
about her becoming head of the science section for correspondence
courses to make it possible for all kinds of people
to study that they would not have had otherwise. Yeah,
(08:44):
I love that. It also reminded me a bit of
when we did the interview about Sears and talked about
how mail order opened up like consumer purchasing to people
who had been discriminated against in stores. Yeah. I still
that's still probably the most mind blowing moment I've ever
had on this show. Yeah, because I just never thought
(09:04):
about it until Jared said, like, no, that's yeah. Why
That's why Sears was so popular with black customers for
so long, because it was the one place they knew
that like they had they could go for mail order
and not have to deal with being stared at or
treated as though they were unworthy or going to do
(09:25):
something wrong in the store, and I was like, oh,
my goodness, that is obviously my privileged white perspective. Ever
took that into account, makes all the sense on earth. Yeah. Yeah,
So anyway, keep picking people to talk about on the
show that turn out to be complicated, well, because that's
what humans are. Yeah. And I knew there was going
(09:48):
to be complications with Ellen Swaller Richards because I already
knew like how much of the whole economics movement was
connected to eugenics and other issues. But yeah, part of
me wanted to take a little field trip over to
her house on and Jamaica plane. But I'm pretty sure
it's just somebody's private residence now, and that felt creepy. Hi.
(10:18):
We talked about the frustrating story. I'm Eliza Fending. We
did on a lighter note because I always like to
talk about food. Huh, what is chicken and dumplings to you?
Or what do you called dumplings? Okay? Well I called
dumplings two different things. Okay. There are dumplings that are
a shell made of dough that is stuffed with something
(10:43):
and is steamed or fried right more in the Asian cuisine.
Yet dumplings are also yeah, this is what I were,
like a biscuity type thing that is like topped onto
like chicken and dumplings is like chicken and also like
(11:06):
these like peas and carrots and onions and stuff like that,
and also a broth and then these things that are
more like a Doughey, maybe biscuity is not like little
like but portions of dough put on top of that
and then it all goes into the oven so that
it's sort of simultaneously poached in the liquid and maybe
(11:29):
baked a little bit on the top. When my mom
would make chicken and dumplings when I was a kid,
the dumpling parts, I think were always like totally submerged
in the liquid during the cooking, and they just they
were doeier and not as delicious to me as when
(11:49):
my husband does it and they go on top not
exactly like a crust, but kind of I feel like
this is very a very long winded description. This is
like all I want all of this. It's uh. When
it gets to be really cold weather, I'm often like,
when are we having chicken and dumplings. What if you
(12:09):
made chicken and dumplings tonight? Um. Growing up, I think
my mom made up what chicken and dumplings were, okay,
because she would do them like in the pan, and
she would make like a very biscuity dough and the
same pan that she had fried chicken in. She would
just drop that dough in with them towards the end
(12:30):
and let them puff up, and you got these nice
like buttery heads of chicken grease in them like biscuits. Essentially,
that sounds really good and delicious, unlike anything, unlike anything
I've ever seen anybody else do. But that's what I
grew up with. And then we moved to the South,
(12:50):
and I remember being at a restaurant and seeing chicken
and dumplings on the menu, and I ordered it, and
when it came and it was like submerged dumplings and
what appeared to be a stew, I was just like,
what is this gloss? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. When Patrick does it,
it's like, uh, occasionally they come out heavy, which is
(13:14):
the term that's used in here. With the dumplings. They
were allegedly poisoned, like when something has gone not quite
right in the mixing process. Occasionally they will come out
of in a way that we both describe as too heavy.
But I find them to be really delicious because they
have like that more Doughey almost poached texture, but there's
often like a more biscuity, crispy top layer two. It delicious,
(13:38):
it's a it's I find it very very yummy. And
maybe I'm going to text him right now and when
when are we having chicken and dumplings? Yeah, there's you know,
if the yeast doesn't interact properly with the gluten or
any of the sugars in it, like it will get
really heavy. They won't puff up and be beautiful. And
there was a point where Eliza mentioned during one of
(14:00):
her statements that the yeast kind of left this weird
red residue which she thought was poisoned. But I think
like your yeast was just not active anymore. Yeah, the
other thing that gets me. Let me tell you about
the villain in this story in my book, because it
is Charlotte Turner. Yeah. I don't think Charlotte Turner did
the poisoning. I think Robert did it, but I think
(14:21):
Charlotte covered it up for him. And I was also
a witch because there's a whole thing that I didn't
include here where she just like hovered over Eliza, who
was a cook, she had been cooking professionally for like
years at this point, whereas Charlotte was not, and she
was like a newlywed wife hovering over her, telling her
(14:45):
how to do every step, and I'm like, I know
you're technically the boss would get out, yeah yeah. And
it was actually Charlotte that insisted that milk went into
the sauce because Eliza I was like, I'm making, I'm
not making that, We're doing like a gravy kind of sauce,
and She's like, no milk in the sauce, and so
(15:06):
I'm like suspicious. I make the Simpson's Dog suspicious eye face. Allegedly,
the doctor John Marshall did get John Joseph Hume, who
was developing ways to test for arsenic involved, and he
did in his test determined that it was arsenic, although
it seemed like John Marshall kind of like got there
(15:28):
before he had done any of the testing, like he
was kind of looking to support his assumed thesis instead
of really doing the scientific method where you try to
prove it by disproving it essentially, but yeah, that's a
little bit weird. John Marshall also wrote a pamphlet after
Eliza had been executed that is essentially a smear campaign
(15:50):
against her. It's completely opposite to the way most accounts
and recordings of things she has said and her letters
and like the way that press reporters found her. He
makes her sound like this really braddy shrew who just
(16:11):
barks at everybody, and it's like so discordant to every
other account we have of her behavior and her temperament
that it's like, dude, no, yeah, I haven't even gotten
(16:31):
to the gross part, okay, which is Sylvester the Judge
because he was known as a hanging judge. Yeah, he
just loved to prosecute people. There were a lot of
those in Britain during this era, yes for sure. And
he also had a really horrible reputation for demanding sexual
(16:56):
favors of women who came to him for help. And
I'm just like, you're the grossest of gross. Yeah. Yeah.
We've had a couple of episodes before and we've talked
about how the justice system worked in Britain over the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and other periods too, But like
we've we've talked about several things that have been related
(17:17):
to like how often it really was just stacked against
whoever was the defendant, Like the there was just a
presumption that this was rubber stamping the fact that the
person who had been accused was guilty. And this was
(17:37):
maybe fifty years or so prior to this was when
we talked about women being transported to Australia to try
to offset the gender imbalance in the convicted men that
were being transported to Australia, and like how many people
were being transported for and just incredibly minor alleged defense
(18:00):
is like stealing somebody's underwear off the clothesline like that
kind of stuff. So this is a way bigger case
because it's like possibly an attempted murder, right, But like
I saw just a lot of the same traits in
the way that the trial played out. Yeah, there is
also a detail that comes up in the most scant
(18:24):
mentions isn't focused on, at least in none of the
documents or information that was available to me, that Charlotte
Turner was apparently pregnant when all of this happened, and
it didn't impact her pregnancy negatively to the best of
our knowledge. But like you would think that would be
a huge focus, right, right, she tried to poison a
(18:46):
pregnant woman, but it never seems to come up or
it was just not recorded properly in court documents, because
that is also a thing. Yeah, that was very common. Yeah,
you know, they weren't getting everything word for word for sure,
and there there were mentions in some I read a
couple of different books that talked about this trial, and
there is like an acknowledgement that eventually, like between arraignment
(19:10):
and like the old Bailey trial, that people would have
eventually those documents would carry over, like the statements from
the arraignment would make their way to the trial. But
that wasn't always happening at this point, so it was
a lot harder to catch in consistencies, a lot harder
to have a basis to go off of on other
records to like prompt questions. So weird. One of the
(19:34):
other things that came up for me is we were
recording this, like it's clear that some of the things
that were done to determine whether there was arsenic present
were specious at best, and like, that's not over. There
continue to be all kinds of like forensic methods that
(19:56):
have been used to convict people and in some cases
execute people that turn out to just not hold up
at all. Like I remember a whole case where a
man had been convicted of arson in a fire that
killed his children, and there were all these things about
(20:16):
the burn patterns on the floor that the prosecution was like, you,
this is evidence that there was an accelerant drift in
all these places, and then they did the fire department
later did like a training burn of the house next door,
with part of the purpose being seeing if the same
(20:37):
thing held up when they knew for sure what was
used in the house, and it was like the exact
same burn patterns were present when no accelerant had been used.
And it's like they're just keep being things like that
coming up, where a lot of things that have been
sort of accepted as evidence work out to be like, oh,
(21:01):
that's not actually how that works, right. Yes, there is
some interesting speculation that was going on at the time
and has been expounded upon by some other writers right
up through you know, modern writing, that this whole thing
was actually kind of intended to send a message to
(21:23):
the servant class, like at a time when there was
starting to be some mobility going on of like stay
in your place, right, don't sess because we can literally
have you kilt, yeah, which is terrifying. And I also
wonder though, too, there's this whole other tertiary thing that
I found myself thinking about while I was making dinner
(21:44):
last night, of We've talked about it many times on
the show before. People can convince themselves of things that
are not true or real sure, and so I really
do part of me also wonders if this is not
a case where like or Labar introduced the idea of like,
I think we were all poisoned, and then they're all like,
(22:05):
Eliza must have poisoned us, and then they're just backing
that up in their head without even really consciously doing so,
where they're like, it does all make sense. This is
the only possible thing, and it's like, well, you've just
literally condemned a person because you got spun up on
an idea that someone introduced. There was also a something
(22:30):
that was pointed out in some of the writings of
the day that made me very very sad, which is
that you know, Eliza's father had been a soldier that
served with honor for the military, for the government, and
like he had no like no one seemed to care
about any of that or respect any of that as
he was fighting to like save his daughter, to pay
(22:52):
for his daughter's body, etc. It's just like a weird
you know, that kind of thing where people treat other
humans as like disposable, even if they have been very
integral to something they have done. It's frustrating anyway. I'm sorry.
I'm in a very murdery space in my research lately,
so there might be more things like this. This was
(23:15):
in case anyone is curious, a case that came up
when we were breaking the first season of Criminalia and
we were like, no, she's not actually a lady poisoner.
I don't think so, we can't. But I really really
was intrigued by her story, which is why we are
here just cross pollinating. It works out great. If this
(23:37):
is your weekend coming up, I hope that nothing horrible
happens to you or by you, and that you have
a RESTful time and you take care of yourself and
others as much as as possible. And if you don't
have time, off. I hope that you still manage to
carve out a little space for yourself to eat something
delicious and wholesome that has nothing tainted in it whatsoever,
(23:59):
and just to rest and relax and rejuvenate your mind,
body and spirit. We will be right back here tomorrow
with a classic episode, and then on Monday there'll be
another new one. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
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the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
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