00:00:00
This is exactly right. of AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile customers compared to 12 months on the Boost Mobile Unlimited Wireless plan
00:00:33
as of January, 2026. For full offer details, visit BoostMobile.com. Running a business shouldn't feel like
00:00:38
surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory,
00:00:44
another for sales, and somehow none of them talk to each other. That's where Odoo comes in,
00:00:50
an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together,
00:00:54
from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform.
00:01:00
No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs. And best of all, no spreadsheets.
00:01:06
Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system.
00:01:10
Try for free today at odoo.com slash iHeartRadio. That's odoo.com slash iHeartRadio.
00:01:21
Sun's out, so dads are too. This Father's Day at Lowe's, shop the gear that'll make his summer.
00:01:27
Get two free select DeWalt power tools when you buy a select 5-amp-hour battery kit for weekends in the garage.
00:01:35
Plus, get a free Blackstone 6-piece stainless steel griddle kit when you buy a select Blackstone griddle.
00:01:41
Our best lineup is here at Lowe's. Valid through 624. While supplies last, selection varies by location.
00:01:47
Hello. And welcome to My Favorite Murder. That is Georgia Hardstar. And that's Karen Kilgariff.
00:02:13
Now you know our voices. And our names. Apparently you didn't know that either. Well, yeah, the names were the first thing we said, but the voices said the names.
00:02:21
Yeah. And it's so confusing. I've been sent clips to like approve things and I don't know who's talking.
00:02:28
There's no way. It's disturbing. I was like, who's who? I don't know what's going on.
00:02:32
That makes me feel good because as someone who hates their voice completely and as you with like a butter voice, you know, like everyone loves your voice sounds like butter.
00:02:42
Wait, where are you getting that? And why are you so mad when you're saying it? Those are my two questions.
00:02:47
No, you just have a good announcer voice. So the fact that you... So do you. Well, now I know.
00:02:52
And I'm so flattered. Here's the proof. No one ever knows who's talking. And it happened to me.
00:02:58
Yes. It's crazy. I was just like, well, that's funny. But who said that? I can tell.
00:03:04
I can completely tell. Maybe it's just that I'm so fucking self-aware that I just know who's saying what.
00:03:10
Well, because you do have to review it in your head several times throughout the rest of your life.
00:03:15
Constantly. It came out and it's public. Yeah. Real quick. This is a public podcast.
00:03:20
Excuse me. Wait. Yeah, no, there's so many. What? There's sad. Even to this day, there's so many people listening.
00:03:26
What is happening? It's a little wild. It is wild. Hey, guys. Don't make me aware of it, please.
00:03:32
Hi. What if I do this voice, Elizabeth Holmes? I'm Georgia. This is me. I'm Georgia.
00:03:39
I'm Elizabeth Holmes. And that's Elizabeth Holmes. And we're just hanging out, talking about the things that interest us.
00:03:45
What's going on? For me, what's going on is the reality that the world and media is presenting to me is simultaneously frightening and a joke.
00:03:59
So it's hard to figure out the level of fright that I need to be feeling because I'm like, what are you talking about?
00:04:07
It seems very like something's glitching at the top of the fucking level. Something's glitching.
00:04:14
I will say this. I really wish I don't think I knew the person or followed them because every once in a while I sneak back onto Twitter just to see what the people are saying and what's going on. And somebody said the funniest thing of all right now would be if the Democrats tried to pass the Donald Trump Memorial Gun Safety Act and the Republicans voted against it.
00:04:36
I can't do that. Yeah, I get it. That's funny. Just let's start making some real moves here that say, do we want a democracy and law and order?
00:04:47
Is that what we would like to continue here? Because I think we take it for granted.
00:04:50
Yeah. And like not even continue it well. We're not we're acknowledging that, that everything is fucked.
00:04:55
It's bad. It's always bad. Politicians suck 100 fucking percent. But it's about something more like it's deeper right now.
00:05:04
It's deeper on the level of gay furries hacking the Heritage Foundation. and exposing that they are actually funded by China.
00:05:15
Right. That's not, I didn't make it up. That's literally what they found in the hack.
00:05:19
Yeah. Yeah. So that kind of thing where we're going, oh my God, it's the Handmaid's Tale.
00:05:25
Yeah. These people are, and then you're just like, oh, this isn't some sort of let's reform America
00:05:29
for America, by America. That's not what's happening. No, it's frightening. Hey, speaking of 2016,
00:05:36
speaking of 2016, Did you guys know that we're now posting our original beginning of My Favorite Murder episodes
00:05:46
with commentary from today? That's right. It's called Rewind with Karen and Georgia.
00:05:52
And we just go over the first We just basically starting again and going over how this thing started and how we gotten to the point we at now And what we learned along the way and case updates So the second episode of that came out yesterday
00:06:08
So you can listen to the first and second episode of Rewind. It's going to be in your MFM feed.
00:06:12
So please make sure you subscribe. And we're going to just put this out once a week as a bonus episode.
00:06:16
Yeah. You know, to give back and also say, hey, look at 2016 was a pretty landmark year in a lot of different ways.
00:06:24
Yeah. And here we are eight years later. What have we learned? What have we learned?
00:06:29
And where are we going? And what are we going to do about it? Oh, Jesus Christ. $10,000 donation to the...
00:06:36
Go ahead. ACLU. Great. Okay, but here's how I'm going to turn it around for you right now.
00:06:41
Last week I did the Halifax Explosion story. And what I love when this happens, people have written in with their own information about it.
00:06:50
So this is from Instagram. someone named Jackie McDou, M-A-C-D-O-U. Just listening to the Halifax Explosion episode,
00:06:58
my husband's grandfather was in medical school, you know, I'm going to mispronounce whatever this is,
00:07:04
at Dalhousie University or Dalhousie. When it happened, he was fairly near the end of med school
00:07:12
and his class was told, okay, you're all now doctors and graduated. Everyone tend to all of the injured.
00:07:21
So he went on to become a surgeon, practiced for many years here in Cape Breton.
00:07:27
His name is Dr. Raymond Ross. So his end to med school was basically explosion. Congratulations, you're now a doctor.
00:07:35
They're basically like the day is cut short. Go help these people. Go be a doctor.
00:07:39
You're a doctor now. Holy shit. Which is incredible. Thank you, Jackie McDew for sending that in.
00:07:45
And there's one other one. It just says, this is an MFM email. The subject line is Halifax Explosion's extras from a Haligonian or a Haligonian.
00:07:56
Not sure. And then in parentheses, it says important, a must read and nice. I promise that it's hilarious.
00:08:05
It says, hi, I love you. We love you. The Halifax Explosion is a very important story to us.
00:08:11
So you'll probably get a few emails about this, but I promise this is the best and nicest one.
00:08:16
Here's the thing. Sometimes when you build up a beginning where you're promising so much to be nice, it scares me more than if someone just came in and said, you got that wrong.
00:08:26
Because now this seems like something terrible happened. Oh, and this person says, hi, I was one of the many people who wrote suggesting this story to you.
00:08:34
Just a few extra pieces of info, not corrections, but additions. I know you will appreciate it.
00:08:39
Okay, well, what is that big fucking beginning for? One, hero Vince Coleman. Vince Coleman is the train dispatcher who stayed behind to make sure his warning got through to stop a train coming into the city with 300 people aboard.
00:08:54
That's right. There's a heritage moment dedicated to him. And in parentheses, it says an extremely Canadian piece of media that you can find on YouTube.
00:09:03
And it says his last message was, quote, hold up the train, ammunition ship a fire in harbor, making for Pier 6 and will explode.
00:09:12
Guess this will be my last message. Goodbye, boys. Wow. End quote. I'm absolutely going to watch that heritage moment.
00:09:21
Oh, my God. Okay. And then it says, The Mi'kmaq village of Turtle Grove was completely obliterated and never rebuilt.
00:09:30
Kathy Martin of Millbrook First Nation returns to the shores of Turtle Grove every December 6th to call out the names of her ancestors.
00:09:38
Fuck. Their spirits are here. the more we say their names, the better they can rest and know that we haven't forgotten them.
00:09:46
So just an entire village of First Nation people were obliterated all at once. Then three, Trinidad-born Dr. Clement Liguore, Nova Scotia's first black doctor,
00:09:58
was denied privileges in the city's medical facilities because of his race. So he opened
00:10:05
a private hospital. After the explosion, he worked day and night to treat the wounded.
00:10:09
His private hospital became a dressing station for people who were refused from overcrowded hospitals and didn't have life-threatening injuries.
00:10:19
Wow. Amazing. That makes me think of The Nick. Yeah. Which is, I mean, I wonder if that character was slightly based on Dr. Clement Liguori.
00:10:30
Okay. And then last one is USA Connection. Help arrived from all over, including Boston.
00:10:35
Every year, Nova Scotia sends a Christmas tree to Boston in thanks. It's a high honor to have a tree on your property selected.
00:10:44
There's a big ceremony before it's loaded onto a truck and driven to Boston. There's a committee who selects potential trees and monitors their growth over the years.
00:10:55
Love to you all. No name. No name? No name for that whole thing. Oh my God, you deserve a name for that email.
00:11:02
I mean, wow. What great like info. Yeah. Great color. So good. Thank you so much.
00:11:09
Thank you. No name. Thank you. No name. All right. Should we get into our network highlights?
00:11:16
Let's do it. We have a podcast network. It's called Exactly Right Media. Here are some highlights.
00:11:21
So the first and foremost highlight, which we already talked about, is that Rewind with Karen in Georgia episode two came out yesterday.
00:11:27
In it, we are facing our ultimate fears and revisiting the second episode from January 22nd, 2016.
00:11:34
Obviously, we had commentary. There are great case updates. There's a lot to talk about in all those old episodes.
00:11:40
So go and listen and rate and review and subscribe. And we're going to put those up every Wednesday as a bonus episode.
00:11:46
And it's becoming fun. I think we were both terrified in the beginning of it. But it's now become like fun to reminisce.
00:11:53
So that's great. Yeah. I love the case updates I do too Also this is so exciting I love her so much Comedian Rachel Dratch You know her from SNL Lots of other things
00:12:05
She is on I Said No Gifts this week. Talking to Bridger. That's so fucking exciting.
00:12:10
Such a good booking. And then Karen mentioned the book Raw Dog, The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs on last week's episode.
00:12:16
And this week, the book's author, Jamie Loftus. What do you know? Hey. She joins Tess, Babs, and Brandy on Lady to Lady.
00:12:22
That is as if we planned it. Obviously, we didn't. No one in our audience would ever think we planned it.
00:12:29
No, we didn't. A week ahead? No, we need months for planning, please. And if you need a respite from the real news of the world,
00:12:35
Tess Barker, who is from Lady to Lady, is on bananas this week with Kurt and Scotty.
00:12:40
And you guys, please stay hydrated. It's so important. If you go to the MFM store, you can grab a Murderino or SSDGM water bottle
00:12:47
and carry it with you, you know, and keep yourself hydrated. It's very important.
00:12:52
It's so hot in Burbank that when I went out to my car, because indoors I need a sweater because there's a lot of air conditioning.
00:13:00
This is the way in L.A. I walked out to my car and got my sweater on my car. And then the walk back was so slow because I was like, oh, and I just looked like a turtle coming back across that parking lot.
00:13:13
Burbank is a special hell during summer. Like it is specifically asphalty, like brand new, new, late asphalt for some reason.
00:13:22
So it's always kind of squishy and it always smells. You're always inhaling those fumes of like melting asphalt.
00:13:29
Well, and we got the airport. So we got those fumes too. But it's great. I know it feels like maybe it's because it's like over the hill.
00:13:37
So maybe we're in. Well, it is. Are we in a basin? It's the valley. It's a valley.
00:13:42
It is literally. Some call it a basin. I call it the valley. Oh, the valley. Hello, beautiful.
00:13:49
I'm Amy Erick, founder of Madison Reed. a hair color company I named after my daughter.
00:13:55
Forget everything you know about hair color. The mess, the smell, the hassle, the damage.
00:14:00
We're female founded and female led. We've transformed the hair color experience
00:14:05
with ingredients that care for your hair and award-winning color on your terms at home or at our hair color bars.
00:14:12
The future of hair color is here at Madison Reed. This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem?
00:14:20
When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing.
00:14:27
Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales.
00:14:36
Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need.
00:14:44
Check out Odoo at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. 2024 average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans, pets age 0 to 10.
00:15:22
All right, well, you're first, I guess. I'm first this week? I think so. All right.
00:15:27
Then let me tell you a story. And it's a story that takes place in California in the middle of the 19th century, just before California became a state.
00:15:37
Do you know what year California became a state? I'm going to say that's going to be embarrassing.
00:15:45
We might have to edit it out if I'm really, really wrong. Can I go 1824? You're not really, really wrong.
00:15:51
We became a state a year after the gold rush. So gold rush was 1849, essentially.
00:15:57
And we became a state in 1850. I should absolutely know that. And I don't care that I don't.
00:16:02
And I'm close enough that I almost high school dropout. I'm proud of that. Yeah, you didn't.
00:16:08
You did just fine. I'm fine. Well, also, if anybody had ever contextualized it for me, that it was like, yeah, this happened
00:16:15
this and the next year this happened. Totally. Which you know are connected. Right.
00:16:19
They don't teach like that, though. Whatever. I hate school. Let's talk about the school system and how much we hate it and how much it didn't work for brains like ours.
00:16:29
We are literally the living proof of how public and private school isn't ideal. We'll handle all that later when democracy is restored.
00:16:41
Let's get this worry out of the way first. And then Karen and I will address the public school system.
00:16:47
And until we do, I'm going to tell you a story about the gold rush. Really? Okay.
00:16:52
It's about the gold rush, which I love. Okay, I know you do. So 1848, a carpenter named James W. Marshall is building a sawmill up in Sutter's Mill, kind of up above Sacramento.
00:17:05
And he strikes gold and he changes California forever. So when word gets out that there's gold in them, Marr Hills, gold fever ensues, a mass migration of hopeful prospectors who eventually start getting called the 49ers because of the year.
00:17:23
Right. So he, James Marshall discovers it in 1848, right? The next year is when everyone starts coming.
00:17:30
Love it. So the 49ers start heading west as they pour into California once tiny rugged towns explode in population basically overnight.
00:17:39
Yeah. So, for example, and I had no idea about this, and I was born in San Francisco.
00:17:44
But in 1848, San Francisco's population was around a thousand people. Oh, my God.
00:17:50
By the end of 1849 a year later it had jumped to 25 people That a big jump And continued rising exponentially after that obviously Countless pioneers from across the country brave the extremely dangerous journey to California
00:18:06
Dreaming of striking it rich, only to, of course, come up empty-handed like some of them do.
00:18:12
If you haven't seen Deadwood, it doesn't take place. It's not set in California.
00:18:17
But I'm positive some of those kind of like, there's a whole gold mining story. I need to get like a heavy, like a medium heavy cold soon so I can really get into Deadwood because I've never gotten past like the first two episodes.
00:18:31
Yes. But I need to be like stuck on a couch. Yes, because you have to, your ear has to adjust to the talking.
00:18:38
Right. And at the beginning. Oh, right. The like. It's very. Lingo. Yeah. And it kind of is like, it's almost like being at a play.
00:18:47
Okay. So if you give it the grace period, it pays off so beautifully. I'm sure. And I kind of love that it's like Boardwalk Empire.
00:18:56
I wish I could start that from the beginning and never have seen it again. So I'm kind of saving this Deadwood as that.
00:19:03
Until you can clear the whole TV room and like... Break an ankle? I mean, I don't want to.
00:19:08
I'm not dying to. But like, you know. Yeah. That'll do it. Yeah. Because there's so many stories about like you could be the smartest prospector.
00:19:18
You could be the strongest prospector or whatever. But you just don't know. It's just a bunch of randos all at the same river trying to get rich.
00:19:26
You just explained podcasting in 2016. You literally just explained how we got where we are.
00:19:34
Yeah. Bitch. There's the fucking gold in them speakers or whatever. Microphones.
00:19:41
That's right. Okay, so obviously, and this is also in Deadwood, but none of that takes place in California, but there are the people who watch the gold rush and then they go, oh, there's a fortune to be made catering to these people who are out sitting at the river all day.
00:19:57
See, that's the smart move, I think. Yes. I don't want to fucking look for gold.
00:20:03
I want to make fucking corndogs for the people. You want to take the gold nuggets out of their hands and give them corn dogs, which they value more than gold at the end of those days because they're out in the middle of the hills of Sacramento and they can't get their hands on anything.
00:20:18
Yeah. So obviously a whole cohort of people come in and they set up in all of these tiny mining camps in the middle of nowhere.
00:20:27
They all immediately have a saloon, a general store and a boarding house. Sure. So they're providing the 49ers with everything they need from shovels to shelter to food and entertainment.
00:20:38
So this story is about two people who did that and they did it so well that they struck their own sort of mother load, amassing a ton of wealth, rising to the status of legendary San Franciscans, like many of the Kilgariffs.
00:20:53
They were originally known for their rags to riches story of lawlessness, luxury and love.
00:20:59
they will become infamous for the murder that tears them apart. Bay Area journalist Gary Camilla writes that their story is a, quote,
00:21:09
tragic only in San Francisco love story, one involving a beautiful young sex worker,
00:21:16
her rakish gambler consort, and the largest vigilante movement in U.S. history. Damn.
00:21:22
Today I'm going to tell you the story of the notorious Belle Cora and her high roller husband, Charles.
00:21:27
Bell, Cora. Yeah, yeah. So the main sources that Marin used in the research today were the book They Saw the Elephant, Women in the California Gold Rush by Joanne Levy.
00:21:42
Hell yeah. Which I absolutely want to read. A history.com write-up on the California Gold Rush and several articles by journalist Gary Kamiya.
00:21:50
He is a well-known journalist from San Francisco. and he writes a ton about historical San Francisco,
00:21:58
but he also has a Substack. So if historical San Francisco or really anything like that interests you,
00:22:04
go to garykamiya.substack.com and you can read all his writing. And the rest of our sources are in the show notes.
00:22:11
So I'll tell you about Belle Cora's early life first. She's born Belle Ryan sometime in the 1820s
00:22:17
in Baltimore, Maryland. We don't know much about her childhood except that she is said to have been raised
00:22:23
in a stable and loving Irish Catholic home. Hey, like you. Seems unlikely. I'm just saying.
00:22:30
Do those things go together? 1820s, stable, loving Irish Catholic home. They beat the odds and congratulations.
00:22:37
They beat their children. They beat the shit out of everyone that came through the front door.
00:22:42
And then they went to church together. And then they said the rosary for seven hours.
00:22:46
That's stability in 1920s Irish Catholicism. I guess that's true. because there would definitely be a lot of carbs on the table at the end of the day.
00:22:55
And everything in the front room would look really nice. Okay. So I guess that's stability.
00:23:01
To the untrained eye. Yeah. You got to keep your eye peeled for the fakery. Okay.
00:23:07
So there's two versions of how Belle spent her teenage years. The most popular one is that in the late 1840s, when she's around 17,
00:23:17
she falls for an older man and she gets pregnant out of wedlock. And when she tells the old guy that she's going to have the baby, he dumps her.
00:23:25
Of course, we don't know his name. So she doesn't know what to do. She runs away to New Orleans to raise the child alone because the sin of being unmarried and pregnant would bring shame to her and her family.
00:23:36
So the embarrassment is the priority there in that loving stable home. Anyway, she runs away to New Orleans.
00:23:45
And then tragically, when she has the baby, the baby dies shortly after childbirth.
00:23:49
so now she's alone grieving short on cash and trying to stay above water in a brand new city
00:23:56
so to make ends meet she starts doing sex work That's the first version. There's a much simpler second version of the story.
00:24:05
Belle, who is usually described as a beautiful brunette with hazel eyes and a voluptuous figure, quote, voluptuous figure.
00:24:13
There was no romance with an older man. She never had a baby that passed away. Instead, she gets into sex work because it sounds more exciting and lucrative than anything else available to women at the time.
00:24:24
I mean, can't they both be true? Yeah. Either way, we know that Belle becomes a very popular sex worker in New Orleans.
00:24:33
And then around the time she's 22 years old, she meets and falls in love with a 33-year-old man named Charles Cora.
00:24:42
They don't get married, but she does take his last name and starts going by Belle Cora.
00:24:48
So here's what we know about Charles Cora. He's an immigrant from Genoa, Italy, who makes his fortune playing a card game called Pharaoh.
00:24:57
at all the gambling halls along the Mississippi River. I am picturing. Who you got?
00:25:03
Well, it's like Oscar Isaac type. Wow. Yes. Wow. Okay. Wow. So like that guy in a light pink three-piece suit.
00:25:12
Come on. And a like pocket watch. Oh, like a bowler hat? Yeah. A professional card player.
00:25:19
A chain wallet. On the Mississippi. Oh, not a chain wallet. That's Orange County in the 90s.
00:25:23
I'm talking about a chain watch. That's Scott. You're talking about a pocket watch.
00:25:27
Not Ska from back then. I'm talking about he doesn't have like spiky, you know, bleached hair.
00:25:34
No. I think she landed a Hawkeye. Sure. That's what it sounds like to me. And he basically he makes a living as a Pharaoh card player.
00:25:42
So real quick, I'm just going to explain the most simplified version of Pharaoh.
00:25:48
It doesn't really matter, but it was as popular at the time as poker. So in Pharaoh, the dealer is called the banker.
00:25:55
The players are called punters. The punters place bets on certain cards, and then they hope that the banker's winning card matches their bets.
00:26:04
So it's simple. Basically, it's probably a different version of 21. Who knows? It's called Pharaoh because there's a picture of an Egyptian pharaoh printed on some of the earliest decks.
00:26:15
It started in France, in 18th century France. But it's spelled F-A-R-O. In the 1800s, it comes across the Atlantic, becomes extremely popular in New Orleans.
00:26:26
and for very good reason because even though it is a game of chance, the odds of winning at Faro are 50-50,
00:26:35
which are better than most casino games. And that's probably why Faro has been almost completely erased
00:26:42
from modern-day casinos and gameplay. Right. They don't like the odds. They're like, 50-50, that's fair.
00:26:50
Gambling is Charles Cora's full-time profession. Nice. He's very good at it. He makes a collective $85,000 playing this game in one six-month period alone.
00:27:01
Which in today's... Okay, I knew this was coming. Yeah. $85,000 in six months in 1840-ish is $315,000.
00:27:16
$3.5 million. Holy shit. He is rich. Real good at it. He's doing good. Damn. Yes. After that winning streak, the Mississippi River casinos banned Charles Cora.
00:27:31
Sure they do. And really any place that hosts Farrow. So in the late 1840s, Bell and Charles moved to the Wild West.
00:27:39
Writer Joanne Levy notes, quote, For men like Charles and women like Belle, news of California's gold discovery conjured a feverish vision of raw wealth waiting to be spent on pleasure and amusement.
00:27:52
Flocks of gamblers and courtesans abandoned New Orleans on the first ships pointed toward the Isthmus.
00:27:59
Do it. Right? And it's just so funny to me. We all know how I feel about Sacramento.
00:28:05
The good and the bad. But that's where everyone's going. It's just like there? Yeah.
00:28:10
At the How About Art and Shopping Center? That's where they're going? But they have that Sbarro that everyone needs?
00:28:17
Do you think they had that yet? Did they go to my TGI Fridays, I wonder? So at first, the Corps settle in Sacramento.
00:28:24
And from there, they move to the smaller mining towns. Gambling's arguably the top form of entertainment for miners.
00:28:31
So in almost every town, no matter how small, they all have gambling saloons, even if that quote-unquote saloon is just a plank and a table.
00:28:40
Yeah. Which I kind of love. They're like, we work hard all day. Yeah. We're at a party all night and get up and do the same thing.
00:28:46
And there's some movie. Do you remember this movie? Three Amigos. Where it's about the gold miners, though, where there was some saloon owner that was smart enough to put.
00:28:59
I think this is an old. I think it's like Cat Baloo or like an old 60s movie. But the planks on the floor of the saloon are just pieces of wood.
00:29:08
Right. So they're not sealed. or anything. And so this saloon owner goes under the floor, like in the crawl space every night,
00:29:16
and collects up all the gold dust and nuggets that drunk gold miners, that it's just falling
00:29:22
out of their pockets. Yeah. Love that. Okay. I don't know if that's real. I just wanted to talk
00:29:27
about a scene from a movie. Okay. So while Bell continues making money as a sex worker, Charles
00:29:33
finds new opportunities to play cards. A 49er, like he was himself a 49er named Edward McElhaney,
00:29:42
writes, quote, I remember seeing a bet of $10,000 made at poker by Charles Cora.
00:29:48
He won his bet. His wife or mistress, I do not know which, was a pretty woman and seemed very much devoted to him as I have seen her with him in the city that he won Okay I going to do it right this time Okay So what was it It going to be
00:30:09
$400,000. Damn it. It seems lower. Yeah. When I was doing that same guess, even guessing game, even though I'm looking straight at the
00:30:16
number. So in one of these little mining towns that they go to, it's actually Marysville,
00:30:22
Charles and Bell opened their own gambling parlor slash brothel. It's called New World.
00:30:28
This is an illegal operation through and through under both Mexican law, which was the rule we were all under at the time because this was Mexico.
00:30:36
And then also when California officially becomes a state in 1850. But many of these communities have no justice system set up specifically towns where a police force or a court system do exist.
00:30:51
they don't really have a lot of sway. See the film Tombstone. We know. Vigilante groups are the ones
00:31:00
who take up the slack and actually make sure that the people that they believe should be prosecuted
00:31:06
or should be ultimately hung or hanged. That's what that is all about. So despite the laws on
00:31:13
the books, sex work and gambling specifically are openly tolerated, if not completely celebrated in
00:31:19
these mining communities. So the Cora's business model is appreciated as the one-stop entertainment
00:31:25
shop that it becomes for all the miners. New World has a bartender slinging drinks, a full range of
00:31:31
games, including faro, poker, dice, and roulette, all at separate tables, not just one little plank.
00:31:38
And Charles often serves as the dealer, although Belle will step in for him when necessary. But
00:31:44
Belle's main responsibility is enticing passersby into the new world with her charm and her beauty.
00:31:51
Journalist Chris Enns paints a picture of the saloon's interior. He says, quote,
00:31:55
The new world was an ornate saloon. An elaborate bar lined an entire wall and brass mountings accentuated the gleaming countertops.
00:32:05
Imposing mirrors clung to all sides of the enormous entryway and paintings of nude women relaxed in beauty prostrate,
00:32:11
So the New World was extremely lucrative for the Korahs, especially for Belle, who is now a madam running her own brothel.
00:32:34
Yeah. So in 1851, a man named Edward Eli crosses paths with the Korahs and writes, quote,
00:32:41
There's a house here owned by a young woman from New Orleans who has succeeded in bringing this to this retired spot about a dozen girls.
00:32:49
And although she has not yet been in the place one year, she must be worth $100,000.
00:32:55
And, you know, we don't know if that that's just an estimation that that one guy said.
00:33:00
But do you want to know how much $100,000 would be? Yeah. Four million dollars. Damn, girl.
00:33:05
So she's they've done it. They've cracked the code. Yeah. Despite their success, the Corps are always looking for new ways to expand their fortune.
00:33:13
So in the early 1850s, they leave New World behind and move down to San Francisco, where gambling culture has hit a fever pitch.
00:33:22
Again, this is journalist Gary Kamiya. He writes, quote, once the gold rush began, trying to stop gambling would have been like trying to damn Niagara Falls.
00:33:34
It wasn't surprising that the 49ers gambled like crazy. After all, the entire gold rush was one big dice toss.
00:33:40
After making the long and arduous journey to California, on which there was no guarantee of survival, wagering one's entire stake on a pharaoh game must have seemed tame.
00:33:50
Yeah, I've played Oregon Trail. You know. That's no fucking joke. You've been through this.
00:33:55
I've died of dysentery. You know how hard it can be. So by 1850, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that there are, quote, 1,000 gambling establishments like in San Francisco.
00:34:07
That's one for every 12 people. Whoa. So the Gold Coast in San Francisco, that was the neighborhood where a bunch of those were.
00:34:17
And apparently it was mayhem. It was constant mayhem and chaos. Yeah. And lawless.
00:34:23
and maybe because at the time San Francisco's almost completely men. In 1849, the ratio is somewhere around 10 men for every one woman.
00:34:33
Which in today's... Four million. Isn't that weird? It feels like four million men.
00:34:40
Really dumb. The mixture of gold rush related dreams and the crushing of those dreams
00:34:45
along with constant gambling, drinking, and man-on-man energy make for an incredibly chaotic city.
00:34:52
Sure. So one 49er named Vincente Perez Rosales writes in a memoir, quote, every night someone was wounded, clubbed or beaten up.
00:35:01
And from each gambling hall, the losers would sally forth and try to recoup their losses by robbery and assault.
00:35:07
Shit. End quote. So you have all the like drunken mayhem going on inside and then it all rolls out in the street.
00:35:15
So against this high risk backdrop, Bell opens yet another brothel on what was then known as Pike Street.
00:35:22
It's now Waverly Street in Chinatown. Hers is an extremely high class brothel in both decor and clientele.
00:35:30
Describing a party Bell hosted, a local newspaper, The Alta, reported, quote, The lady of the establishment has sent the most polite invitations on the finest and most beautifully embossed notepaper to all the principal gentlemen of the city, including collector of the port, mayor, alderman, judges of the county, and members of the legislature.
00:35:52
A splendid band of music is in attendance. A way over the Turkey or Brussels carpet whirls the politicians with some sparkling beauty and the judge joins in and enjoys the dance in company with the beautiful but lost beings whom tomorrow he may send to the House of Correction
00:36:10
Whoa. Yeah. So it's all the big boys went there. Meanwhile, Charles Cora continues playing poker in Faro in San Francisco and anywhere else the gambling circuit takes him.
00:36:22
So almost immediately, the Koros are a part of the city's upper crust, and it's mostly because of Bell.
00:36:29
According to writer John Bessenecker, Bell's brothel becomes, quote, the most successful of the more than 100 brothels in town.
00:36:37
Though plain on the outside, its interior was replete with fancy furnishings and even fancier courtesans, end quote.
00:36:44
But San Francisco is actually changing and the lawlessness that's part and parcel in the day-to-day of the Wild West is starting to transform into something more formalized.
00:36:57
So as the mania of the gold rush comes to an end, the attitude around all the illegal business it brings in is beginning to shift.
00:37:05
And by 1854, there's new laws on the books that aim to outlaw sex work and gambling.
00:37:10
It doesn't put an end to these activities overnight, but it's clear that openness or like willingness to turn a blind eye is waning.
00:37:19
So all that considered, Bell and Charles' biggest troubles begin sometime around the fall of 1855.
00:37:26
One evening, the couple decides to throw a big party to pull in more clientele. But it just so happens to be on the same night of a party being hosted by U.S. Marshal William Richardson and his wife.
00:37:38
and his wife is always identified as Mrs. Richardson everywhere. So here's an account written in 1855.
00:37:46
It says, quote, Mrs. Richardson and her husband were unhappy with the lack of male attendance at their event.
00:37:52
When they learned that their invited guest chose to go to Bell's place, the marshal and his wife were furious.
00:37:58
Then on the night of November 15th, 1855, Bell and Charles decide they're going to go to the theater.
00:38:05
After sitting down in their premium seats, They start getting recognized by the other audience members, and the audience members start heckling the Koras.
00:38:16
Specifically, Belle is the target of their jeers, of course. No surprise there. And worse, the Richardsons are seated directly in front of them.
00:38:25
Oh, dear. So at first, Mrs. Richardson thinks that everybody in the audience is laughing and yelling at her.
00:38:30
Oh, God. She tells William to make them stop. but then they realize that they're sitting in front of the sex worker gambler duo who ruined
00:38:39
their party so in addition to having an axe to grind the richardsons are disgusted by bell and
00:38:45
charles lifestyles and they don't want anything to do with them this absolutely should be the next
00:38:52
like the gilded age yeah this is like i can picture the characters because this like they all did have
00:38:58
to go along and get along and then that turn is so good where it's like oh you don't not like me
00:39:03
because you think i'm a bad person yeah you don't like me because your husband comes to my
00:39:09
establishment and does all kinds of crazy shit right mrs richardson yeah um that's your real
00:39:14
name what if she was born and her parents named her missus yeah just be like eyes on the prize
00:39:19
baby. So William Richardson asks them to leave the theater. And the Korahs say, you can go fuck
00:39:29
yourself. Go fuck yourself. U.S. Marshal. The Richardsons call over a manager and they say to
00:39:34
the man, they pull a full Karen. Come on. Say, kick these guys out of the theater. Manager's like,
00:39:40
no. Yeah. They're paying customers and I'm also going over there later. So then the Richardsons are furious and they storm out. Sure. Over the next couple of days,
00:39:49
a very hot-headed William Richardson, who also simultaneously has the reputation of being a
00:39:55
violent drunk, decides he's going to track down Charles Cora himself. So he goes, just spends a
00:40:03
day looking in saloon after saloon around San Francisco. I've done that too. Stop in, have a
00:40:10
couple of cocktails. He finally bumps into Charles Cora just randomly on the street. But then when
00:40:18
the two men talk and this pulls in my oscar isaac theory they talk and patch things up yeah so
00:40:25
charles cora this is based on nothing but me interpreting context clues yeah is slick as shit
00:40:32
yeah your wants and needs as well yeah yeah he knows how to tell you what you want to hear yeah
00:40:37
and they're like besties cool so they even go grab a drink together great right keep the party
00:40:44
going. Love it. That afternoon will end on the corner of Clay and Leidesdorf streets with Charles
00:40:53
Cora shooting William Richardson dead. Charles is the shooter. Charles is the shooter. That's not
00:41:00
what I expected. He actually claimed self-defense. Okay. Basically was like he was going to shoot me.
00:41:06
I had to shoot him. Yeah. No one knows what's true. We don't know what's true. No. But William
00:41:12
Richardson's gun is found cocked and loaded next to his body. And he's known as a mean drunk.
00:41:18
So like. And he's already a U.S. Marshal. So anything could have happened. Yeah.
00:41:23
And anything is possible. I have no idea. Although I love to guess and then say it is a fact.
00:41:29
Sure. There's a good chance Charles claimed that his life was in danger. It is true.
00:41:34
Either way, Charles Kors is arrested for murder and he goes to trial. so this once untouchable raconteur's fate is now at risk because of this very specific time in San Francisco history.
00:41:48
So according to writer R.K. DeArment, quote, shootings and stabbings were common occurrences in the city and had this murder been committed a few months earlier Cora might have escaped punishment on the ancient claim of self But violence had reached such proportions in the
00:42:06
city that residents were calling for reorganization of the vigilance committee that had been so
00:42:12
effective against the criminal element in 1851. In that year, vigilantes had executed or banished
00:42:19
from the city, many miscreants, and now five years later, they felt another no-nonsense
00:42:25
cleansing was called for. Uh-oh. So that's where vigilantism comes from, is like that's in the towns where there was nothing
00:42:33
set up. The people would just all get together and be like, let's get in a big group and decide
00:42:38
how we feel. It's like a neighborhood watch. Yeah. But hardcore. Yeah. So Belle is devastated by her boyfriend's arrest, and she does everything she can to help him.
00:42:49
She sends fresh linens and home-cooked meals to the jailhouse every single night.
00:42:54
And she also identifies the best defense lawyer in San Francisco, a person named E.D. Baker.
00:43:00
And she pays him in advance of $15,000 to defend Charles, which is worth over— Hold on. Hold on.
00:43:08
It's over $100,000. $150,000. $600,000. God damn it. I knew that. Over half a million dollars.
00:43:17
Holy shit. And just in case, Bell also attempts to bribe a witness to make sure that he is exonerated.
00:43:23
Don't do that. That will eventually come to light, but her investment in such a great lawyer pays off
00:43:29
because ultimately she is never charged for that crime. Meanwhile, when the trial starts, the jury hangs on every word that E.D. Baker says.
00:43:38
He captivates the courtroom with his speeches about the Corps' relationship, humanizing Charles for the jury, and he describes their love as, quote,
00:43:46
not sanctioned by the rights of the church, but a tie which angels might not blush to approve.
00:43:53
End quote. So he's a real silver tongue, this guy. So the jury comes back with a hung verdict.
00:44:01
So Charles, who is now, of course, a pariah, has to go back to jail to wait for a retrial.
00:44:07
Meanwhile, E.D. Baker's involvement in the case actually comes back to bite him in the ass.
00:44:13
According to Joanne Levy, quote, polite society shunned him afterwards and due to threats on his life, he eventually fled from the city.
00:44:21
Damn. Yeah. So San Francisco's Committee of Vigilance does get back together and they decide that they're going to handle Charles's retrial.
00:44:31
So according to their rules, a person can be convicted if there's majority consensus among the vigilantes.
00:44:38
and the committee finds Charles guilty and they order him to be hanged. Belle begs and pleads with anyone who will listen.
00:44:47
She offers to pay off whoever she needs to to free Charles, but at this point, her money has no sway,
00:44:56
of course, with the Committee of Vigilance. Just before Charles is scheduled to be executed
00:45:01
on May 22nd, 1856, he and Belle get married. And hours later, around 1.30 p.m., Charles Cora is hanged.
00:45:12
Holy shit. Bell Cora becomes a widow at just 29 years old. Oh, my God. Yeah. Despite her grief, she goes back to her work as a madam, and she maintains a level of fame in San Francisco for the rest of her life.
00:45:27
Wow. She stays incredibly angry at the Committee of Vigilance, or whatever they're called, the people responsible for her husband's death.
00:45:36
And according to Gary Camilla, Bell even collaborates with, quote, the publisher of an anti-vigilante scandal sheet to humiliate the vigilantes who killed her husband.
00:45:46
Damn. So she's not letting it rest. Good. She holds on to this resentment until a few years later, the early 1860s, when she catches pneumonia and she does not recover.
00:45:59
But before she dies, she sells her brothel. She donates most of her fortune to various social causes, specifically organizations that help educate children.
00:46:10
And by doing that, Belcora becomes a rare female philanthropist at a time when men were the only ones doing it.
00:46:19
Bel passes away at the age of 35. She's buried in Calvary Cemetery. She prearranged to have Charles reinterred next to her.
00:46:27
He was initially buried at the Mission Dolores Cemetery, but Belle was unable to secure a plot beside him because of overcrowding.
00:46:35
So she basically has him moved to her. Over time, the Cora's graves become neglected and overgrown with grass and weeds.
00:46:44
But then in the 1920s, a young female reporter named Pauline Jacobson learns about Belle and Charles Cora's story, and she writes a series of articles about them for the San Francisco Bulletin.
00:46:56
And around this time, as the property is redeveloped, bodies interred at Calvary Cemetery are moved to Colma, which is a city of cemeteries in South San Francisco.
00:47:08
And Pauline lobbies to have the Korahs re-interned at Mission Dolores. So it's his original resting place.
00:47:16
And this ends up being their final resting spot. The couple is still buried there to this day.
00:47:22
Wow. And that is the story of the notorious Gold Rush era, super rich mega millionaires, Belle and Charles Cora.
00:47:31
Oh, my God. How tragic. Isn't she beautiful? I fucking drew that. It looks like I drew it.
00:47:39
It does look like you drew that. And also, here's a drawing of Charles. No, that's not what you described.
00:47:45
No. I mean, look, I love it. I love a strong brow, but this doesn't look like Oscar Isaac.
00:47:52
It doesn't. Wow. That's such a heartbreaking tale. I had never heard of that. I love the shape of the story.
00:48:00
which is like, hey, get your bag, make your money, figure it out. If there's a trend,
00:48:07
how can you be the supporter of that trend? Because if money's being made, how can you go
00:48:13
provide services to the people getting rich off that thing? Again, podcasting. It's so obvious, clearly.
00:48:21
Hello, beautiful. I'm Amy Erick, founder of Madison Reed, a hair color company I named after
00:48:27
my daughter. Forget everything you know about hair color. The mess, the smell, the hassle,
00:48:33
the damage. We're female founded and female led. We've transformed the hair color experience
00:48:38
with ingredients that care for your hair and award-winning color on your terms at home
00:48:44
or at our hair color bars. The future of hair color is here at Madison Reed. This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem? Business software is expensive,
00:48:56
And when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing, slow to use, hard to integrate.
00:49:05
Odoo solves that because all Odoo software is connected on a single affordable platform.
00:49:11
Save money without missing out on the features you need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data.
00:49:17
Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have, all at no additional charge.
00:49:23
Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting, all linked and talking to each other.
00:49:30
Check out Odoo at O-D-O-O dot com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Protect your pet with insurance from PetsBest.
00:49:39
Plans start from less than a dollar a day. Visit PetsBest.com. Pet insurance products offered and administered by PetsBest Insurance Services, LLC,
00:49:47
are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company or Independence American Insurance Company.
00:49:50
For terms and conditions, visit www.petsbest.com backslash policy. Products are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company, Independence American Insurance Company, or MS Transverse Insurance Company, and administered by Pets Best Insurance Services, LLC.
00:50:00
One dollar a day premium based on 2024 average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans, pets age zero to 10.
00:50:07
All right. Great job. Thank you. So my story actually is old timey also. Oh. It takes place in 1858.
00:50:18
What? Here we are. I feel like Hannah and Alejandra did this on purpose. Probably, but mine is in Bradford, England.
00:50:24
Where would you rather be? Bradford, England or back in San Francisco during the cold rush?
00:50:30
In that time, Bradford, England. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Okay. This story is kind of a, it would be a comedy of errors if it wasn't so tragic because a
00:50:38
lot of people and a lot of children die in this story. It's a story of how a batch of tainted candy in the 1850s left 20 people dead, many of
00:50:49
whom were children, the one silver lining is that it ultimately led to important safety
00:50:53
regulations that are still in place today. This is the story of the Bradford Sweets poisoning.
00:50:59
Oh, yeah. So the main source I use in this story is an article by Lauren Potts for BBC News and
00:51:06
reporting from the time from the Leeds Mercury. Also, there's a podcast called The Alarmist and in it, yeah, it's great.
00:51:14
There's an episode from September 2021 where Rebecca Delgado Smith, the host, interviews one of my favorite authors of nonfiction, Deborah Bloom, who wrote The Poisoner's Handbook.
00:51:28
Oh, yeah. Fucking incredible. And she's actually been on this podcast, We'll Kill You and Wicked Words.
00:51:34
I highly recommend listening to anything and reading anything by Deborah Bloom. And the rest of the sources can be found in the show notes.
00:51:40
All right. So we're going to begin in Bradford, England. And at the moment, it's a booming hub for the textile industry, your favorite industry.
00:51:48
It's the wee hours of the morning on Sunday, October 31st, 1858. Halloween is not a thing yet, so don't think about it.
00:51:55
I don't want to worry about that. Yeah. Several children in town have become extremely sick overnight.
00:52:00
A doctor rushes to the home of a boy named Elijah Wright, who is nine years old.
00:52:04
He's been vomiting and convulsing. And nearby, a 14-year-old boy has the same symptoms.
00:52:10
By sunrise, both boys die. And the doctor originally believes they both had cholera because it had been going around and it displays similar symptoms to what the boys were suffering.
00:52:23
But then a different doctor named John Henry Bell rushes to the home of two other young boys, Orlando and John Henry Brann.
00:52:30
They're only five and three years old. I know. The boys are already near death when the doctor gets there.
00:52:37
And tragically, they both die while he's at their house. So something's happening.
00:52:42
The father's also ill, though not nearly as sick as his sons had been. The boy's parents tell the doctor that both children had eaten peppermint candies the night before.
00:52:54
The father had brought home the candy as a special treat from the Bradford Green Market.
00:52:59
Another distraught relative of the family, like while they're there, eats two of those candies, like, you know, stress eating.
00:53:07
Sure. Promptly starts to vomit. Oh. And Dr. Bell is like, something's up. This isn't cholera.
00:53:13
Sends the candies to a chemist to be tested. And these specific candies, the Brits call them humbugs.
00:53:19
And they're basically just like little black and white peppermints. Like, I don't know, like any kind of peppermint you'd have.
00:53:25
Like a hard candy. Hard candy. Yeah. Like a boiled candy, they call them, or boiled sweet.
00:53:29
Oh, really? Yeah. At the same time, more and more reports are pouring in about people, mostly children,
00:53:35
becoming violently ill, and they had all recently consumed peppermint humbugs. And specifically, they'd all eaten peppermint humbugs that were purchased at the Green Market
00:53:45
the day before Saturday, October 30th. And there's only one person who sells candy at the Saturday Green Market, and his name
00:53:53
is William Hartiker But most people affectionately refer to him as Humbug Billy So like picture a farmer market bustling There a candy stall and Humbug Billy is like your guy
00:54:06
Everyone knows him. Yeah. A police detective named William Burniston. There's a lot of people named William in this story.
00:54:14
They love to name people William in the 1800s. They really do. It's a passion. So Burniston gets to Humbug Billy's house Sunday evening and finds him in his bed.
00:54:24
he's violently ill, the candy seller. He had eaten half a candy the night before,
00:54:31
started throwing up, and had to hire a horse-drawn carriage to bring him home. So he had tried one of the candies,
00:54:38
started getting violently ill, didn't put it together that it was from the candy,
00:54:42
and went home. When the detective tells him that many others are sick too, humbug Billy is immediately frantic.
00:54:49
He says that he sold about five pounds of peppermint candies the day before, which is about a thousand of the little candies.
00:54:56
So it's a fuck ton of these candies. Like it can't be something that everyone hates, like black licorice.
00:55:01
It has to be something that everyone loves. It's like such a bummer. The Bradford police constable immediately summons the town crier
00:55:08
to march through the streets ringing his bell, like straight up old school. Yes.
00:55:12
And is like, y'all, don't fucking eat these candies. We need that today. Yeah. Town crier, for sure.
00:55:20
To be like, dangling, dangling, get off the internet. I was going to say it's called the Internet, but we don't want an alternative.
00:55:27
We need a real life person. To say get off the Internet. As the word spreads, volunteers join in the cause.
00:55:34
They run from pub to pub because that's where everyone is, warning everyone inside about the bad batch of candy.
00:55:40
The police constable also has a special flyer printed hung up on every wall in town and also brought to surrounding towns because a lot of people come from smaller villages on a Saturday to go to the green grocer.
00:55:52
A nightmare, just like a nightmare of distribution. Yeah. Humbug Billy tells the police that he doesn't make the candy himself.
00:56:00
So he's just the seller. He buys it from a confectioner who's the candy maker named Joseph Neal.
00:56:06
So the detective leaves Humbug Billy and moves on to find this candy maker. He's trying to find, obviously, the root of this poisoning.
00:56:13
When Detective Bernstein gets to Joseph Neal's house, the candy maker, Joseph says that he made the peppermint humbugs the way he always does.
00:56:23
The recipe includes sugar and peppermint oil. But something that's super normal at the time, because sugar is so expensive and hard to get, is you just fucking cut it with some shit.
00:56:32
It's like cocaine. It's the same thing. Same idea. Yeah. Or like anything we eat today that's cut with stuff to make it cheaper.
00:56:38
Right. Because sugar, I guess Deborah Bloom in the Alarmist episode says that it's like $70 a pound.
00:56:45
Oh. And people are not, you know, don't have a lot of money at the time. So Joseph Neal cuts the candies with a filler substance that's called daft.
00:56:54
And daft is any kind of white powder that confectioners use to replace some of the costly sugar in their products.
00:57:00
Joseph typically uses what he calls terra alba as his daft, but it's the same thing as plaster of Paris.
00:57:09
Oh, no. So you want to talk all you want, you know, fucking nutritionists about additives.
00:57:14
But back then, it wasn't great either. They're like, should we put this on a balloon and try to sculpt a weird animal or should we feed it to children?
00:57:26
Oh, my God. I've been getting all these videos about canola oil recently, and it's just like, everything's terrible.
00:57:32
Everything's terrible. Everything's terrible. But it is unappealing, obviously, but it's generally harmless, supposedly.
00:57:38
And it's a totally acceptable common practice among candy makers, especially now during the Industrial Revolution, having to make these big batches.
00:57:47
And at the moment, it's all completely unregulated as well, because the Industrial Revolution is kind of a new thing.
00:57:53
And people are used to growing and selling their own stuff. So the fact that like someone else is making it and you're selling it is kind of rare and it's not regulated yet.
00:58:01
So the week before, Joseph had sent an employee named James Appleton to a druggist to buy 12 pounds of daft.
00:58:11
So a druggist is basically a pharmacist. And so the druggist or the pharmacist named Charles Hodgson, he was sick in bed when the confectioner went to buy the fucking plaster of Paris from the chemist.
00:58:28
Is making sense? Mm-hmm. So the only person in the shop was his young apprentice, a teenage boy, happened to be named William as well, William Goddard.
00:58:38
And so this teenager, William Goddard, was just like an untrained kid who was like covering the desk because Charles Hodgson was sick.
00:58:48
You know, not someone who had any idea what he was doing. So James comes to the shop asking for 12 pounds of daft.
00:58:56
William doesn't know what that is or where to look for it. He runs over to his boss's bedside, asks him where he keeps the daft.
00:59:03
Charles, the chemist, was like, it's the white powder in the barrel in the room in the corner, blah, blah, blah, explains to him where the daft is.
00:59:11
Oh, God. Guess what? Rat poison? Well, William goes to the barrel that he thinks his boss is referring to and scoops out 12 pounds of white powder, which he thinks is daft, and which he sells to James.
00:59:25
But it turns out that white powder is arsenic. Oh, God. Just a classic fucking arsenic.
00:59:32
Just a straight up poison. Just 12 fucking pounds of arsenic. James then mixes all 12 pounds of what he thinks is daft with 40 pounds of sugar and four pounds of gum to make the peppermint candies.
00:59:45
And while he and his employees are making the candies, they actually all begin to feel ill.
00:59:50
And the candies come out a strange color, darker than usual. Like there so many points in this for this to have not happened Yeah But people didn really pay attention Joseph Neal the candy seller he samples a bit of the candy because he like this is the wrong color
01:00:05
He starts to get sick, but he thinks it's maybe he's seasick or something. He doesn't equate it with the weirdly colored candy.
01:00:13
And because the candy is a weird color, he haggles them for a discount. That's as far as it fucking goes.
01:00:19
And thinking of like their big investment, which is the bought sugar that they've already used.
01:00:24
Right. It's kind of, they're not thinking worst case scenario. They're thinking, how do we keep this going?
01:00:30
Yeah. Which is, yeah. And it's kind of one of those things too that we talk about in scams where it's like, we need this now.
01:00:37
So people don't stop to think about consequences or likely answers. Also, and not to, you know, a mistake's a mistake.
01:00:45
And that's just the truth where it's clearly no one had any ill intention. But could we keep the arsenic in the hallway?
01:00:53
away from the sugar and powdered sugar. You know, like a colored post-it note on it
01:00:59
so you know that it's like not, you know what I mean? What would a Victorian England post-it note be?
01:01:06
I don't know. It'd be like a cloth diaper or something. Could we pin a cloth diaper to it?
01:01:11
A dirty diaper you find in the street. And then just like, just that's our way of saying,
01:01:15
please be careful. Yeah, this is the shit, you know. And to hear Deborah Bloom of The Poisoner's Handbook
01:01:22
talk about arsenic, which is, quote, her favorite poisoning, is a joy. I just, it's, she's amazing.
01:01:29
So after hearing this story from the candy maker, Detective Bernstein, it knows it's time to go back to the druggist where he originally went.
01:01:37
Joseph Neal decides to go with him. The candy maker is also like, dude, what's going on?
01:01:42
Yeah. So he goes to. So when the two men get to the pharmacy, the main druggist, Charles Hodgson, is out.
01:01:49
But he's not sick anymore. He's just not at the shop at the time. But the teen apprentice, William, is there.
01:01:55
The detective asks William if he's recently sold 12 pounds of daft. And William's like, yeah, totally.
01:02:00
And the detective asks if he can see the daft. William brings him up to the area.
01:02:04
He opens the cask and Joseph Neal, the candy maker, sticks his finger in the powder.
01:02:08
I mean, it's like a detective anomaly. And because of experience, knows immediately it's not daft.
01:02:14
There's no label. But at that point in time, the druggist gets back to the shop and realizes that the white powder is arsenic.
01:02:23
So basically the problem was there was two unmarked barrels in two different corners of the attic, each containing white powder.
01:02:29
I mean, it's just like... We know the problem. Yeah, we know what the problem is.
01:02:32
The problem is absolutely no regulation. Yeah, exactly. So the chemist who had been given the very first sample of peppermints confirms that they had been tainted with arsenic and matches it to the arsenic from the barrel.
01:02:43
and it's found that each candy contains enough arsenic to kill four men. Oh my God.
01:02:49
So of course, if an adult eats some of it, they're going to get sick, but not as sick as if a child eats even one.
01:02:56
I know it's fucking heartbreaking. Also, just if you're thinking about it, if it's how I'm picturing it,
01:03:01
which is like a northern mill town. Yeah, right. Getting a piece of candy is a really big deal.
01:03:07
Huge. Because sugar is so expensive. You don't like candy is not an everyday thing.
01:03:12
Right. And 20 people wind up dying from exposure to the poison candies. Many of them are children, some less than a year old.
01:03:21
About 200 more people become very sick. It's likely that the real numbers are even higher because some of the candies would have made their way to other towns where people might not have heard what happened.
01:03:33
And because arsenic is this like perfect poison, it doesn't taste like anything.
01:03:38
It doesn't smell like anything. It doesn't, you know, change anything. So just people randomly dying.
01:03:43
Yeah. And the effects mimic cholera, like a natural sickness. Yeah. Bradford's population is about 50,000.
01:03:51
So this is felt as a tragedy that touched everyone's life. Like everyone knew someone who got sick or died.
01:03:58
Totally. William the Apprentice, Charles the Druggist, and Joseph the Candymaker are all initially charged with manslaughter.
01:04:06
An inquest finds that only Charles, the druggist, is guilty. But the findings from an inquest also make it clear that what happened was a tragic accident.
01:04:15
And in the end, a judge dismisses the charges against Charles as well. So nobody's ever really helped.
01:04:20
I mean, good. Yeah, but also like. Well, what does it do? I know. Well, yeah. OK, so what happens is.
01:04:28
No, I'm just saying like what would sending him to jail do? He didn't intend it.
01:04:33
He didn't want it. And he didn't do anything against the law. He didn't do anything against the law.
01:04:37
And he now has to live the rest of his life knowing children die. Probably exactly the opposite of his goal of selling candy in the first place.
01:04:45
Not the candy seller, the chemist, the pharmacy guy. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. He doesn't.
01:04:50
But whoever's found guilty. Yeah. No, it's terrible. It's the last thing anyone would want.
01:04:56
So that idea of like, well, someone has to pay. It's like they don't, though. That's what an accident is.
01:05:01
Yeah. Well, actually, Humbug Billy, the candy seller, he survives the poisoning that he got, but he's paralyzed for the rest of his life. Like arsenic is no fucking joke. Rules about adulterating foods with other substances, so like daft with sugar, won't come on the scene for a long time. But this event leads directly to Parliament passing the Pharmacy Act of 1868. So like almost 10 years after the poisoning, but still it was directly related to this poisoning.
01:05:30
And this law requires that poisons can only be sold in particular bottles made from colored textured glass and that poisons must be labeled.
01:05:39
And it also requires sellers to keep a record of the names of the people who buy them so they can see who's responsible for that arsenic.
01:05:48
And that's awesome. But the U.S. doesn't implement that rule for another like 50 years.
01:05:53
So why would we Wild West And that is the tragic story of the Bradford Sweets poisoning Wow I feel like the stories that we do I absolutely tried to make up really quick in my head what this could possibly be
01:06:09
The idea that it's like a poisoning that was purely accidental. And all the people with hands on that like moved the poison along the process were innocent of knowing what was happening.
01:06:23
Horrifying. But they all got sick. The candy makers needed one person to go hold up. Let's take a look at this.
01:06:31
But was it a time where everyone was always sick? Was it that time where feeling ill was like, too bad, go back to your factory job?
01:06:41
Right. And speaking up on the line is going to get you fired immediately. Sucks.
01:06:46
I know. Horrible. Yeah. Well, very interesting. Right. All right. Well, should we pick this up at the very end by doing, by finding-
01:06:55
Wait one second. You know what we should do? We have a surprise here. Oh, yeah. So this is a piece of mail that just came in that Alejandra brought in for us. It's a gift from Shelby Nichols Art in Arkansas. So you want to take a look at this?
01:07:09
Yeah. Shelby Nichols is at Shelby Nichols Art on Instagram. We haven't had a present or like unboxing in so long.
01:07:17
This is really exciting because now we have an office for like where things can be sent, not like a basement or a storage unit.
01:07:23
Right. Exactly. Should we both put a hand on this and pull it up? It's a pretty box. It looks like it's going to be art.
01:07:29
Oh. It's wrapped in brown paper and it has a little mustache on it. Do you want to unwrap it?
01:07:35
No, no, go ahead. Here, take that side. I don't want to be the only one unwrapping it.
01:07:39
oh my god oh my god we said we wanted a framed photo of steven steven's mustache and there this is a close-up of steven's mouth and mustache this is a photo
01:07:59
realistic painting shelby incredible art shelby we will post this on our socials so
01:08:06
Like, make sure you check this out. It's totally Stephen's mouth. It's totally. It's Stephen's mouth so exact.
01:08:13
Like, you show this to me in the wild and I would know it's him. Shelby was very specific with Stephen's mustache being a little sparse.
01:08:21
Yep. And trimmed by himself, you can tell. Oh, my God. He's smiling in his Stephen way.
01:08:28
Oh, my God. What a delightful, like, reminder. Yeah. Also, if you are a talented artist and you want to give us some rendering of Stephen's mustache, get in here.
01:08:40
We could have a gallery wall of Stephen's mustache. We could have a Stephen's mustache.
01:08:44
It'll be just like, what year was that? Like 2011, where all of a sudden mustaches and like, remember when everyone got tattoos of a mustache on their finger?
01:08:55
It's like, let's bring it back. Bring it back. That's fucking delightful. All right.
01:08:59
Well, send in, if you have an idea for that, send it in. But in the meantime, Shelby Nichols, thank you so much.
01:09:04
Great job. Shelby Nichols art. Oh, my God. Unboxing. That was fun. I want to do more.
01:09:09
That was really fun. OK, so we asked you guys hashtag what are you even doing right now so we can find out what you do when you listen to this podcast because we want to know.
01:09:17
We're genuinely interested. And you guys have the best the best answers. I actually need to skip the line and tell you that last night we went to Osiria Moza, which is a very fancy restaurant here in Los Angeles.
01:09:29
Oh, my God. Me and my friend Chase Bernstein, who has a podcast called Composed, which is hilarious.
01:09:34
It's literally just her talking. She's so fucking hilarious. She's so funny. So we, I hadn't seen her in a long time.
01:09:41
So I was like, oh yeah, let's go out to dinner. So I get on open table to meet. And I totally thought we were going to regular mozza pizzeria.
01:09:50
Yeah. And they're like, oh no, you're up there. And then I was like, I'm wearing flip flops.
01:09:54
Like I should not be in this restaurant right now. And we had the most delicious dinner.
01:09:59
And at one point, a waiter came over and was kind of talking to us about the food.
01:10:04
And then he goes, I just want you to know that what I'm doing right now is usually setting up all these tables.
01:10:11
Oh, my God. And I was like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. I haven't had a what are you doing right now in the wild yet.
01:10:16
It was to my face. That's exciting. Very sweet and exciting. And then he was like, but ma'am, we need you to put real shoes on.
01:10:22
But ma'am, you're going to have to leave out the back door because who the hell do you think you are?
01:10:26
I mean, Helen Mirren is sitting right over there. Like, how do you even? Also, soon after that conversation, I knocked the candle off of our table across the fucking floor with wax and drama.
01:10:40
So I'm only telling that to say I cannot remember this person's name. And I'm really sorry because they were so sweet and nice.
01:10:47
But I guess we'll just have to go to Osteria Moza and find that out. Maybe later that night they were cleaning up wax while listening to the podcast.
01:10:55
Yeah. Someone had to get down there with a butter knife and scrape it off the floor.
01:11:00
OK, anyway. Yeah. OK, go. Mine's from someone named The Real Donda on Instagram.
01:11:05
And they say, I'm a dog walker in Calgary, Canada. I currently have six dogs strapped around my waist.
01:11:11
Whoa. As I think about which way really is the best way to eat eggs. We had a lot of comments on that.
01:11:18
That's the kind of like mental, you know, fodder that we try to give you. Just like these are things you can think about during the day.
01:11:25
other than scary stuff. Yeah. What is the best way to eat eggs, Scramble? You guys get me through my many hours of walking these pups in minus 40 degrees Celsius
01:11:35
to plus 40 degrees Celsius. It's meaningless to us. I gasp, but that was just polite.
01:11:42
I was being polite. Well, you know, if they're mentioning it, it must be high and low.
01:11:47
Yeah. Thank you for all you two ladies do is the end of that. Thank you, Real Donda.
01:11:53
Say hi to those dogs for us. Six dogs. This is an email. What am I even doing right now?
01:11:59
A Smithsonian. exhibition about forensic science. Greetings, murder scholars. I have been with y'all since the early days.
01:12:06
And when you stated the, what are you even doing right now corner, I knew it was finally my time to write in.
01:12:12
I am the mount maker at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. I have the greatest job in the museum
01:12:18
that you've never heard about. Mount making is the process of designing, fabricating and installing the mounts
01:12:24
slash support slash armatures for artifacts. And then it says, this is a fancy word for treasure, Karen.
01:12:32
I know what fucking artifacts are. We're off to a bad start. While listening to MFN, I've been making fire and bending brass for the mounts for our latest exhibition, Forensic Science on Trial.
01:12:45
Wow. Oh, my God. Those, so sorry, they don't buy mounts at the mount factory. No.
01:12:51
This person actually creates. Yeah. Wow. I know. It says, um, you guys, I've been trying to keep it together, but this exhibit is made for murderinos.
01:13:01
It includes historical case studies and displays objects related to forensic investigations of murder, sexual assault and kidnapping.
01:13:09
Trials of the century. You covered some of these stories on MFM. The exhibit opened on June 28th 2024 and closes in June 2025 Oh that good A full year Yeah Please come for a visit to D We would love to have you at the National Museum of American History Love you gals Laura Laura I honored to be talking to somebody that works at the Smithsonian
01:13:29
Seriously. Like the background check you had to pass to get that job is like epic.
01:13:34
Yeah. And then you like, you're just like, you want to push that up so people can see it on a slant.
01:13:40
I got you. You know what we need is her to make something for this beautiful Stephen portrait that we've got.
01:13:46
Oh, my God. Yeah. Laura, when you're not busy, because I'm sure you have a lot of free time at the Smithsonian.
01:13:53
There's not that much going on. No, no, no. We don't want you to fabricate a frame for Stephen's mustache painting.
01:14:00
What if Laura does that and then sends us the bill along with it where she's like, oh, no problem.
01:14:05
My services would be roughly around $11,000. Well, the podcast is over. Hey, this episode is over.
01:14:12
It is. Thanks for listening, you guys. You guys, please figure out your favorite type of eggs.
01:14:18
Please look around and go outside and find other humans and engage with humans and make plans in humanity and don't let the Internet scare you.
01:14:32
Yeah. Or go to a museum, a history museum. And remember that time isn't linear. It all circling around the drain Oh no wait Yeah just go to a museum go to a museum and then while you there find some women some like women and start planning yeah
01:14:51
stay sexy and don't get murdered goodbye elvis do you want a cookie this has been an exactly right production our senior producer is alejandra keck
01:15:08
Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
01:15:13
This episode was mixed by Liana Squalache. Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Allie Elkin.
01:15:19
Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritemurder and Twitter at myfavemurder.
01:15:26
Goodbye! This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem? Business software is expensive.
01:15:36
And when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing, slow to use, hard to integrate.
01:15:45
Odoo solves that because all Odoo software is connected on a single affordable platform.
01:15:50
Save money without missing out on the features you need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data.
01:15:56
Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have all at no additional charge Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting all linked and talking to each other Check out Odoo at O dot com
01:16:13
That's O-D-O-O dot com. This episode is brought to you by Bobcat. They started the compact equipment industry through grit, determination,
01:16:22
and a whole lot of, think we can't do that? Watch us. They set standards, broke records, empowered people to build bigger and higher, to dig deeper, to make the impossible possible.
01:16:34
We've all been there, with doubters telling us what we can't do. Who cares what they think? We don't need their permission. We're forgiveness. We just get things done.
01:16:44
So go ahead and doubt me. Judge me. Challenge me. But when the time comes, watch me.
01:16:50
Bobcat. You ever get the feeling the city walls closing in? The concrete jungle suffocating your soul.
01:16:59
You crave wide open spaces. The chance to connect with nature. Maybe chase some elk.
01:17:04
Fish a private stream. Well, listen up. There's a whole world out there and finding your own piece of it just got easier.
01:17:11
Head over to land.com. They've got ranches, forest, mountains, you name it. Search by acreage, location, the kind of hunting or fishing you dream of.
01:17:20
land.com. It's where the adventure begins.