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The Story of Starvation Heights · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: here two. Jerry's here too, and I'm here too. That's
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: me Josh, And this is Stuff you Should.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Know, the We're All Three Feeling Weird edition.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and that's strange. So yeah, I said that
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: I was just feeling kind of off today and you
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: said me too, and Jerry said me three.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what does that mean?
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know, but I mean that is very That's
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: remarkable to me that all three of us, I mean,
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: we all have three different personalities. Ye, we don't like
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: you know, we don't live together, despite what most people think.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not anymore.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: No, So I don't know what it is. Maybe something's
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: in retrograde and something's house or something like that.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: That whole thing. Yeah, stuff you should Know is in retrograde,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: whatever that means.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, we'll do our best with this. I'll do
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: my best not to break out in tears.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: No, I think would be okay. And big thanks to
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Julia for helping us put together this episode on one
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: of the quacks of all quacks. I feel like we
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: have covered quite a few quacks over the years.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this one know isn't as bad as that one
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: guy that we did though, But she's up there for sure.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: I mean I think she still has her supporters, Like
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: you can still buy her books online. Yeah, but most
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: people who are familiar with their case are like, she
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: was a serial killer, right, she just had a strange,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: strange method of murder.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of bleeding people of their money.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure and their life force.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: As Toby Hooper might put it, that's right. So, yeah,
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: we're talking about a woman named Linda Burfield Perry Hazard.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: There's at least two hyphens in there. Yeah, And she
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: was born in the nineteenth century, but was doing most
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: of her work in the late nineteenth early twentieth century.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: And she was a person who was vehemently opposed, like
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: from what I could tell, like very seriously, like this
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: was her personal philosophy against what would be called modern
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: medicine today, but at the time was you know, just
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: starting out as we'll see.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, she was a self described fasting specialist.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: She had no medical degree. She did have wealthy patients
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: and I was about to say patrons, but I guess
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: they were patients and she said she was the only
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: fasting specialist in the world. You know, this was sort
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: of the time of the sanitarium sanatorium world, where you
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: could go off and practice some very questionable methods of
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: healing people.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like the Kellogg brothers in Battle Creek.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, because you know that we had not in
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: the United States yet set up sort of rules around
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: the medical world at this point.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: No, but it's coming. It's like right around that time,
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: and in part because of so much quackery that was
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: going on the same time. A lot of this stuff
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: is what you would call alternative medicine today or just
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: sensible stuff. Like the Kellogg brothers had a bunch of
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: weird stuff, and their whole jam was fairly weird, But
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: if you boiled everything down to what they were saying,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: a lot of it was like diet and exercise, which
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: is just great advice today as far as health is concerned.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: The problem is is like some people took this to
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: terrible extremes. Other people were peddling just like outright fake
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: and dangerous medicines, Like yeah, there were the outliers were
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: so bad that they were ruining it for everybody who
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: actually had some legitimate stuff that they were doing, and
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Linda Hazard was an outlier. Although again I think she
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: was a true believer in herself and her cure.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But you know, to be clear, she
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: was not serving up bowls of granula. She was killing
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: people like I think fifteen patients starved to death under
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: her watch. Yes, and she would eventually go to trial
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: for the murder of one.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a sensation in nineteen.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Twelve, a real sensation.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about Linda Burfield Perry Hazard, who we're just
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: going to call Linda Hazard from here on out. But
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: she was born Linda Burfield in Minnesota in eighteen sixty seven,
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: as most people in eighteen sixty seven were born what
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: really rurally, and a lot of them in Minnesota. I
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: think something like ninety eight percent of births in eighteen
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: sixty seven took pres Minnesota.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: That's incredible.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: She actually had an experience, she said, she wrote again
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: a bunch of books, eleven by my count. Oh well,
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: and so she said, according to herself, that she had
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: been she had run into modern medicine as a child,
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: and this doctor had given her some pills blue mass
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: pills that are essentially mercury pills, and they were like
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: fairly regularly used at the time, but they did not
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: sit very well with her.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: No, it made her really sick, like this again, this
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: is the day when they would, you know, a doctor
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: would say like, here, take this thing, because it'll cure
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: basically anything you have. And that's always the red flag,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: even if it's not pure snake oil, the sort of
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: cure all thing. And it made it really sick, very memorably,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: so like digestively for the most part. But after that
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: she was like, I'm done with doctors and I'm going
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: to eventually be my own doctor and be a doctor
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: to other people. She married a guy named Edwin Perry
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty six, had a couple of kids, got divorced,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: and apparently I don't know if that led to her
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: divorce when she just sort of went center of left
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: as far as her care goes. Do you think that
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: was it.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: It's possible that was the impression. I have too, but
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure. There's so much just random stuff that
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: people say about her that may or may not be true.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of surmising.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I think it said center of left too, by the way, Yeah.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: The thing is, Chuck, is everyone knew what you meant,
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: so that counts as communication. You know, don't be such
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: a prescriptionist.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: That's right left of center. But she married Perry, got divorced,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: and then fell into the care of doctor Edward Dewey,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: who was a a faster. He preached fasting. He basically
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: said that, you know, every disease that we have comes
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: from habitual eating and excess. Basically like you're out eating
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: what your stomach and your gastric juices can handle.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the sum total of Linda Hazard's whole thing.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, she had a three prong approach, which was
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: intense fasting ama anema an I've read that that her
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: enemas lasted for hours sometimes.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: I think that was also the title of your second LP, right, it.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Was my cover songs of William Shatner's cover r that's right, Yeah,
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: that's actually appropriate title for that. Or lobotomy lobotomy lobotomy. Yeah.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: And then the other one was powerful massage that I
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: think calling a massage is fairly genous. Yes, she would
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: pound on her patients and apparently shall eliminate, eliminate because
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: again she's trying to get undigested food and poop that's
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: left over out of the body. And by fasting, you're
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: not introducing more food, You're letting the body rest while
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: getting rid of the food that's been undigested. That's the
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: source of all of your diseases.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like you drank the colon clints before your first
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: colonoscopy kind of empty.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, Oh, she would have loved that stuff.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, probably, so. She did take a few nursing classes.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: You know, we have to mention that I'm not trying
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: to legitimize he or anything, but she did take a
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: few osteopathic nursing classes. She opened a fasting therapy practice
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: in Minneapolis. There this is when she went by doctor
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Linda Burfield Perry, even though she was divorced from Edwin Perry.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: And yeah, she said, like, come on in, I'll beat
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: on you. I will. I will not let you eat anything,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: like really not at all. As we'll see, let's hold
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: on to that little factoid like how little these people
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: are eating. But she would find love again in nineteen
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: oh three, or find something in the way of a
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: swindler named Samuel Hazzard, who was a He would go
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: to jail for bigamy because he was already married and
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: I guess did not get divorced and also married Linda Burfield,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: and so he went to jail for a couple of years. Yeah,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: and then got out of jail and they're like, all right,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: we're good to go. Let's go to Seattle.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's where her practice really started. The two
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: of them together like really kind of established this.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: They call it Wilderness Heights, and it was supposed to
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: be like a sanitarium or retreat where you went and
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: got this fasting cure. And it's just like you said,
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: you have to be wary of cures that cure everything,
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: and that was very much the case with her. She
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: apparently was saying like, once you go through the fasting
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: cure and you get all this crowd out, you're set
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: like everything from you can go have a kid and
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: have no pain during childbirth. You're not going to get
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: toothaches anymore. If you're an alcoholic, you won't be an
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: alcoholic anymore. If you're depressed, no more depression, Like it's
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: a cure all from her stance, that's how she basically
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: advertised it. I guess.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So she's the main player here, Samuel. Her husband
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: is a little bit in the background, but he'll pop
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: up here and there when it comes to the financials.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: And then our other couple of players are Claire and
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Dora Williamson. They were English. They were daughters of an
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: English military person, Evelyn Dorothy. Her name was Dora. She
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: went by Dora Williamson. She was born in India in
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three, and then her sister Enid Lily and
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Claire Williamson was born in London in eighteen seventy seven.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: And they were basically from teenagers on. Had no parents.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: I think their father died after Claire was born and
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: then their mom died about sixteen years later. So they were,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: you know, they were orphaned teens who were really really
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: rich and really really tight, very close with one another,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: and seemed to be like adventurous, not in a hurry
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: to get married, which is what you would think for
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: the time period to get married right away. They kind
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: of like to travel the world and go on adventures
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: and not follow the prescribed method.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were independent women of the nineties, eighteen nineties,
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: that's right. So they also though they weren't entirely orphan,
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: I mean as far as like biological parents, maybe you're concerned,
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: But they had a governess who took care of them
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: as well, and I think kind of was part of
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: their life long before their mother died. But I have
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: the impression that she was like an additional mom or
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: an additional grandmother or something to them, Right, So.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: I think that's how the richies do it, Yeah for sure.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: So just keep that in mind that these women are
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: slightly outside of the norm. They have no problem with
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: being slightly outside of the norm. And they are very
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: interesting and interested people, are very curious, and one of
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: the things that they are focused on is natural health.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Like they're just super into that kind of thing. And
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: by the time they cross paths with Linda Hazzard, they've
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: done like all sorts of stuff, like any kind of
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: cure you can think of. They've traveled to some sanitarium
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: or some notorium, they've traveled to some health clinic, and
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: they've just done this whole thing. It's like basically what
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: they were interested.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: In, Yeah, for sure. And you know, they did some
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: kind of brave things at the time. For the time
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: period they were like, I don't want to wear corsets anymore.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: They're super uncomfortable, and don't I think they're probably bad
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: for us. Sure, so they didn't wear corsets anymore. They
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: gave up meat. Eating meat was or being vegetarian, I
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: guess at the very least was a pretty weird thing
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: back then. So they were definitely following their own path.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: And then in nineteen ten they were in their thirties.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: At this point they were in the beautiful Empress Hotel
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: in Victoria, British Columbia.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: You sounded like you're an announcer for the Price's right.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: It looks really nice. I mean it's still around from
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: what I can tell, at least the pictures of modern.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a fairmunt now, Oh, of course it is.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: And I didn't mean that snarkily, like there are some
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: very nice Fearmonts.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Sure you said that because they're a huge sponsor stuff.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: Should know they're not, are they?
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's like, why am I not getting
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: any free juice there? So at the time it was
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: like the nicest hotel in North America. And they saw
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: an ad in the local paper from doctor Hazard and
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: I guess we can call her a doctor but mentally
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: easing scare quotes, and they wrote her a letter and said, Hey,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: we're two sisters. We'd like to visit Wilderness Heights and
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: we're coming to Seattle.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: Nice. I think that's a great place to leave off
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: for an.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Ad break, coming to Seattle. What could be better?
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: Not much? Man, all right, we'll be right back. So
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: before we get back to Claire and Dora and Linda Hazard,
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: we should probably make like a little side note here that, like,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: although Linda Hazard's stuff was bizarre like this, the extremes
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: she took it to, like, alternative medicine was still very
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: much a thing. We did that whole episode on the
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Flexner Report which basically said from now on in the
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: United States and Europe, it's just like medical science. That's it.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Anything outside of that is cuckoo quackery and should be
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: persecuted and run out of town on a rail essentially.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: And that so this was the time when you could
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: still be an alternative medicine practitioner. You could still be
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: an out and out quack. Yeah, And there was no
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: law against that yet. And this was definitely the like
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: the gray area that Linda Hazard fell in.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think her case, and especially the case
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: with these two sisters in particular. Like, it wasn't the
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: leading reason, but it was definitely evidence as they move
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: forward with stuff like the Flexner report of like changes
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: is needed. Their fasting had been around for a long
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: long time. Obviously, people fasted in the Bible, people fasted
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: in ancient Greece. I think Hippocrates and Pythagoras both were
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: into fasting, So that was not a new thing. Fasting
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: is still a thing, and detoxes and cleanses, and you know,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: we've done our fair share of podcasting on that kind
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: of stuff, So none of this is new or old.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: No, we did one on courses too. I just remembered,
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: that's right. Yeah. One of the other things that is
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: definitely old about this is that whole idea of undigested
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: food being the source of all disease. That's ir vedic
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: in nature too. Ancient Asian Indian medic goal practice basically
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: says if you have underjust of food or build up
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: a poop or whatever in your system, all disease emanates
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: from that. So even doctor Edward Dewey was not exactly
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: like groundbreaking with that idea.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and people are like it all comes from the
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: poop and They're like, have you smelled the stuff? There's
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: no way that's good.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: It's gee ross.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: What if poop not you know, I guess we're going there.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I'm going there. Okay, what if poop didn't smell like
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: that at all? And I'm not saying, oh, what if
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: it smelled like, you know, something great? Like what if
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: it just literally had no odor and that was it?
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Like would the world be really a better place? H
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: I say, yes, Yeah.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: I guess sure. I guess I don't smell enough poop
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: in any given day that it really ruins the world
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: for me.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean you have your outhouse.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: Sure, but I see yourself. Yeah.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: I was just curious at like on the like the
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: divorce rate, like what all would change air airports? Airports happens?
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: Okay, yes, airports. That's a really good point right there.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah that's the worst.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is really bad. Like that's a good
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: reason not to fly before like ten am.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Like it's one thing to be married to somebody, but
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: you don't want to smell the poop of twelve strangers.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: No, no you don't. That's why no one should poop
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: in public bathrooms. They shouldn't even have toilets in there,
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: all urinals all the time.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they should have urals, urinals and signs that say
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: hold it.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Right, just hold it, have a poop, go to jail.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: All right. So sorry to get to go off on
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: a tangent there about poop. I was just kind of
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: I've never done that particular thought experiment.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Okay, Well I liked it all right.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: So she had her her big, big book. I mean,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: she had eleven of them, but I feel like the one,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: as far as this goes, this most relevant is the
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: one from nineteen oh eight. It's called Fasting for the
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Cure of Disease, ease, and that's where she laid out,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: you know, the program which is just those three things really,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: you know, fast to get beaten on and get those
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: as Josh says, m enema. And the first person to
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: die from this treatment. She wrote the book after six
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: years after this, which is pretty disturbing. But in nineteen
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: oh two at her Minneapolis practice, there was a woman
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: who was partially paralyzed, and very sadly, she died on
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: day thirty seven of a forty day fast and Linda Hazzard,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: as the doctor said, cause of death paralysis.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be a recurring theme, as we'll see, right,
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: because she also she was declaring the cause of death
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: for her patients as a physician, even though she wasn't
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: really a physician. And I guess still even at this time,
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: under circumstances like this, the local coroner would still take
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: a look at any dead body. Saw the body of
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: this woman, Gertrude Jon and was like, I don't know
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: that this was paralysis that did this, because she's pretty emaciated.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Let's perform an autopsy and see what happens. Looked inside
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: of poor Gertrude Young and said, yep, she died of starvation,
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: just as I suspected.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: That's right. And as we'll see later, Linda Hazard didn't
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: think that was a viable way of dying. She's basically like,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: you can't starve some of the death. It's not possible, right,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: So she's wrong about that. But she did not have
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: a medical license, so she could not be like brought
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: up on charges or anything. It's she was telling this
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: woman to fast, and the woman was fasting. She didn't
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: have her, you know, locked up and chained to a
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: bed or anything like that. She was just following the
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: advice of the wrong.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: Person exactly, and yeah, Linda Hazard could just like shrug
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: and be like, you know, what are you gonna do? Yeah,
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: this was like years after when she and her husband
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Samuel moved to Seattle and started their practice together. So
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: that's not why she moved. This was just the first
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: body in her long body count essentially.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean bodies. You know, people started dying at
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: her practice in Washington as well. And there in Washington
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: at the time, you could be grandfathered in as far
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: as what kind of alternative medicine you were practicing, so
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: she was kind of all good there. In nineteen oh
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: seven is when she started treating patients in Washington, and
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: you know, right away, again this wasn't like the weirdest
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: stuff at the time, so she had some of the
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: elite of Washington, like state legislators coming there. It was
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: it wasn't like that weird lady in the woods that's
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: killing people. It was you know, it was sort of
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: of the fashion of the day in some ways.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, there was a real deference to her from
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: the local population, which were typically Swedish immigrants who were
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: not necessarily formally educated. They didn't have a lot of money.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: So this was like she made a lot of money,
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: we should say, multiple times throughout her career, so she
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: was wealthy. She had a lot of land. She was
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: a doctor, so she said, she was much more highly
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: educated than anyone else in the area that they knew.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: So she was popular and people just kind of respected
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: her in this area too. So in addition to these
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: wealthy and kind of elite you know, alternative medicine file
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: patrons and customers, just the local people who had nothing
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: to do with this still thought fairly highly of her too.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, even though people were dying. I think
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: by the time the Williamson's sisters arrived in nineteen eleven,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: seven patients had died under her care, six from starvation
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: what looked to be starvation. And what was also learned was,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: like you said, she performed all the autopsies herself. And
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: it was also revealed that the estates of these people
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: were left to the sanatorium, So she was also taking
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: their money, even though it was, you know, from the outside,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: under the guise of like they believed in her so
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: much they wanted her practice to continue.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, and this is where it really becomes murdery.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: You know, yeah, like the super nefarious.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: Something else that was gross that I found was so
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: the Wilderness Heights was like a few like a handful
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: of primitive cabins and then her cottage, and her cottage
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: still stood until like twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Oh wow.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you could go into her cottage and it
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: was still there was still furnishings in it and including
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: her bathtub, and the bathtub of her cottage is where
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: she was performing her autopsies.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: So that to me kind of like really gets across
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: like this is not like a super polished outfit, you
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: know what I mean?
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: And I think that's important to keep in mind too.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: She basically built some rough fused cabins in the woods
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: in Washington and called this like her sanitarium.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And this is by the way in Alala Woods, Washington.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, so close to Walla Walla, so close.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: So Claire and Dora get there in February of nineteen
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: eleven and she was like, hey, we're not going to
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: stay here in Wilderness Heights. I'm not sure why she
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: did this. I have a feeling that she knew that
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: she had some big fish on the line. So she
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: took them to Seattle instead, and she basically lied to
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: them and said that the Alala Woods Retreat wasn't completed yet,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: even though I think it clearly was. And so they
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: they put them up in some apartments in downtown Seattle,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: started their fasting treatment and the vigorous massage, and they
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: were eating two cups of vegetable broth sounds like basically
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: canned tomato juice a day.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: I also saw I think Dora later said that they
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: were made from asparagus tips, spinach, and lettuce. A broth
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: made from that, yeah, veggie broth. Yeah, so not anything
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: that you could possibly even remotely get full off of yet,
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: like you said, I think a cup twice a day, Yeah,
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: that's just yeah, So you're going to lose weight very quickly.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: And this was like forty plus days of fasting. That
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: hazard was prescribing to her patients, right, And so I
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: think both of the Williamson sisters made it to fifty
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: days before they were transferred to Wilderness Heights. They didn't walk,
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: they were on stretchers. That's how they got to Wilderness
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Heights from their apartments in downtown Seattle.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean from what I can tell. They
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: weren't screaming on the way like get me help. Like
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: it feels like they were either all in still on
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: this or just so out of it at this point
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: they didn't know any better, you know.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, or they were asking for help, but they were
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: asking for it, like Stevie from Malcolm in the Middle,
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: where they were like, get help.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: It was pretty good, Stevie.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: Thanks.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Did you watch the reboot of that?
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: No reboot. I can't give me one reboot that was
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: as good as the original or even close.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I can't bring any reboots to mine at all,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: so I don't know. But you're you're pretty much right,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: like even the great Kids in the Hall, Like it
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: was just okay, right. I kind of want to watch
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: the Malcolm in the Middle one though, Oh oh, you
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: haven't seen it either, No, but I heard it was
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: pretty good.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Actually all right, But is Frankie Munis has his voice changed?
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: No, it's exactly the same. And so it was what's
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: his face?
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: What was his name, Stevie, Stevie, Yeah.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I couldn't remember. I just remember Cranston was so great.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and his daughter's great too. We've said it before.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: We'll say it again on the Pit. Doctor mel Is
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Brian Cranston's daughter, and she does it great to him.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we said that live on stage. I
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: don't think the listening public knows that you are now
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: on the pit.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but apparently it just stopped, like they just stopped
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: putting out episodes. But that last episode does not end
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: in any way that anyone would ever end the season
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: of TV. Oh you think, Yeah, Like, Noah Wiley didn't
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: leave yet. I don't even think as Buddy fully agreed
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: to getting the treatment he's supposed to get. What's going
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: on with Ali? Sheemi? Like the last thing we saw
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: is she just kind of had a meltdown in her car.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: There's just all the stuff's up in the air.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: But oh, I think that was the purpose. I think
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: it just was cliffhanger after cliffhanger.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Okay, yes, I can get cliffhangers. But it's almost like
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: it just petered out rather than cut it, like they
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: just cut all right, disagree? All right, Well, I was
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: surprised that that was how they ended it.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: We just spoiled some stuff, by the way.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we should probably Well, we.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Didn't say anything huge. No Wiley didn't leave, big deal. Okay,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: all right, does he ever leave?
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: That's what I just need to go, like, he's never
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: he never leaves, he comes over, he overstays, is welcome.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Everyone's like, when's this guy gonna get on SMO and
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: drive out of Here's true? All right, I feel like
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: we're really off the rails now. We should take a
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: break and come back. Yes, yeah, all right, we'll be
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: right back all right where we left you. So, Noah
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Wiley had not left yet the pit. No, I'm sorry.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: We left the sisters in pretty bad condition. It was
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: about fifty days into their treatment. They were obviously in really,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: really bad shape, having traveled by stretcher to Alaala Woods
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: and Claire died seventeen days after they got to the compound.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: There in the forest. She and this is like very
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: triggering and super upsetting, so I'm issuing a warning here.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: But she weighed less than fifty pounds when she passed,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: and Hazard's own autopsy once again determined she died of
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: a liver disease that came from a childhood medical treatment
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: that caused her organs to shrink, and when her the
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: governess showed up, Margaret Conway, you know, finally arrived. She
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: told her that and she was like, I basically raised
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: these kids and she didn't have any childhood medical treatment
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: that caused her organs to shrink.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we should just say that Margaret Conway, her governess,
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: who we talked about earlier, she got a cable from
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: one of them. I can't remember if it was Dora
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: or Claire.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Probably Dora, I think it was Dora.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it just basically saying like, please come, here's the
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: ship you want to take, here's where we are. Just
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: get here. And Margaret Conway just dropped everything. And within
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: a month she had traveled from Australia to Seattle. That's
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: how long it took.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean she was welcomed. I mean Samuel
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: met her in Seattle and said, all right, let's get
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: on the train. We're going to show you this operation.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Like it's pretty sad what's happening, but like we have
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: a top notch practice here. And they brought her to
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: the mortuary to see Claire and she was like, that's
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: not Claire, whoever this body is. And I get the
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: impression that it wasn't like she so emaciated. I didn't
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: recognize her like I think they tried to pull the
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: fast one on her.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there was rumors, I guess that the local mortuary
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: was in cahoots with the Hazards and that they would
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: switch out bodies that weren't amazing heated who had nothing
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: to do with Wilderness Heights. Yeah, the emaciated bodies of
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: their victims so that family wouldn't be like, I think
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: you starved my mom to death. Right, So Margaret Conway
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: was not in any way, shape or form put off
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: by Samuel Hazzard's charm or Linda Hazard's authority, like she
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: realized like that they had killed Claire. One of the
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: dead giveaways was that Linda Hazard was wearing one of
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: Claire's robes and her favorite hat when she received Margaret
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Conway at the at the Wilderness Heights at their cottage,
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: and that I think immediately rubbed Margaret Conway the wrong way.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: And she was like, I give me Dora. I'm taking
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Dora home and Linda and Samuel said not so fast.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, while Dora was in the same shape, she weighed
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: about fifty pounds, was barely alive at this point, and
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: so yeah, she asked for and the hazards are like,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: actually where the executor of her estate. She is under
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: our legal guardianship forever, and my husband Samuel has power
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: of attorney over all of her in the family's financial matters.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: And not only that is you've got a medical bill
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: you need to pay. You owe us two grand.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: It's about seventy k today.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Margaret Conway is like, well, I don't have seventy grand.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: I have no idea how to overturn a legal guardianship.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: But it just so happened that Claire and Dora's uncle,
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: John Herbert, was just up in Portland, not very far away,
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: even back in nineteen eleven, nineteen ten, down in Portland. Yeah,
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: oh yeah, you're sorry. Go to be right, No, one
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: hundred percent, it is I have which show we did backwards?
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: Usually we do Seattle first and then Portland. Right, yeah, okay,
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: So anyway, John Herbert was down in Portland, and Margaret
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: Conway got in touch with him as I need your help,
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: like these Claire's been killed and Dora was in big trouble,
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: She's about to die, and these two hucksters have like
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: all sorts of legal mumbo jumbo going on. And John
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Herbert got involved. He's like, I'm a man and this
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: is the Edwardian era. So everybody listened to me, and
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: that's when things started moving.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, Samuel Hazard did produce a document. It
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: was a typewritten statement that he said, Claire, you know,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: dictated this to us on her deathbed, but she didn't
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: sign it because she was too weak to sign it.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Because of the whole you know, liver issue. I said
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: to my relatives and friends, I'm writing the statement to
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: say that Dora and I entered on this course of
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: treatment only after thorough investigation, that we have continued it voluntarily,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: and that if death occurs, I believe that it is
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: inevitable that it would have come in any circumstances, which
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: is like, I mean, it sounds like a child wrote
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: that to get out of being in trouble, you.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Know, right exactly. So, I mean, just that last line
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: about if she dies it was inevitable anyway, just so
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: smacks of Linda Hazard's philosophy that you can't starve to death. Yeah,
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: it was just very clearly fake. So John Herbert gets involved.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: Thanks to Margaret Conway, they find get this. The vice
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: counsel of the British embassy in Tacoma. Let all that
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: sink in for a second. They get them involved, and
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: they get the guardianship overturned. Herbert gets the two thousand
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: dollars unpaid bill negotiated down to one thousand dollars and
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: essentially pays a ransom for Door to be released. And
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: in the meantime, once he has Dora back, he starts
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: looking into some of these other patients and finds like
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: Dora and Claire were far from the only victims who
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: were essentially had been exploited financially while they were out
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: of their minds from starvation.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So it's, you know, just like the
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: movie scene is starting to sort of add up in
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: his head, and he brings this evidence into the authorities
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: there in the county and they investigate obviously, and Linda
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Hazard was arrested for murder for I think murder in
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: the first degree of Claire Williamson and for obvious financial fraud.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: And it was a you know, you said earlier, it
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: was sensational. It was a big deal, international press. You know,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: first they had to find out where the Olala Woods
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: was and then they came there and started covering this case,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: and she was known as the Starvation Doctor. I think
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: they started calling her place Starvation Heights instead.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Of what was it, Wilderness Heights.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Wilderness Heights, Yes, it's pretty good one. And they
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of speculation flying around, like
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: you know that she had this hold over people, that
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: was rumors that she may have been hypnotizing them to
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: keep them under her hold. But like you mentioned earlier,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: there still are and certainly back then had people their
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: former patients or wealthy benefactors or other naturopaths that were like, hey,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: you know, she's a woman practicing outside the box medicine
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: and that's why she's being prosecuted.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, we should say that it actually took a lot
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: of leaning on the Kitsap County prosecutor where Wilderness Heights
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: was located, to actually prosecute this crime, because again, she
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: had a lot of local support and there were a
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: lot of people who are like, she's being persecuted by
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: these Brits who are like total out of towners, and
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: they're being supported by vocal people from the American Medical
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Association who want only doctors to practice their way and
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: basically this woman's being persecuted that as a witch essentially,
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: so she did have a lot of supporters, but she
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: had a lot of detractors too. It seems like, on balance,
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: at least as far as the press is concerned, she
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: was generally viewed as a murderer and a grifter. I guess,
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: a grifting murderer, terrible combination.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the first thing she said was this,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: the first guy that came at me was an ambassador
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: stationed in Tacoma, Tacoma. Everyone does that sound remotely believable?
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: Right? It does sound kind of made up.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: So January fifteenth, nineteen twelve, the trial starts. They lay
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: out their evidence basically, which was all pretty obvious, like
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: she's trying to fleece these people of money when they
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: have no control over their own senses. And I think
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: I had about one hundred people testify for the prosecution.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: There were lots of doctors, you know, being paraded up
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: there as expert witnesses. And Dora even took the stand
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: and talked about this scene basically near the end where
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: she was bedside and Claire is trying to whisper Stevie
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: style something to Dora like her sister as she's passing essentially,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: and every time she tried to speak miss Hazard or
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: missus Hazzard as as she called him, she kept talking
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: and I couldn't hear. Like she would lean in and
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: she'd say Dory, and she would interrupt and say how
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: did you spell that name again, and like she would
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: not let her. I mean, this is one of the
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: most upsetting parts. Like she wouldn't even let her sister
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: perhaps even say goodbye. Who knows what she was trying
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: to say.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently also, I guess doctor Hazard cut in
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: and was like, I'm going to give Claire one of
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: my famous massagists and pressed down so hard that Claire
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: lost consciousness. And shortly after that, Dora was told that
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Claire had died. And so, yeah, those probably would have
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: been her last words to her that Linda Hazzard basically
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: interrupted on purpose.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think she actually died, Dora. I found out
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: she died the next morning, so she didn't get that chance.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: Later either, the defensive course comes in and said that
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: you know it wasn't the treatment. She didn't die of starvation.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: That's when Linda Hazard very famously says, you know, it's
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: not possible to starve someone to death. And you know,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Trot's out her book in the middle of court and
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: says here, read this, and this is the quote from
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: the book. Death in the fast never results from deprivation
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: of food, but is the inevitable consequence of vitality sapped
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: to the last degree by organic imperfection. Right. I mean,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: that's quackery, if like nineteenth century quackery, if I've ever
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: heard it, you know for sure.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: But I mean it is technically true, like you die
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: from your organs failing, but your organs get their vitality
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: from the food that you're not getting. So it's kind
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: of like potato potato essentially. Yes, it is. It's a
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: pretty glib workaround, I guess. But she stood by that.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: She was like, now, you can't die from starvation. That's
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: why she said. And Claire died from liver disease. That's
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: why her first patient, Gertrude Young, a first patient to die,
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: she died from paralysis. It's whatever was wrong with you
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: ahead of time, that's what killed you, not starvation. I
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: don't know if Linda Hazard truly believed that there's actually
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: some evidence at the very end that we'll see, but
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: that's just so dumb that and I have the impression
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: that Linda Hazard was not a dumb person at all.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: I just can't believe that she believed that.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: I feel like, given the financial piece, I feel like
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: she knew what she was doing. Okay, that's just my
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: take on it.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Right. So again, there were some supporters who are like, hey,
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: you know, like she's being persecuted, and the jury said,
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: you know what, we're going to split the middle here.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: We're going to find her guilty on a charge of
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: manslaughter not murder, so everybody can be unhappy.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, basically, she was sentenced to two to twenty hard
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: labor at Walla Walla Penitentiaria.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: And that wasn't it though, because she appealed the case
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: and appealed it and appealed it all the way up
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: to the United States or was it the state Supreme Court?
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: No, the US Supreme Court.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: From what I am seen, the US Supreme Court took
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: about eighteen months to get there, and you know, she
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: had supporter sending in letters the whole time saying to
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: release her. The state of Washington did revoke her license
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: to practice medicine, but she did continue to practice two
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: more deaths happened after Claire Williamson, and then she finally
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: goes to prison, eventually at Wallawalla.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so while she's appealing and is out and about
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: on bail, two more people die. She kills two more people.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: That's just crazy. She finally gets to Walla Walla, like
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: you said, and that two to twenty years. It's what's
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: known as an indeterminate sentence, like you have to serve
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: at least a minimum, but you're not going to serve
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: beyond twenty right. So she was in there for I
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: think less than two years before she was paroled. She
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: very famously knitted ponchos for the other inmates. And when
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: she did get out, I think within six months she
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: had been pardoned by the governor of Washington.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, it's kind of hard to get
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: super accurate information for this old time stuff, but I
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: did see in the Washington archives there was a stipulation
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: that she had to leave the country if they were
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: going to let her out. So, regardless of whether or
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: not that's true, she did leave the country. We'll get
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: to that in a second. Dora also left the country.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: She went back to England and settled down in Gloucester
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: and you know, lived sounds like a pretty great full
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: life after that. She got married in nineteen fourteen to
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Reverend Wyndham Allen Chaplin and lived to be seventy one
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: years old. Died in nineteen forty five. So she fully
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: recovered from her quote unquote treatment, right, and Linda Hazard
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: went to New Zealand to Hawker Wares.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and was very well received there during the trial.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: One of her vocal supporters was the Sydney Morning Herald,
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: I think, or at least some columnists in there. And
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: she made a ton of money again when she showed
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: up in New Zealand, Like people just flocked to her
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: for her treatment. And I think she long said like, hey, yeah,
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: fifteen people died in my care from the fasting, but
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: you know I've had hundreds of other patients, So is
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: that really that bad? And people are like, yeah, it
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: is kind of bad. But also, you know, most doctors
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: who lose patients don't also fleece them of their estate.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: Like that's really what took it. Like, murder is bad,
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: murder for profit is really bad.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, we're going to rank murder.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: Sure, let's just face it. Murder for profit is really bad.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: I agree. I think the piece that you were talking about,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: the one additional little piece of information that maybe she
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: did believe fully believe this stuff, yeh, is that she
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: herself died from her own treatment June twenty fourth, nineteen
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: thirty eight, self administering of fasting cure. So you know,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: I don't think it was pure hocum in her mind.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: I think she probably did believe it to a certain degree,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: but I think she took it to extremes to fleece
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: people for sure.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's Linda Hazard.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There's a book that a lots came from from
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven. It's called Starvation Heights by a local
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: named Greg Olsen. So shout out to Greg Olsen in
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: that book.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: If you can't find it at a sec or a
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: third g, I guess to the end of Greg Olsen's
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: name and it should.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Come up that was it, g R e Gg.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, probably won't come up on a search that's just
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: g R. E g in Starvation Heights nineteen ninety seven,
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: but if you add that extra ge, it will definitely
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: come up.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And if you just google greg Olsen, you'll probably
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: come up with the Atlanta Braves Catcher from the nineteen
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: nineties or.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: Early about him. Yeah, he was a catcher. Huh yeah, Okay,
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: you got anything else about Greg Olsen, whether you're talking
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: about the author or the catcher.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: I know he was not a belly scratcher.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: You belly itcher.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: I think scratcher a picture, not a belly atcher. Catcher,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: not a belly scratcher.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, I've never heard that second part. He just
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: blew my mind. Buddy. Well, since we started talking about
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: braves pictures and childhood rhymes, I think it's time for
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: listener mail.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: That's right. This is from Daniel. Hey, guys, love the
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: episode of Maple Syrup and all your episodes. You want
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: to let you know something similar In Australia, there's a
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: tree called the side agum or the eucalytus gunny nice,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: and it produces a similar sweet sap. Guys. I couldn't
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: find any evidence of it being eaten as is, but
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: the local Paalawa people of Tasmania let it naturally ferment
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: to turn it into a cider like drink called Why Elena.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Of course, the tree is now incredibly rare, mostly confined
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: to one valley in Tasmania due to all the usual
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: good things I sent sarcasm there. As a white Australian,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: I would love for you to do an episode on
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: bush Tucker. So much knowledge was lost due to colonization
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: and genocide, but there's still so much amazing information out there.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: And that is from Daniel.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: Nice. Daniel, thank you have not heard of cidergum tree
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: no or bushtucker no. So those are really great ideas
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: and thanks a lot for that. I cannot wait till
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: we get back to Australia so we can try that
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: cider bush Tucker?
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: Is it food apparently?
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: Oh? I think bush tucker is like knowledge. That was
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: the impression I have.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Well I just look it up and it's called it's
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: a food, So.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: You know, thanks for that. He just gave me the rope,
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: didn't you.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean I tried to tell you those food.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: Well, I hadn't realized that you looked anything up. I
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: thought we always discussed before we look things up.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Oh sorry, click any click type type.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: Here you go now. I know. If you want to
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: be like Daniel and send us a great email, we
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: would love that. You can send it off to Stuff
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: a production of iHeartRadio.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.