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Short Stuff: The Berners Street Hoax · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff on Josh And
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and this is short Stuff and this is
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: a hoax edition which we're starting to slowly assemble into
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a short stuffed suite. The year eighteen ten, the month November,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the day possibly unknown, right, and on this particular day,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: if we zoom over to London and then zoom in
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: a little more into a wealthy section of London, and
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: then even further into a place called Berners Street, We're
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: we're going to find a twenty two year old a
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: guy who I would have liked to have been friends with,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: named Theodore Hook. He was a bomb of aunt. He
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: was known to be mischievous, incredibly intelligent, very charming kind
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: of guy. Um, the kind of person who would just
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: show up on a stranger's doorstep and start talking to
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: them and in the hopes that he would be invited
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: to dinner just to see if he could do it. Um.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Just a neat guy all around. And he's walking down
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: the street with a friend of his name, Samuel Beasley, Right,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: that's right, Uh, in this bon vivant which I'm not
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: even sure what that is. What does that mean? It's
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: somebody who likes the good life. They like the party.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: They don't want to work. They they just wanna have fun.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Oh like us kind of I think we work a
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: little too much for that. But yes, my daughter one
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: of her favorite songs as girls just want to have fun.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: And she looked at Emily one day and said, I
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: feel sorry for boys. They just don't want to have fun.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: And it made me realize she had the name wrong.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: She I guess she thought it was just girls want
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: to have fire. Girls, that's hilarious. It's like boys have
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: fun too. Uh. So they were walking down the street
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: that day in November of eighteen ten, these two boys
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: and the bon vivant cook, uh pointing to a house
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: which was Burner Street, fifty four Burners Street, and said, hey,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: I'll wager within a week I can make that house
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: that I've talked about alis in London, and Beasley said,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: you're on. I'm sure. So they had they had a bet.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: I'm sure listeners are like, well, that was dead on.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: That was purposely bad. Everybody, My exits are usually much better.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Yet they are agreed, but we'll give you a pass
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: because of that. Too bad. They're not German, right, m hmm. Yeah.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: So Beasley said, you're on. I don't know why you
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: would even make that bet. It's such a preposterous bet
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: that I can't possibly lose. So we took that bet.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: And a week later, about seven and them in the
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: morning at fifty Burnard Street. Uh, the date was November.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: We have the date, yeah, but we didn't know when
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: they were walking down the street. It was some time
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: about a week earlier. I'm gonna say November three. Sure,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: let's go with that. So this is November ten, and um,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: a chimney sweep shows up at fifty four Burner Street
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: and knocks on the door and says, I'm here to
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: clean Mrs Tottenham's um chimney and the the servant who
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: answered the door, because Mrs Tottenham was a fabulously wealthy widow,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: um and the servants would be the ones answering the door,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: said that we don't need a chimney sweep, but your
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: your mistaken please go away shut the door. And that
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: was that, right, that's right. Another different chimney sweep would
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: show up, and then another, and then they kind of
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: kept coming and it was a rush of chimney sweeps.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: And you might think, you know, that's probably a pretty
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: good joke, much like the prank today where you might
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: order a pizza to someone's house. Apparently, just calling like
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: a chimney sweep or some other service to a house
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: was a joke of the day, and the servants thought, oh,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: that's very funny. Uh, that's great. But that was not
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: the end of it, and that is not why people
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: still tell this story two years later. So perhaps we
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: should take a break a little early, because that's a
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: great cliffhanger and tell you what happened next. Okay, Chuck,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: So it's time to unhang off of the cliff. And
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: like you said, we would not be talking about this
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: hoax if it had just been a handful of chimney
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: sweeps that showed up that day. But those chimney sweeps
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: were just a little trickle that were foreshadowing of the
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: deluge to come. And as the morning started to begin
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: in Earnest, tons and tons and tons of people showed up,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: all of whom had been um summoned toft Burner Street
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: within the last month or so on this particular day
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: November to carry out some sort of business or another,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: and the sheer volume of how how many people were
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: tricked into showing up. Is why we're still talking about
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: this hoax two hundred years later. Yeah, it's at this
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: point I wish we could hire that fast talking guy
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: from the TV commercials in the eighties. Just read through these,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: but uh, I'll do something. Why don't you just follow
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: in after? Alright, So here's who came by the house
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: that day. Uh, male midwives, tooth pullers, miniature painters, artists, auctioneers, grocers,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: textile merchants, horse drawn taxis, morning coaches, poultry sellers, an
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: undertaker with a coffin made to measure six men. It's
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: a six men bearing an organ that could be very anything.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Wine porters, barbers with wigs, and you can take over opticians, uh,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: coal wagons, upholsterers, pianos, linen, jewelry, people bearing furniture, doctors, attorneys.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Apparently at five PM, a whole bunch of servants showed
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: up because they were told that there was a job
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: to fill, and fifty different bakers showed up with raspberry
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: tarts between them. That is just the joke. Yes, that's
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: just a sampling of who was there, so you can
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: guess in very short order. The streets Burner Street in particular,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: but also streets around it became completely thronged with not
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: just like taxis and carts of coal and like all
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: of the trades people showing up, but also gawkers who
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: came out to say, like what is going on? And
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: so the police arrived pretty quickly and had to shut
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the whole street down. That's right. This prank even got
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: the mayor involved. Lord Mayor London got a note that
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: said that and again Mrs Tottenham was, you know, a
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: woman of means, and I feel like somebody that um
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: would have had some sort of political influence. But uh,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: there was a note supposedly from Mrs Tottenham that said
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: she was summoned to appear before him, but she was
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: confined to her room by sickness and requested that the
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Mayor come to her house, which he did. And also
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: not just the mayor was roped into this, the Archbishop
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: of Canterbury showed up, the Governor of the Bank of England,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: the chairman of the East India Company, and the Duke
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: of York all duped along with all of those scores
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: and scores of tradespeople showing up at fifty four Burners
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Street on November, so you can imagine like this was
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: a pretty big deal. The police were finally able to
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: disperse the crowd um by evening maybe by night, and
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: um the next day Samuel Beasley knew for sure that
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: he had lost that bet. That's right. Uh, newspapers were
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: reporting it all over England. Um, there were annual registers
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: that said it was one of the notable events of
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: London for the whole year for ten. It is still
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: talked about today as part of British lore and pop culture.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: And you know, of course they wanted to find out
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: who did this, but officially they never found out that
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: it was Theodore Hook. Didn't that right? Yeah it was, yeah,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: but it was. It's widely assumed then and now that
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: it was Theodore Hook. And he, I mean, he was
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: the kind of person who would do this. But also
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: he wrote a semi autobiographical novel about twenty five years
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: after it was called Gilbert Gurney, and in it one
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: of the characters says, I'm I'm the one I did it.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: I pulled off the Berner Street hoax and then rattles
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: off some of like the greatest hits. So people are like, yes,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: obviously it was Theodore Hook, but he was never like
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: prosecuted or anything like that because no one could ever
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: prove he did it. Yeah, and this is the part
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: that really impressed me was I thought, when I had
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: read the initial review of this that, uh, you know,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: if he says that a week later, it's game on.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Like that's a lot of work to get that many people.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: It was a long con. Apparently he had uh little
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Minians working for him, and they wrote up to four
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: thousand letters in weeks who knows, maybe even months leading
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: up to this. So he had this thing planned out
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: all along, and you know, purposely brought his friend by
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: that house once everything was in place and said, hey,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: I bet you a guinea that I can get make
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: this house and most talked about house. So it was
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: all pre planned, which makes it even better, it really does.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: And then, um, Hook wasn't really picking on Mrs Tottenham
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: for any particular reason. Uh. Most people say that he
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: had no acquaintance with or whatsoever, that she was a
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: random victim. Uh. And so this prank went down in history.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: I mean like people are still again talking about it
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: two d years later. We're talking about it two hundred
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: years later. Um. But there's a there's a twist to
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: this whole thing to Chuck, isn't there. Yeah. The twist
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: is that, and I I'm not sure I buy this,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: is that it may not have actually even happened, and
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: that the real hoax was that Theodore Hook made all
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: this stuff up. And it's not like a newspaper b
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: reporter from reporters from all over England descended upon this
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: to witness this with their own eyes. They heard reports
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: of this and wrote about it. So it was a
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: hoax on a hoax and it never really happened to
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: begin with. Yeah, there's some historians who believe that the
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: hoax of a hoax, which however happened, if it happened
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: the way that it supposedly did as reported in the papers, awesome,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: if he managed to pull the same thing off without
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: actually doing it, I think that might be even more awesome, Chuck,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: I'm fox Smoulder here. I want to believe so bad. Okay,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: but you just do that because there's no reason not to,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: all right, Okay, Chuck said, Okay, everybody that means short
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio
• 10:46
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• 10:49
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