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1-800-1841: London's Charivari · 1-800-1800

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  ring rings hello is I don't know what year it is babe OMG I
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  forgot to tell you I'm
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  doing 1841 hello you've reached 1-800-1800 1-800-1800 I have a
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  burning question
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  SPEAKER_00: 1-800-1800 1-800-1800
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  SPEAKER_02: Is it 1841?
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  SPEAKER_02: This is she, as you knew, as I know.
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  This episode I have not prepped with you at all,
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  and I'm really excited about it.
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  SPEAKER_02: I know, listeners, this is not a front.
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  SPEAKER_02: I have no idea what we're about to do.
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  SPEAKER_03: I think you're going to enjoy it.
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  What I do know is that Mabel texted me an hour ago that she was
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  prepping by going
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  SPEAKER_02: through a New York review of books with a green Crayola crayon.
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  yeah and of course I did actually leave that in the other room
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  but I'm just gonna
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  power through okay if we need to pause and you need to go get
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  it that will I will
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  allow it okay thanks I've for the listeners at home I've moved
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  locations three
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  times since we started recording okay I am doing 1841 but
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  before we get into it I
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  want to ask you a question that I've already asked you about 10
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  minutes ago did you
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  SPEAKER_03: learn anything this week
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  SPEAKER_02: Did I learn anything this week?
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  SPEAKER_02: Well, so this week I turned in my dissertation prospectus on Tuesday.
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  SPEAKER_02: And then I proceeded to watch Bravo for three or four days.
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  SPEAKER_02: So the only thing I really have learned about,
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  SPEAKER_02: but I've really learned about it,
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  SPEAKER_02: is the Amanda and West drama on Summer House.
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  and it's funny you bring this up because when thinking about
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  what I learned this
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  week all I could say was Amanda and West but you are further
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  along than I am well
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  so yeah I'm a devoted watcher of the show I mean it's literally
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  Shakespeare I have
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  to say what's going on right now I'm finding it really
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  troubling and did so how far
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  SPEAKER_02: into the current season are you I'm only four episodes in
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  oh babe I'm really far behind the last episode was truly
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  devastating okay I
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  actually am not sure spoilers yeah well okay can for the dads
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  in the room can you
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  explain what's going on basically two summers ago West joined
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  Summer House which is
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  a show where people go get a house in the Hamptons that's the
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  premise of the show
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  SPEAKER_02: dads already have turned off this recording now that they heard that
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  SPEAKER_02: So no point in keeping going, but I will.
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  So Wes joined with Jesse Solomon and there were these two boys
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  and they were
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  SPEAKER_02: tearing it up big time and then he and Sierra Miller?
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  SPEAKER_02: Is that her last name?
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  SPEAKER_02: Had a romance of the century.
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  SPEAKER_02: They were best friends.
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  SPEAKER_02: They fell in love.
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  SPEAKER_02: He took her home to wherever he's from.
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  I think like the Ozarks or something to like pet a horse and
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  she thought it was
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  SPEAKER_02: like true love then
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  last year he they broke up and then he gave an interview to the
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  New York Times for
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  some reason I don't know why they interviewed him then they're
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  not interviewing us
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  but he gave them an interview where he was like we're just like
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  not meant to be
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  we're not each other's people and they had not really been
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  talking but she wasn't
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  SPEAKER_02: like totally aware that they had broken up and then
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  that came out in print and then she froze him out for two years
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  now in this current
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  season she and West have been mending their relationship and in
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  the most recent
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  episode I'm gonna spoil it for you Mabel like they really have
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  this like big heart
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  to heart and they they're both crying and they're like can we
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  just be best friends
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  SPEAKER_02: again and it kind of seems like they're gonna get back together mm-hmm
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  but watchers of the show know if you're involved in the sort of
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  wider Bravo
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  universe that simultaneously as this is airing we're aware from
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  the outside that
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  Amanda Batula and Kyle Cook have gotten divorced and Amanda and
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  West appear to be
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  dating Amanda is here as a best friend it's just so fucked up
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  it's so fucked up
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  SPEAKER_02: yeah
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  it's really really bad I mean also the part where I am that's
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  upsetting to me is
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  just watching Amanda and Kyle's relationship disintegrate yeah
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  I mean that's also
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  pretty sad although like I've watched enough of this show to
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  kind of think Kyle's
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  really good at making himself appear less bad on camera so I
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  imagine whatever is
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  SPEAKER_02: aired it's actually a thousand times worse that's what I assume I mean
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  their problems are just so intractable and it's just like
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  making me reflect on the
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  nature of relationships where like the realities that people
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  are willing not to
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  SPEAKER_03: face I'm like why are you together
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  totally and there's also always something difficult I feel
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  where it's like I really
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  like I would never be judgmental of someone's relationship
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  because you really can't
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  know what goes on between two people and like what you know so
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  it's like hard when
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  someone's on TV but I have to assume it's not better yeah I
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  don't I don't think so
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  yeah like this is the nice version probably the sanitized
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  version of whatever's
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  SPEAKER_03: going on between them
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  yeah I was gonna say something oh the other thing the latest
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  update is I saw today
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  that a bunch of people have been seeing West on Raya so now
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  he's like completely
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  alone it was all for naught and apparently at the reunion he
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  didn't stand up for
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  Amanda at all and she got her ass handed to her by Sierra you
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  think yeah definitely
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  well they're all just evil they're all just evil anyway yeah so
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  that's what I
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  SPEAKER_03: learned and it's kind of what I learned
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  that's what we learned that's what we learned it was kind of a
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  weird week we well
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  we had an amazing start to the week because we spoke at the
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  Brooklyn Public Library
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  in a panel called pernicious trash which was about the history
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  of popular fiction
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  and we did it with Rachel Syme the New Yorker writer so I feel
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  like my brain was
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  like alive and churning at that event and I was thinking a lot
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  about the history of
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  popular fiction and Rachel had so many great ideas and so did
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  Gretchen one of the
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  SPEAKER_03: librarians who moderated the presentation and um
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  And then my grandma and my dad came which was awesome as did
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  then they flew from
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  far away but also so many other loved ones friends and family
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  came as well from
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  closer by but someone had asked us if there was book clubs in
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  the 19th century.
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  i think yeah and my grandma apparently told my dad after in the
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  cab home and he
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  told me that my grandma said that in the 19th century often
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  there would be like
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  reading clubs for illiterate people like you would go and sit
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  in the home of
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  someone who could read and they would read to you dickens and
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  things like that and
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  i was like that would have been great to know beforehand so i
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  learned that i'm
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  SPEAKER_02: chimed on in
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  yeah my dad said that after the talk she was just sharing all
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  the most helpful
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  insights ever but I don't know if it like surfaced in her mind
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  because I don't
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  think she knew where we were going to go with it but yeah so I
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  learned that I saw
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  Bound for Glory on Friday which is a Hal Ashby movie about
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  Woody Guthrie and when
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  he's like Woody when Woody Guthrie's in California like going
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  to all of the farm
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  SPEAKER_02: workers camps
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  he there's like a scene where he goes to a field school which
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  is literally in the
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  field like teachers would go and the children would stop
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  working and come like
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  learn to read and then go back to work that's so crazy but they
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  were like singing
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  and reading and that sort of sounds like a similar literacy
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  movement yeah I mean we
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  should really do a session on literacy yeah we should learn to
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  read it's like one
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  SPEAKER_02: of those things we really take for granted I think
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  well and I will say that this episode 1841 is I came to this
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  year because of our
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  panel I should say that oh interesting yeah I was inspired by
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  the conversation
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  about popular fiction in the 19th century and was interested in
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  other things that
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  SPEAKER_03: people loved and enjoyed and so I'll explain why I'm doing 1841 but
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  SPEAKER_03: I'll get there.
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  SPEAKER_03: But first, I want to just share with you some general overview.
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  And it was a really fun year that reminded me why we're doing
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  this podcast because
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  SPEAKER_03: I just could not stop learning fun things.
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  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm going to meander today.
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  SPEAKER_03: We love these kinds of episodes.
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  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I have, you know, only 19 pages of notes and I'm ready.
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  SPEAKER_03: That's actually pretty average, I would say.
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  SPEAKER_03: And there are pictures in it.
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  SPEAKER_03: So it's shorter than that.
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  but like considering that I started prepping this episode
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  yesterday morning I feel
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  like I have a lot to say and I'm sure you do okay births Burt
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  Morisot I don't know
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  okay yeah that's right as well as Renoir so okay impressionism
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  yeah impressionism
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  SPEAKER_03: is born in 1841 in a way and a little like Renoir
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  um Renoir freaks me out nobody likes Renoir I just want to put
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  the do you I feel
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  like I it's so perverted it's so perverted my friend here was
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  like those blousey
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  nudes yeah the blousey nudes and the little girls they're kind
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  of tacky and the
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  dolls yeah there's something I'm always sort of like this is so
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  me and yet like
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  SPEAKER_03: when I'm looking at a Renoir painting I feel like I just saw one now
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  is like they're sort of they kind of look like AI art yeah I
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  mean this is a
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  question I have about art history that I always had like
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  thinking about motel art
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  and stuff like that and and sort of like what do people average
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  people think of
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  when they think of art those types of images that come to mind
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  and then I think AI
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  SPEAKER_03: makes it even more strange yeah yeah
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  I don't know but it is kind of AI art yeah yeah anyway but I
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  always I mean
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  obviously I think of Lorelai Gilmore being the Renoir girl
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  right right right yeah
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  so she has a special place in my heart okay another birth that
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  I thought was
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  SPEAKER_03: notable was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
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  the Supreme Court Justice son of our Mandylion author Oliver
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  Wendell Holmes Sr.
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  so I was liking that because for those who don't know Oliver
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  Wendell Holmes Sr.
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  SPEAKER_03: the author of Elsie Venner
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  he was a doctor and a writer and a poet and he was very very
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  famous in the 19th
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  century and he had the unfortunate fate to have a very
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  successful child of the same
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  name this is really why you shouldn't give your kids the same
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  name because they
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  will eclipse you yeah but also it's kind of cool it's cool i
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  mean wait aren't there
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  two john adams who are president yeah i'm actually going to
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  talk about presidents
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  and two presidents having the same name i think well there's
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  john adams and john
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  SPEAKER_02: quincy adams is that what it is yeah father son right
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  i guess also george bush duh yeah i think john adams was the
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  second president and
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  john quincy adams was the sixth president yeah because he was
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  his son yeah um it'd
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  be funny if they were back to back but it could happen i mean
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  the bushes weren't
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  that far apart really no like 12 years or something eight years
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  i don't know
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  SPEAKER_03: there's no way to find out yeah okay
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  SPEAKER_03: Now on to deaths.
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  I'm actually just going to talk about one death,
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  which was a rabbit hole,
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  let me tell you.
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  SPEAKER_03: So there was a famous murder in 1841 of a woman named Mary Rogers,
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  SPEAKER_03: who was a young,
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  SPEAKER_03: beautiful girl who worked in a tobacco shop in New York City.
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  And this tobacco shop was frequented by many of the most
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  powerful men in New York City.
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  SPEAKER_03: Among the people who went there was like
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  James Fenneborg Cooper Washington Irving you know a cultured
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  set like to go to this
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  tobacco shop and on Wikipedia it says that she was often
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  exchanging quote teasing
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  glances with these men because she was so gorgeous and
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  apparently they paid her
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  more because she was so pretty which we need to bring back wait
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  well people no hot
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  people get better tips yeah I guess you're right um what's a
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  teasing glance it's
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  SPEAKER_03: like this let me do it for you
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  Mabel just winked at me like a cartoon character I don't think
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  that's teasing I
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  think that's like in I feel like in Victorian New York that
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  would have been like
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  prostitution basically like solicitation yeah everything I do
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  in 2026 would have
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  been prostitution in 18 everything 26 so what's fascinating
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  about Mary Rogers is
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  that she was murdered and disappeared in 1841 but actually
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  three years earlier in
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  SPEAKER_03: 1838 she also disappeared
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  sick so she disappeared and her mother found a suicide note
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  that was like bye mom
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  goodbye to this world and it was initially thought to be real
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  but then nobody could
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  verify it and there was also this like culture of and she was
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  gone she was not to
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  be found yeah in New York City at the time there was kind of
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  like a big paranoia
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  SPEAKER_03: about hoaxes
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  And this was in the aftermath of something called the Great
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  Moon Hoax of 1835.
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  SPEAKER_03: I want to do an episode about the Great Moon Hoax.
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  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm aware of it.
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  SPEAKER_03: That's on my list.
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  SPEAKER_03: It's so cool.
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  SPEAKER_03: So in 1835,
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  there was six articles published in the Sun newspaper about the
• 14:02
  discovery of life
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  SPEAKER_03: on the moon.
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  SPEAKER_03: And the images are so cool.
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  SPEAKER_03: Like they look like gargoyles kind of people flying on the moon.
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  and so apparently the great moon hoax had really like stirred
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  people up and nobody
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  could believe anything anymore it's so funny it's fake news but
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  then Mary Rogers
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  reappears and it's a little unclear where she was but she comes
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  back and she starts
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  working at the tobacco shop again but then in 1841 she is on
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  her way to go visit
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  family in New Jersey or she that's her excuse she says she's
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  going to go visit
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  SPEAKER_03: family in New Jersey and
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  her body is found floating in the Hudson River so she killed
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  herself well it maybe
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  we don't know and okay immediately it becomes a newspaper
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  sensation and everyone
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  starts referring to her as the beautiful cigar girl and there
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  was rumors about what
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  SPEAKER_03: happened most of the rumors accused a woman named Madame Restelle
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  SPEAKER_03: of murdering her and dumping her body.
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  Madame Rostel was an abortionist,
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  a very famous abortionist in New York City in the 1830s.
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  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's fascinating.
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  SPEAKER_03: So I'm now going to take us on a brief interlude into Madame Rostel.
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  SPEAKER_03: So great.
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  She is an English woman who was born in 1812,
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  and her given name is Anne Trow Lohman.
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  SPEAKER_03: She came to New York City in 1831 and supported herself as a midwife.
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  she marries a man named Charles Lohmann in 1836 he's a German
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  Russian immigrant and
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  a very radical free thinker and it seems like with his
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  influence the two of them
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  started getting more and more into women's health more broadly
• 15:41
  than just midwifery
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  and she started selling supplements that she claimed could work
• 15:48
  as birth control
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  SPEAKER_03: she sold something called female monthly pills yeah
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  and she was also I mean it's super interesting I did like a
• 15:57
  little deep dive into
• 15:59
  how abortion was understood in the 19th century and basically
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  there was a lot of
• 16:04
  sort of like old wives tales of things you could do to get your
• 16:07
  period to start
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  again which were kind of like coded as ways to actually get rid
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  of a pregnancy
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  which is super fascinating and so at the time people were often
• 16:19
  taking herbs such
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  SPEAKER_03: as ergot,
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: calomel,
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  SPEAKER_03: aloe or black hellbore
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  and they were thought to like disrupt your digestion and
• 16:26
  therefore cause a
• 16:27
  miscarriage but they're not always that effective so Madame
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  Ristel gets into
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  surgical abortions which would often involve like rupturing the
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  amniotic sac or
• 16:39
  dilating the cervix or this one I just can't comprehend in
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  utero decapitation yeah
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  and Madame Restelle she got her name there was a type of I
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  think like French
• 16:54
  women's powder that people took called Restelle so that's and
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  that's what she sold
• 16:59
  initially and so that's where her name came from and what's
• 17:01
  super crazy is it's
• 17:03
  like basically her name was Avon Lady yeah literally and it's
• 17:08
  interesting I'm going
• 17:09
  to talk a lot about sort of like Anglo versus French themes
• 17:12
  today and so I'm
• 17:13
  interested in like the Madame Restelle of it all and I'll be
• 17:16
  interested to hear
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_03: what you have to say about this but
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  what's interesting is like abortion wasn't illegal really I
• 17:23
  think if there was any
• 17:25
  codified laws against it it was like abortion after the quote
• 17:29
  quickening was not
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  SPEAKER_03: acceptable and quickening is when the fetus starts to move
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  but she also was able she like advertised her her services in
• 17:37
  the New York Times
• 17:39
  and but it was all kind of encoded and she worked out of a
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  building on Fifth Avenue
• 17:44
  and 52nd Street I've like heard of this woman yeah I think
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  she's very famous I'm
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  SPEAKER_03: going to show you actually this amazing image of her
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  because the building she worked out of was really close to oh
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  my god but look at
• 17:57
  that do you see what's happening here so it's a it's a portrait
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  of like a very
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  normal looking 19th century woman and then speaking of
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  gargoyles there's like a
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  gargoyle beneath her like devil figure eating a baby and then
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  it says the female
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  SPEAKER_02: abortionist yeah I'm pretty sure her her um
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  where she worked out of was like right next to one of like the
• 18:20
  Vanderbilts or the
• 18:20
  Carnegie's or one of those like big families houses and so
• 18:24
  there was some sort of
• 18:24
  scandal related to that as well that makes a lot of sense and
• 18:29
  basically her success
• 18:32
  started to draw attention and and ironically or what like also
• 18:36
  started to make
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: people more anti-abortion and
• 18:39
  in 1857 the American Medical Association launched a campaign to
• 18:42
  combat abortion and
• 18:44
  what's super fascinating is that abortion became known as
• 18:47
  Ristellism because of her
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  so basically everyone just thought that Madame Ristell had
• 18:54
  performed a botched
• 18:56
  abortion on Mary Rogers who then died and that Madame Ristell
• 19:00
  then dumped her body
• 19:00
  in the Hudson River we don't know if that happened but you know
• 19:04
  who thought he knew
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: for sure what happened oh
• 19:07
  Edgar Allan Poe of course he knows everything he knows
• 19:11
  everything in 1842 he
• 19:13
  published a short story called the mystery of Marie Roget which
• 19:16
  retold the story of
• 19:17
  Mary Rogers in France and it was published originally in a
• 19:21
  publication called the
• 19:22
  Snowden's Ladies Companion and I'm familiar with it yes he like
• 19:27
  loosely retold the
• 19:28
  story he said she was French and said that instead of working
• 19:30
  at a tobacco shop she
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_03: worked at a perfume shop
• 19:33
  um and he I was like reading that he promoted the story by
• 19:37
  saying that he solved
• 19:38
  the murder and I was like that must have been sort of like
• 19:40
  implicit and then I read
• 19:41
  it or read his preface where he's like first line he's like on
• 19:46
  Thursday a girl
• 19:47
  named Mary Rogers was found dead and I know why it's a bit
• 19:50
  cheap wouldn't you say I
• 19:52
  don't know he was he was doing his best to make a buck and then
• 19:56
  I was just
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: remembering his weird freaky death too
• 20:00
  all right well what I was gonna say is that about the abortion
• 20:04
  question I want to
• 20:05
  hear the rest of this but it's over actually so keep going how
• 20:08
  did so how did he
• 20:09
  think he solved it um I don't know okay you need to look at
• 20:15
  what he thought
• 20:16
  happened no I think he also made the claim of the abortion I
• 20:19
  think okay okay um but
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: it's just nebulous to me the whole thing
• 20:25
  yeah I was just thinking about like the professionalization of
• 20:27
  medicine in the
• 20:28
  period it's like why would abortion be illegal it was like not
• 20:32
  like it was like
• 20:35
  that stuff was not legalized in any way at that point yeah
• 20:38
  nothing you can't make
• 20:39
  something illegal if like there's nothing that's legal yeah if
• 20:42
  it's like some yeah
• 20:43
  exactly it's like like the professionalization of medicine was
• 20:47
  like happening
• 20:48
  simultaneously so the legality of things was not like ever
• 20:52
  called into question
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: medicine was just something people kind of did.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_03: And it's interesting that Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
• 20:59
  was born because his father was probably at the point in his
• 21:02
  medical career where
• 21:03
  he was making like the very radical argument that doctors
• 21:05
  should wash their hands
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: and tools.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like the world is so different
• 21:11
  um and we i mean i we've seen a lot of amazing 19th century or
• 21:15
  portrayals of 19th
• 21:15
  century medicine where you're just seeing the most horrific
• 21:19
  disgusting treatment of
• 21:21
  like a president who's been shot carfield for example and so
• 21:25
  you can't even imagine
• 21:26
  how someone would treat a woman who's looking to a cigar shop
• 21:29
  girl with a teasing
• 21:31
  glance who can't keep it in her pants also became a moment of
• 21:37
  reckoning around
• 21:39
  the police in New York City because the New York City police
• 21:42
  force was incredibly
• 21:43
  like slim at the time there was there was one night watchman
• 21:47
  for the entire city in
• 21:48
  the whole city yes where did he what was his haunt I don't know
• 21:53
  I don't know what
• 21:54
  he could have seen it's like you know near Westforth there's
• 21:56
  that library that has
• 21:58
  what was once the fire watch tower for Manhattan and it's like
• 22:02
  two stories tall
• 22:05
  so cool yeah um well okay now I'm going to continue talking
• 22:10
  about medicine because
• 22:11
  I'm going to talk about the death of President William Henry
• 22:14
  Harrison who died 30
• 22:15
  days into his presidency in 1841 do you know about this no
• 22:20
  these guys had bad luck
• 22:22
  I mean it's so funny because all of it is caused by being cold
• 22:28
  outside yeah yeah I
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: was cold today and I thought I might die so I get it
• 22:33
  imagine if there's like no way to warm up so William Henry
• 22:37
  Harrison became
• 22:39
  president after Martin Van Buren he became president on March
• 22:44
  4th 1841 and he died
• 22:47
  exactly 30 days later of pneumonia and what's super interesting
• 22:51
  is not only that he
• 22:52
  died so quickly but also that he was the first president to die
• 22:54
  in office oh and so
• 22:57
  nobody knew what was going to happen because that they hadn't
• 23:00
  thought of the vice
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: president thing yet
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: no so it's in the constitution but it's really vaguely worded and that's
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_03: subsequently been amended like there's so basically what it says in the
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: constitution article 2 section 1 clause 6
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: The key words here are...
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_03: that that person shall act as president.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_03: So there was an ambiguity.
• 23:45
  Is that person president or are they acting as president until
• 23:49
  someone can be elected?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: Turns out his vice president, John Tyler, of course, of course.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: So it was it's just fascinating because I just didn't know that.
• 24:01
  And we talk so much about 19th century presidential
• 24:04
  assassinations where it just
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_03: seems like a given that the vice president would become president.
• 24:08
  yeah i never knew that that they didn't come up with that right
• 24:12
  away i just you
• 24:14
  know they did but about these things i know i i was just
• 24:18
  feeling working on this
• 24:19
  episode i was like there is literally no limit to how much i
• 24:23
  can learn and how much
• 24:25
  i can talk about it with you i know it's amazing special it's
• 24:28
  so special it's
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_03: really cool um some interesting things about president harrison
• 24:34
  he was the last president to have been born before the
• 24:37
  Declaration of Independence
• 24:38
  so he was technically a British subject oh wow okay and then
• 24:43
  his grandson Benjamin
• 24:44
  Harrison was also president from 1889 to 1893 I have never
• 24:47
  heard of him that cannot
• 24:49
  be true I'm sorry but there's no way that's true I literally
• 24:55
  had to check it like
• 24:55
  three times because I was like nah I've never heard of that
• 24:58
  1889 to 1893 yeah one
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_03: term
• 25:03
  I've never heard of him it's incredibly strange so I wonder I
• 25:09
  mean I guess that's
• 25:10
  during that point like we've talked before in the gilded age
• 25:12
  about how kind of like
• 25:13
  the president was not as powerful of an office when you had
• 25:17
  these like titans of
• 25:18
  industry and these like local politics syndicates like running
• 25:21
  things well that was
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_03: that was an interesting part of
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: Harrison's story.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm glad you brought us there, Madeline.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_03: So he was a Whig.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: Let me tell you a little bit first about his background,
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: which is he was a governor of the Indiana territory,
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: and he he's most famous for killing tons of Native Americans,
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: which is just fantastic to hear about.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_03: and really brutal, horrific stuff.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_03: He was then a representative in Congress from the state of Ohio in 1816.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_03: He was then a senator.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_03: And then I read this sentence, which I could not comprehend.
• 25:59
  His Senate term was cut short by his appointment as minister
• 26:02
  plenipotentiary to
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: Gran Colombia in 1828.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, what?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: So let me break it down for you.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: A minister plenipotentiary...
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: is also known as an envoy extraordinary or a minister,
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: which would have been way more simple to explain.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's basically the diplomat below ambassador.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: But then Grand Colombia, I didn't know what that was.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: Colombia.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: That is how...
• 26:31
  it's actually interesting because it's a historiographic term
• 26:33
  so Gran Colombia was
• 26:35
  a state that was larger than the current Colombia it was
• 26:39
  included Ecuador and
• 26:41
  Panama and Venezuela and parts of Peru and parts of Brazil and
• 26:46
  it was huge and it's
• 26:48
  used to we use that term now to distinguish it from the current
• 26:51
  Republic of
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: Colombia oh I see was it ruled by the Spanish or was it independent
• 26:59
  I didn't get there okay I think it was well I started reading a
• 27:04
  little bit about
• 27:04
  that and it was interesting it was like you couldn't really be
• 27:08
  recognized as a
• 27:09
  state at that point in South America unless you like were
• 27:12
  associated with a foreign
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: monarch so I don't know it was really confusing
• 27:18
  but then there was like a Brazilian emperor I don't know I
• 27:21
  learned a little bit
• 27:22
  about that it was cool because something maybe we should also
• 27:24
  do like a South
• 27:25
  American independence episode because I feel like there's a lot
• 27:29
  it's also almost
• 27:29
  Cinco de Mayo but there's a lot of like because actually it
• 27:34
  happened earlier than I
• 27:36
  tend to assume yeah but then there's like all these military
• 27:40
  coups in the 20th
• 27:40
  century which then like well yeah you know like it's just
• 27:43
  confusing very confusing
• 27:44
  but I think like the original Mexican independence happened
• 27:47
  like the 1820s
• 27:49
  let's dig in i also let's dig into that in the 1870s was when
• 27:53
  russia sold alaska to
• 27:54
  the united states i was like i need to learn about that what we
• 27:57
  know we also need
• 27:58
  to do an arctic episode okay moving on so in 1836 i literally
• 28:04
  forgot who i was
• 28:05
  talking about harrison became senior the whig party's nominee
• 28:10
  for president but as
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: you were just saying
• 28:14
  person was really not even a figurehead it was just kind of
• 28:17
  random like it was you
• 28:19
  were voting for a party not for a person yeah and like he
• 28:22
  didn't even go to the wig
• 28:24
  party convention he was selected from afar and they chose John
• 28:29
  Tyler as his running
• 28:30
  mate and but then his campaign kind of took on a life of its
• 28:34
  own so have you heard
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_03: the phrase Tippecanoe and Tyler too
• 28:38
  oh yeah Tippecanoe and Tyler too isn't that interesting that
• 28:41
  one of the least
• 28:42
  famous presidents of all time has one of the most famous
• 28:44
  presidential campaign
• 28:45
  slogans of all time yeah it's fascinating Tippecanoe refers to
• 28:49
  the battle of
• 28:50
  Tippecanoe that Harrison won in 1811 it was again against the
• 28:55
  Native Americans and
• 28:58
  so Harrison didn't participate in his presidential campaign but
• 29:02
  then can you
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_03: imagine he didn't want to do it
• 29:08
  like all the president does now is run for president it was not
• 29:12
  part of the job at
• 29:14
  the time so fascinating yeah but then this democratic newspaper
• 29:19
  in Baltimore made
• 29:21
  this sort of audacious joking claim that if Harrison had been
• 29:25
  offered a pension and
• 29:27
  some hard cider to drink in a log cabin he would have fully
• 29:30
  given up the campaign
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: yeah which is a just a savage joke
• 29:36
  and then but then the wigs kind of like we're like well if
• 29:38
  you're going to say that
• 29:39
  we're going to use it so then they adopted the cabin and cider
• 29:43
  as emblems of their
• 29:45
  campaign and cider obviously was alcohol is alcohol and so
• 29:51
  their campaign rallies
• 29:52
  became like really raucous parties with tons of drinking and
• 29:56
  partying and they were
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: like carnivalesque and so the
• 30:03
  then people were criticizing that because it was like kind of
• 30:06
  taking advantage of
• 30:06
  people and um making too much of the candidate in a way so i
• 30:14
  think that's a good
• 30:14
  strategy yeah towards um the the inauguration harrison decided
• 30:21
  to you know weigh in
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_03: on his future presidency he was like oh right
• 30:28
  so I forgot you guys were doing that so it's the winter of 1840
• 30:32
  1841 and he starts
• 30:35
  you know going out and helping a little bit with the campaign
• 30:37
  he's giving speeches
• 30:38
  I mean at this point he's already been elected he's just giving
• 30:41
  he's just like out
• 30:42
  and about now and he's getting tired and it's a very cold
• 30:45
  bitter winter and then he
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: makes some major major mistakes so he gives his inaugural address
• 30:54
  it is a two-hour speech that he gives in the pouring rain and
• 30:58
  he is not wearing a
• 30:59
  coat or a hat yeah he's the one who wouldn't wear a coat I
• 31:03
  remember that about that
• 31:05
  yeah because three weeks later he went to the market he walked
• 31:09
  to the market from
• 31:09
  the White House which also is just so cool like imagine Trump
• 31:12
  just walks down the
• 31:13
  street to the bodega to the bodega he walks to the market again
• 31:18
  not wearing a hat
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_03: or a coat
• 31:20
  what is wrong with this man he gets caught in the rain and he
• 31:24
  does not take off his
• 31:25
  wet clothes he falls ill so ill that he will die despite the
• 31:30
  doctor's best efforts
• 31:31
  so here's a little bit of an insight into how the doctor was
• 31:34
  treating him the
• 31:35
  doctor prescribed a mustard plaster and gave him a laxative and
• 31:39
  then let his blood
• 31:41
  and then gave him castor oil to make him vomit and then gave
• 31:44
  him laudanum opium and
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_03: camphor I can't believe that didn't cure his pneumonia yeah
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's so weird.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's so weird.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: He's high on opiates.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_03: He's shitting and bleeding out.
• 31:58
  Puging pneumonia is a lung disease that has literally nothing
• 32:01
  to do with the stomach.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: They should have just warmed him up.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_03: Instead they like drained him dry.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: Also can I say something?
• 32:09
  There is no sensation that I despise more than having wet
• 32:14
  clothing on my body.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:17
  like I cannot imagine a scenario in which you got home from the
• 32:22
  market you're
• 32:22
  soaking wet and you go I got other stuff to do I'm not going to
• 32:25
  change I mean it's
• 32:28
  fascinating he must have had other clothes certainly he worked
• 32:32
  at his house that's
• 32:34
  the thing about the president he was at home it's very very
• 32:38
  strange and I bet he
• 32:39
  regrets it from heaven I was walking the dog the other day
• 32:43
  definitely in hell sorry
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: keep going
• 32:47
  um I was walking the dog the other day and I spilled a little
• 32:50
  coffee on my pants
• 32:52
  and then I was like we have to go back to the house
• 32:55
  unfortunately I can't keep
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: going like I hate spilling stuff I'll die it was so
• 33:01
  yucky feeling I hate that too I mean you know when it's raining
• 33:05
  I freak out and I
• 33:06
  chant to myself internally my mantra is whatever is wet shall
• 33:10
  be dry whatever is
• 33:11
  wet shall be dry I didn't know about the mantra I thought that
• 33:14
  was because you
• 33:14
  would melt in the rain because you're a witch that's funny I
• 33:17
  was walking through
• 33:18
  the pouring rain with my 92 year old grandmother and I was
• 33:20
  complaining about it she
• 33:21
  was not and she said you're not made of sugar you won't melt
• 33:25
  she said that's what
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: they used to tell her when she was a little girl that's sort of cute yeah
• 33:31
  and I am a witch so there's other potential reasons that he may
• 33:36
  have died other
• 33:38
  than pneumonia just one more thought about Harrison which is
• 33:41
  that the White House's
• 33:43
  water supply was downstream of a sewer so so it could have been
• 33:48
  cholera yeah it
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: could have been that
• 33:50
  but he was already basically being given cholera by his doctor
• 33:55
  yes because from
• 33:57
  cholera you die of diarrhea so it's kind of a double whammy
• 34:02
  yeah um there's this
• 34:03
  amazing 1888 cartoon illustration of president or vice
• 34:10
  president John Tyler
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_03: receiving notice that Harrison has died
• 34:13
  which i'm showing madeline on my screen right now why do i know
• 34:16
  what john tyler
• 34:17
  looks like was he the fat one no that's him he i just know that
• 34:22
  face i would know
• 34:23
  it anywhere really i'm looking at pictures of him now not i
• 34:29
  mean he's kind of
• 34:29
  distinctive i'm just like i don't know what anyone looks like
• 34:34
  why do i know his
• 34:35
  face you know what is interesting i went to the morgan library
• 34:39
  with my grandparents
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: a couple weeks ago
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_03: And they have the Washington life mask there.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: Washington's life mask.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: Life mask or death mask?
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: Life mask.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, cool.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: So they made it while he was alive.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_03: That's the distinction.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's why I called it that.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: I was just wondering.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: I've never heard that.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: They made it while he was alive.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: And he really looked like that.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like the paintings.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like the idea that you have of him in your head.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's what he looked like.
• 35:09
  that's interesting the life mask proves I mean I guess like
• 35:11
  later portraits were
• 35:12
  all probably modeled on this cast so that makes sense but I was
• 35:17
  just like wow I
• 35:19
  really know what he looked like this is reminding me of how I I
• 35:24
  have to just show
• 35:24
  you this Wikipedia page because if people really looked like
• 35:27
  their portraits and
• 35:28
  look at this guy who I just discovered recently yesterday like
• 35:32
  I know people that
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: look like that though don't you
• 35:34
  i'm showing madeline portraits of he kind of looks prince of
• 35:38
  portugal um john the
• 35:40
  six and i mean he looks like madeline's dog and here's a
• 35:46
  painting of him with a dog
• 35:47
  that looks like fran madeline's dog do you think yeah he kind
• 35:50
  of has like he looks
• 35:52
  like nathan lane yeah but flatter yeah faced yeah nathan lane
• 35:59
  with not enough tummy
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: time oh okay
• 36:05
  that is what I have to say about 1841 in general okay you want
• 36:08
  to know why we're
• 36:09
  doing 1841 I mean I'm already sold okay we're doing 1841
• 36:17
  because that was the year
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_03: that the magazine punch was founded Madeline says
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, knowingly.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: That makes sense.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: Punch it is.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_03: Punch it is.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: So for those who are not as steeped in the 19th century as us,
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: though,
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_03: if you listen to our podcast,
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: we definitely mentioned it before.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_03: Punch was a huge deal.
• 36:39
  It was a satirical magazine based out of London that everyone
• 36:44
  read and that every
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: character in every 19th century novel after 1841 was probably reading or
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_03: referencing.
• 36:51
  and a lot of our favorite 19th century authors were involved in
• 36:55
  it and published
• 36:56
  their stories serially in it it was just it's it was everywhere
• 37:00
  well and they had
• 37:01
  satirical cartoons in it so if you've ever read any history
• 37:05
  book about the 19th
• 37:06
  century you've seen punch cartoons like it really was like
• 37:09
  there's no escaping it
• 37:11
  yeah and yeah you can like there's a whole website that I was
• 37:15
  looking at which just
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: has cartoons of people
• 37:18
  from punch like name someone and they were made fun of in this
• 37:22
  magazine yeah I'm
• 37:24
  just gonna say because we've already started using the word
• 37:27
  cartoon the word
• 37:28
  cartoon developed its current meaning because of punch so I was
• 37:33
  gonna say what did
• 37:33
  it mean before like a model for a fresco or something yeah
• 37:37
  which is so interesting
• 37:37
  because the Met right now has the Raphael exhibition open which
• 37:40
  is full of quote
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: cartoons
• 37:42
  but it was first used to refer to comic drawings in punch in
• 37:45
  1843 when the houses
• 37:48
  of parliament were to be decorated with murals and cartoons for
• 37:51
  the murals were
• 37:51
  displayed for the public and so then the term cartoon at that
• 37:55
  point had meant a
• 37:56
  finished preliminary sketch on a large piece of cardboard punch
• 37:59
  humorously
• 37:59
  appropriated the term to refer to its political cartoons and
• 38:02
  the popularity of the
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_03: punch cartoons led to the terms of widespread use wow isn't that crazy
• 38:08
  Yeah I guess the other reason that punches everywhere just as
• 38:12
  like is because it
• 38:14
  was political and cultural commentary and so like if you're a
• 38:18
  historian like trying
• 38:20
  to figure out what people thought about something in the 19th
• 38:22
  century it's like a
• 38:23
  really useful resource that is like a blessing but also kind of
• 38:27
  creates a biased
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: record.
• 38:31
  Yeah well what I was going to what I was reading in the New
• 38:34
  York Review of Books
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_03: and annotating with a green Crayola crayon
• 38:38
  before getting on this call was this review of a new book about
• 38:42
  the history of
• 38:43
  satire which I read after doing my research into punch but just
• 38:48
  reminds me of what
• 38:48
  you're saying because basically it's an 800 page book about the
• 38:52
  history of satire
• 38:53
  and it's a very dull review of a very dull book and I was like
• 38:56
  there's nothing
• 38:57
  hilarious there's nothing less funny than writing a review of a
• 39:02
  book of the history
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_03: of satire and
• 39:04
  and the reviewer though makes this argument that the author of
• 39:07
  this book has one
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_03: very narrow specific definition of what satire is
• 39:13
  which is basically that it's political in nature and what the
• 39:18
  reviewer is saying is
• 39:19
  that that it really misses so much of satire from most of time
• 39:24
  you know from the
• 39:26
  Roman era to now because yes some political commentary is
• 39:31
  satirical but also there
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: is just like a lot of scatological
• 39:35
  sex jokes and yeah that's about being a person and yeah and the
• 39:42
  the writer of the
• 39:42
  review had a really fun way of describing that and basically
• 39:45
  like all satire is
• 39:47
  trying to understand what it what it means to be in a brain
• 39:51
  inside of a body and I
• 39:53
  yeah I loved that um and I love talking about punch because I
• 39:57
  was just feeling
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: inspired after our conversation with Rachel and
• 40:00
  at the library like what made people laugh what made people
• 40:04
  tick what were people
• 40:05
  having fun reading and punch was there for a really long time
• 40:11
  punch is it punch is
• 40:12
  it okay so punch was founded in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and
• 40:19
  Ebenezer Landels and
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_03: Mayhew Mayhew Mayhew I think Mayhew how do you spell it M-A-Y-H-E-W
• 40:31
  Mayhew was a journalist a playwright and a social reformer and
• 40:36
  he was one of the
• 40:37
  founding editors of the magazine and it's interesting it's
• 40:41
  super interesting
• 40:41
  because on the topic of like what did people like he he was
• 40:46
  also very interested in
• 40:47
  what people's lives were like so he was not only like a funny
• 40:51
  guy he also was a
• 40:54
  social researcher who wrote many books on the quality of life
• 40:58
  for poor Londoners
• 41:00
  which I thought was really interesting and there's something
• 41:03
  about Punch where it's
• 41:04
  like it's reaching people where they are also interestingly he
• 41:09
  was the 13th of 17
• 41:11
  children and he served in the East India Company and Punch so
• 41:16
  he lived in Calcutta
• 41:17
  and Punch was a huge deal around the whole British Empire was
• 41:20
  being read everywhere
• 41:21
  and a lot of Punch cartoons were about what it was like to be a
• 41:24
  subject of the
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_03: Empire
• 41:25
  yeah that's interesting yeah do you know it's okay if you don't
• 41:30
  but where this
• 41:31
  falls in like like was Harper's already being published or was
• 41:34
  punch like one of
• 41:35
  the first I don't know about Harper's I could quickly google
• 41:39
  one that was founded
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: i only ask because harper's was like at the beginning publishing a lot of
• 41:47
  missionary stories harper's is later us oh interesting it's i
• 41:52
  was wondering if it
• 41:52
  was like that but fun but it sounds like harper's was punch but
• 41:56
  boring well there's
• 41:59
  that's interesting so ebenezer landals was one of the other
• 42:01
  founders but he's kind
• 42:02
  of less important he was a wood engraver and illustrator and
• 42:05
  this is a really
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_03: important part that punch was a an illustrated magazine um
• 42:11
  and he also founded a short lived fashion journal called the
• 42:14
  Cosmo Rama which
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_03: obviously I love and I'm like we should bring that back Cosmo Rama so
• 42:21
  Landyls sold his third share in the magazine after having some
• 42:26
  financial troubles
• 42:28
  and was basically kind of supplanted by this guy named Mark
• 42:31
  Lemon who was one of
• 42:32
  the editors they I mean he Mark Lemon wasn't an illustrator
• 42:34
  they've had tons of
• 42:35
  other illustrators and many many famous 19th century artists
• 42:40
  worked for punch but
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: Lemon is interesting because he was a journalist and a playwright
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_03: and 60 of his plays were produced in London in the 19th century.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_03: Really prolific.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_03: Again, it's like, what happened to those plays?
• 42:56
  it's amazing to me that we're still watching Shakespeare
• 42:58
  productions but it's like
• 42:59
  what about the works of Mark Lemon yeah we don't know I was
• 43:02
  watching I was driving
• 43:03
  the other day and I saw like a sign like an advertisement you
• 43:07
  know like a whatever
• 43:08
  like a pick what is it when you put a sign on the lawn I don't
• 43:11
  know picket sign no
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: whatever anyway of like a high school performance of a
• 43:20
  like a disney movie like cinderella or something and it like
• 43:23
  occurred to me in that
• 43:24
  moment that they had had to license it yeah how does that work
• 43:28
  i don't know but i
• 43:29
  was just like they should be doing like shit like this instead
• 43:32
  like our school
• 43:32
  system should not be paying disney to license the it's that is
• 43:37
  so interesting yeah
• 43:38
  there's also like yeah my co-worker's kid is an annie annie
• 43:41
  junior right now and i
• 43:43
  was thinking about that katie just sent me a video of darren
• 43:47
  cross performing annie
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_03: Do you mean Darren Criss?
• 43:50
  Yes Okay Moving on Of course So Mark Lemon The reason I wanted
• 43:59
  to talk about Mark
• 44:00
  Lemon too is because he was a huge contributor to another
• 44:03
  newspaper called the
• 44:04
  Illustrated London News which was founded in 1842 and was the
• 44:07
  first illustrated
• 44:08
  weekly news magazine and that was a very radical idea that was
• 44:14
  invented by a guy
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_03: named Herbert Ingram
• 44:16
  who was a printer and a news agent who realized and started to
• 44:20
  notice that when
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_03: newspapers had pictures in them they sold better.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just like that was a radical concept.
• 44:27
  I feel like this whole episode for me is like someone had to
• 44:29
  come up with that.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: But of course.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: Of course.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: It was so hard to reproduce images.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: People don't remember that.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:39
  Well in the first issue of the Illustrated London News which
• 44:42
  was published on May
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_03: 14th 1842 was time to report on
• 44:46
  Queen Victoria's first masquerade ball and the the first issue
• 44:52
  covered and
• 44:53
  illustrated topics including a war in Afghanistan the
• 44:56
  Versailles rail accident a
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_03: survey of the candidates for the U.S.
• 44:59
  presidential election extensive crime reports theater and book
• 45:02
  reviews and a list
• 45:03
  of births marriages and deaths it's basically the New York
• 45:07
  Times yeah nothing has
• 45:09
  changed now it's a plane crash instead of a rail accident but I
• 45:13
  guarantee you all
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_02: of those things are on the front page of the Times today
• 45:16
  also there like recently was I feel like a big Amtrak accident
• 45:20
  so train accidents
• 45:21
  are still in so this all really begs the question why why would
• 45:26
  someone start a
• 45:26
  humor magazine so it came in part because Henry Mayhew was so
• 45:34
  in debt that he had
• 45:35
  to escape his creditors by moving to Paris for a little while
• 45:38
  totally which I could
• 45:40
  see happening to either one of us on this call I don't think
• 45:44
  you can outrun debt
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: these days
• 45:46
  but we would try we would not look that up and we would try but
• 45:50
  if I had to I would
• 45:50
  go to Paris yeah um and it was in Paris that Henry Mayhew
• 45:57
  encountered this
• 45:58
  satirical French paper called Le Charivari which if you know
• 46:02
  anything about Punch
• 46:04
  the subtitle of Punch is Punch the London Charivari they were
• 46:09
  inspired by the
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: Charivari Le Charivari in Paris um
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_02: What does that mean in French?
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm going to get there.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_03: Wait, don't look it up.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_03: Don't look it up.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'm not looking it up.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_02: I was about to look it up and I'm not.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm coming back into the Zoom full screen.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_03: Nothing's happening.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't translate into anything.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_03: In French, it is charivari.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_03: In English, it's charivari.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: Charivari is a traditional European and North American folk custom.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_03: It is a type of way of shaming someone in public.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, to do a charivari would be for me to get everyone in your town.
• 46:44
  to go up to your house to let ourselves in to grab your body
• 46:49
  drag you through the
• 46:49
  streets pelt you with garbage and scream and make lots of noise
• 46:53
  and then eventually
• 46:54
  probably dump you in a body of water perfect it is a parade
• 46:59
  what is that oh sorry
• 47:01
  go ahead it's a well I'm curious what were you going to ask I
• 47:05
  was going to ask like
• 47:06
  what sort of thing that would be retribution for I have a list
• 47:10
  uh ashari bari um
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_03: could be used
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_03: if someone had committed domestic violence.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_02: Love.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of it had to do with like relationships between men and women.
• 47:21
  So if a man had let his wife cuckold him,
• 47:23
  they might do a sharivari to him.
• 47:27
  um sometimes they would also do it to a woman but it was mostly
• 47:30
  men so men who
• 47:31
  committed violence there was also economic crimes that people
• 47:34
  would commit that
• 47:34
  were the reason to do a sharivari so blocking footpaths
• 47:38
  preventing traditional
• 47:40
  gleaning or profiteering at times of poor harvests okay and
• 47:45
  there's different I
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_03: mean sharivari is basically like
• 47:48
  a folk concept and it takes many many different forms and it's
• 47:52
  called many many
• 47:53
  things around the world I like this practice I do too I think
• 47:57
  we should bring it
• 47:58
  back I'm just like it's so much more like yeah you don't want
• 48:04
  to send someone to
• 48:04
  jail for that like economic fines don't do anything I mean
• 48:08
  domestic violence aside
• 48:09
  obviously but like for like like your neighbors doing something
• 48:13
  really fucking
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: annoying but like not criminal necessarily but everyone's mad about it
• 48:18
  mm-hmm like parade them through the streets throw shit at them
• 48:22
  throw them in the
• 48:22
  water and let it be done yeah and I I mean I am curious in a
• 48:25
  time of like public
• 48:26
  executions when was a Sharivari implemented versus an execution
• 48:32
  I mean I guess it's
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_03: just the severity of the crime but
• 48:35
  But I also feel like people were being executed for very,
• 48:37
  very small crimes.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
• 48:38
  but I think an execution is like you have to be sentenced to
• 48:43
  death by this state,
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: whereas a sharivari seems like it's more of a like a what's it called?
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like vigilante.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's a folk tradition.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's really cool.
• 48:52
  yeah it's like we don't need to involve the law like yeah this
• 48:56
  is a citizen's
• 48:57
  arrest well especially in a place like New York which was
• 49:00
  probably like one of the
• 49:01
  most sophisticated places in the world if they have one night
• 49:04
  watchman in the
• 49:04
  entire city you can't always count on you gotta take matters
• 49:08
  into your own hands
• 49:09
  sometimes that's called community I do think that it probably
• 49:13
  brought people
• 49:14
  together um and that is what I believe punch the London
• 49:18
  Sharivari was trying to do
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_03: and
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_03: They wanted to be similar to this French publication,
• 49:24
  but they wanted to be less bitter and also kind of like cleaner
• 49:27
  than the French.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll talk a little bit about how that manifested.
• 49:33
  The magazine's first issue came out in July 1841 and at first
• 49:37
  struggled to find much
• 49:39
  of a readership but then they published an annual special issue
• 49:42
  called the Almanac
• 49:43
  and they sold 90,000 copies and after that they were just kind
• 49:46
  of like selling
• 49:48
  selling hot like hotcakes I was like what's that phrase
• 49:50
  hotcakes they also 40,000
• 49:51
  copies a week by 1850 rose to above 100,000 a week by 1910 but
• 49:54
  then after the 19
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: yes the volume is crazy
• 50:03
  like my dad was telling me like there's three million New York
• 50:06
  Times subscribers in
• 50:07
  this country and only like 500,000 people get it in print still
• 50:12
  and that's still a
• 50:13
  lot but we're also not England is so small yeah England is tiny
• 50:18
  um the population
• 50:19
  that was even smaller yeah like percentage wise I think that's
• 50:23
  way bigger than the
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_02: New York Times reach here
• 50:26
  it also like when we were talking with Rachel about the history
• 50:29
  of popular fiction
• 50:30
  I think like between 1830 and 1890 there was like only 60,000
• 50:34
  novels published so
• 50:35
  the fact that 40,000 copies a week of Punch were selling in
• 50:38
  1850 is interesting
• 50:40
  yeah and that's what like why I wanted to talk about Punch was
• 50:43
  like because that
• 50:45
  was how people experience novels also like this was how you
• 50:50
  read books was in
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_03: sections in magazines like Punch um
• 50:56
  the magazine eventually kind of started declining in the 1940s
• 51:01
  and then closed
• 51:02
  officially in 1992 it was revived in 96 but then closed again
• 51:06
  in 2002 wait the year
• 51:08
  of my birth and then the year of your birth yeah and then 2002
• 51:12
  nothing happened
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_03: someone was probably born maybe one person no one I could name yeah
• 51:20
  um but I've talked a lot about shari vari but now I want to
• 51:23
  talk to you about punch
• 51:25
  okay you know why it's called punch because it's a punch in the
• 51:28
  gut no because it's
• 51:31
  fruit punch on the bowl at a social event no those are my two
• 51:38
  guesses I have
• 51:40
  nothing else okay it's called punch because it's named after
• 51:44
  one of the most famous
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_03: puppets of all time
• 51:46
  oh Punch and Judy Punch and Judy talk about domestic violence
• 51:50
  exactly so crazy okay
• 51:54
  for the uninitiated and I include myself amongst these
• 51:57
  yesterday I like knew who
• 51:59
  Punch and Judy were but I didn't I've never seen it performed
• 52:02
  you like have
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_02: actually I'm sure okay like at the seaside no like in movies yeah
• 52:11
  I feel like I'm just not like a I'm not a good I don't know a
• 52:14
  lot about it so I
• 52:15
  learned a lot and what's interesting about Punch and Judy like
• 52:19
  speaking of
• 52:19
  Cinderella it's like a and similar to Charivari it's like
• 52:23
  iconic and a tale is all
• 52:24
  the time and it's told in different ways all the time and Punch
• 52:29
  dates back to at
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_03: least the 17th century
• 52:33
  um if not earlier punch is the anglos anglosization
• 52:38
  anglosization of a neapolitan
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_03: italian puppet character named puccinella um
• 52:47
  you know him I don't know you totally know him it's this guy oh
• 52:52
  my god I do know
• 52:53
  him yeah it's like the iconic clown like when you see a clown
• 52:58
  wearing a white
• 52:58
  outfit with a hunchback and a huge potbelly wearing a sort of
• 53:02
  cone-shaped hat and a
• 53:03
  black mask that is Puccinella wow so I mean I'm just so
• 53:09
  fascinated by this totally
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_03: yeah
• 53:12
  so Puccinella had been living a beautiful life in Italy for a
• 53:17
  long time in the 17th
• 53:19
  century and by the 17th century and like similarly was this
• 53:24
  kind of like I'm trying
• 53:26
  to think of the kind of contemporary comparison I mean to a
• 53:31
  clown it's but like a
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_03: kind of character who reoccurs in many many different forms
• 53:38
  um it's kind of like the minions in a way copyright is so hard
• 53:43
  yeah copyright so
• 53:44
  different so it's kind of like you know who Raggedy Ann is like
• 53:47
  yeah it's a I mean
• 53:49
  the minions are iconic yeah it's in the minion it's like
• 53:53
  there's a minion for
• 53:54
  everything like a minion in every different outfit a minion in
• 53:56
  every different form
• 53:57
  it's kind of like that yeah Charlie Brown characters or
• 54:01
  something yeah just like
• 54:04
  a shape and even like the way that people know what a French
• 54:07
  mime looks like you
• 54:08
  know like I don't know so Punch and Judy came to England in
• 54:14
  1662 when an Italian
• 54:16
  puppeteer named Signor Bologna performed for the recently
• 54:21
  restored monarch Charles
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_03: II at Whitehall Palace and
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_03: in the reform restoration period sorry not reformation restoration so the
• 54:31
  restoration period in England refers to the time when after
• 54:34
  King Charles II was put
• 54:35
  back on the throne after the Cromwell era and there was this
• 54:39
  huge flourishing of
• 54:40
  theater and performing arts and because in the Cromwell era
• 54:43
  which had been like
• 54:44
  defined by Puritan values you couldn't be silly at all so
• 54:48
  everyone was really silly
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_03: including Charles II so
• 54:53
  Bologna did his performance of Puccinella the way that they did
• 54:57
  it in Italy which
• 54:57
  is with like marionette puppets so puppets on strings and
• 55:02
  that's notable because
• 55:03
  over the course of Punch's Puccinella aka Punch's life in
• 55:06
  England Punch became a
• 55:08
  hand puppet this is so insane that I'm talking about this I
• 55:11
  love it I know so
• 55:14
  is that because British people are lack dexterity or what kind
• 55:19
  of because well I
• 55:20
  think it's because punch becomes so common that in some ways
• 55:25
  it's like there's a
• 55:25
  lower bar to entry also the stories that people told with punch
• 55:30
  and Judy were so
• 55:31
  violent it was kind of easier to do that with your hands okay
• 55:35
  um like the strings
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_03: don't get tangled um and
• 55:39
  so but punch is like now living in England and he's appearing
• 55:44
  in a lot of different
• 55:45
  marionette shows around the country and one of his signature
• 55:49
  moves is that he
• 55:50
  fights the devil and he often beats the devil but sometimes the
• 55:53
  devil beats him and
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_03: so this is a quote
• 55:58
  Punch became such a popular character that when Samuel Foote
• 56:01
  staged a puppet show
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_03: at the Haymarket Theater on February 15th,
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_03: 1773,
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_03: featuring real actors with strings attached and no punch,
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_03: the audience in the upper gallery revolted,
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_03: tearing up the benches on the opening night.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_03: So love.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_03: They were like, bring out Punch.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like, where's the hand puppet?
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 56:20
  So by the 19th century,
• 56:21
  Punch had become a hand puppet,
• 56:24
  also known as a glove puppet.
• 56:26
  and he had started to wear his signature outfit so unlike
• 56:29
  Puccinella who wears the
• 56:30
  white outfit with the cone hat which is cute which is cute
• 56:33
  punch wears a red and
• 56:34
  yellow you would also wear this though a red and yellow striped
• 56:37
  jester outfit yeah
• 56:39
  I've seen you wear stuff like that I don't like to wear red and
• 56:42
  yellow because of
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_02: ketchup and mustard but yes yes of course
• 56:47
  silhouette wise it's in the right family heading in the right
• 56:50
  direction and then
• 56:52
  there comes to be like other punch signatures like well Judy of
• 56:56
  course his wife who
• 56:57
  he likes to be and who he fights with and then his dog he gets
• 57:01
  a dog named Toby
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_03: Toby Toby in addition to
• 57:06
  fighting he also dances a lot but he's probably most famous for
• 57:10
  his voice do you
• 57:11
  know what punch sounds like no idea he has a distinctive
• 57:15
  swazzle voice so a swazzle
• 57:19
  what is a thing that the performer puts in their mouth it's
• 57:26
  like a reed basically
• 57:27
  it's like a little stick that you put in your mouth and you
• 57:30
  talk through it and it
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_03: makes your voice sound like a kazoo
• 57:34
  um originally swazzles were made from bone or ivory today
• 57:37
  they're made from tin but
• 57:38
  whatever the material each was equally tricky to master and
• 57:41
  easy to swallow that's
• 57:44
  a quote from the Victorian Albert Museum oh my god so people
• 57:48
  were swallowing
• 57:49
  swazzles yeah definitely um so yeah it just makes you I can't
• 57:54
  even imagine what
• 57:54
  punch sounds like I could have watched the video but I lost
• 57:57
  track of time but I
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_03: think it's like squawking like
• 58:02
  um in the 19th century punch became something that people would
• 58:06
  often watch on the
• 58:07
  street so you've probably seen that like a mobile puppet booth
• 58:09
  that's very famous
• 58:11
  um like a cloth little set yeah I've seen that you've seen that
• 58:15
  what's interesting
• 58:16
  to me in terms of this whole history of the magazine and of the
• 58:19
  puppet is that
• 58:20
  Punch and Judy was originally for adults and it discussed
• 58:25
  obviously very adult
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_03: subject matter like the marital strife between Punch and Judy and
• 58:30
  but then it becomes by the late Victorian era a children's
• 58:34
  entertainment and I feel
• 58:36
  like you see that with cartoons also yeah like just in general
• 58:41
  that like they were
• 58:42
  for adults and now they're for kids yeah and I feel like
• 58:45
  there's something about
• 58:45
  the 19th century honestly I was thinking about this when we
• 58:50
  were talking about the
• 58:50
  history of popular fiction because I was reading someone write
• 58:54
  about the Count of
• 58:55
  Monte Cristo and was saying who was saying that like basically
• 58:58
  the tragic fate of
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_03: that
• 59:00
  book is that it was a serious novel that tackles very serious
• 59:04
  topics but has been
• 59:07
  fated to basically be something for children like when
• 59:09
  something's so iconic that
• 59:11
  it actually isn't for adults anymore right or it's like I feel
• 59:17
  like Victorian
• 59:17
  literature in general is kind of like it's safe for kids like
• 59:20
  even if there's like
• 59:21
  you know some things that they won't pick up on whether it's
• 59:25
  like racist or
• 59:25
  whatever like it's you know that there's not going to be
• 59:28
  anything really graphic in
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_02: there
• 59:30
  yeah because like our cultural mores have changed and it's so
• 59:35
  seeped in innuendo
• 59:36
  like yeah we are such an explicit culture that's disgusting
• 59:41
  it's disgusting and
• 59:42
  that's what I love about 19th century fiction is like things
• 59:45
  are hidden and you
• 59:46
  have to dig for them and like I actually think it's totally
• 59:48
  fine for kids to read
• 59:49
  and watch inappropriate things I think it's cool for them to
• 59:52
  have to work for it a
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_03: little bit yeah
• 59:54
  Like to learn why something's inappropriate rather than just
• 59:57
  like watching porn.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_03: For example.
• 1:00:01
  Now I want to read to you this Charles Dickens quote about
• 1:00:04
  Punch the Puppet.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_03: He wrote this in a letter in 1849.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_03: In my opinion,
• 1:00:09
  the street punch is one of those extravagant reliefs from the
• 1:00:12
  realities of life
• 1:00:13
  which would lose its hold upon the people if it were made moral
• 1:00:16
  and instructive.
• 1:00:17
  I regard it as quite harmless in its influence and as an
• 1:00:20
  outrageous joke which no
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_03: one in existence would think of as regarding
• 1:00:24
  An incentive to any kind of action or as a model for any kind
• 1:00:27
  of conduct.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_03: It is possible,
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 1:00:29
  that one secret source of pleasure very generally derived from
• 1:00:32
  this performance is
• 1:00:33
  the satisfaction the spectator feels in the circumstance that
• 1:00:36
  likenesses of men and
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_03: women can be so knocked about without any pain or suffering.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_03: Isn't that interesting?
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_02: That reminds me of that book about Raggedy Ann.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:00:47
  Which I can't remember the name of,
• 1:00:49
  but I think the author's name was Robin Bernstein.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:00:55
  which is about kind of like how Raggedy Ann was racialized and
• 1:00:59
  so it became like
• 1:01:00
  certain classes or races of people who were subject to violence
• 1:01:05
  because like with
• 1:01:05
  Raggedy Ann stories would be her getting like sort of throttled
• 1:01:08
  about yeah well
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_02: like all these previousness
• 1:01:13
  all of these things that are the purview of children are
• 1:01:16
  testing grounds for very
• 1:01:17
  adult themes and like we teach kids to treat a Raggedy Ann doll
• 1:01:22
  poorly we we
• 1:01:24
  glorify the like violence of Punch and Judy but I do and then
• 1:01:28
  like on a more
• 1:01:29
  positive note I think there I like what Dickens is saying about
• 1:01:33
  how you learn
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_03: something
• 1:01:35
  by watching someone be hurt but not or be beat but without
• 1:01:39
  being hurt and yeah that
• 1:01:41
  there is this inherent violence to life but you most people
• 1:01:44
  actually get the
• 1:01:45
  privilege of surviving it yeah well I was also watching a kid
• 1:01:52
  just now at the
• 1:01:53
  coffee shop like get sort of fall down and the parents like
• 1:01:57
  relief react and fawn
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_02: over him and then he started crying like you know two minutes later yeah
• 1:02:04
  and like this idea that like so much of I don't know that kind
• 1:02:11
  of like so much of
• 1:02:13
  the sort of pain of life you're reacting actually to like other
• 1:02:16
  people's responses
• 1:02:17
  and not to what you're experiencing which only makes it more
• 1:02:21
  interesting when you
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_03: just cry naturally
• 1:02:24
  yeah like but I feel like I cry when I'm like embarrassed more
• 1:02:27
  than I cry any or
• 1:02:29
  like frustrated or like something's not like very rarely do I
• 1:02:33
  cry because like I
• 1:02:34
  feel really bad well I don't yeah I mean I haven't cried
• 1:02:39
  because I got a boo-boo in
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_03: a while like I luckily knock on wood I famously don't cry when I get hurt
• 1:02:46
  i cry only when i'm like been sick for a long time and i'm like
• 1:02:49
  i can't believe i'm
• 1:02:50
  still sick like out of frustration yeah but that's frustration
• 1:02:53
  yeah and then like
• 1:02:54
  the other day i was in an awful situation and i at work and i
• 1:02:58
  start like i could i
• 1:02:59
  could tell i was about to start crying and i was just like why
• 1:03:02
  like sometimes my
• 1:03:03
  eyes cry but the rest of me doesn't my voice was crying my
• 1:03:06
  voice was doing crying
• 1:03:07
  thing which also sucks like i hate when you hear when someone
• 1:03:11
  can hear how you're
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_02: crying yeah
• 1:03:13
  it sucks um okay so why was punch magazine named for punch the
• 1:03:19
  puppet that's a
• 1:03:20
  great question so mark lemon explains that in the first issue
• 1:03:26
  so basically he's
• 1:03:28
  like our title at first may make you think that we're doing
• 1:03:32
  nothing other than just
• 1:03:33
  amusing a thoughtless crowd and trying to take a penny from you
• 1:03:36
  but actually we
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_03: have a higher object and
• 1:03:40
  he he thinks of punch as this kind of model we have considered
• 1:03:43
  him as a teacher of
• 1:03:45
  no mean pretensions and have therefore adopted him as a sponsor
• 1:03:47
  for our weekly
• 1:03:48
  sheet of pleasant instruction um and he's he's like not rude
• 1:03:55
  basically is what he
• 1:03:56
  says like punch is there's something aspirational about punch
• 1:03:59
  and there's something
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_03: like pure about the way that he makes you laugh that he's not rude
• 1:04:05
  yeah he beats his wife his dog no I can't explain everything
• 1:04:10
  what's not rude about
• 1:04:11
  him I don't know there's also this like really weird part where
• 1:04:14
  I guess like a big
• 1:04:15
  part of the punch drama that was constantly being told and
• 1:04:17
  retold and told in new
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_03: ways was had to do with
• 1:04:21
  prison and the gallows and the editor of punch is like we're
• 1:04:26
  not tackling those
• 1:04:27
  topics it's really weird and we should start putting a note
• 1:04:31
  like that at the
• 1:04:31
  beginning of mandylion books yeah we will not be getting into
• 1:04:34
  moral questions we
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_02: will not be doing gallows humor here um but
• 1:04:40
  I've read a little bit like what was the key to the Punch
• 1:04:44
  magazine success and
• 1:04:46
  partly it was that it was hilarious but also that it evolved
• 1:04:50
  with the times and
• 1:04:52
  when society turned radical in the sort of moment in and around
• 1:04:57
  and after 1848 it
• 1:04:58
  was also radical and then in the 1860s it became more
• 1:05:02
  conservative because that's
• 1:05:03
  the way that the culture was going and instead of like
• 1:05:05
  criticizing the British
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_03: Empire it sort of
• 1:05:07
  celebrated the british empire um but there's something to that
• 1:05:11
  rudeness point
• 1:05:13
  basically it also like didn't go for the gut um so i was
• 1:05:21
  reading this history of
• 1:05:24
  punch magazine that was written in the 1890s which says that
• 1:05:28
  basically like punch
• 1:05:29
  attacked everyone equally it didn't have a particular cause and
• 1:05:35
  they were like
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_03: unlike the french
• 1:05:39
  already amazing if there is one it's just kind of crazy that in
• 1:05:43
  1890s it had
• 1:05:44
  already been 50 years like a punch yeah and like the onion I
• 1:05:49
  don't know I'm just
• 1:05:50
  like well have you heard about how the onion is trying to buy
• 1:05:52
  Alex Jones's website
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_03: InfoWars or they bought it oh yeah yeah I don't know I was thinking about
• 1:05:59
  I just think like satire is also it's hard to be satirical I
• 1:06:02
  feel like and I'm not
• 1:06:03
  interested in political satire in a moment where like our own
• 1:06:06
  political state is
• 1:06:07
  like such a joke no I actually think that the like farce of our
• 1:06:12
  political system is
• 1:06:13
  a result of like this sort of political satire of the early
• 1:06:17
  2000s to be honest yeah
• 1:06:20
  like no one could not a direct result but like that's like
• 1:06:23
  snark yeah I mean it's
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_03: also like it's a testament to how
• 1:06:30
  people's feelings were hurt and they were angry and resentful
• 1:06:33
  yeah um unlike those
• 1:06:36
  dirty French those dirty French um yeah basically they're
• 1:06:40
  saying like unsavory
• 1:06:41
  subjects form the principal stock and trade of the French
• 1:06:44
  humorist which is true
• 1:06:45
  all French humorists are like it's just pornography basically
• 1:06:50
  well totally they're
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_03: like they're like ah
• 1:06:55
  she got fucked by a million horses it's like that's not a joke
• 1:07:01
  well it's so funny
• 1:07:02
  trying to understand what other cultures find funny like I was
• 1:07:05
  thinking a lot about
• 1:07:06
  like English humor when doing this research and I was like yeah
• 1:07:09
  did you watch
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_02: Ladies of London this week
• 1:07:12
  yeah no not yet huge features hugely wait I did see that in the
• 1:07:16
  like next week on
• 1:07:17
  ladies of London yeah yeah they're like British people are
• 1:07:19
  really mean to you
• 1:07:20
  that's what's funny you if you feel hurt you're an idiot but
• 1:07:23
  also having dated a
• 1:07:24
  British person I don't know if you had this experience I was
• 1:07:27
  constantly being told
• 1:07:28
  that I was misunderstanding like British humor when I was like
• 1:07:32
  no I just don't like
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_02: what you're saying and it's not funny like I get British humor
• 1:07:38
  it's not some privileged thing that you know about that I can't
• 1:07:41
  comprehend it's
• 1:07:42
  like I just that's not it for me babe like yeah they're so
• 1:07:47
  proud of it I know like
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_02: they're like I was joking
• 1:07:54
  like it's not fucking funny yeah it's like I'm happy to be the
• 1:07:57
  butt of the joke as
• 1:07:58
  long as the joke is funny yeah totally um I love this in the
• 1:08:03
  history of punch from
• 1:08:04
  the 1890s they talk about like punches punch attacks everyone
• 1:08:08
  equally and this
• 1:08:09
  amazing sentence punch has been a kindly cauterizer of social
• 1:08:13
  sores caustic but
• 1:08:14
  rarely vindictive spiritualism socialism Ibsenism Walt witt
• 1:08:19
  mania all the movements
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_03: and sensations of the day
• 1:08:21
  social political and artistic insofar as they are follies have
• 1:08:24
  been shot at as they
• 1:08:26
  rose and then they the writer of this history quotes Oliver
• 1:08:30
  Wendell Holmes senior
• 1:08:31
  which just goes to show again like how iconic this guy was yeah
• 1:08:34
  so this is the
• 1:08:34
  quote the clown knows his place to be at the tail of the
• 1:08:37
  procession love love it's
• 1:08:41
  like I mean it's reminding me of South Park in this description
• 1:08:43
  fun thing about me
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_02: never seen it really never seen South Park that's crazy I know
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think I possibly would never have seen it if I didn't have a brother.
• 1:08:55
  I thankfully was not subjected to that by my brothers yeah I
• 1:08:59
  was I mean I watched a
• 1:09:01
  lot of cartoons I didn't want to watch but not that one so
• 1:09:07
  punch came out in 1841
• 1:09:09
  its first issue had sort of had something they called the punch
• 1:09:13
  prospectus which I
• 1:09:14
  wanted to tell you about because it's very your moment in time
• 1:09:17
  my moment my current
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_03: moment in time your current moment so it's very funny and strange
• 1:09:24
  so they call it a guffaw graph like guffawing graph this guffaw
• 1:09:30
  graph is intended
• 1:09:31
  to form a refuge for destitute wit an asylum for the thousands
• 1:09:36
  of orphan jokes the
• 1:09:37
  superannuated joe millers the millions of perishing puns which
• 1:09:41
  are now wandering
• 1:09:42
  about without so much as a shelf to rest upon and get listen to
• 1:09:46
  this it is also
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_03: devoted to the emancipation of the jew desprey all over the world
• 1:09:52
  The Jew Desprey The spirit of the Jew Okay That is what they're
• 1:09:56
  going for in Punch
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_02: Magazine Not Jew Jew J-E-W J-E-W?
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah Wait what?
• 1:10:07
  They're going for It is also devoted to the emancipation of the
• 1:10:11
  Jew Desprey All
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_03: over the world Is that how you spell it?
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_03: Desprey Desprey The Jew Desprey That's crazy So that's what Punch is
• 1:10:22
  wow okay um and then they go on to name the topics that they'll
• 1:10:28
  be tackling first
• 1:10:28
  they're like we're going to be published every saturday they
• 1:10:30
  said politics punch
• 1:10:32
  has no party prejudices he is as conservative he is
• 1:10:34
  conservative in his opposition
• 1:10:36
  to Fantanucci and political puppets but a progressive wig in
• 1:10:39
  his love of small
• 1:10:40
  change and then fashions um which they say will be the
• 1:10:44
  department conducted by mrs
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_03: j punch judy
• 1:10:48
  um and she's going to furnish okay sorry I'm the Jew Desperie
• 1:10:53
  thing Jew Desperie is
• 1:10:55
  a phrase in French so I'm like I feel like it's maybe just a
• 1:10:59
  typo no it says Jew
• 1:11:01
  J-E-W all caps like it's very intentional let me show I'm not
• 1:11:05
  quoting from
• 1:11:06
  Wikipedia I'm quoting from like a screenshot of the original
• 1:11:10
  publication Jew
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_03: Desperie I have it open here too
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so it is a pun then at least.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I guess it's a pun.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_03: The Jew d'Espérie.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_03: What?
• 1:11:26
  Yeah,
• 1:11:27
  I was gonna...
• 1:11:28
  Because Jew d'Espérie means like wordplay or like it's like
• 1:11:31
  puns and wit.
• 1:11:33
  I'm searching the word Jew in this internet archive compendium
• 1:11:37
  of like the first
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_03: six issues of Punch and there's six occurrences.
• 1:11:42
  the wandering jew okay a jew peddler you know okay okay i'm
• 1:11:49
  rich as a jew that's a
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_03: line in a song okay um fascinating i don't really know even what to say
• 1:11:59
  okay so if you're wondering what a pun what if you're wondering
• 1:12:04
  what articles were
• 1:12:06
  published in the first issue they had titles such as a railroad
• 1:12:10
  novel lessons in
• 1:12:11
  punmanship a conversation between two hackney coach horses
• 1:12:16
  which features the two
• 1:12:17
  horses bragging about their pedigrees and then complaining that
• 1:12:20
  a fat obese female
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_03: has on top of them
• 1:12:24
  that sounds awesome yeah and then there's a fashion article
• 1:12:28
  called a chapter on
• 1:12:29
  boots which begins boots boots yes boots we can write upon
• 1:12:33
  boots we can moralize
• 1:12:34
  upon boots we can convert them as Jacques does the weeping stag
• 1:12:38
  and as you like it
• 1:12:39
  or whether you like it or not into a thousand similes and then
• 1:12:43
  they describe
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_03: different types of boots yeah
• 1:12:45
  it's like shoes a youtube video it's like shoes and I'm just
• 1:12:50
  like the humor is the
• 1:12:51
  same yeah nothing changes park and it's shoes and it's making
• 1:12:55
  fun of juice um so
• 1:12:58
  Ruskin hated punch and was I bet that makes perfect sense
• 1:13:04
  Ruskin was so fucking
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_02: self-serious like that's the thing about him that I think history forgets
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean and that's I do feel like people's humorlessness is celebrated in
• 1:13:15
  historiography you know like yeah because you like had an
• 1:13:18
  opinion about anything
• 1:13:19
  like if you have a sense of humor about life you don't write
• 1:13:21
  your opinions about
• 1:13:22
  everything yeah in a way that's important to remember um so
• 1:13:26
  yeah and then or
• 1:13:27
  someone like Oscar Wilde then becomes like the butt of the joke
• 1:13:30
  themselves because
• 1:13:31
  they didn't take anything seriously you really have to sort of
• 1:13:35
  find the middle line
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_03: um so
• 1:13:38
  Ruskin said punch has never in a single instance endeavored to
• 1:13:42
  represent the beauty
• 1:13:43
  of the poor on the contrary his witness to their degradation as
• 1:13:46
  inevitable
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_03: consequences of their London life and is constant and for the most part
• 1:13:50
  contemptuous yeah I mean it's like an opiate of the masses type
• 1:13:55
  thing too I was
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_02: under the impression that punch was like relatively conservative yeah
• 1:14:01
  i can't tell i mean i'm reading punch telling me that punch is
• 1:14:05
  not really aligned
• 1:14:06
  with any politic but i'm sure that's not true like i mean i
• 1:14:11
  guess maybe just in a
• 1:14:12
  sense like they would make like what they're saying themselves
• 1:14:16
  they would make fun
• 1:14:16
  of like any sort of progressive like art movement but those
• 1:14:19
  were often tied also to
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_02: progressive social causes
• 1:14:22
  yeah I mean but then like the founder founding editor was very
• 1:14:26
  interested in like
• 1:14:27
  uplifting the poor or at least studying the poor and saying
• 1:14:29
  that they were worth
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_03: thinking about which not isn't necessarily uplifting I guess yeah um
• 1:14:36
  so many famous artists and writers published in punch um
• 1:14:42
  Thackeray DeMaurier and
• 1:14:46
  our friend I don't know why that's happening the screen is
• 1:14:50
  covered in thumbs up I
• 1:14:52
  got distracted um and it's like still happening I don't know
• 1:14:57
  why I'm sorry this
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_03: would never happen in punch so Thackeray's
• 1:15:04
  Vanity Fair was actually published in punch satire satire yeah
• 1:15:09
  it's a 20 part it
• 1:15:10
  was published in 20 parts between 1847 and 1848 also like think
• 1:15:14
  about between
• 1:15:15
  January 1847 and July 1848 like I read Vanity Fair in like a
• 1:15:20
  month maybe yeah and I
• 1:15:23
  felt like that was kind of a long time to be inside of his mind
• 1:15:25
  I've been reading
• 1:15:27
  SPEAKER_02: the moonstone for like eight months yeah
• 1:15:32
  so you're basically reading it in a serial form uh-huh yeah
• 1:15:36
  there's kind of nothing
• 1:15:36
  worse to me than really dragging out like I think all books are
• 1:15:39
  better when read
• 1:15:40
  fast sometimes I'll put a book I'll get halfway through a book
• 1:15:43
  and I will put it
• 1:15:44
  down for like six months and then pick it back up oh I need to
• 1:15:48
  pick up Daniel
• 1:15:48
  Duranda again speaking of which she I just I'm always like if I
• 1:15:53
  put it down for two
• 1:15:53
  days it's gone it's lost to me then you just jump right back in
• 1:15:57
  it actually doesn't
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_02: go anywhere it's like riding a bike
• 1:16:00
  yeah okay i'll pick it up i i was like i've been feeling like i
• 1:16:03
  forgot something of
• 1:16:04
  that i was reading um and that's kind of all i have to say
• 1:16:10
  about punch well that
• 1:16:11
  was fascinating thank you i hope that you enjoyed that i did
• 1:16:16
  did you have any
• 1:16:17
  favorite cartoons you pulled no that would have been fun to do
• 1:16:22
  that would have been
• 1:16:22
  fun to do we can maybe do maybe like when we publish this we'll
• 1:16:26
  include some
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_03: cartoons
• 1:16:27
  the punch cartoons that I'm most most stick out in my mind are
• 1:16:31
  the ones making fun
• 1:16:33
  of the aesthetic movement and how so do they do that like
• 1:16:38
  there's one where it's
• 1:16:39
  like a really like wispy frail kind of like gay looking man
• 1:16:46
  being like you know
• 1:16:50
  and then they're like and then there's one where it's like a
• 1:16:54
  greek statue of a
• 1:16:55
  woman and then a woman with consumption and it's like the new
• 1:16:58
  ideal and how does
• 1:17:02
  that make you feel about aestheticism i'm i mean it's sort of
• 1:17:07
  like yeah totally
• 1:17:09
  they had a point they had a point well i'm just on this my
• 1:17:13
  favorite website which
• 1:17:13
  is called victorian web looking through some different punch
• 1:17:17
  i'm familiar with it
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_03: yeah
• 1:17:20
  so this this punch cartoon is called the London bathing season
• 1:17:23
  father Thames tells
• 1:17:24
  the street urchin holding his nose against the river stink come
• 1:17:27
  my dear come to old
• 1:17:28
  Thames and have a nice bath and there's just like dead animals
• 1:17:31
  floating in the
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_03: river so you know that's social commentary yeah
• 1:17:36
  old king cole and then like there's a whole section about women
• 1:17:42
  in punch cartoons
• 1:17:43
  about women George du Maurier yeah here's one of his
• 1:17:46
  illustrations called the
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_03: gondola just talking about trilby yeah we're always talking about trilby
• 1:17:54
  so there's just like this Victorian web page has like you name
• 1:17:59
  a topic we will find
• 1:18:00
  you a punch cartoon and it goes the list goes on and on in
• 1:18:02
  conclusion I really
• 1:18:04
  enjoyed thinking about punch I mean there's obvious corollaries
• 1:18:07
  to like the
• 1:18:08
  intranet and cartoons and memes and people talking about life
• 1:18:16
  and trying to make
• 1:18:17
  sense of it and I had a good time doing that via punch and I
• 1:18:21
  feel like something
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_03: that I noticed in
• 1:18:24
  myself after our panel was I was like oh I actually think I
• 1:18:28
  know are the readers of
• 1:18:29
  19th century novels like the period readers but I don't and I
• 1:18:32
  want to know how
• 1:18:34
  people responded to things more and punch feels like a way of
• 1:18:37
  getting towards that
• 1:18:39
  okay so we'll read punch and return to the question yeah um but
• 1:18:44
  anyway thanks for
• 1:18:45
  listening to 1-800-1800 please subscribe and tell your friends
• 1:18:50
  and like it
• 1:18:51
  and just buy our books and just be devoted to us in any way
• 1:18:54
  that you see fit I
• 1:18:56
  think we do know what the 2026 reader wants they want us hello
• 1:19:03
  you've reached
• 1:19:04
  SPEAKER_00: 1-800-1800 1-800-1800 I have a burning question 1-800-1800 1-800-1800
• 1:19:20
  SPEAKER_01: I have a burning question.