Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Who was America's first murderer?

Transcript

Who was America's first murderer? · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
0:03
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
0:08
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
0:16
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
0:19
Speaker 1: and this is Stuff you Should Know Episode three. Well,
0:25
Speaker 1: I'm saying it is so now it's episode episode three
0:29
Speaker 1: something three niner eight or that's good, Josh? Is that
0:35
Speaker 1: your intro? Rocking and a rolling, splihing in the splashing
0:39
Speaker 1: over the horizon? What could it be? Look like it's
0:42
Speaker 1: gonna be a new country? Do you remember that one? Now?
0:46
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? That idea? That was the
0:50
Speaker 1: the schoolhouse rock for the Mayflower Voyage? Really rocking in
0:55
Speaker 1: a roll and splashing in the splash, and you remember
0:57
Speaker 1: that good coming over the horizon? What could it be?
1:01
Speaker 1: Look like it's going to be a free country or
1:05
Speaker 1: new country? Either way, it was both new and probably
1:08
Speaker 1: knew because it was not free for everybody. That's true.
1:13
Speaker 1: So you're talking about this because we're going to talk
1:15
Speaker 1: about the first murderer? Right yeah? And before we start,
1:19
Speaker 1: I want to ask why has no one ever made
1:21
Speaker 1: a modern film about the Mayflower Voyage. It seems like
1:25
Speaker 1: a no brainer, you know. Yeah, I don't know, especially
1:28
Speaker 1: after gotting around to you yet. Like the awesomeness of
1:31
Speaker 1: Master and Commander. Did you ever see that, the one
1:33
Speaker 1: with um Russell Crowe? Yeah, it was very good, surprisingly good. Yeah,
1:37
Speaker 1: it surprised me too. Actually, I didn't get the colon.
1:40
Speaker 1: It made it sound like it was a franchise, but
1:42
Speaker 1: it was like the first of the franchise. It wasn't like, Oh,
1:45
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess parts of the Caribbean did have
1:48
Speaker 1: a call in the first one, didn't it. I don't know. Huh.
1:51
Speaker 1: But Master, that was Peter we Are Master and Commander,
1:53
Speaker 1: So it makes sense that it was awesome because he's
1:55
Speaker 1: such a great director and related to bobwe right, I think, really,
2:00
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't think so. I've always suspected.
2:02
Speaker 1: Did he do the Treaman show? Uh? That was written
2:08
Speaker 1: by we did Gattica. I don't know who directed that.
2:12
Speaker 1: That might have been Peter Weir, but he did Gallipoly
2:15
Speaker 1: and U like scores of great movies. Well cool, Well,
2:19
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us at this discussion of Peter
2:21
Speaker 1: Weird's films. He should direct the Mayflier movie was what
2:24
Speaker 1: I'm saying. For goodness sakes, Okay, they need to do
2:27
Speaker 1: it like a realistic because you know, when you learned
2:29
Speaker 1: about it in school at least I did. I thought,
2:32
Speaker 1: you know, you learned about it from Schoolhouse Rock, and
2:34
Speaker 1: you get the picture. They sang songs and kind of
2:36
Speaker 1: rock and rolled over the ocean and then ran into
2:39
Speaker 1: Plymouth rock and shared Thanksgiving with the Indians, and they
2:42
Speaker 1: need to make a real movie about how it really was. Well, yeah,
2:45
Speaker 1: because you know, that whole Schoolhouse Rock impression is pretty
2:49
Speaker 1: widely held even among adults, educated adults. And the reason
2:54
Speaker 1: why is because there's a very small amount of firsthand
2:57
Speaker 1: information that left Plymouth call any right um and was
3:03
Speaker 1: allowed to stand. There was a small group of people
3:05
Speaker 1: who were controlling all of the info about that place,
3:10
Speaker 1: and they were trying to paint it in as good
3:11
Speaker 1: as light as possible because they were trying to attract investors.
3:15
Speaker 1: And these firsthand accounts that you know, basically painted the
3:19
Speaker 1: Puritans as you know, these hard scrapple people who were
3:24
Speaker 1: um guided by a divine hand in the wilderness. Has
3:28
Speaker 1: stood all these centuries hard scrapple. So let's talk about
3:34
Speaker 1: let's talk about the Pilgrims the voyage, right, They landed
3:37
Speaker 1: in sixty just as a quick primer um. And they
3:44
Speaker 1: were Pilgrims. They were Puritans separatists, as they were often called.
3:49
Speaker 1: They were people who were so pious that no one
3:52
Speaker 1: in all of Europe was pious enough to contend with them.
3:56
Speaker 1: And they were like, I'm sick of all you sinners.
3:58
Speaker 1: Were going to go found a new um, a new
4:01
Speaker 1: republic in the in the name and for the glory
4:04
Speaker 1: of God, and we're going to be really, really good,
4:07
Speaker 1: and we're going to do it in the new world.
4:10
Speaker 1: And that that's what they did. They sailed over to
4:12
Speaker 1: Massachusetts and landed in Plymouth, as it turns out, nice
4:15
Speaker 1: place to land, I imagine. And uh, welch, I mean,
4:20
Speaker 1: are we going to get to the murder a guy
4:21
Speaker 1: right away or should we just ease into that. Well,
4:24
Speaker 1: let's talk about who was there. It wasn't just Puritans,
4:27
Speaker 1: it wasn't just separatists. There's a whole other group of
4:29
Speaker 1: people who don't get talked about a lot. Uh. And
4:32
Speaker 1: they were called the strangers. Yeah, that sounded really creepy
4:34
Speaker 1: when I read it. For some reason, I think it
4:36
Speaker 1: sounds cool. I think it sounds creepy. Like they look
4:38
Speaker 1: like they should have been dressed in like like the
4:41
Speaker 1: pilgrim black, like with why brim hats that you can't
4:44
Speaker 1: see their eyes. Yeah, what was the deal with them?
4:46
Speaker 1: Were they Catholic? They were anything but the separatists of
4:49
Speaker 1: the Puritans. So they were Catholics, They were sailors, they
4:54
Speaker 1: were um Africans, they were whoever kidnapped Indians. I don't
5:00
Speaker 1: know if all those people were on the main Flower,
5:02
Speaker 1: but there it was. There was a bunch of people,
5:06
Speaker 1: you know, I got them over there. He went with them.
5:09
Speaker 1: And the Puritans were pretty rigid. Obviously they didn't like
5:11
Speaker 1: Catholics at all. They were indeed extremely rigid. But to
5:16
Speaker 1: this degree is we'll see, um. They they they found
5:21
Speaker 1: that like, no nobody's this rigid. And there were a
5:23
Speaker 1: lot of strangers who broke a lot of laws. But um,
5:26
Speaker 1: there are a lot of Puritans who did too, um
5:29
Speaker 1: and they just kind of glossed it over. They kept records,
5:32
Speaker 1: but these things just didn't get promoted. Right. Yeah, Mort's relation. Yes,
5:37
Speaker 1: so you're talking about mort relation. Written in sixteen twenty
5:41
Speaker 1: two by William Bradford, who was clearly the governor, longtime
5:45
Speaker 1: governor of Plymouth. His cousin George Morton wrote he was
5:49
Speaker 1: a separatist and he wrote this book or an account,
5:52
Speaker 1: and that was that sort of looked at as the
5:55
Speaker 1: account of Plymouth. But as it turns out, as you
5:58
Speaker 1: point out, because you wrote this um works relation was
6:00
Speaker 1: written to attract funding, right for Plymouth. So it was
6:04
Speaker 1: basically like a lengthy, in depth brochure to attract investors.
6:10
Speaker 1: And what are you going to say. You're not going
6:11
Speaker 1: to say, we're starving to death over here, we're having
6:15
Speaker 1: a really hard time, we're probably not going to make it.
6:17
Speaker 1: People are committing bestiality, yes, buggery is what they call
6:20
Speaker 1: the huh And we'll get to that and then okay, um,
6:24
Speaker 1: And they're not going to say this. They're going to
6:26
Speaker 1: say things are great, we're really you know, living and
6:30
Speaker 1: by God's will, we're really just making it over here,
6:34
Speaker 1: and we need some more money. Yeah. Yeah, so that
6:38
Speaker 1: means take take it with a grain of salt. They
6:41
Speaker 1: but they didn't just pretend like the strangers weren't there,
6:43
Speaker 1: but they painted some of the strangers in possibly less
6:46
Speaker 1: than flattering light, right, Yeah, I mean, are we at
6:50
Speaker 1: the Billington's Inn, might as well be the Billington's the family,
6:53
Speaker 1: John Billington's, his wife um eleanor his son's little John
6:58
Speaker 1: John Jr. And Francis who was a boy his other son.
7:04
Speaker 1: They were sort of painted as like reading your reading
7:10
Speaker 1: your article. They sort of seem like, on one hand,
7:13
Speaker 1: like the first white trash, you know, that's one way
7:17
Speaker 1: to put it, and then they also sort of seem like, no,
7:20
Speaker 1: you know, they might have been kind of cool and
7:22
Speaker 1: just rabble rousers. Yeah, or yes, I think that that's
7:27
Speaker 1: very accurate. But they definitely weren't any friends of Bradford
7:30
Speaker 1: that he did not like these people. No, he didn't.
7:32
Speaker 1: He called um He wrote in a letter to a
7:35
Speaker 1: Mr Cushing I believe uh that who had some sort
7:40
Speaker 1: of authority I guess in the over the colony in
7:44
Speaker 1: back in England. But he basically says that Billington's still
7:48
Speaker 1: rails against you and that he's a nave, which means
7:51
Speaker 1: a scoundrel, and he'll always be a nave. He'll live
7:54
Speaker 1: and dies so and and as so he'll live and die. Yeah,
7:58
Speaker 1: that was Cushman. By the way, they cute same thing.
8:01
Speaker 1: And uh he also said he quote he said they
8:03
Speaker 1: were one of the profanest families to come to the colony.
8:07
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just John, I mean they didn't. He
8:10
Speaker 1: didn't like any of them. His kids were a bit
8:13
Speaker 1: of a handful too, well, one of them. It doesn't
8:15
Speaker 1: say who in the records, but on the way over,
8:18
Speaker 1: Um decided that he was going to shoot off his
8:21
Speaker 1: father's musket, right gun in a cabin filled with people,
8:27
Speaker 1: which is bad enough, but he did it right next
8:30
Speaker 1: to a open, half filled keg of gunpowder, right, so
8:36
Speaker 1: he almost just blew the whole Mayflower up and history
8:39
Speaker 1: would have changed forever probably. So that was the first
8:42
Speaker 1: thing that happened with the Billington's and the rest of
8:44
Speaker 1: the people on the Mayflower. Yes, no, actually it wasn't.
8:48
Speaker 1: There was part. There was a mutiny that John Billington's,
8:52
Speaker 1: the father was involved in Um and he was he
8:57
Speaker 1: was let off the hook because it was his first offense.
9:00
Speaker 1: But he uh he that that started. Tensions were already high.
9:05
Speaker 1: And then one of his sons, either Francis or John Jr.
9:08
Speaker 1: Shot off the gun in the camp. So you start
9:11
Speaker 1: to get an impression of this family, especially when you
9:14
Speaker 1: look at you know when you think of them bristling,
9:18
Speaker 1: not just the average persons, you know, right, ire, Yeah, yeah,
9:22
Speaker 1: but a puritan's hire, right, because you can screw up
9:28
Speaker 1: like innumerable ways in the eyes of a Puritan, especially
9:31
Speaker 1: if you're not a Puritan, That's right. And then once
9:34
Speaker 1: they got to the New World, Uh, they continue their shenanigans.
9:38
Speaker 1: John Jr. Kind of wandered off one day twenty miles
9:42
Speaker 1: worth and wandered into a Native American village, and then
9:47
Speaker 1: he was taken to another village by those Native Americans.
9:50
Speaker 1: And eventually they sent out a group to go find
9:52
Speaker 1: him and took him a little while they set sail,
9:54
Speaker 1: actually ended up on Cape Cod what is now Cape
9:56
Speaker 1: Cod and uh said, you know you're gonna have to
10:00
Speaker 1: come back, yes, And they found him because of Massa Swat,
10:06
Speaker 1: who was the great statum of the Wappanoag Wapag. Yeah,
10:12
Speaker 1: well panel Wag or get an email for that one
10:15
Speaker 1: um who was involved in the first Thanksgiving with these
10:20
Speaker 1: same people. So he might have had something to do
10:22
Speaker 1: with that, then, Uh, well he did. He was already
10:24
Speaker 1: like he he basically was um trying to use the
10:29
Speaker 1: Englishman against his rivals. I think the Abenaki um to
10:37
Speaker 1: basically run them out rather than consolidate with the other
10:40
Speaker 1: Indians against the English, and basically that turned over the
10:45
Speaker 1: whole continent to Europe. Like that one act is largely
10:48
Speaker 1: considered as the the turning point. So he was already
10:51
Speaker 1: pals with him, um and uh so he helped him
10:55
Speaker 1: find the boy. And if you're from Plymouth, if you
10:57
Speaker 1: live in the Plymouth area, then you might know Billington see,
11:01
Speaker 1: which is a pond and that's name for John Jr. Yeah,
11:04
Speaker 1: who wandered off right. Yeah, I think that he might
11:07
Speaker 1: have found that. I mean, you know, he discovered the pond,
11:09
Speaker 1: but he may have discovered it on his wander right,
11:12
Speaker 1: his sojourn. Yeah, but they found him and he was
11:16
Speaker 1: quote be hung with beads. So apparently they you know,
11:20
Speaker 1: kind of adopted him a little bit like he was
11:22
Speaker 1: the mascot and yeah, and then they gave him back. Yeah,
11:26
Speaker 1: and then the I think that the colonists gave the
11:29
Speaker 1: Indians and a couple of knives and said thanks and
11:33
Speaker 1: went back to Plymouth, thanks for the beads and the guy.
11:35
Speaker 1: But you have to imagine that mounting a ten man
11:38
Speaker 1: sailing expedition into Indian country. Um, because your kid wandered off,
11:44
Speaker 1: it's gonna you're gonna You're gonna rub the back of
11:46
Speaker 1: your neck and be like a lot. Uh yeah, you know,
11:49
Speaker 1: if you're a Billington and she like, thanks for getting
11:52
Speaker 1: my kids back, you know, can I do I owe
11:55
Speaker 1: you anything? Or you know? Not so though, because Billington
12:00
Speaker 1: uh had a bad reputation and that he scoffed at
12:03
Speaker 1: Captain Miles Standish and you don't scoff at Standish Miles
12:06
Speaker 1: Standish proud Miles Standard was trying to get people to
12:09
Speaker 1: uh to you know, serve in the military, and Bill
12:12
Speaker 1: and was like, no, dude, I'm not doing that. He
12:15
Speaker 1: was a part of anti government groups. Government subversion, well
12:18
Speaker 1: there was in sixty four there was called what's called
12:21
Speaker 1: the Old woman Lyford Conspiracy. That was the name of
12:25
Speaker 1: the two main conspirators. He was named as a co conspirator.
12:29
Speaker 1: And reading his history and then this, you know, the
12:31
Speaker 1: the actual history of this conspiracy, which is a lot
12:33
Speaker 1: of secret meetings about how they should overthrow this Puritan
12:38
Speaker 1: regime and start governing this colony the right way. Um,
12:43
Speaker 1: he was probably a part of it, but he denied
12:45
Speaker 1: it and and was let off the hook again. Well,
12:48
Speaker 1: and he he was also apologized for the UM for
12:51
Speaker 1: standing up against Standish, and they said they threatened him
12:55
Speaker 1: with hog tyme, which can actually kill you. I didn't
12:58
Speaker 1: realize that I could see that could what you're all
13:00
Speaker 1: your weights on your chest right, Well, it's they tie
13:03
Speaker 1: your legs together, they tie your arms behind your back,
13:05
Speaker 1: and then they tie your ankles to your neck around
13:09
Speaker 1: your neck. What So, unless you stay completely arched like that,
13:14
Speaker 1: you're gonna start cutting off circulation. Like it's a form
13:17
Speaker 1: of torture. It's not just how we're gonna tie you up. Well,
13:20
Speaker 1: the that whole second step has been kind of lost
13:23
Speaker 1: to history as I understand it. Well, now is it
13:26
Speaker 1: just tying the hands and tie your your hands and
13:30
Speaker 1: your ankles, your wrists and your ankles together behind your back,
13:33
Speaker 1: And yeah, you're arched, but I don't know anything about
13:36
Speaker 1: tying the ankles around that. That's horrible. Apparently the old
13:39
Speaker 1: hog tie is a little more brutal. Yeah, which makes
13:41
Speaker 1: total sense. Which also makes sense why he's described as
13:44
Speaker 1: basically like pleading for mercy not to have that happened
13:47
Speaker 1: to him, and which is why they let him go. Yeah,
13:49
Speaker 1: Miles Stands is like, all right, but get out of
13:51
Speaker 1: my sight Billington, And I mean, like there's really there's
13:56
Speaker 1: there's we can't forget. We can't leave out the fact
14:00
Speaker 1: that these people were original Plymouth colonists, Like they were
14:03
Speaker 1: the first he's on the charter, the first European, the
14:06
Speaker 1: first English European Americans, and the first what would become
14:10
Speaker 1: one of the first states of America. Like, these are
14:13
Speaker 1: important people, no matter what their reputations are. He was
14:16
Speaker 1: the signer of the Mayflower Compact, which is the first
14:20
Speaker 1: um European based governing law. I guess you would call
14:26
Speaker 1: it of laws um. And he was he was. He
14:31
Speaker 1: helped Hugh the colony out of the wilderness. He was
14:34
Speaker 1: one of the colonists, right, yeah. And there's a pdf
14:36
Speaker 1: online I found that traces his family tree and apparently
14:40
Speaker 1: James Garfield, the President, was a descendant of Billington and
14:44
Speaker 1: it I mean, if you're I wish I would have
14:46
Speaker 1: written down some of the last names. I know Witten
14:48
Speaker 1: was one of them, but I mean there are people
14:50
Speaker 1: that have said, like still alive today, Oh yeah, there's
14:54
Speaker 1: an apparently I remember researching this. I couldn't find it
14:56
Speaker 1: when I reresearched for this podcast. But there's like a
14:59
Speaker 1: whole up of people who are into that kind of thing.
15:01
Speaker 1: We're proudly ancestors of Billington's this rabble rous of the
15:06
Speaker 1: first like real troublemaker in America. Well, people are proud
15:09
Speaker 1: period just to be descendants of the Plymouth colonists for sure.
15:13
Speaker 1: So um, but you you, I hopefully everybody has like
15:17
Speaker 1: kind of an idea of how Billington and his family
15:20
Speaker 1: were regarded. Right, Well, we didn't get to his wife
15:23
Speaker 1: and daughter. I know that was after what he could.
15:25
Speaker 1: His wife was Eleanor was locked in the stocks and
15:29
Speaker 1: whipped at one point. She was also had to pay
15:33
Speaker 1: fines of five pounds sterling because she was found guilty
15:36
Speaker 1: of slandering her neighbors. And his granddaughter Dorcas. I love that.
15:43
Speaker 1: There's only one way to pronounce that, right, yeah, d
15:46
Speaker 1: O r c As. I'm gonna bring that one back.
15:50
Speaker 1: If I ever had a daughter, she's gonna be Dorcas Bryant. Uh.
15:54
Speaker 1: Dorcas apparently was sentenced to whipping because she um had
15:58
Speaker 1: sexual intercourse. She was twenty two years old, and he
16:01
Speaker 1: didn't do that. So um, yeah, the whole family was
16:05
Speaker 1: definitely not. They didn't fall in line with with the
16:07
Speaker 1: rest of the crowd. Although that's that's not true because
16:10
Speaker 1: a lot of the rest of the crowd was doing
16:11
Speaker 1: even worse things. As it turns out, you just didn't
16:14
Speaker 1: read it in the brochure, right, So can we talk
16:18
Speaker 1: about some of the stuff that people were doing please? Okay.
16:21
Speaker 1: So remember by there's still only seven and fifty five
16:25
Speaker 1: people in Ploymouth Colony. Okay, so this this stuff is
16:31
Speaker 1: happening like twenty fifty years before that the way fewer people.
16:36
Speaker 1: And yet there were incidents where people like Thomas Granger,
16:41
Speaker 1: who was a servant UM was indicted for buggery which
16:45
Speaker 1: we established before it was beastiality with a mayor, a cow,
16:50
Speaker 1: two goats, diverse sheep, two calves, and a turkey he
16:56
Speaker 1: fell in love with. He he was sentenced to hang
17:00
Speaker 1: by Um are sentenced to die by hanging John Walker
17:04
Speaker 1: the next year turkey he yes, um, he was. He
17:10
Speaker 1: laid with a bitch as it's uh put and of
17:12
Speaker 1: course we mean the the well the pilgrims meant the dog,
17:16
Speaker 1: the female dog. Um. Another guy was was he was
17:23
Speaker 1: held on suspicion of buggery with the beast. Another guy
17:28
Speaker 1: had buggery with the mayor, and it just keeps going
17:30
Speaker 1: on and going on. So basically somebody would get caught
17:33
Speaker 1: sleeping with a dog and would be whipped, put into
17:37
Speaker 1: the stocks, pilloried, um, and it was just recorded but
17:42
Speaker 1: never talked about. Yeah, there was also rape in sodomy
17:44
Speaker 1: against humans. Yeah. The the way they put sodomy was
17:48
Speaker 1: that they were um. These John Alexander and Thomas Roberts
17:52
Speaker 1: back in sixty seven were caught um and they got
17:57
Speaker 1: the hot irons, which wow, is that's rough. So you
18:01
Speaker 1: hear about this stuff and you think Dorcas doing you know,
18:05
Speaker 1: sleeping with a man, I presume is a very normal
18:08
Speaker 1: thing for twenty two year old middle aged woman to do.
18:10
Speaker 1: Right at the time. Yes, she's not, she's not laying
18:15
Speaker 1: down with the turkeys. No, so Eleanor got put in
18:19
Speaker 1: the stocks for slander, right, Yeah, there's no recording of
18:22
Speaker 1: what she said or basically we've reached this point here
18:25
Speaker 1: where we should probably talk about what John Billington did. Okay,
18:29
Speaker 1: because now that we debunk the fact that not everyone
18:32
Speaker 1: was super pure and you can't necessarily read uh Mort's
18:37
Speaker 1: relation and the brochure and say, you know, everything was
18:41
Speaker 1: just hunky dory over there. This maybe actually, maybe this
18:43
Speaker 1: is why the movie hasn't been made because he wants
18:45
Speaker 1: to see a guy sleeping with the turkey. I don't know.
18:48
Speaker 1: I think there's a market that you paid a lot
18:51
Speaker 1: for it. You know, it's a market for that, but
18:53
Speaker 1: it's not the box office grossing record breaking numbers. Peter
18:57
Speaker 1: Weir wouldn't touchdown or not what the didn' football? So, um,
19:01
Speaker 1: we should probably talk about how Billington became America's first murderer.
19:05
Speaker 1: It took it took place what ten years after he
19:08
Speaker 1: got there, So you have to think, like, this guy's
19:11
Speaker 1: an original settler and he's been farming and hewing an
19:14
Speaker 1: existence out for himself and other people. And as a
19:18
Speaker 1: h an original Mayflower compact signer, he got a bunch
19:22
Speaker 1: of land parcel to him, like this is probably ten's
19:25
Speaker 1: land now. So but while he made an enemy, clearly
19:29
Speaker 1: one real enemy. He made quite a few, Bradford being
19:31
Speaker 1: one of them. But he made one enemy named John Newcomen,
19:35
Speaker 1: who was a newcomer as it turns out, to Plymouth. Um,
19:39
Speaker 1: he hadn't been there for ten years and it seems
19:42
Speaker 1: like history is a little sketchy because, like you said,
19:45
Speaker 1: it's not all like recorded at that point. But one
19:50
Speaker 1: thing I read was that it was possibly over hunting rights,
19:54
Speaker 1: and I don't know how true that is. It is true,
19:57
Speaker 1: it is, Yeah, there there's I When I was going
20:00
Speaker 1: back and um reading the the source material for this,
20:05
Speaker 1: I'm like, why did I Why was I so vague
20:08
Speaker 1: when I wrote this article? Because it did that confirm?
20:11
Speaker 1: Did it confirm that? Yeah? Well so in the Bradford's
20:15
Speaker 1: version basically is like this, he wayed at Billingtons Waylade Newcoming,
20:19
Speaker 1: which we should explain what waylate is. Waylade is like
20:22
Speaker 1: basically lying in wait and then murdering, like hiding in
20:25
Speaker 1: the bush. It premeditated. It's huge if you read a
20:31
Speaker 1: stranger's account. There's an account by a stranger and I
20:33
Speaker 1: don't know who. Um it's not in this, not in
20:36
Speaker 1: the source I cited, but um it's It talks about
20:40
Speaker 1: how Newcoming was already known to Billington's because he um
20:45
Speaker 1: he used to steal from Billington's traps, he poached on
20:48
Speaker 1: his land and um Billington had chased the kid off
20:51
Speaker 1: a bunch of times newcomers seventeen at the time. He
20:54
Speaker 1: was a little jerk basically, and he was what the
20:57
Speaker 1: strangers called a saint, which meant you were in good
21:00
Speaker 1: with Bradford because you're a Puritan, and compared to a stranger,
21:03
Speaker 1: you had exponentially more rights and you got away with
21:06
Speaker 1: exponentially more stuff. Okay, So here's Billington, who already has
21:11
Speaker 1: a bad reputation, and there's some little seventeen year old
21:13
Speaker 1: punk kid stealing from his traps who's chased off time
21:17
Speaker 1: and time and time again, and um, he catches him there.
21:21
Speaker 1: So he goes after him with his gun, and the
21:24
Speaker 1: kid goes and hides behind a tree, and Billington shoots
21:27
Speaker 1: at the tree. I don't know if he meant to
21:31
Speaker 1: shoot at the kid. Apparently he's a pretty good marks mint,
21:35
Speaker 1: but he hit the kid in the shoulder, not exactly
21:37
Speaker 1: a lethal shot. Today. Well, the kid died in like
21:41
Speaker 1: three days of an infection. That's how the America's first
21:46
Speaker 1: murder took place. And it was apparently with a blunderbuss.
21:49
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of these guns? Is that the
21:51
Speaker 1: one with the big sort of like pilgrim hunting with yeah,
21:56
Speaker 1: a little bit. I mean, it's not like an elephant gun,
21:57
Speaker 1: but if it does flare out at the end, and
21:59
Speaker 1: it's sort of, um, what would be considered today, it's
22:02
Speaker 1: sort of like a sawed off shotgun. So like it
22:05
Speaker 1: was a musket, but it was short and flared, and
22:08
Speaker 1: so I imagine it it had a wider spray, even
22:13
Speaker 1: though it wasn't well it wouldn't be a spray because
22:15
Speaker 1: they didn't use pellets, but they compared it to a
22:18
Speaker 1: sawed off shotgun. And what I read hand on the
22:20
Speaker 1: pump exactly. So, um, that's how the first murder took place.
22:25
Speaker 1: I get the impression. Billington, who was also um described
22:29
Speaker 1: as um beloved by many in another account by a
22:34
Speaker 1: stranger kind of a satirical take on Plymouth colony. Yeah,
22:38
Speaker 1: Thomas Morton in the New English Canaan said that he
22:42
Speaker 1: was a beloved dude. He was beloved by many. Basically,
22:45
Speaker 1: if you were a stranger, you probably like Billington's He
22:48
Speaker 1: sounded like a kind of a fun guy to be honest.
22:51
Speaker 1: I know he's the first murderer, but he's a rebbel
22:54
Speaker 1: rouser that's into associate with those types. Well, Billington thinks
22:58
Speaker 1: that because of the um, the fact that they need people,
23:03
Speaker 1: they're still each individual is very important. UM. And that
23:07
Speaker 1: this kid had been really it was the kid's fault
23:10
Speaker 1: that he was on his property. Billington and warned him,
23:13
Speaker 1: all warned him all that he would he would be
23:15
Speaker 1: spared his life. Well, no, Governor Bradford himself was the
23:19
Speaker 1: one who ordered him to death, and he didn't like
23:21
Speaker 1: him to begin with. So right, So this is um
23:24
Speaker 1: what you could call unfair to a certain extent perhaps.
23:29
Speaker 1: And not only did Bradford sentence his longtime enemy or
23:32
Speaker 1: somebody he disdained for many years to death, he was
23:36
Speaker 1: also the one who literally wrote the history. In addition
23:40
Speaker 1: to what is it Morts what mort retort? Uh? Not
23:45
Speaker 1: Mort's retort? I was kidding most mort relation, Okay. So
23:48
Speaker 1: in addition to Morts relation, the other probably largest cited
23:53
Speaker 1: um firsthand account of Plymouth plantation is called of Planmouth Plantation.
23:59
Speaker 1: It's Bradford's own journal. So he literally wrote the history
24:03
Speaker 1: for Plymouth. And of course he's going to paint it
24:07
Speaker 1: in his He's gonna paint himself and his fellows in
24:11
Speaker 1: the best light. And that's what we go on and
24:13
Speaker 1: Billington in a poor light because he sent him the hang.
24:16
Speaker 1: So I think if anything, this um was the episode
24:23
Speaker 1: intended to tell you to always take historical accounts of
24:29
Speaker 1: the Green Stall, especially the old ones. There's always two
24:31
Speaker 1: sides to every story, and the three stooges actually get
24:36
Speaker 1: better as you age stuff. You should know you got
24:39
Speaker 1: anything else. Nope. If you want to learn more about
24:41
Speaker 1: America's first murderer, type America's first murderer America. I'm gonna
24:47
Speaker 1: have be trouble saying that. These days you can type
24:50
Speaker 1: that in the hand You can type wherever you want,
24:51
Speaker 1: but you're gonna get the best result if you type
24:53
Speaker 1: it in the handy search bart how stuff works dot
24:55
Speaker 1: com uh, and then of course brings up listener mail. Yes, Josh,
25:01
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this nicotine poisoning from Aaron. A couple
25:05
Speaker 1: of years ago, guys who came home from university to
25:07
Speaker 1: find my key, we roommate, working away in the kitchen.
25:10
Speaker 1: He decided to bake brownies for the first time, and
25:13
Speaker 1: I hurried upstairs to try some, because you want to
25:15
Speaker 1: support his friend. Quickly, I was overwhelmed by a sour taste,
25:20
Speaker 1: which was only mildly canceled out by the cherries which
25:22
Speaker 1: were mixed in with the batter. It was very close
25:25
Speaker 1: to spitting it out when my roommate walked in and said,
25:27
Speaker 1: what do you think. I didn't want to insult them,
25:29
Speaker 1: so I popped the rest of it in my mouth
25:30
Speaker 1: and said I could use a little more sugar. I
25:33
Speaker 1: left the room, and that's when everything got hazy. What
25:36
Speaker 1: I do remember is my roommates bursting into my room.
25:39
Speaker 1: This is crazy. They found me curled up into a
25:41
Speaker 1: ball with my head between my knees, rocking slowly. I
25:44
Speaker 1: was covered in sweat and muttering to myself, letting out
25:48
Speaker 1: loud moans, which is apparently what alerted my roommates when
25:52
Speaker 1: they opened the door. They flooded the room with light,
25:55
Speaker 1: caused intense pain in my head and for some reason
25:59
Speaker 1: in my stumm I not really thinking. I bolted to
26:02
Speaker 1: the bathroom and induced vomiting trying to get all the
26:05
Speaker 1: evil out of me. I was exhausted, laying on the
26:07
Speaker 1: floor trying to figure out what was wrong. Apparently, there
26:11
Speaker 1: were two boxes on the table, did you read this?
26:14
Speaker 1: One one containing brownies and one with shisha tobacco destined
26:21
Speaker 1: for the hookah that they kept in their house, Clark,
26:25
Speaker 1: In my haste, I accidentally consumed about three ounces of
26:28
Speaker 1: cherry tobacco mix that was destined for the hookah. I'm
26:31
Speaker 1: not sure exactly how much nicotine my body absorbed in
26:34
Speaker 1: the hour or so it was in me, but when
26:37
Speaker 1: I stood up, I promptly passed out and, according to
26:40
Speaker 1: my roommates, started convulsion on the floor. They wanted to
26:43
Speaker 1: take me to the hospital, of course, but I refused,
26:46
Speaker 1: being the bull headed midwesterner I sometimes can be, or
26:49
Speaker 1: the college student who doesn't want to pay for that
26:51
Speaker 1: kind of When I did go to the hospital the
26:55
Speaker 1: next morning explain the situation to the e R Tech,
26:58
Speaker 1: they immediately took my vital sin said I was lucky,
27:01
Speaker 1: lucky to have survived without any serious complications, uh that
27:05
Speaker 1: it very well could have been a fatal dose. And
27:08
Speaker 1: all I can say is, if you're ever in the
27:10
Speaker 1: same situation, air on the side of caution, called poison
27:13
Speaker 1: control right away. And He's lucky that his roommates one
27:17
Speaker 1: of them at e M T training because it could
27:19
Speaker 1: have gone the other way. And Aaron might not be
27:21
Speaker 1: a fan of our podcast today Man the eight who
27:25
Speaker 1: gets tobacco pot it in his mouth and said it
27:27
Speaker 1: needs a little more sugar. Wow. So okay. And if
27:31
Speaker 1: you are a member of the Billington Clan by blood,
27:34
Speaker 1: somehow or marriage, whatever we want to hear from you,
27:39
Speaker 1: send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff
27:41
Speaker 1: works dot com. Be sure to check out our new
27:49
Speaker 1: video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work
27:52
Speaker 1: staff as we explore them as promising and perplexing possibilities
27:56
Speaker 1: of tomorrow. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
28:01
Speaker 1: twelve Camry. It's ready, are you