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The Right Time · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: How we're remembered after we die is only partially up
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  Speaker 1: to us. Our lasting impact will be remembered by those
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  Speaker 1: who survive us, and so it's important to make sure
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  Speaker 1: that the impression we leave behind is a good one,
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  Speaker 1: a moral one, and perhaps a sober one. On the
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  Speaker 1: outskirts of London is an area known as the London
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  Speaker 1: Borough of Waltham Forest. It's an amalgamation of several other
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  Speaker 1: boroughs which were merged together in the mid nineteen sixties,
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  Speaker 1: and within this location is the Chingford Mount Cemetery. Opened
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  Speaker 1: in May of eighteen eighty four by the Abney Park
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  Speaker 1: Cemetery Company, Chingford Mount was a secondary location for the
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  Speaker 1: city's more colorful characters. It made sense given its sister
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  Speaker 1: location had been opened in eighteen forty in what became
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  Speaker 1: known as a notable cemetery for one noisy and smelly reason.
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  Speaker 1: Abney Park was opened by Sir Robert Fowler, the Lord
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  Speaker 1: Mayor of London, who was quite large in stature. Frank Harris,
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  Speaker 1: a writer who knew and detested Fowler, wrote about a
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  Speaker 1: dinner party the two men attended, in which Fowler seemingly
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  Speaker 1: ate his weight in beef, game, birds, and fish. Then,
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  Speaker 1: part way through the meal, without warning, Harris heard something,
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  Speaker 1: he wrote, and I quote, Suddenly there came a loud,
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  Speaker 1: unmistakable noise, and then an overpowering odor. Apparently something Fowler
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  Speaker 1: had eaten, or maybe most of what he had eaten
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  Speaker 1: hadn't agreed with him. The hostess lost her appetite after
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  Speaker 1: that and fled for fresher air and so. Forty years later,
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  Speaker 1: Chingford Mount Cemetery was opened by another Lord Mayor in
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  Speaker 1: a ceremony that was far less well foul. Though it
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  Speaker 1: may not have had a flatulant politician cutting the cheese
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  Speaker 1: or the ribbon, the people occupying its forty one and
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  Speaker 1: a half acres certainly made up for it. After it opened,
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  Speaker 1: Chingford Mount became a veritable who's who of England's most
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  Speaker 1: notable and notorious, the most well known residents of the
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  Speaker 1: cemetery are the Cray family, including twins Ronnie and Reggie.
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  Speaker 1: These brothers, born in October of nineteen thirty three, became
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  Speaker 1: prominent gangsters and murderers during the nineteen fifties and sixties.
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  Speaker 1: They owned a night club where they mingled with celebrities
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  Speaker 1: such as Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. They also killed
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  Speaker 1: a lot of people, sometimes because someone looked at them
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  Speaker 1: wrong or made a snide comment behind their backs. The
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  Speaker 1: pair were arrested in nineteen sixty eight. Ronnie died in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five from a heart attack while a patient
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  Speaker 1: at a hospital in Berkshire. He was sixty one. Reggie,
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  Speaker 1: on the other hand, lived to be sixty six and
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  Speaker 1: died in October of two thousand from bladder cancer. He
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  Speaker 1: was released from prison just weeks before his death. Much
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  Speaker 1: of the family was buried at Chingford Mount over the years,
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  Speaker 1: including the twins' mother. But the Cray brothers, while homicidal
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  Speaker 1: and infamous for their lengthy crime spree, are not in
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  Speaker 1: fact the most renowned of the cemetery's permanent residence. When
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  Speaker 1: the white Field Tabernacle of Tottenham Court was rebuilt in
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  Speaker 1: eighteen ninety eight, many of the coffins and bodies in
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  Speaker 1: its cemetery had to be moved elsewhere, and one of
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  Speaker 1: the new locations chosen was Chingford mount Of the coffins
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  Speaker 1: that were dug up, one happened to be made of iron,
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  Speaker 1: and inside it was a woman whose body had been
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  Speaker 1: preserved through mummification. Her skin looked like marble and was
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  Speaker 1: just as solid, though the metal box lacked a plaque
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  Speaker 1: describing who the occupant was, and so her identity remained
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  Speaker 1: a mystery. One person whose identity was quite well known
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  Speaker 1: in the area, though, was Jane Cakebread. She was buried
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  Speaker 1: in Chingford Mountain eighteen ninety eight. Only one person attended
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  Speaker 1: her funeral, the North London Police Court missionary, a man
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  Speaker 1: named Thomas Holmes. He had tried for a long time
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  Speaker 1: to help missus Cakebread, who sadly passed away at only
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  Speaker 1: sixty four years of age. She had been homeless, mentally ill,
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  Speaker 1: and had trouble seen. Holmes placed a wreath of flowers
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  Speaker 1: atop her coffin, more than others believe that she deserved,
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  Speaker 1: because the newspapers described her as the drunkest person in
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  Speaker 1: the world. She'd been convicted two hundred and eighty one
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  Speaker 1: times for drunk and disorderly conduct and spent the equivalent
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  Speaker 1: of twelve years in jail. As a result, she died
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  Speaker 1: in an asylum from a combination of edema, cirrhosis of
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  Speaker 1: the liver, and heart failure. Looking back, it is fitting
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  Speaker 1: that Jane Cakebread was interred in our curious little Chingford
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  Speaker 1: Mount Cemetery, a place that wasn't meant for everybody, even
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  Speaker 1: though everybody was dying to get in. It seems that
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  Speaker 1: for as long as humans have existed, they've tried to
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  Speaker 1: keep track time. Ancient Egyptians used shadow clocks or sun
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  Speaker 1: dials and obelisks to monitor the sun's movements throughout the day.
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  Speaker 1: The ancient Greeks developed a sort of alarm clock called
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  Speaker 1: the klepsidra, which kept time using water. The water would
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  Speaker 1: rise at certain parts of the day and cause a
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  Speaker 1: mechanical bird to blow a loud whistle. And the Chinese
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  Speaker 1: use candles that burned at a specific rate to track
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  Speaker 1: the passage of time. At night. In Prague, though they
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  Speaker 1: use something else. It's called the Orloi, a medieval astronomical
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  Speaker 1: clock built into the old town Hall. It's comprised of
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  Speaker 1: three distinct segments, the mechanical clock that tells the time,
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  Speaker 1: the calendar dial that shows the current date, and the
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  Speaker 1: astronomical dial that highlights the position of the sun and
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  Speaker 1: the moon along with the signs of the zodiac. There
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  Speaker 1: are also sections on the main clock plate that display
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  Speaker 1: specific time times of the day, such as the sunrise
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  Speaker 1: and the sunset, and in the middle of it all
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  Speaker 1: an image of a globe. Now Surrounding the clock are
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  Speaker 1: wooden figures representing death, Vanity, the astronomer, the chronicler, and
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  Speaker 1: the philosopher. Some of these figurines move every hour, while
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  Speaker 1: others remain stationary. Meanwhile, inside the clock are another set
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  Speaker 1: of wooden figures, twelve in total, which are supposed to
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  Speaker 1: be the twelve Apostles who rotate past two windows at
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  Speaker 1: the top of the structure. They look down on the
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  Speaker 1: townspeople that come to watch their hourly performance. The clock
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  Speaker 1: is a marvel of technology, but it wasn't built all
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  Speaker 1: at once. Its origins can be traced back to fourteen ten,
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  Speaker 1: when the astronomical dial and the mechanical clock portion inside
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  Speaker 1: were first constructed. They were the work of clockmaker Mikaelus
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  Speaker 1: of Kadania and math professor Jan Shindel, although for a
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  Speaker 1: long time it was believed that clockmaster Jan of Ruche
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  Speaker 1: had been the original creator, and that misattribution led to
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  Speaker 1: several dark legends and a curse that have round of
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  Speaker 1: the clock's history for the past six hundred years. According
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  Speaker 1: to one story, the work done by Jan of Rouge
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  Speaker 1: had been admired by others outside of Prague, but he
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't let anyone see his plans. A rumor began to
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  Speaker 1: spread that he'd been hired to build another more advanced
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  Speaker 1: clock for one of those other nations, while the Prague
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  Speaker 1: counselors couldn't have that, so they blinded him, preventing him
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  Speaker 1: from finishing their clock and from ever building another one
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  Speaker 1: for anyone else. And Yan was enraged by their actions,
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  Speaker 1: so he damaged the astronomical clock as revenge. Since he
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  Speaker 1: was the one who had built it, he was the
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  Speaker 1: only one who could fix it. In another version of
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  Speaker 1: the story, they had the counselor's blind Michelus of Kadana instead,
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  Speaker 1: but he didn't just break the clock. In retaliation, he
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  Speaker 1: threw his body into the gears, destroying both himself and
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  Speaker 1: the mechanism. At the same time, his suicide led to
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  Speaker 1: the belief in a curse that anyone who tried to
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  Speaker 1: fix the clock would lose their mind just as he had.
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  Speaker 1: Now Could either story be true, possibly, although it's more
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  Speaker 1: like that the clock simply broke down over time. What
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  Speaker 1: we do know is that the calendar dial was added,
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  Speaker 1: presumably by Janavrush, around fourteen ninety. The clock also underwent
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  Speaker 1: a series of repairs during the mid fifteen hundreds, as
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  Speaker 1: it would often stop turning for one reason or another.
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  Speaker 1: The exterior wooden statues, such as those of death and Vanity,
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  Speaker 1: were added during the mid seventeenth century, while the apostles
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  Speaker 1: were incorporated sometime during the late seventeen hundreds. In the
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  Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, the calendar doll was updated by a check painter,
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  Speaker 1: Joseph Mannus, with twelve or eight discs made to represent
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  Speaker 1: the months. That face was taken down and replaced with
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  Speaker 1: a copy in eighteen eighty, while the original was put
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  Speaker 1: on display in the Prague City Museum. In other words,
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  Speaker 1: for hundreds of years the clock was either being fixed
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  Speaker 1: or upgraded. It also underwent serious renovations after the Nazis
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  Speaker 1: attacked Prague, during World War II. I've been to Prague myself,
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  Speaker 1: but only once, and the week that I was there,
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  Speaker 1: the clock was covered up for yet more repairs. That
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  Speaker 1: said I have, I've been told that to see the
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  Speaker 1: astronomical clock is to time travel in a way. It's
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  Speaker 1: a glimpse back through hundreds of years of innovation and engineering.
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  Speaker 1: And if you can pay it a visit on the hour,
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  Speaker 1: you'll be treated to a delightful twenty seven second show
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  Speaker 1: put on by the clockswooden characters. You know, if you're
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  Speaker 1: in Prague and you have a little time on your hands,
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  Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
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  Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
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  Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
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  Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
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  Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
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  Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
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  Speaker 1: Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.