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Short Stuff: The Body in the Cylinder · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's lurking there on mute, just hanging around
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: being a weirdo, looking all weird. And this is short stuff.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: As I said, already, we should tell everyone. The other day,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: it was kind of funny. We were recording and about
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: five minutes in Jerry somehow a muted herself and she
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: was in some sort of a conference call. We couldn't
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: get ahold of her and it was just like, shut up. Yeah,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, she wasn't recording, but it was very distracting
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: to us. And that's the important thing, you know. Yeah,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I have a thing in my brain where they're and
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: this happens a lot when you have a kid, Like
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: You'll be listening to music and then she'll come in
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: with some dumb toy that's playing different music and it
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: it just it breaks my brain and makes me want
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: to break things. It's not good. I don't know what
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: it is. It's a big trigger. Yeah. Well, I like
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: the anecdote. It was very charmed. Right now, we're not
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: going to be able to get to the end of
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: this episode. Alright, let's do it. We've wasted Uh, I
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: don't know a minute. So all right, well let's start
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: by talking about the Blitz, because that's kind of where
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: the story technically begins. And the Blitz is like this,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: the German bombing of England, and Germany really really bombed
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: England in general. But most people think of London being
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: bombed the most as the Blitz. That's not entirely true. Well,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: London was for sure bombed a lot. We don't want to,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: you know, take anything away from what they suffered. But Liverpool,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I think was number two in England is getting walloped
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: by the Germans. And there's a there's a place in
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Liverpool where after the bombing they I think it's near
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: uh what was then called Great Homer Street. And after
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: the bombing they kind of left it that way for
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: a little while because I think everyone was just recuperating
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: from the war. And then in nine some American soul
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: just finally started clearing out this area and found a
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: little something interesting. Yeah, well at first they didn't think
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: it was interesting. It was part of the rubble that
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: was cleared out by those American soldiers, but it was
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: a long tube of cylinder um. Let me say this
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: found something that would prove to be interesting exactly, but
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: we are in agreement that at the time they didn't
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: think it was interesting at all. Yeah, it just looked
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: like a tube, you know. I think it was a
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: little under seven ft long um less than two feet
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: in diameter, and it was just made of steel. It
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: just looked like some big, dumb thing. But apparently it
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: was heavy enough and big enough that rather than being
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: removed with all the other rubble, it just kind of
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: got left in the area and became kind of a
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: fixture in this little little part of the neighborhood, so
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: much so that people would like sit on it as
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: a bench sometimes and children would play on it and
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: roll it along and all that stuff. And that's the
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: way it stayed for at least a good two years
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: between ninety three when they cleared out the rubble in
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: when something kind of big happened. Yeah, I think one
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: end was sort of factory sealed, and one end was
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: kind of uh stamped shut by the bulldozers and stuff
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: that we're clearing stuff out. And over time over those
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: couple of years, that end that was sort of stamp
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: shut kind of worked its way loose a little bit,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: just enough for a little kid that was climbing on
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: it to see a bony skeletal foot. Yeah, a little
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: boy named Tommy Lawless who appropriately found the skeletal foot
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: in the cylinder on a Friday. So the little boy,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: um who went on to become Ringo star, went and
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: fetched a cop, the local cop, Robert Baile or Bailey
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: would be Bailey, I guess, but I've never seen it
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: spelled that way. Be a I L L I E. Yeah, sure,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: that's that's Bailey, right. And he said, well, this is
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: way above my pay grade, rather famously, and went and
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: got the detectives and they all kind of came together
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: and said, what is going on here? And this mystery
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: was launched. That's right. Uh. I think it's too early
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: for a break, but that is a good cliffhanger. I
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: thought so too. I can do whatever we want. We're
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: God's here. That's right. Let's let's take an early break
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: since you set it up so well, and we'll come
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: back right after this. Alright, great cliffhanger. They find this thing,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: they find the skeletal foot. They need to get inside
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: of it, so they get a welder to open it up,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: and they get some corners and some forensics people in there,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: and what they end up finding it was an entire
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: skeleton of a man about six ft tall, dude, Victorian dress,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: and they had it was it was a little bit
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: of hair still left even on the skull. And here's
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: one key that kind of flummixes me that I'll kind
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: of harp on a bit later, but yeah, me too.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: There was a brick wrapped in burlap as a little pillow. Yeah,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: which to me kind of confuses a lot of the
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of the ideas they had of what might
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: have happened to this guy. It really does. And it's
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: weird that the brick was there and wrapped in burlap.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it was the guy who writes
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Passing Strangest, which huge shout out um this this is
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: actually kind of a somewhat well known mystery. The body
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: and the cylinder is what it's called. But Um Passing
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Strangeness did far, in a way, the best job of
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: kind of getting this point across. And that guy Um
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: describes it as as a pillow. So I don't know
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: if that's if it was just Tamm or if that's
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: generally what it's love, but it is very weird that
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: it was there and in that position. Do we have
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: his name? From what I can tell, the guy who
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: wrote that, and probably the guy who has the the
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: blog Passing Strangeres, which seems to be defunct, which is
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: a shame because it's pretty interesting. UM is named Paul Dry.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: At the very least, that's the name of the person
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: who's accepting um compliments on the comments under the blog.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: But you want to hear something truly bizarre, Chuck. Sure.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: There is a little tag called trackbacks. One of them
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: is Indonesia Blowing Up Boats and C g I Pompeii.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Another's fishing Shop. The third one is s y s
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: K Internet Roundup. Really isn't that cool? Does that mean
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: we covered this before? No? I think this guy UM
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: is just a fan. I don't think the trackbacks mean anything.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: I think he's saying, like, go check this out. Maybe,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: I hope, let's find out. Well that's small world. So
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: all right, they've got this body in there, and there's
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of other stuff in there, and we'll kind
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: of just list out what else was in this cylinder
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: with the skeleton. UM, they discovered a London north Western
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Railway notice that had a tag about arrival of some
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: goods that was dated June five. I think there was
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: a postcard from Birmingham dated July three, eight five, a
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: couple of diaries which they couldn't read. It was illegible.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I would guess just sort of damage to time would
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: be my guess. Uh. And then they found some papers
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: and this proved to be I guess the biggest key.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: They found some papers under the body, um, one of
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: which was a receipt and account sheets for a company T. C.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Williams and Company, and then some other kind of stuff
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: that didn't prove to be useful, right right. One of
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: the things that got me though, is that it was
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: found in a bunch of grave wax, like a pool
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: or puddle of grave wax from the body decomposing onto
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: the papers. That's called yeah, grave wax. I think we
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: ran into it for Center Urban Explorers episode because like,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: people find it in catacombs, but it's um the what's
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: astounding is that these coroners from the mid century were
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: able to kind of um uh get the papers back
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: in tax so that they could read them again. That's
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: astounding to me. Pretty cool. They also did find that
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: his skull was damaged, but I think they thought that
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: was kind of due to the bulldozing and trying to
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: get the body out of there, that's right, or the cylinder. Yeah,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: So there didn't seem to be any any um evidence
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: of violence. There was just a dead body. So they
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: have no idea what happened to this guy. And at
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: first I guess the coroner thought, um, this is like
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: maybe a ten year old cadaver that we're looking at.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Everybody else said, um, what about every other piece of
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: evidence that that you've discovered along with this guy? And
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: he's like, well, technically somebody could have dressed up like
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: a Victorian person in and gotten a bunch of old
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: papers and keys and stuff in a ring, and um,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: you know, died within the last ten years. And I
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: think everyone kind of said, you know, that's bosch. The
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: coroner wasn't ready to give that up yet. They actually
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: investigated a theory that it could have been, um, a
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: man named TC Williams son whose name was also TC Williams,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: and maybe it was him and he just happened to
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: have some old papers with him. And they said, I
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: think we already said bosh to that, Yeah, because I
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: don't think we mentioned, Uh, there was a paint manufacturing
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: plant in that area that was owned by Thomas Kreegan Williams.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: That fit the time period. So they're like, it can't
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: be that guy, Like you said, maybe it's his son,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: but did They ended up finding him and that went
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: in that right They found the sun his body. Yeah,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: the son had been buried back in nine nine and
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: leads so he was accounted for. His strange Chuck, is
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: that the older man, his father, had not been accounted for.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: The man who owned this manufacturing plant in the eighteen
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: seventies and eighteen eighties in this area of Liverpool, Um
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: had suddenly just vanished right around right. Uh. They did
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: end up kind of figuring out that the tube and
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: the cylinder itself was part of a ventilation shaft, which
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: to me sort of only confused things a little bit.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Um that it was put forth and I don't know
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: if this was Paul who kind of put this forth,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: or or or general evidence that perhaps this man was
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: despondent and suicidal over the loss of the factory and
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: crawled into the shaft for final privacy. That seems a
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: little a bit of a stretch to me. Um. Yeah,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: it also seems like a stretch that a ventilation shaft
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: should be closed off on one side. What kind of
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: ventilation shaft is that? Yeah, I guess, But don't they
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: all end at some point they're supposed to end into
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: like the open air? You know, Like I think that's
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: just really weird, like a a a one ended a
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: ventilation shaft. It just I'm sure there's some kind out there,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: but it just escapes me. And then the pillow also
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: seems a little weird, that brick burlap pillow. Yeah, that's
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: the weirdest part to me is that that that is
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: clearly some sort of a a purposeful thing that someone
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: has done, um right, I mean like like for comfort. Yeah,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: but also it's like do you hate yourself to um?
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Like a brick wrapped in burlap is not a comfy pillow.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Like you could use almost anything else on the planet
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: and wrap it and burlap and it will be more
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: comfortable than brick. Uh. Yeah, And they had pillows back then,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: you know, right exactly. Um. There was another theory put
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: forth that it wasn't Williams, it was someone else that
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: was maybe murdered, uh in retaliation for that factory closing
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: and maybe they stuffed them in there and Williams maybe
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: just like disappeared after that, changed his name and skipped down.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Who knows. Yeah, so I think they finally closed the
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: case in nineteen forty seven, forty five, actually right up
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: right off the bat, they closed the cases that we're
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: never going to solve this um or we've totally solved it.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: We just can't say with a percent, But they basically said,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: we don't know who it is, we don't know how
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: he died, but you can probably surmise yourself. And the
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: prevailing theory is that it was TC Williams, upon the
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: ruination of his um paint business, uh possibly took his
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: own life. The fact that he wrapped a pillow or
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: a brick and burlap and took it into ventilation shift
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: with him with all this other stuff would suggest he
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: didn't accidentally go in there and and get stuck. He
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: probably died by suicide or it was somebody else made
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: to seem like TC Williams. But the astounding fact is
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: that this happened in five. He was in that ventilation
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: chef all the way up and through the bombing of
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Liverpool during World War Two and used to be rolled
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: around the playground by children until they finally figured out
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: he was in there. Yeah, I'm sure there was more
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: than one adult walking around that remembers playing on that trip.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: I know, I know. Um. And then a very special
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: shout out to Josh and Chuck from the past because
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: it turns out, Chuck, we did talk about this in
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: an Internet roundup which explains the track back, So this
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: is probably the last time we'll ever talk about the body,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: and I think memory of that, I think this is
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: the best version. I don't either, and plus no one
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: saw an Internet round up anyway, so I think we're
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: all good. Enjoyed that show. But big thanks and hats
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: off to Passing Strangeness for making such a great blog post.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: And if you haven't been on that blog yet, go
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: it's very good. And since I said that, that means
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: short stuff is a happening. Stuff you should know is
• 13:54
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