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Fight Club · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
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  Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. When one thinks of Black Friday, they think
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  Speaker 1: of large crowds, stampeding shoppers and underpaid retail workers just
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  Speaker 1: trying to make it through their shifts. But before it
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  Speaker 1: was dominated by rampant commercialism, Black Friday defined several terrible
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  Speaker 1: events in human history, one of which, however, forged the
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  Speaker 1: suffragettes of the United Kingdom into hardened warriors, not only
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  Speaker 1: armed with protests, signs and slogan, but with a new
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  Speaker 1: set of skills to deliver some much needed justice. On
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  Speaker 1: November eighteenth of nineteen ten, women marched through the streets
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  Speaker 1: of London. Their destination was the houses of Parliament. Their mission.
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  Speaker 1: Voting rights for women legislation had been introduced which would
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  Speaker 1: grant the right to vote to one million British women,
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  Speaker 1: but the Prime Minister wouldn't hear it. The Women's Social
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  Speaker 1: and Political Union or the w SPU, refused to accept
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  Speaker 1: his decision, and a protest ensued. As they stormed parliaments
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  Speaker 1: front door, the police stepped in and began violently arresting protesters.
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  Speaker 1: Many were assaulted by officers, and two were killed in
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  Speaker 1: the pursuit of equality. As a result of the police's actions,
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  Speaker 1: the WSPU realized that they would need to protect themselves
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  Speaker 1: going forward. Worried about their physical safety, many began wrapping
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  Speaker 1: cardboard around their ribs prior to attending protests. Others, though,
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  Speaker 1: wanted to make sure they could handle themselves in a fight.
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  Speaker 1: If they were going to be thrown to the ground
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  Speaker 1: and attacked, they would go down swinging. And that was
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  Speaker 1: where Edith Garud came in. She was barely five feet tall,
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  Speaker 1: but she knew just how to address the injustice that
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  Speaker 1: her fellow suffragettes were facing. She and her husband, William,
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  Speaker 1: were jiu jitsu instructors. They were both supposed to attend
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  Speaker 1: a WSPU meeting that followed the Black Friday incident, but
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  Speaker 1: William had been too sick to attend, so Edith went alone.
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  Speaker 1: She demonstrated how even though a woman might be smaller
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  Speaker 1: or lighter, than her mail attacker, she could leverage his
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  Speaker 1: own momentum against him and incapacitate him. She targeted specific
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  Speaker 1: points on the body, contorting an attacker into numerous uncomfortable
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  Speaker 1: positions and bending limbs in ways that were never meant
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  Speaker 1: to bend until he was left prone on the floor.
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  Speaker 1: She also knew how to flip a man over her
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  Speaker 1: shoulder and land him flat on his back. Her goal
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  Speaker 1: had not been to engage the police or start beating
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  Speaker 1: up random men in the streets. Edith was training women
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  Speaker 1: to fight back against men who used their size, strength
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  Speaker 1: and status to assault them. As the press got wind
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  Speaker 1: of her classes, though, they began running satirical articles and
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  Speaker 1: cartoons at her expense. After all, how could a few
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  Speaker 1: dozen of them trained in martial arts ever hope to
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  Speaker 1: stand up to organize police. Well, they did, and they
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  Speaker 1: did it as a team. They called themselves the Bodyguard
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  Speaker 1: and made headlines protecting important members of the women's suffrage movement.
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  Speaker 1: In one instance, they'd been tasked with keeping outspoken activist
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  Speaker 1: Emmeline Pankhurst safe from arrest at a major speaking events.
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  Speaker 1: The Bodyguard were arranged on stage in a half circle
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  Speaker 1: behind the podium, A bouquet of flowers in each woman's hand.
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  Speaker 1: Pankhurst crossed the stage to address the crowd, and she
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  Speaker 1: wasn't more than a few minutes into her speech when
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  Speaker 1: the cops burst in. Fifty officers ran towards the stage,
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  Speaker 1: their batons raised high above their heads, ready to strike,
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  Speaker 1: but the Suffragette warriors had come prepared. Buried in the
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  Speaker 1: leaves of their bouquets were strands of barbed wire, which
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  Speaker 1: the bodyguard members swung at the police in an effort
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  Speaker 1: to keep them from getting too Pankhurst. In the end,
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  Speaker 1: though they failed their mission. Pankhurst was taken into custody,
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  Speaker 1: but sometime later she got her revenge, and her bodyguards
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  Speaker 1: were there once again to help. It happened as Pankhurst
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  Speaker 1: gave another speech, this time from the balcony of a
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  Speaker 1: home in London's Camden Square. As expected, the police showed
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  Speaker 1: up and waited outside for her to finish and come downstairs,
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  Speaker 1: But when she finally stepped outside, she was surrounded by
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  Speaker 1: women from the Bodyguard who tried to keep the cops
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  Speaker 1: at bay. Their efforts proved fruitless as officers rushed Pankhurst
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  Speaker 1: and shoved her to the pavement. They hauled her to
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  Speaker 1: her feet and pulled back the veil, and quickly realized
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  Speaker 1: that they had been played. The person they had captured
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  Speaker 1: was a member of the bodyguard, standing in as a
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  Speaker 1: decoy while the real Pankhurst had slipped away during the struggle.
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  Speaker 1: Thanks to Edith Garud and her students, the Suffragettes showed
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  Speaker 1: men all over England that they were not to be
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  Speaker 1: trifled with. They were strong, they were smart, and they
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  Speaker 1: were clever. The press dubbed them amazons armed with iron
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  Speaker 1: will as, in a fearsome fighting style that they referred
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  Speaker 1: to as suffragetsu. James Jeffrey was a bit of an overachiever.
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  Speaker 1: Born in Scotland in seventeen fifty nine, he grew up
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  Speaker 1: to chair both the botany and anatomy departments at Glasgow University.
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  Speaker 1: As the head of two burgeoning scientific fields, especially where
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  Speaker 1: anatomy was concerned, he was often at the forefront of
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  Speaker 1: new discoveries. Unfortunately, his methods were not always sound. He
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  Speaker 1: was once accused of stealing a woman's body from a
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  Speaker 1: cemetery for research purposes. His home was attacked and his
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  Speaker 1: reputation was tarnished until he was absolved of any charges.
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  Speaker 1: In November of eighteen eighteen, Jeffrey dissected the body of
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  Speaker 1: Matthew Clydesdale, a murderer who had been recently hanged. But
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  Speaker 1: while dissection provided the professor with further understanding of the
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  Speaker 1: human body, it still didn't tell him everything. For example,
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  Speaker 1: he wanted to know the effects of electricity on the
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  Speaker 1: central nervous system, so he hooked Clydesdale's remains up to
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  Speaker 1: an early battery called a voltaic pile, and passed the
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  Speaker 1: current through the corpse. The deceased man's hand and fingers
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  Speaker 1: twitched in the operating theater as students and other professors
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  Speaker 1: looked on in horror. It sounds cruel, but Jeffrey performed
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  Speaker 1: these experiments so that he could better treat the living.
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  Speaker 1: By knowing the internal structure of the body and how
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  Speaker 1: it reacted to specific stimuli, he was able to devise
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  Speaker 1: new methods of treatment for the sick and injured. Pregnant
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  Speaker 1: women benefit of the most from Jeffrey's advanced knowledge. If
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  Speaker 1: a childbirth proof particularly difficult, maybe due to the size
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  Speaker 1: of the fetus or the position, the prevailing method of
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  Speaker 1: freeing the baby was called symphysiotomy. It was a painful
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  Speaker 1: procedure where the pelvic area was expanded by cutting through cartilage, ligaments,
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  Speaker 1: and even bone with a sharp knife. Recovery, though, was
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  Speaker 1: a long, complicated process that often led to other health issues. Later,
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  Speaker 1: doctor Jeffrey knew that a better way was possible, and
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  Speaker 1: so he teamed up with fellow Scottish surgeon John Aitken
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  Speaker 1: to find one. They decided to start with the source
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  Speaker 1: of all their troubles, the knife. It took too long
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  Speaker 1: to use and caused too much pain, So Aitken and
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  Speaker 1: Jeffrey devised a new kind of blade, one that was
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  Speaker 1: wrapped with a series of small, serrated segments. It featured
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  Speaker 1: two handles, one on either side, and the doctor using
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  Speaker 1: it would pull each handle from side to side across
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  Speaker 1: the bone, cutting through it more easily. Aitken went on
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  Speaker 1: to modify the design to include a hand crank. No
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  Speaker 1: longer would someone have to drag the blade back and forth.
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  Speaker 1: As they turned the crank, the chain would move on
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  Speaker 1: its own, allowing for greater control during cutting. As time
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  Speaker 1: passed and technology advanced, the device changed as well. Bernard Hein,
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  Speaker 1: German orthopedist, came up with his own version in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: thirty He called it the osteotome, translated from and to
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  Speaker 1: literally mean bone cutter, and its uses grew from simply
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  Speaker 1: aiding in childbirths to other procedures such as amputations. It
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  Speaker 1: wasn't until nineteen o six when the osteotome was modified
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  Speaker 1: once again, but this time it wouldn't be used to
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  Speaker 1: slice through bone. Samuel J. Ben's, a man from San Francisco,
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  Speaker 1: wanted to cut down a few giant redwoods in the
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  Speaker 1: forest and needed something faster and easier to use than
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  Speaker 1: his ax, so he filed a patent for a larger,
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  Speaker 1: more powerful iteration of the osteotome, one that could fell
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  Speaker 1: a tree in minutes instead of ours. Thirteen years later,
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  Speaker 1: James Shand of Canada would be granted his own patent
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  Speaker 1: for such a machine, the rights of which he would
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  Speaker 1: lose in nineteen thirty. After that, German tool company Festo
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  Speaker 1: took the idea and turned it into a full fledged business.
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  Speaker 1: That original design that had started in Scotland so many
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  Speaker 1: years before was now much larger. It ran on electricity
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  Speaker 1: and could cut through almost anything, mainly would Symphysiotomies were
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  Speaker 1: eventually a and and in favor of safer, more medically
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  Speaker 1: sound techniques like the c section. However, the device invented
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  Speaker 1: by two Scottish surgeons in the late eighteenth century would
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  Speaker 1: go on to change the face of several different industries,
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  Speaker 1: including construction, logging, and forestry. And let's not forget the
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  Speaker 1: sound of its worrying teeth, which have provided countless nightmares
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  Speaker 1: for fans of horror movies over the past few decades,
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  Speaker 1: all thanks to the device we now call the chainsaw.
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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 Manky 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: World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.