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Precious Cargo · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Henry Brown knew nothing
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  Speaker 1: but slavery for most of his life. Despite his upbringing
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  Speaker 1: on the Hermitage plantation in Virginia, Henry had a surprisingly
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  Speaker 1: positive outlook on life. He appreciated nature and enjoyed showing
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  Speaker 1: the children on the plantation the flowers that grew there.
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  Speaker 1: He was a religious man, with a whole lot of
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  Speaker 1: faith in a world that had done him so much wrong.
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  Speaker 1: Henry's faith brought him to Nancy, another slave, and the
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  Speaker 1: two of them got married and had three children of
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  Speaker 1: their own. He'd been making regular payments to his wife's
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  Speaker 1: master as a way of keeping him from selling her
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  Speaker 1: and the children off, but the master had other ideas.
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  Speaker 1: There was more money in selling Nancy and the kids
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  Speaker 1: to the highest bidder than there was in taking Henry's
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  Speaker 1: meager payments, so the master separated the family, leaving Henry
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  Speaker 1: despondent and alone. You might think something like that would
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  Speaker 1: break Henry's faith in people, but it didn't. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: he was about to take the biggest leap of faith
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  Speaker 1: in his life with the help of two men who
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  Speaker 1: had a plan. After the loss of his family, Henry
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  Speaker 1: knew he had to get out. He refused to go
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  Speaker 1: through something as heartbreaking is that again if he could
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  Speaker 1: help it. So, he contacted a friend, a freed black
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  Speaker 1: man named James Smith, who helped him orchestrate his escape.
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  Speaker 1: James and a white shoemaker named Sam Smith came up
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  Speaker 1: with an ingenious way to get Henry out of Virginia
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  Speaker 1: and into the North where he could be free. Except
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  Speaker 1: Henry didn't use the underground railroad or abolitionist safe houses
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  Speaker 1: to his gape. He chose a very different route, actually
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  Speaker 1: several different routes, including a trip by wagon, then by railroad,
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  Speaker 1: transferred to a steamboat, another wagon, a second journey by train,
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  Speaker 1: a ferry, and another railroad, until he finally reached Philadelphia
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  Speaker 1: after twenty seven grueling hours. Henry was free, and he
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  Speaker 1: used that freedom to advocate on behalf of other slaves.
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  Speaker 1: He spoke out as an abolitionist against the South and
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  Speaker 1: its barbaric practices. To avoid the Fugitive Slave Law of
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  Speaker 1: eighteen fifty he moved to England and became a magician
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  Speaker 1: to entertain crowds and earn a living. He eventually remarried
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  Speaker 1: and began a new family, taking them back to the
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  Speaker 1: US with him after the end of the Civil War.
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  Speaker 1: Now you might be asking yourself, what is it about
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  Speaker 1: Henry's story that still resonates today. Many slaves escaped their fates,
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  Speaker 1: but we never got to hear their stories. Well, Henry's
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  Speaker 1: tail is a special Like other slaves, he was so
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  Speaker 1: desperate to leave a life of pain and suffering that
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  Speaker 1: he embarked on a journey where at any moment he
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  Speaker 1: could either die or be discovered. But of course his
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  Speaker 1: efforts were a success, and literature about how he earned
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  Speaker 1: his freedom found its way back Selth, boosting the morale
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  Speaker 1: among other slaves. He became a sort of celebrity. For
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  Speaker 1: better or for worse. You see, Henry Brown was the
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  Speaker 1: first slave to mail himself to freedom. He spent a
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  Speaker 1: little over one day in a three ft by two
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  Speaker 1: ft crate that was hauled from his home in Virginia
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  Speaker 1: to the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee in Pennsylvania. He survived with
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  Speaker 1: the help of a single air hole cut in the
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  Speaker 1: side of the box and a small portion of biscuits
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  Speaker 1: and water by his side. Any person might be dehydrated, exhausted,
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  Speaker 1: or even unconscious after such a long, difficult journey. He
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  Speaker 1: even spent part of that journey upside down. But Henry
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  Speaker 1: Box Brown never lost his positive attitude. Upon opening the
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  Speaker 1: crate in Philadelphia, one of the men remembered hearing Henry's
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  Speaker 1: very first words as a freeman. True to his positive attitude,
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  Speaker 1: they were anything but frustrated, tired, angry, or even afraid.
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  Speaker 1: He simply smiled from inside the dark wooden crate, waved
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  Speaker 1: his hand and cheerfully said, how do you do, gentlemen?
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  Speaker 1: Henry Brown, it seems knew how to deliver a powerful message.
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  Speaker 1: Long before the age of social media, people kept to themselves.
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  Speaker 1: More lives were lived in private, and no one had
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  Speaker 1: to know every little detail about what we had for
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  Speaker 1: lunch or what we bought at the store. Privacy was
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  Speaker 1: not a four letter word. Nobody embodied that philosophy more
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  Speaker 1: than Homer and Langley. They were brothers who lived in
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  Speaker 1: New York City, Harlem in fact, and a brown stone
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  Speaker 1: with their mother and father. Their childhood was pretty normal.
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  Speaker 1: They went to public school, attended Columbia University and went
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  Speaker 1: on to do great things. Langley and engineer and concert
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  Speaker 1: pianist performed at Carnegie Hall, while Homer practiced maritime law.
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  Speaker 1: The brothers were close best friends, even having only each
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  Speaker 1: other and no spouses to speak of. They continued to
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  Speaker 1: live at home with their parents well into adulthood, sadly
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  Speaker 1: nothing less forever. Their mother and father divorced in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: o nine, and the boys, wanting to remain in their
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  Speaker 1: home with their mother, stayed in Harlem while their father
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  Speaker 1: moved downtown. For twenty years, the boys lived in that
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  Speaker 1: brown stone until two major life events changed them forever,
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  Speaker 1: the stock market crash of nine and death of their mother.
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  Speaker 1: As the Great Depression ravaged the city, their neighborhood began
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  Speaker 1: to change as well. Their mother had left them everything,
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  Speaker 1: every known possession, including the brownstone. Their neighbors had not
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  Speaker 1: been so lucky, and as the people they knew moved away,
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  Speaker 1: groups of African Americans looking for a better life moved in.
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  Speaker 1: Harlem was beginning its shift into the jazz capital of
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  Speaker 1: the world, a place that would cultivate greats like John
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  Speaker 1: Coltrane and Charlie Parker, but Homer and Langley saw things differently.
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  Speaker 1: With their mother gone and their neighborhood changing into something
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  Speaker 1: they no longer recognized, they retreated from it. They boarded
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  Speaker 1: up their windows, locked their doors, disconnected their telephone, and
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  Speaker 1: slipped away from public life. It wasn't that they feared
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  Speaker 1: certain kinds of people. Homer and Langley were terrified of
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  Speaker 1: change in all its forms. After divorce, depression, and death,
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  Speaker 1: I think they had simply taken all they could manage
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  Speaker 1: and just sort of closed themselves off from the world,
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  Speaker 1: both mentally and physically. Rumors began to circulate about the
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  Speaker 1: brothers unorthodox lifestyle, which brought unwanted attention to their doorsteps.
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  Speaker 1: Some people thought the men were hoarding vast amounts of
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  Speaker 1: money and treasure in their house. After a few attempt
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  Speaker 1: at burglaries, Langley had to put his engineering knowledge to
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  Speaker 1: use by building a series of traps to discourage thieves
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  Speaker 1: from entering uninvited. The thing was the Collier brothers were
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  Speaker 1: hoarding something in their Harlem brownstone everything boxes, old bicycles, guns,
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  Speaker 1: camera equipment, part of a horse drawn carriage, over twenty books,
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  Speaker 1: human organs in jars, and afford model t which Langley
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  Speaker 1: had rigged to provide electricity to the house. The once
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  Speaker 1: pristine brownstone had become a maze of boxes and debris,
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  Speaker 1: and the men took to crawling through tunnels to get
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  Speaker 1: from room to room him As they grew older, however,
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  Speaker 1: disease took its toll, and Homer was hit the hardest.
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  Speaker 1: He went blind and eventually succumbed to inflammatory rheumatism, which
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  Speaker 1: left him paralyzed. Langley took everything upon himself, becoming his
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  Speaker 1: brother's sole caregiver. He brought him food and water, bathed him,
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  Speaker 1: and kept the public away. But all that privacy came
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  Speaker 1: at a cost. Years later, a man who identified himself
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  Speaker 1: as Charles Smith called the local police, claiming there was
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  Speaker 1: a dead body inside the Collier home. When the police arrived,
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  Speaker 1: they found it impossible to get in the front door.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't just that the windows were barred or that
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  Speaker 1: the doors were locked. They couldn't get past the stack
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  Speaker 1: of boxes and old newspapers, or the furniture that had
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  Speaker 1: been piled up in the brownstones entryway. It took seven
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  Speaker 1: men to haul enough junk out in order to give
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  Speaker 1: police the access they needed. Once inside, they were able
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  Speaker 1: to look around, and what they found astounded them. Over
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  Speaker 1: one hundred twenty tons of debris had been collected inside
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  Speaker 1: the home, but tucked away in a corner, surrounded by
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  Speaker 1: boxes that stretched from floor to ceiling was a human corpse.
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  Speaker 1: The dead body, it turns out, was real, and it
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  Speaker 1: was Homer. Authorities assumed his brother had been the one
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  Speaker 1: to make the anonymous phone call, but Langley was nowhere
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  Speaker 1: to be found. There were rumors that he'd managed to
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  Speaker 1: skip down. Reports came in for over a week about
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  Speaker 1: Langley being sighted in nine different states, but none of
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  Speaker 1: them turned out to be true. You see, Langley, even
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  Speaker 1: in his old age, had refused to give up on
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  Speaker 1: his brother, but his fear of the outside world had
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  Speaker 1: left him with no options for getting Homer the help
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  Speaker 1: he needed. It wasn't until after more than one hundred
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  Speaker 1: tons of clutter were removed from the brownstone when he
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  Speaker 1: finally resurfaced. It turns out he'd been there the whole time.
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  Speaker 1: Langley had been in the process of bringing his brother
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  Speaker 1: some food, crawling through a narrow tunnel of rusty bedsprings,
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  Speaker 1: when he triggered one of his own traps. Moments later,
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  Speaker 1: a massive pile of suitcases and bundled newspapers collapsed on
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  Speaker 1: top of him. Like I said before, Langley Collier had
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  Speaker 1: taken everything upon himself literally. I hope you've enjoyed today's
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.