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Head of the Class · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
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  Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
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  Speaker 1: 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. As countries grow and change, they often put
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  Speaker 1: laws on the books that don't age well. That's even
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  Speaker 1: more evident at the state and local levels. For example,
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  Speaker 1: in Arizona, there's a law that makes it illegal for
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  Speaker 1: donkeys to sleep in bathtubs. Now, how could such a
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  Speaker 1: thing ever come to be, you might ask, Well, despite
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  Speaker 1: the silliness of the law today, it's origin is based
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  Speaker 1: in a tragic disaster back in nineteen a damn burst
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  Speaker 1: that released devastating floodwaters into the town of Kingman. A
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  Speaker 1: donkey had taken to sleeping in an abandoned bathtub, and
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  Speaker 1: it floated away in the flood, prompting the town to
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  Speaker 1: have to step in and save the donkey from drowning.
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  Speaker 1: But the rescue effort was costly and dangerous, and so
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  Speaker 1: Kingman residents voted to outlaw donkeys from sleeping in bathtubs. Ever, again,
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  Speaker 1: to clarify, donkeys were still allowed to stand in bathtubs,
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  Speaker 1: but sleeping in them was strictly forbidden. Go even further back, though,
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  Speaker 1: in the laws of the past make even our wildest
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  Speaker 1: legislation look like the Ten Commandments. Take, for example, the
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  Speaker 1: town of Halifax in West Yorkshire and England. Several hundred
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  Speaker 1: years ago, there was a law on the Halifax books
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  Speaker 1: known as the Halifax Gibbit Law. It allowed the Lord
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  Speaker 1: of the Manner to execute thieves caught in town by
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  Speaker 1: way of a swift and speedy trial, and the threshold
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  Speaker 1: for killing them was pretty low. If what they stole
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  Speaker 1: was worth thirteen and a halfpence or about ten dollars today,
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  Speaker 1: they were eligible for the death penalty. Suspected felons were
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  Speaker 1: held by the Lord of the manners bailiff along with
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  Speaker 1: the property in question, but the aggrieved party wasn't allowed
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  Speaker 1: to recover the stolen goods, even if they had captured
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  Speaker 1: the thief in the act, until the bailiff had taken
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  Speaker 1: possession of it first. Once the suspect was apprehended, the
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  Speaker 1: bailiff would survey the richest and most well respected men
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  Speaker 1: from the nearby towns and select sixteen of them to
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  Speaker 1: sit on a jury, you know, a jury of peers. Everyone,
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  Speaker 1: including the defendant, the accuser, and the jury then gathered
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  Speaker 1: at the bailiff's home. There was no courtroom or even
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  Speaker 1: a judge to preside over the trial, and the accused
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  Speaker 1: wasn't allowed their own defense counsel. The rules were simple,
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  Speaker 1: though both parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, told their
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  Speaker 1: sides of the story. If the jury of wealthy men
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  Speaker 1: who would never have stolen anything believe they accused thief
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  Speaker 1: was innocent, they were released. But if the person was
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  Speaker 1: declared guilty, then they were sentenced to death. And Halifax
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  Speaker 1: had a unique way of punishing its criminals was called
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  Speaker 1: the Halifax gibbet. Their gibbet was a device made of
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  Speaker 1: two fifteen foot tall wooden posts set parallel to each other.
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  Speaker 1: Grooves were carved into one side of each beam to
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  Speaker 1: allow the vertical movement of a four ft long wooden
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  Speaker 1: block between them. Then on the underside of that block
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  Speaker 1: a seven pound axe head. The whole thing sat on
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  Speaker 1: a stone platform and even required a small staircase to reach.
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  Speaker 1: The axe head was then raised by pulling a rope
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  Speaker 1: and securing it with a pin to the stone base.
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  Speaker 1: The prisoner was then lowered so his or her neck
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  Speaker 1: was just underneath the blade, at which point the pin
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  Speaker 1: was removed and the axe head was released. The rest well,
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  Speaker 1: I'm sure you can use your imagination, and if the
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  Speaker 1: guilty party had been accused of stealing cattle or a horse,
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  Speaker 1: then a length of rope was attached to that pin,
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  Speaker 1: while the other end was tied to these stolen animal
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  Speaker 1: or one of the same species. The beast was then
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  Speaker 1: set loose to run and pull the pin out, sealing
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  Speaker 1: the criminal his fate. But there was a loophole in
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  Speaker 1: the system. If the thief somehow managed to escape the
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  Speaker 1: gibbets and the forest in which it had been erected,
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  Speaker 1: then they were free to go. Only two men, ever,
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  Speaker 1: managed to make it out alive, though one man was
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  Speaker 1: smart and never came back. The other tried his luck
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  Speaker 1: seven years later by returning to Halifax, only to find
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  Speaker 1: himself once again under the Gibbet's blade. It turns out
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  Speaker 1: he wasn't so lucky after all. The thing about the
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  Speaker 1: Halifax Gibbet was that it was simultaneously ahead of its
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  Speaker 1: time and antiquated. Other towns had already moved on from
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  Speaker 1: using the gibbet for their executions by the seventeenth century,
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  Speaker 1: but Halifax kept up the tradition until sixteen fifty, having
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  Speaker 1: started it all the way back in twelve eighties, six
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  Speaker 1: five years before France introduced their own version and took
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  Speaker 1: credit for the invention. The name for that same device,
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  Speaker 1: the guillotine. M The Old West in America actually isn't
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  Speaker 1: as old as we think. Despite the common belief that
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  Speaker 1: it ended toward the close of the nineteenth century, the
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  Speaker 1: Old West actually lasted until about nineteen twenty. But it
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  Speaker 1: wasn't all outlaws and gun slingers everywhere. Real progress was
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  Speaker 1: being made in places all over the country. Take Wyoming,
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  Speaker 1: for example. On May eleventh of nineteen twenty, three months
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  Speaker 1: before the United States would grant women the right to vote,
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  Speaker 1: a historic election took place in the small town of Jackson. Now,
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  Speaker 1: early on, Jackson had garnered a reputation for itself as
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  Speaker 1: a haven for the criminal element. Cattle thieves and murderers
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  Speaker 1: had often hid there due to its relatively remote location
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  Speaker 1: in the mountains, But in nineteen twenty, the town's residents
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  Speaker 1: had other matters to attend to an election. Up for
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  Speaker 1: grabs was the position of mayor, as well as a
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  Speaker 1: few seats for a council men. Well, councilmen were what
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  Speaker 1: most people expected. Instead, the town went in a different direction.
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  Speaker 1: Grace Miller, Rose Crabtree, Genevieve van Vleck, May Deloni, and
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  Speaker 1: Faustina Height had put their names on the ballot that year.
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  Speaker 1: Each of them were up against a rival male candidate. Then,
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  Speaker 1: in the case of Mrs Crabtree, her opponent was actually
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  Speaker 1: her husband, and much to everyone's surprise, each of the
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  Speaker 1: women won their respective roles, with Grace Miller becoming Mayor
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  Speaker 1: of Jackson, while all the rest joined the council. From there,
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  Speaker 1: they appointed several other women to serve underneath them in
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  Speaker 1: various positions within the local government. One such woman was
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  Speaker 1: Pearl Williams. At only twenty two years old, Pearl had
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  Speaker 1: been tasked with the daunting job of town Marshall. The
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  Speaker 1: job was exactly what you might think it was too.
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  Speaker 1: She was responsible for apprehending the unsavory characters in town
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  Speaker 1: and putting them in jail, a building by the way
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  Speaker 1: that lacked doors at the time, In a role that
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  Speaker 1: would have given anyone pause, she stepped up to the task. Thankfully,
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  Speaker 1: there weren't many outlaws to deal with. Despite Jackson's early reputation,
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  Speaker 1: it hadn't been a criminal heightout for some time, but
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  Speaker 1: the few bandits that she did come across treated her
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  Speaker 1: with respect and followed her orders. The press, of course,
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  Speaker 1: wrote numerous articles about the town run entirely by women,
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  Speaker 1: including one in the Jackson Hole Courier titled women now
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  Speaker 1: rule Bad Men's Town. And the thing they had an
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  Speaker 1: especially hard time believing was that it had a woman marshal.
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  Speaker 1: But Pearl proved all of them wrong. She got so
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  Speaker 1: sick of answering the same question from the media that
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  Speaker 1: one day she finally told them that she had earned
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  Speaker 1: the job by killing three men and burying them herself.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't true, of course, but it certainly shut the
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  Speaker 1: reporters up. It took almost no time for the new
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  Speaker 1: console to get to work improving Jackson. They noticed that
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  Speaker 1: very little had gotten done while the men were in charge,
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  Speaker 1: and their new strong arm tactics earned them the nickname
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  Speaker 1: the Petticoat Rulers. First on their dockets taxes. When Grace
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  Speaker 1: and her colleagues took office, They found that only two
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  Speaker 1: d dollars were in the town's coffers. It wasn't nearly
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  Speaker 1: enough to push through their new agenda, so they started
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  Speaker 1: collecting taxes from everyone in town. The money was put
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  Speaker 1: toward a variety of expansive projects, including graded roads, a
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  Speaker 1: new cemetery, and the installation of electric wiring. In two weeks,
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  Speaker 1: they had over two thousand dollars available. They had also
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  Speaker 1: passed ordinances meant to beautify the town and reduced the
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  Speaker 1: noise pollution caused by fireworks. The women had been placed
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  Speaker 1: in their roles thanks to progress, and in turn, they
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  Speaker 1: were going to bring progress back to Jackson. But if
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  Speaker 1: the Nineteenth Amendment wasn't ratified until August of nineteen twenty,
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  Speaker 1: how were a group of women elected to run a
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  Speaker 1: small western town once besieged by criminals. That's because states
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  Speaker 1: and towns all across the country had already been giving
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  Speaker 1: women the right to vote, and Wyoming, the equality state,
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  Speaker 1: accomplished it in eighteen sixty nine. Grace Miller and her
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  Speaker 1: counsel did a great job. They were elected again for
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  Speaker 1: a second term. Some even stayed on for longer. They
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  Speaker 1: had proven that women had every right to serve in
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  Speaker 1: politics right alongside men, and more importantly, they proved that
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  Speaker 1: women get the job done. I hope you've enjoyed today's
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  Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
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  Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
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  Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
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  Speaker 1: me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
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  Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.