April 11, 2016 • 32 mins
In his early career Dr. Haugh claimed to be working on the next step in human evolution. But he was really a man enslaved by his addiction to cocaine and morphine.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode is brought to you by square Space. Start
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square Space. Build it beautiful. Welcome to Stuff you missed
in History Class from works dot com. Hello, and welcome
(00:23):
to the podcast. I'm Holly from and I'm Tracy. He
will say, remember back when we were talking about the
Wright brothers and I interviewed David McCullough and he talked
about that boy that colloqued Wilbur in the teeth with
a hockey stick when they were in high school. Ye
remember how that kid grew up to be a serial killer.
Do you remember how people wrote in We're like, I
(00:44):
want to hear more about that guy that hit him
in the face. Well, lucky them, so do I. How
we are. I can't resist a good story of gruesome
goings on. So today we're going to talk about Oliver
haw who was that very same person from the will
Were Wright incident. His life was a mess. I will
warn you up front that we are not going to
talk about the Right brothers at all. We won't even
talk about that incident because it's kind of one of
(01:04):
those weird things that nobody has a lot of documentation on.
It's like they seem to be playing something like ice
hockey on a pond and he got hit in the
face and it's unclear whether that was accidental or not,
and there's just no documentation that the whole story. That's
that's the whole story. We've already talked about it. And
I also want to give just a little bit of
a trigger warning here because the story of Oliver haw
(01:25):
is one that is really just a classic case of
addiction and the cyclical nature that addicts lives tend to take,
and that I know it can be hard to revisit
for people who have had to live through it or
watch someone lives through it. So I just want to
give you a heads up here that that is pretty
much what's going on for the next two episodes. Yeah,
and his first wife similarly has a trying to get
(01:48):
away and then going back and trying to get away
and going back, and yeah, yeah, it's it's you know,
if those are things that that you are sensitive to
that you just don't want to deal with in your
your podcasting or aiment, this set might not be for you. Um,
but if those are things that do not bother you.
Buckle up, because this guy's a piece of work. Ah, yep,
(02:10):
I am with you. I know he's a piece of ware.
He even has a suitable man on middle name. Oliver
Crook Haw was born in Dayton, Ohio, in April twelfth,
eight seventy one. His parents were Samuel Jacob Haw and
Mary Frances Metz Haw, and he had an older brother,
Jesse Lincoln Hall, who was three years older than he was.
And the Haws were deeply religious, and they were devoted
(02:32):
not just to the church, but to really helping others
in the community. Mr Haw was known to bring impoverished
children to the house so that he and his wife
could give them a good meal and clean them up,
get them closed in some cases if they needed them
before they sent them home. And Mrs Hawk kind of
made it her business to keep an eye on all
of the boys of the neighborhood and kind of keep
(02:54):
after them to ensure that they attended Sunday services regularly.
This couple was so dedicated to helping other people that
in doing so, they sometimes spread themselves too thin and
jeopardize their own financial stability. This is something that Oliver
really resented. He was also embarrassed by their public displays
of religious devotion, and Oliver's brother Jesse, also made him uncomfortable.
(03:17):
He'd had a brain injury and a fall when he
was really young, and that seems to have led to
some developmental delays. Yeah, there's not a lot of like
medical specificity around that. It seems like he hit his
head when he was young, and he was what they
would call at the time slow. I was gonna say,
did they describe him as slow? But there's really no
(03:39):
specifics on what that injury actually would have been. It
seems like he really didn't get treatment for whatever it was. Um,
So we just know that he he kind of was
a little bit like He's also described as simple in
a lot of texts, so just not quite superspeedy um,
but seemed for all the world to be a very
kind and good man. So despite his lack of enthusiasm
(04:03):
for his family, Oliver, who became something of a bully
as he grew up again that maybe tied into that
wilber Right story, started working for his father at the
age of fifteen. The Hawes had a carriage painting business,
but that arrangement did not work out, and it wasn't
long before it was abandoned and Oliver went to work
instead at a drug store owned and run by Charles C. Francisco.
(04:25):
Working in a drug store gave Oliver ready access to
powerful drugs that he started using to self medicate to
cope with pain from tooth decay. Initially, it appears that
he started using a product called cocaine toothache drops, which
would kill the pain from his tooth issues. Let's remind
everyone that once upon a time you could go to
a drug store and buy cocaine toothache drops. Yeah, but
(04:48):
in addition to those drops, he started mixing other cures.
And I'm using the air quotes there based on pamphlet
recipes for Druggists, Bateman's pictorial draw had been part of
these kinds of pamphlets for quite some time. That recipe
first received a Royal patent in Great Britain in seventeen
twenty six as a patent medicine, and it was alleged
(05:10):
to be so effective that many counterfeits followed. Numerous recipes
for variations on this formula for Bateman's pictorial drops had
been printed in Druggists manuals for almost a decade by
the time Oliver Haw happened upon it in a book
called The King's American Dispensatory, and that was a book
of formulas written to advise druggists on the use of
(05:31):
botanicals in compounding medicines. The pectoral in Bateman's Drops refers
to the lungs and chest, not so much just the
muscles on your body. This is a medicine initially marketed
to treat things like colds and coughs, and then eventually
that spread to rheumatism, reast pain, and other maladies. Its
effectiveness in treating these things was from its primary ingredient,
(05:52):
which was opium and as an aside. You can read
King's American Dispensatory online. Will have a link to a
later publication of it in the show notes, but please
do not make these things. Oliver Hag got so good
at mixing medications at the drug store that a local
doctor named Otho Evans Francis suggested that maybe Oliver should
become a doctor himself, and the doctor offered to mentor him.
(06:16):
Dr Francis, who was the city physician, really encouraged Haw
to go to college and seriously study science to prepare
for a medical career. Has started his medical studies in
eight at the Cincinnati Medical College, but though he initially
seemed enthusiastic, his attendance was really spotty. For one thing,
his family struggled to cover the cost of tuition, and
(06:36):
for another, he was still using a combo of coca
of cocaine and opium to treat his toothaches. He also
developed a taste for liquor. Despite the inconsistency of his life.
At this point, Oliver fell in love with a girl
named Anna Margaret Eckley, and he managed to convince her
family that he should live with them. So that he
should he could put away money to go back to
(06:57):
medical school, so he was still working in the drugs
or whenever he went back to Dayton. But Anna's father,
William Eckley, did agree to this, but he really wasn't
Oliver's biggest fan. This is when the first suspicious incident
in Oliver's life really takes place. William equally died suddenly
of pulmonary apoplexy on February. This isn't really a diagnosis
(07:19):
that exists today anymore. Uh, He had no previous history
of heart problems, and he was in good health right
up to this unexpected death, and Oliver definitely benefited from
at least passing. First, it meant that he could marry Anna,
which he did later that year on Thanksgiving Day, without
William putting up any objections, which would have been a
(07:40):
problem had he been alive. Second, it meant that he
could use the considerable life insurance payout that Anna received
to go back to medical school, which he also did.
He did not return to the Cincinnati Medical College, though,
he switched schools to the Miami Medical College, which was
also in Cincinnati, and that school would later join the
University of Since Daddy. That school didn't work out either.
(08:02):
How what, Hall was asked to leave after one semester,
although the reason is unclear. Yeah, we don't know why
they invited him to exit, but they did and he didn't. Uh.
He did continue his medical education though, and he graduated
from Louisville Medical College in spring of and he opened
up his own practice on March tenth of that year
(08:23):
in his hometown of Dayton. From his office lab, he
was working on a project that he claimed was going
to change science forever and create a new race of beings.
He really felt like, um, he was going to evolve
humanity to the next level, and referencing Robert Louis Stevenson's
Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde story, Haw told friends that
(08:44):
he was onto a formula that would prove that two
beings could share a body, and of course he was
his own guinea pig for testing the drug. Before we
talk about how that played out, you, Mike can guess
we're gonna have of a brief moment for a word
from a sponsor. So whether he really believed that he
(09:13):
was testing a new pharmaceutical or if he was just
using his lab as a cover for his growing dependency
on drugs, Things quickly went wrong for Oliver Hall. He
started ordering large quantities of both cocaine and morphine through
multiple pharmacies, so he was placing large orders but then
spreading them around to kind of cover his tracks. And
(09:34):
just a few months after he set up his office
UH and started all of these experiments, Anna sought out
help from a neighbor, claiming that her husband, in a
fit where he was not himself, had attacked her. The
couple separated, each of them moved back in with their
family and Dr Hawk closed his practice. Anna filed for divorce,
but then she discovered she was pregnant and the two
(09:56):
attempted to reconcile. Anna moved in with the Haws, and
the actor once again started a practice, this time out
of a room and his family's home. Anna gave birth
to William Samuel Haw on December six, but there really
wasn't much time to celebrate their new child. Oliver's addiction
was once again spiraling out of control and he stopped working,
(10:17):
and Anna once again left her husband in a desperate
move because things had really just gotten worse and worse
and worse. Oliver's parents UH started proceedings to have their
son declared insane because he had become prone to terrifying
fits of violence, and they recognize that they really were
not equipped to help him through whatever this was. And
(10:38):
when a deputy sheriff and a police patrolman arrived at
the Hall home to collect Oliver so that he could
be taken for evaluation, this plays out like a late
Victorian version of the show Cops. So the doctor resisted
being taken into custody. He was fending off this sheriff UH,
this deputy sheriff and this patrolman, all the while injecting
(11:00):
himself in the chest repeatedly. I can only imagine we're
this film today what it would look like. We know
because we've seen it now. Just picture it a hundred
years ago. The doctor, as we said, resisted being taken
into custody, but eventually he was subdued. Whether from uh,
just being physically overpowered by the two men, or if
(11:21):
he just kind of wore himself out with all of
the drugs that he was taking in front of them,
we do not know. Ah. And he was declared in
saying the following day, which was March, by a probate
judge after testimony was given by his family, so there
was also some family dynamic in the midst and he
was admitted to the Dating Asylum for the insane at
(11:43):
that point. At the facility, which had a rash of
problems at the time, including multiple patients dying from what
appeared to be repeated kicks to the ribs. Haw was
given high seen hydro bromide as part of his treatment.
This is a drug commonly used in treatments today from
ocean sickness, and in low doses it's perfectly safe, but
(12:03):
in higher doses it can cause irregularity and heart rate
and respiration and even paralysis. And I want you to
just make a mental note of that as we go forward,
particularly for the second episode that would become important. After
a four month stay in the asylum, Oliver was discharged
with a clean bill of health. He reconciled with his
wife Anna, and once again he opened his medical practice,
(12:26):
but his time in the asylum was common knowledge throughout Dayton,
and no one was really willing to trust him as
their doctor. He briefly moved to Springfield without his wife
to try to start a practice there, but it went
bussed within just a few months, and he moved back
to Dayton once more. This entire cycle played out again
with another Dayton office which also closed, and then I
(12:47):
moved to Toledo once again without Anna and his son.
While in Toledo, Haw apparently formed a relationship with a
woman and the pair even lived together briefly, but then,
according to rumor, she died suddenly, and Hall moved back
to Dayton and his wife and he started using morphine again,
and in an echo of their early marriage, Anna plan
(13:08):
to leave Oliver, but once again Just as she was
getting up the gumption to do so, she found out
she was pregnant with their second child, and she once
again decided to stay. Their second son, Clarence, was born
on March twenty three, and Hall once again made a
go at a medical practice. But this time he shifted
gears a little bit, and he decided that he would
(13:28):
focus on mineral baths as a treatment. This sounds like
it wouldn't be dangerous, but these bats were incredibly hot,
and on multiple occasions Hall left patients in them too
long and caused serious medical problems. He was still using drugs,
which is a contributor in his neglect of his patients.
He was at times found unconscious or naked in hallways
(13:49):
of the office building where he practiced. At one point,
when a dentist who also had an office in the
building asked whether one of his patients had been cured,
Haw replied, Oh, yeah, I cured him all right. He
is dead, so already he sounds like a delight. He
eventually set up a second office, so this wasn't a
(14:10):
move to a new office. He set up a second
branch of his existing office in Hamilton, Ohio. But do
not be uh misled. This was not a sign of
a growing business or success. It was, in fact quite
the contrary. He had such a bad reputation in Dayton
that he opened that second office in an effort to
make ends meet, hoping that he could take on patients
(14:31):
for his bath cures there that had not heard of
his poor treatment of others in his care. But the
second venture didn't really flourish, and Hall once again turned
to drugs as an escape. His violent outbursts once again
became commonplace, and he was admitted to the Dayton State Hospital,
which was a new name for the same asylum he
had been in before, at the request of his wife. Again.
(14:54):
He was released in December of nine and he restarted
his practice, started using and let his work fall up art.
And while he had been practicing in Hamilton's he mentioned
to a businessman who was one of his patients that
he thought killing the infirm and sick medically was actually
a kindness, and that he knew how to do so,
and that he had already ended the lives of some
(15:15):
of his elderly relatives. Then in nineteen o one, Dr
Oliver Haw vanished. Of course, he didn't really vanish off
the face of the earth. We're going to talk about
what he was doing during that time in just a
moment while he was away from all of the people
that knew him up to that point. But first we're
going to pause for a sponsor break. So it turned
(15:44):
out that when Oliver Hall ran away from Dayton, he
went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and he applied for a license
to practice medicine there, and after practicing for a few
months in Milwaukee, he moved to Spooner, Wisconsin and advertised
himself as a doctor who could cure any disease. He
also got married in Chicago, Illinois, in August of nineteen
o one, to a woman named Delia Betters. Delia, for
(16:08):
whom Oliver was a third husband, was not privy to
the information that her new groom already had a wife.
I'm surprised people could not hear how hard my eyes
rolled when he said a part in the part about
how he advertised himself as a doctor who could care
any disease. Yeah, we've we've been through those before. One
(16:28):
of Haw's patients and Spooner died from morphine poisoning. So
for the first time, and a string of suspicious events
doctor Hall was actually arrested and charged in the death.
His defense was at the overdose was accidental. He was
acquitted due to lack of evidence, but he closed his
Spooner practiced and moved on to Stirring, Wisconsin and haws
surring office uh did uncharacteristically well for him. He had
(16:52):
struggled in every other office, but this one really was
was zipping right along. He still lost some patience, but
not in a way that red flagged anybody, and his
clientele didn't seem to drop off because of it. He
was most assuredly still battling the demons of addiction, however,
and his new wife, Delia, was not tolerant of the problem.
(17:12):
Oliver promised you'd take a popular addiction treatment at the
time called the Keiley Cure, which centered on diet and
administering by chloride of gold, and Oliver vanished from Stirring
for a month allegedly to go take this cure, though
whether he actually ever went to a clinic and received
the Keiley Cure is completely unclear. After haw and Delia reunited,
(17:32):
they moved to Michigan to be closer to Delia's elderly mother,
but their time as a couple ended abruptly. After that,
Delia found out about Mrs Anna Haw, left Oliver and
went to Dayton to have him arrested for bigamy. She
assumed that when they split, he had gone back to
his Ohio home, but in fact he stayed with her
mother and cared for the older woman right up un
(17:54):
until her sudden death in June. While in Dayton, ready
to confront all of her Haw, Delia instead found the
first Mrs Haw, Anna, and when Anna found out what
was going on, she begged Delia to not go public
with the story of all of HER's second life out
of concern for their two children, and Delia was quite
(18:17):
moved by Anna's please, and so she decided to drop
the matter and just go home. Oliver returned to Ohio
after the death of Delia's mother and checked into another asylum,
this time in Lebanon, Ohio. While there, he became friends
with the woman named Jenny Tooey and her brother, Dr
Samuel s Herman. Haw and Jenny left the sanitarium together
(18:37):
so that Hawk could take over as her doctor and
help her with some trouble she seemed to be having
related to her reproductive system. Yeah the wording on any
of the records is you know, in that sort of
clouded female trouble dealist. Yeah, so we don't really know
what the issue was. Uh. She certainly did not need
Oliver Hall for a doctor though, but he did become
(19:00):
good friends with her brother, so comfortable in that friendship,
in fact, with Dr Herman, that he admitted to him
that he had killed several women, performing illegal abortions on them,
and that he planned to kill his brother Jesse at
some point. And he also made it clear to Herman
after he told him this, that he would kill him
as well should he share this information with anyone. Unfortunately,
(19:22):
Dr Herman's sister Jenny had developed a romantic attachment to
Oliver Hall. I proposed to Jenny, and in yet another
case of haus life repeating itself, he set up a
new practice in Lima, Ohio, using money Jenny had inherited
when her mother died. This death actually had happened before
the two of them had met. Yes, so he is
not potentially implicated in that death, but he was certainly
(19:44):
happy to use the inheritance from it. He was not
implicated in that death. That one Dr Herman realized that
not only was Oliver has squandering his sister's fortune, he
had also gotten her addicted to cocaine and morphine. Herman
began proceedings to have himself legally appointed as Jenny's guardian
in in the hopes of getting her away from all
(20:05):
over Hall. But the lovebirds got wind of this plan
and they ran away. They kind of did the vanishing
act that Oliver had practiced before, and this time they
eventually opened a saloon together in Cleveland, Ohio. By this point,
things are in a weird ceedy whirlwind for Haw. He
continued to inject his paramour with drugs, which she told
their business partner in the saloon she didn't want, and
(20:27):
a young woman disappeared while she was living with Jenny
and Oliver. The pair were arrested for keeping a house
of prostitution, but after being issued a fine, business continued
as usual. Haw, who was living under the name Twee
at this time and claiming that Jenny was his aunt,
was rarely sober and often found passed out in random
(20:47):
spots about the town. Yeah, this is such a hotbed
of weird at this point, Like he's with this woman romantically,
but tells everyone she's his aunt, and she's also working
as a prostitute with him, as seems, and it's a
big ugly miss um. However, to make matters even creepier,
hob began to practice medicine from the saloon, although the
(21:10):
suspicion was actually that he was purposely trying to kill
patients with drug injections in order to rob them and
to make matters even grosser. By all accounts, this establishment
was unbelievably filthy, and it's sordid reputation had become such
common knowledge that the place was finally rated. Jenny two
was in terrible shape when the authorities arrived. She was
(21:32):
wasting away, nearly unconscious and covered in needle. Marks Hall
was charged with disorderly conduct. He pled guilty and was
imprisoned for thirty days. His wailing from withdrawal while in
custody was so unbearable to everyone in the jail that
a doctor was called to give him injections of morphinite
regular intervals. Eventually, he was sent to Cleveland on the
(21:54):
city's dime and with a small amount of money, per
an agreement that he would check himself into a treatment
facility for his addiction. Do you think he did that thing,
he did not. Instead, he opened another medical practice. I
don't even I didn't even count them because there's so many.
When he got to Cleveland and he sent for Jenny
(22:15):
to join him, but he did not know that she
had actually died at that point. And after that, he
himself was in and out of hospitals for treatment. He
kind of started drifting from city to city. He would
open medical offices, but they would close almost as soon
as he set them up. Probably he was opening them
just so he could place orders for drugs. I really
(22:35):
wish there had been any effective treatment for morphine addiction. Yeah. Yeah,
they tried lots of things, but none of them were
really cures so much as I have an idea that
that was not really working. Eventually, after straying of troubles
just like those we've already talked about, he ended up
(22:56):
back in Dayton, Ohio, living with his parents. Anna, however,
back to the first wife, refused to listen to live
with him. He seemed to be in a new phase
of life and often told people as much. He spoke
openly about his addictions and how he had put all
of that behind him. When Anna filed for divorce, again
on September five. It took Oliver by surprise. Uh. He
(23:22):
confronted her and he told her he would kill her
if she didn't withdraw the filing, but she refused. He
himself attempted suicide by taking a hundred and fifty grains
of the hypnotic drug trigonal, but that did not kill him.
There's actually some debate over whether or not he knew
that it would not kill him. Not long after this,
(23:42):
Oliver found out that he had been cut out if
his parents will and that everything would go to his
brother Jesse. After a heated argument with his father, he
told a family friend that he would kill them all
if they didn't change the will to include him again.
I like how that's just his casual reaction and like
what you did, I'll kill you. That's just how he
(24:02):
goes about his life at this point. Uh. He soon
placed a large rush order for hiocene hydrobromine with a
medical supplier in Cleveland. So remember that from earlier in
the episode, he was still on file as a physician
with that medical supplier, and so the order was shipped
to Dayton, and he also purchased a larger than normal
supply of oil for the family house when the vendor
(24:24):
came to visit on his normal rounds. Not long after
midnight on November all A Raja banged on a neighbor's
door to tell them that his parents home was on fire.
On the house initially didn't appear to be in flames,
a trail of oil roughly eight inches wide ran through
the house and was indeed burning. When Oliver was asked
(24:47):
if everyone got out, he said that they had, and
then neighbors began running into the house to try to
save what they could of the possessions. So there's a
weird thing that happens here. And yes, that is weird.
I do mean that it's weird, even in the context
of all of this madness that is his life. Where
when additional neighbors arrived, as other men were running in
(25:09):
and out of the house, Hall told those new arrivals
that his family was trapped inside. And when the blaze
became too dangerous and the men who had been working
to save any of those valuables all came out, they
were questioned as to why they didn't try to save
the family, And when one of the men, Thomas Farrell,
who had been running in and out of this burning house.
(25:29):
Confronted Hall about having said everyone was out, the doctor replied,
I know that I did, but they are all in there,
and in there in this case meant the house in
a back bedroom that he was gesturing to. There was
so much confusion going on with the house on fire
that it seems like nobody really stopped to think about
(25:50):
the weirdness of his ever shifting story. The flames were
so great at this point that really no one dared
go into the burning house again. Hall was taken to
a neighbor's house and treated for a burn on his leg,
and later a doctor was sent for who treated the
blistering burns on his leg again and gave him a
pain killer that was not morphine or cocaine, specifically at
(26:12):
Haw's request. And meanwhile, this fire was still burning at
this point, it was not going to be put out.
They were waiting for it to burn through. Eventually, spectators
could see the bodies of the Haw family falling one
by one through a burned floor under the bedroom down
into the cellar below. Hall was admitted to the hospital
(26:33):
under the care of Dr Fred C. Weaver, who had
actually been a classmate of his at Miami Medical College. Again,
Hall was adamant that while he needed something for the
pain from his burns, he would not take morphine. This
is where her Holly's favorite thing to do. We are
going to Cliff hang you uh awaiting what happens next.
(26:57):
We're going to talk about the investigation of this incredibly
suspicious fire and the trial that followed, and things relating
to the deaths of the family in our next episode. Yeah,
you have some listener mail before we call it a day,
and it's not grizzly at all. I have a couple
of pieces, as I wanted to do lately. One is,
(27:22):
these are actually two comments that were made on our
Facebook page about our knitting episode, and I just wanted
to point them out because they brought new information the
light that I had not thought about or that wasn't
in the episode. One was from our listener Margaret, and
she said a newer material the knitting needles are made
out of is carbon fiber composits, just like jet fighters.
I didn't know that. I didn't either, and then I
(27:43):
wondered why I didn't super strong. Another listener commented that
sometimes depending on the fiber that you select and you're
knitting style. It can kind of create and nails on
a chalkboard situation, but that they are very smooth and
a lot of people love them. So another one is
from our listener. I'm hoping I pronounced its correctly arian uh,
(28:05):
and she commented on the same thing as someone who spins.
I'd also like to add that elasticity is impacted by
the texture of the fiber and how the fiber is spun.
It's not really important to the overall story, but I
thought that you might want to know. Find smooth fibers
like a marino tend to make for fabrics with more
drape and less stretch crinkly fibers. She herself fell in
(28:27):
love with a clute forest bfl cross breed. Sheep's wool
will give more bounce to a yarn spun at the
same ratio. It's a very cool aspect to knitting, weaving,
and crocheting, and it has driven nifty innovations in breeding
over the millennia. I presume in breeding of sheep to
create different types of wool. So that's kind of cool
information that I didn't stumble across in my research, and
(28:47):
I like it. The other thing I wanted to uh mention,
it's not so much listener mail, but we got an
awesome gift while we were in Chicago recently. Our listener
Brian DuPont, and I normally we don't do last names
just for safety, but as he is publishing under that name, YEP,
I figured it's safe. That's different. Brian DuPont, who is
an artist, gave us a bunch of comics that he's drawn,
(29:10):
including one that features Edward Binny as a character. Yeah,
there are lots of historical figures in them. This one
is a series called pacos Bill and it has Tesla
in it and other people that you have heard of
on this podcast, including Posters of Orble and Wilbur WRIGHTE.
So it's very cool. Thank you so much. Brian. I
felt bad because he had emailed us about it and
(29:31):
I it was one of those emails that I was like,
I will reply to that and then when I have
a minute to think about it, and then that minute
never materialized. Yeah. The thing I feel guilty about is that,
as we have discussed, I don't work from the Atlanta
office anymore, so sometimes when I come to visit, which
I do pretty regularly, I will get here, and my
desk is covered in listener presence, and often I'm like,
(29:55):
who do I think? And I'm like, I don't know.
I didn't remember to put their name on it, So
that's really mine. Didn't make you feel bad in front
of everyone. That's not nice. It's okay. I'm not so
organized with those things. If you were the person who
sent us beautiful metal bookmarks, drop us a note. Please?
Oh yes, you really do want to drop us a note.
Tracy has plans uh. So thank you so much to
(30:17):
Brian and to our listeners that wrote in about their
knitting knowledge. We appreciate it. If you would like to
write to us, you can do so at History Podcast
at house stuff works dot com. You can also visit
us at Facebook dot com, slash missed in history, on
Twitter at mist in History, at pinterest dot com, slash
missed in history at missed in history dot tumbler dot com,
and on Instagram at missed in history. If you would
(30:39):
like to visit our parents site house stuff Works, uh
and learn a little bit more about what we talked
about today, you can type in the word addiction into
the search bar and you will get an article called
how addiction works will maybe help make sense of this
weird cyclical nature of the life of Oliver our Haw
And it was a roller coaster once again. Wish there
had been any effective treatment for addiction to morphing when
(31:05):
I mean even today it's really hard, but there was
basically nothing when he was alive. Yeah, they would give
people sedatives and hope that they would just be calm
for the durgation of their time in whatever facility they
were in. Just really treating an addiction. It's just medicating
in a different way. Uh. So, if you would like
(31:27):
to visit us, uh, you can do that at missed
in history dot com or we have an archive of
all of the episodes that have existed ever. We have
show notes from any of the episodes that Tracy and
I have worked on together, as well as some other goodies.
So we encourage you to come and visit us at
missed in history dot com and how Stuff Work dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(31:50):
Is that how stuff Works dot com
This episode is brought to you by square Space. Start
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square Space. Build it beautiful. Welcome to Stuff you missed
in History Class from works dot com. Hello, and welcome
(00:23):
to the podcast. I'm Holly from and I'm Tracy. He
will say, remember back when we were talking about the
Wright brothers and I interviewed David McCullough and he talked
about that boy that colloqued Wilbur in the teeth with
a hockey stick when they were in high school. Ye
remember how that kid grew up to be a serial killer.
Do you remember how people wrote in We're like, I
(00:44):
want to hear more about that guy that hit him
in the face. Well, lucky them, so do I. How
we are. I can't resist a good story of gruesome
goings on. So today we're going to talk about Oliver
haw who was that very same person from the will
Were Wright incident. His life was a mess. I will
warn you up front that we are not going to
talk about the Right brothers at all. We won't even
talk about that incident because it's kind of one of
(01:04):
those weird things that nobody has a lot of documentation on.
It's like they seem to be playing something like ice
hockey on a pond and he got hit in the
face and it's unclear whether that was accidental or not,
and there's just no documentation that the whole story. That's
that's the whole story. We've already talked about it. And
I also want to give just a little bit of
a trigger warning here because the story of Oliver haw
(01:25):
is one that is really just a classic case of
addiction and the cyclical nature that addicts lives tend to take,
and that I know it can be hard to revisit
for people who have had to live through it or
watch someone lives through it. So I just want to
give you a heads up here that that is pretty
much what's going on for the next two episodes. Yeah,
and his first wife similarly has a trying to get
(01:48):
away and then going back and trying to get away
and going back, and yeah, yeah, it's it's you know,
if those are things that that you are sensitive to
that you just don't want to deal with in your
your podcasting or aiment, this set might not be for you. Um,
but if those are things that do not bother you.
Buckle up, because this guy's a piece of work. Ah, yep,
(02:10):
I am with you. I know he's a piece of ware.
He even has a suitable man on middle name. Oliver
Crook Haw was born in Dayton, Ohio, in April twelfth,
eight seventy one. His parents were Samuel Jacob Haw and
Mary Frances Metz Haw, and he had an older brother,
Jesse Lincoln Hall, who was three years older than he was.
And the Haws were deeply religious, and they were devoted
(02:32):
not just to the church, but to really helping others
in the community. Mr Haw was known to bring impoverished
children to the house so that he and his wife
could give them a good meal and clean them up,
get them closed in some cases if they needed them
before they sent them home. And Mrs Hawk kind of
made it her business to keep an eye on all
of the boys of the neighborhood and kind of keep
(02:54):
after them to ensure that they attended Sunday services regularly.
This couple was so dedicated to helping other people that
in doing so, they sometimes spread themselves too thin and
jeopardize their own financial stability. This is something that Oliver
really resented. He was also embarrassed by their public displays
of religious devotion, and Oliver's brother Jesse, also made him uncomfortable.
(03:17):
He'd had a brain injury and a fall when he
was really young, and that seems to have led to
some developmental delays. Yeah, there's not a lot of like
medical specificity around that. It seems like he hit his
head when he was young, and he was what they
would call at the time slow. I was gonna say,
did they describe him as slow? But there's really no
(03:39):
specifics on what that injury actually would have been. It
seems like he really didn't get treatment for whatever it was. Um,
So we just know that he he kind of was
a little bit like He's also described as simple in
a lot of texts, so just not quite superspeedy um,
but seemed for all the world to be a very
kind and good man. So despite his lack of enthusiasm
(04:03):
for his family, Oliver, who became something of a bully
as he grew up again that maybe tied into that
wilber Right story, started working for his father at the
age of fifteen. The Hawes had a carriage painting business,
but that arrangement did not work out, and it wasn't
long before it was abandoned and Oliver went to work
instead at a drug store owned and run by Charles C. Francisco.
(04:25):
Working in a drug store gave Oliver ready access to
powerful drugs that he started using to self medicate to
cope with pain from tooth decay. Initially, it appears that
he started using a product called cocaine toothache drops, which
would kill the pain from his tooth issues. Let's remind
everyone that once upon a time you could go to
a drug store and buy cocaine toothache drops. Yeah, but
(04:48):
in addition to those drops, he started mixing other cures.
And I'm using the air quotes there based on pamphlet
recipes for Druggists, Bateman's pictorial draw had been part of
these kinds of pamphlets for quite some time. That recipe
first received a Royal patent in Great Britain in seventeen
twenty six as a patent medicine, and it was alleged
(05:10):
to be so effective that many counterfeits followed. Numerous recipes
for variations on this formula for Bateman's pictorial drops had
been printed in Druggists manuals for almost a decade by
the time Oliver Haw happened upon it in a book
called The King's American Dispensatory, and that was a book
of formulas written to advise druggists on the use of
(05:31):
botanicals in compounding medicines. The pectoral in Bateman's Drops refers
to the lungs and chest, not so much just the
muscles on your body. This is a medicine initially marketed
to treat things like colds and coughs, and then eventually
that spread to rheumatism, reast pain, and other maladies. Its
effectiveness in treating these things was from its primary ingredient,
(05:52):
which was opium and as an aside. You can read
King's American Dispensatory online. Will have a link to a
later publication of it in the show notes, but please
do not make these things. Oliver Hag got so good
at mixing medications at the drug store that a local
doctor named Otho Evans Francis suggested that maybe Oliver should
become a doctor himself, and the doctor offered to mentor him.
(06:16):
Dr Francis, who was the city physician, really encouraged Haw
to go to college and seriously study science to prepare
for a medical career. Has started his medical studies in
eight at the Cincinnati Medical College, but though he initially
seemed enthusiastic, his attendance was really spotty. For one thing,
his family struggled to cover the cost of tuition, and
(06:36):
for another, he was still using a combo of coca
of cocaine and opium to treat his toothaches. He also
developed a taste for liquor. Despite the inconsistency of his life.
At this point, Oliver fell in love with a girl
named Anna Margaret Eckley, and he managed to convince her
family that he should live with them. So that he
should he could put away money to go back to
(06:57):
medical school, so he was still working in the drugs
or whenever he went back to Dayton. But Anna's father,
William Eckley, did agree to this, but he really wasn't
Oliver's biggest fan. This is when the first suspicious incident
in Oliver's life really takes place. William equally died suddenly
of pulmonary apoplexy on February. This isn't really a diagnosis
(07:19):
that exists today anymore. Uh, He had no previous history
of heart problems, and he was in good health right
up to this unexpected death, and Oliver definitely benefited from
at least passing. First, it meant that he could marry Anna,
which he did later that year on Thanksgiving Day, without
William putting up any objections, which would have been a
(07:40):
problem had he been alive. Second, it meant that he
could use the considerable life insurance payout that Anna received
to go back to medical school, which he also did.
He did not return to the Cincinnati Medical College, though,
he switched schools to the Miami Medical College, which was
also in Cincinnati, and that school would later join the
University of Since Daddy. That school didn't work out either.
(08:02):
How what, Hall was asked to leave after one semester,
although the reason is unclear. Yeah, we don't know why
they invited him to exit, but they did and he didn't. Uh.
He did continue his medical education though, and he graduated
from Louisville Medical College in spring of and he opened
up his own practice on March tenth of that year
(08:23):
in his hometown of Dayton. From his office lab, he
was working on a project that he claimed was going
to change science forever and create a new race of beings.
He really felt like, um, he was going to evolve
humanity to the next level, and referencing Robert Louis Stevenson's
Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde story, Haw told friends that
(08:44):
he was onto a formula that would prove that two
beings could share a body, and of course he was
his own guinea pig for testing the drug. Before we
talk about how that played out, you, Mike can guess
we're gonna have of a brief moment for a word
from a sponsor. So whether he really believed that he
(09:13):
was testing a new pharmaceutical or if he was just
using his lab as a cover for his growing dependency
on drugs, Things quickly went wrong for Oliver Hall. He
started ordering large quantities of both cocaine and morphine through
multiple pharmacies, so he was placing large orders but then
spreading them around to kind of cover his tracks. And
(09:34):
just a few months after he set up his office
UH and started all of these experiments, Anna sought out
help from a neighbor, claiming that her husband, in a
fit where he was not himself, had attacked her. The
couple separated, each of them moved back in with their
family and Dr Hawk closed his practice. Anna filed for divorce,
but then she discovered she was pregnant and the two
(09:56):
attempted to reconcile. Anna moved in with the Haws, and
the actor once again started a practice, this time out
of a room and his family's home. Anna gave birth
to William Samuel Haw on December six, but there really
wasn't much time to celebrate their new child. Oliver's addiction
was once again spiraling out of control and he stopped working,
(10:17):
and Anna once again left her husband in a desperate
move because things had really just gotten worse and worse
and worse. Oliver's parents UH started proceedings to have their
son declared insane because he had become prone to terrifying
fits of violence, and they recognize that they really were
not equipped to help him through whatever this was. And
(10:38):
when a deputy sheriff and a police patrolman arrived at
the Hall home to collect Oliver so that he could
be taken for evaluation, this plays out like a late
Victorian version of the show Cops. So the doctor resisted
being taken into custody. He was fending off this sheriff UH,
this deputy sheriff and this patrolman, all the while injecting
(11:00):
himself in the chest repeatedly. I can only imagine we're
this film today what it would look like. We know
because we've seen it now. Just picture it a hundred
years ago. The doctor, as we said, resisted being taken
into custody, but eventually he was subdued. Whether from uh,
just being physically overpowered by the two men, or if
(11:21):
he just kind of wore himself out with all of
the drugs that he was taking in front of them,
we do not know. Ah. And he was declared in
saying the following day, which was March, by a probate
judge after testimony was given by his family, so there
was also some family dynamic in the midst and he
was admitted to the Dating Asylum for the insane at
(11:43):
that point. At the facility, which had a rash of
problems at the time, including multiple patients dying from what
appeared to be repeated kicks to the ribs. Haw was
given high seen hydro bromide as part of his treatment.
This is a drug commonly used in treatments today from
ocean sickness, and in low doses it's perfectly safe, but
(12:03):
in higher doses it can cause irregularity and heart rate
and respiration and even paralysis. And I want you to
just make a mental note of that as we go forward,
particularly for the second episode that would become important. After
a four month stay in the asylum, Oliver was discharged
with a clean bill of health. He reconciled with his
wife Anna, and once again he opened his medical practice,
(12:26):
but his time in the asylum was common knowledge throughout Dayton,
and no one was really willing to trust him as
their doctor. He briefly moved to Springfield without his wife
to try to start a practice there, but it went
bussed within just a few months, and he moved back
to Dayton once more. This entire cycle played out again
with another Dayton office which also closed, and then I
(12:47):
moved to Toledo once again without Anna and his son.
While in Toledo, Haw apparently formed a relationship with a
woman and the pair even lived together briefly, but then,
according to rumor, she died suddenly, and Hall moved back
to Dayton and his wife and he started using morphine again,
and in an echo of their early marriage, Anna plan
(13:08):
to leave Oliver, but once again Just as she was
getting up the gumption to do so, she found out
she was pregnant with their second child, and she once
again decided to stay. Their second son, Clarence, was born
on March twenty three, and Hall once again made a
go at a medical practice. But this time he shifted
gears a little bit, and he decided that he would
(13:28):
focus on mineral baths as a treatment. This sounds like
it wouldn't be dangerous, but these bats were incredibly hot,
and on multiple occasions Hall left patients in them too
long and caused serious medical problems. He was still using drugs,
which is a contributor in his neglect of his patients.
He was at times found unconscious or naked in hallways
(13:49):
of the office building where he practiced. At one point,
when a dentist who also had an office in the
building asked whether one of his patients had been cured,
Haw replied, Oh, yeah, I cured him all right. He
is dead, so already he sounds like a delight. He
eventually set up a second office, so this wasn't a
(14:10):
move to a new office. He set up a second
branch of his existing office in Hamilton, Ohio. But do
not be uh misled. This was not a sign of
a growing business or success. It was, in fact quite
the contrary. He had such a bad reputation in Dayton
that he opened that second office in an effort to
make ends meet, hoping that he could take on patients
(14:31):
for his bath cures there that had not heard of
his poor treatment of others in his care. But the
second venture didn't really flourish, and Hall once again turned
to drugs as an escape. His violent outbursts once again
became commonplace, and he was admitted to the Dayton State Hospital,
which was a new name for the same asylum he
had been in before, at the request of his wife. Again.
(14:54):
He was released in December of nine and he restarted
his practice, started using and let his work fall up art.
And while he had been practicing in Hamilton's he mentioned
to a businessman who was one of his patients that
he thought killing the infirm and sick medically was actually
a kindness, and that he knew how to do so,
and that he had already ended the lives of some
(15:15):
of his elderly relatives. Then in nineteen o one, Dr
Oliver Haw vanished. Of course, he didn't really vanish off
the face of the earth. We're going to talk about
what he was doing during that time in just a
moment while he was away from all of the people
that knew him up to that point. But first we're
going to pause for a sponsor break. So it turned
(15:44):
out that when Oliver Hall ran away from Dayton, he
went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and he applied for a license
to practice medicine there, and after practicing for a few
months in Milwaukee, he moved to Spooner, Wisconsin and advertised
himself as a doctor who could cure any disease. He
also got married in Chicago, Illinois, in August of nineteen
o one, to a woman named Delia Betters. Delia, for
(16:08):
whom Oliver was a third husband, was not privy to
the information that her new groom already had a wife.
I'm surprised people could not hear how hard my eyes
rolled when he said a part in the part about
how he advertised himself as a doctor who could care
any disease. Yeah, we've we've been through those before. One
(16:28):
of Haw's patients and Spooner died from morphine poisoning. So
for the first time, and a string of suspicious events
doctor Hall was actually arrested and charged in the death.
His defense was at the overdose was accidental. He was
acquitted due to lack of evidence, but he closed his
Spooner practiced and moved on to Stirring, Wisconsin and haws
surring office uh did uncharacteristically well for him. He had
(16:52):
struggled in every other office, but this one really was
was zipping right along. He still lost some patience, but
not in a way that red flagged anybody, and his
clientele didn't seem to drop off because of it. He
was most assuredly still battling the demons of addiction, however,
and his new wife, Delia, was not tolerant of the problem.
(17:12):
Oliver promised you'd take a popular addiction treatment at the
time called the Keiley Cure, which centered on diet and
administering by chloride of gold, and Oliver vanished from Stirring
for a month allegedly to go take this cure, though
whether he actually ever went to a clinic and received
the Keiley Cure is completely unclear. After haw and Delia reunited,
(17:32):
they moved to Michigan to be closer to Delia's elderly mother,
but their time as a couple ended abruptly. After that,
Delia found out about Mrs Anna Haw, left Oliver and
went to Dayton to have him arrested for bigamy. She
assumed that when they split, he had gone back to
his Ohio home, but in fact he stayed with her
mother and cared for the older woman right up un
(17:54):
until her sudden death in June. While in Dayton, ready
to confront all of her Haw, Delia instead found the
first Mrs Haw, Anna, and when Anna found out what
was going on, she begged Delia to not go public
with the story of all of HER's second life out
of concern for their two children, and Delia was quite
(18:17):
moved by Anna's please, and so she decided to drop
the matter and just go home. Oliver returned to Ohio
after the death of Delia's mother and checked into another asylum,
this time in Lebanon, Ohio. While there, he became friends
with the woman named Jenny Tooey and her brother, Dr
Samuel s Herman. Haw and Jenny left the sanitarium together
(18:37):
so that Hawk could take over as her doctor and
help her with some trouble she seemed to be having
related to her reproductive system. Yeah the wording on any
of the records is you know, in that sort of
clouded female trouble dealist. Yeah, so we don't really know
what the issue was. Uh. She certainly did not need
Oliver Hall for a doctor though, but he did become
(19:00):
good friends with her brother, so comfortable in that friendship,
in fact, with Dr Herman, that he admitted to him
that he had killed several women, performing illegal abortions on them,
and that he planned to kill his brother Jesse at
some point. And he also made it clear to Herman
after he told him this, that he would kill him
as well should he share this information with anyone. Unfortunately,
(19:22):
Dr Herman's sister Jenny had developed a romantic attachment to
Oliver Hall. I proposed to Jenny, and in yet another
case of haus life repeating itself, he set up a
new practice in Lima, Ohio, using money Jenny had inherited
when her mother died. This death actually had happened before
the two of them had met. Yes, so he is
not potentially implicated in that death, but he was certainly
(19:44):
happy to use the inheritance from it. He was not
implicated in that death. That one Dr Herman realized that
not only was Oliver has squandering his sister's fortune, he
had also gotten her addicted to cocaine and morphine. Herman
began proceedings to have himself legally appointed as Jenny's guardian
in in the hopes of getting her away from all
(20:05):
over Hall. But the lovebirds got wind of this plan
and they ran away. They kind of did the vanishing
act that Oliver had practiced before, and this time they
eventually opened a saloon together in Cleveland, Ohio. By this point,
things are in a weird ceedy whirlwind for Haw. He
continued to inject his paramour with drugs, which she told
their business partner in the saloon she didn't want, and
(20:27):
a young woman disappeared while she was living with Jenny
and Oliver. The pair were arrested for keeping a house
of prostitution, but after being issued a fine, business continued
as usual. Haw, who was living under the name Twee
at this time and claiming that Jenny was his aunt,
was rarely sober and often found passed out in random
(20:47):
spots about the town. Yeah, this is such a hotbed
of weird at this point, Like he's with this woman romantically,
but tells everyone she's his aunt, and she's also working
as a prostitute with him, as seems, and it's a
big ugly miss um. However, to make matters even creepier,
hob began to practice medicine from the saloon, although the
(21:10):
suspicion was actually that he was purposely trying to kill
patients with drug injections in order to rob them and
to make matters even grosser. By all accounts, this establishment
was unbelievably filthy, and it's sordid reputation had become such
common knowledge that the place was finally rated. Jenny two
was in terrible shape when the authorities arrived. She was
(21:32):
wasting away, nearly unconscious and covered in needle. Marks Hall
was charged with disorderly conduct. He pled guilty and was
imprisoned for thirty days. His wailing from withdrawal while in
custody was so unbearable to everyone in the jail that
a doctor was called to give him injections of morphinite
regular intervals. Eventually, he was sent to Cleveland on the
(21:54):
city's dime and with a small amount of money, per
an agreement that he would check himself into a treatment
facility for his addiction. Do you think he did that thing,
he did not. Instead, he opened another medical practice. I
don't even I didn't even count them because there's so many.
When he got to Cleveland and he sent for Jenny
(22:15):
to join him, but he did not know that she
had actually died at that point. And after that, he
himself was in and out of hospitals for treatment. He
kind of started drifting from city to city. He would
open medical offices, but they would close almost as soon
as he set them up. Probably he was opening them
just so he could place orders for drugs. I really
(22:35):
wish there had been any effective treatment for morphine addiction. Yeah. Yeah,
they tried lots of things, but none of them were
really cures so much as I have an idea that
that was not really working. Eventually, after straying of troubles
just like those we've already talked about, he ended up
(22:56):
back in Dayton, Ohio, living with his parents. Anna, however,
back to the first wife, refused to listen to live
with him. He seemed to be in a new phase
of life and often told people as much. He spoke
openly about his addictions and how he had put all
of that behind him. When Anna filed for divorce, again
on September five. It took Oliver by surprise. Uh. He
(23:22):
confronted her and he told her he would kill her
if she didn't withdraw the filing, but she refused. He
himself attempted suicide by taking a hundred and fifty grains
of the hypnotic drug trigonal, but that did not kill him.
There's actually some debate over whether or not he knew
that it would not kill him. Not long after this,
(23:42):
Oliver found out that he had been cut out if
his parents will and that everything would go to his
brother Jesse. After a heated argument with his father, he
told a family friend that he would kill them all
if they didn't change the will to include him again.
I like how that's just his casual reaction and like
what you did, I'll kill you. That's just how he
(24:02):
goes about his life at this point. Uh. He soon
placed a large rush order for hiocene hydrobromine with a
medical supplier in Cleveland. So remember that from earlier in
the episode, he was still on file as a physician
with that medical supplier, and so the order was shipped
to Dayton, and he also purchased a larger than normal
supply of oil for the family house when the vendor
(24:24):
came to visit on his normal rounds. Not long after
midnight on November all A Raja banged on a neighbor's
door to tell them that his parents home was on fire.
On the house initially didn't appear to be in flames,
a trail of oil roughly eight inches wide ran through
the house and was indeed burning. When Oliver was asked
(24:47):
if everyone got out, he said that they had, and
then neighbors began running into the house to try to
save what they could of the possessions. So there's a
weird thing that happens here. And yes, that is weird.
I do mean that it's weird, even in the context
of all of this madness that is his life. Where
when additional neighbors arrived, as other men were running in
(25:09):
and out of the house, Hall told those new arrivals
that his family was trapped inside. And when the blaze
became too dangerous and the men who had been working
to save any of those valuables all came out, they
were questioned as to why they didn't try to save
the family, And when one of the men, Thomas Farrell,
who had been running in and out of this burning house.
(25:29):
Confronted Hall about having said everyone was out, the doctor replied,
I know that I did, but they are all in there,
and in there in this case meant the house in
a back bedroom that he was gesturing to. There was
so much confusion going on with the house on fire
that it seems like nobody really stopped to think about
(25:50):
the weirdness of his ever shifting story. The flames were
so great at this point that really no one dared
go into the burning house again. Hall was taken to
a neighbor's house and treated for a burn on his leg,
and later a doctor was sent for who treated the
blistering burns on his leg again and gave him a
pain killer that was not morphine or cocaine, specifically at
(26:12):
Haw's request. And meanwhile, this fire was still burning at
this point, it was not going to be put out.
They were waiting for it to burn through. Eventually, spectators
could see the bodies of the Haw family falling one
by one through a burned floor under the bedroom down
into the cellar below. Hall was admitted to the hospital
(26:33):
under the care of Dr Fred C. Weaver, who had
actually been a classmate of his at Miami Medical College. Again,
Hall was adamant that while he needed something for the
pain from his burns, he would not take morphine. This
is where her Holly's favorite thing to do. We are
going to Cliff hang you uh awaiting what happens next.
(26:57):
We're going to talk about the investigation of this incredibly
suspicious fire and the trial that followed, and things relating
to the deaths of the family in our next episode. Yeah,
you have some listener mail before we call it a day,
and it's not grizzly at all. I have a couple
of pieces, as I wanted to do lately. One is,
(27:22):
these are actually two comments that were made on our
Facebook page about our knitting episode, and I just wanted
to point them out because they brought new information the
light that I had not thought about or that wasn't
in the episode. One was from our listener Margaret, and
she said a newer material the knitting needles are made
out of is carbon fiber composits, just like jet fighters.
I didn't know that. I didn't either, and then I
(27:43):
wondered why I didn't super strong. Another listener commented that
sometimes depending on the fiber that you select and you're
knitting style. It can kind of create and nails on
a chalkboard situation, but that they are very smooth and
a lot of people love them. So another one is
from our listener. I'm hoping I pronounced its correctly arian uh,
(28:05):
and she commented on the same thing as someone who spins.
I'd also like to add that elasticity is impacted by
the texture of the fiber and how the fiber is spun.
It's not really important to the overall story, but I
thought that you might want to know. Find smooth fibers
like a marino tend to make for fabrics with more
drape and less stretch crinkly fibers. She herself fell in
(28:27):
love with a clute forest bfl cross breed. Sheep's wool
will give more bounce to a yarn spun at the
same ratio. It's a very cool aspect to knitting, weaving,
and crocheting, and it has driven nifty innovations in breeding
over the millennia. I presume in breeding of sheep to
create different types of wool. So that's kind of cool
information that I didn't stumble across in my research, and
(28:47):
I like it. The other thing I wanted to uh mention,
it's not so much listener mail, but we got an
awesome gift while we were in Chicago recently. Our listener
Brian DuPont, and I normally we don't do last names
just for safety, but as he is publishing under that name, YEP,
I figured it's safe. That's different. Brian DuPont, who is
an artist, gave us a bunch of comics that he's drawn,
(29:10):
including one that features Edward Binny as a character. Yeah,
there are lots of historical figures in them. This one
is a series called pacos Bill and it has Tesla
in it and other people that you have heard of
on this podcast, including Posters of Orble and Wilbur WRIGHTE.
So it's very cool. Thank you so much. Brian. I
felt bad because he had emailed us about it and
(29:31):
I it was one of those emails that I was like,
I will reply to that and then when I have
a minute to think about it, and then that minute
never materialized. Yeah. The thing I feel guilty about is that,
as we have discussed, I don't work from the Atlanta
office anymore, so sometimes when I come to visit, which
I do pretty regularly, I will get here, and my
desk is covered in listener presence, and often I'm like,
(29:55):
who do I think? And I'm like, I don't know.
I didn't remember to put their name on it, So
that's really mine. Didn't make you feel bad in front
of everyone. That's not nice. It's okay. I'm not so
organized with those things. If you were the person who
sent us beautiful metal bookmarks, drop us a note. Please?
Oh yes, you really do want to drop us a note.
Tracy has plans uh. So thank you so much to
(30:17):
Brian and to our listeners that wrote in about their
knitting knowledge. We appreciate it. If you would like to
write to us, you can do so at History Podcast
at house stuff works dot com. You can also visit
us at Facebook dot com, slash missed in history, on
Twitter at mist in History, at pinterest dot com, slash
missed in history at missed in history dot tumbler dot com,
and on Instagram at missed in history. If you would
(30:39):
like to visit our parents site house stuff Works, uh
and learn a little bit more about what we talked
about today, you can type in the word addiction into
the search bar and you will get an article called
how addiction works will maybe help make sense of this
weird cyclical nature of the life of Oliver our Haw
And it was a roller coaster once again. Wish there
had been any effective treatment for addiction to morphing when
(31:05):
I mean even today it's really hard, but there was
basically nothing when he was alive. Yeah, they would give
people sedatives and hope that they would just be calm
for the durgation of their time in whatever facility they
were in. Just really treating an addiction. It's just medicating
in a different way. Uh. So, if you would like
(31:27):
to visit us, uh, you can do that at missed
in history dot com or we have an archive of
all of the episodes that have existed ever. We have
show notes from any of the episodes that Tracy and
I have worked on together, as well as some other goodies.
So we encourage you to come and visit us at
missed in history dot com and how Stuff Work dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(31:50):
Is that how stuff Works dot com
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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