April 11, 2025 • 31 mins
Genius or dumb-dumb? That's the question that surrounds the life of Timothy Dexter, an eccentric businessman, who ended up on top despite making terrible decisions. He was also illiterate but somehow wrote a book, published in 1802.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. On today's episode of American Felth, I
don't know if I'm going to be telling you about
a guy who I despise or who I love, because
(00:29):
the guy who's the subject of today's episode has been
the subject of a lot of debate. The debate being
was this guy smart or a huge imbecile genius? Are idiot?
It was hard to tell which I admire because that's
one of my goals is people in the future they
(00:51):
look back at these American filth episodes and they ask themselves,
is Gaby Watson genius or the dumbest lady whoever existed?
But what happened in this guy's life is that he
made a lot of terrible business decisions, but they all
ended up working out against all odds, like he would
(01:17):
get himself in a pickle, but somehow end up on
top of the pickle jar. Speaking of pickles, he wrote
a book called A Pickle for the Knowing Ones. It
came out in eighteen oh two. It was an autobiographical
book about his commerce genius. And you might be wondering
(01:39):
why did he say a pickle, Well, that's what he
thought of himself as he was a Pickle. He was aged,
he was wise, he was filled with brine. All of
the rest of you are just dumb little cucumbers who
have no experience. Let me, the wizard Pickle, tell you
(02:00):
how to live. One of the big problems with this
book is that it is impossible to read. There are
so many spelling errors in each sentence that historians have
actually had to translate it into English, even though it's
(02:20):
written in English. Also, the book was missing one very
important thing, which was punctuation. Yeah, throughout the entire thirty
two page long book, there is nary a piece of
punctuation in there. Initially, he handed out his book for free,
(02:42):
but it became so popular that there ended up being
multiple reprints of it. And you might be like, why
do people buy something so awful? Well, I feel like
this guy has the same energy as Tommy Wizzo, who
made The Room, which is a movie that has been
called the worst movie that's ever been made. And I
can agree it's very bad, but it is so enjoyable.
(03:04):
This is kind of what this guy's But people still
complained about the punctuation. So in one of the reprintings
of it, what he did is on the last page.
He got printers to put a lot of periods, a
lot of commas, a lot of exclamation points, question marks,
and then he said, hey, if you want punctuation in
the book, here it is. You can put it wherever
you want. Sassy or also extremely annoying. This guy's name
(03:34):
was Timothy Dexter, and he said about himself that he
was the greatest philosopher in the Western world. And I
think he adds a lot of nuance to the American
dream because his life shows that you don't have to
work harder. You also don't have to work smarter. In fact,
you could work dumber and all of your dreams might
(03:55):
still come true. That's America for you. Cue the theme song,
This is American Filth and I'm Gabby Watts. Every week
I tell you a filthy story for American history. This
week's episode how to be Successful. According to a pickle bead,
(04:35):
Timothy Dexter was born in seventeen forty seven in the
province of Massachusetts. He was born into a very poor
Irish family and he wasn't able to finish school. He
had to drop out when he was eight and work
as a farm laborer. So unfortunately he was not able
(04:56):
to learn how to fully read and write. Which that's
another inspiring thing about his story, because we know he
wrote a book, but he didn't even know how to
read or write. Incredible inspirational. In America, you can do
anything even if you can't do anything. Isn't that great?
(05:20):
When he got older, he moved to Boston and he
started working in the leather industry. And I know some
of you American filth listeners are freaks and you might
be like, ooh, leather, that's so hot, but no, he
was mostly making leather products for shoes, not for any
of your freaky bondage stuff like whips and whatever. And
(05:44):
after he finished his apprenticeship, he opened his own business.
And how was he able to open his own business? Well,
he met a rich milf named Elizabeth Frothingham. And technically
she wasn't a milf, you know, she didn't have kids yet,
but she was hot, you know, she would fall into
that older woman category. But even hotter than being a milf.
(06:09):
She was a widow. Yeah, her husband had up and died,
so rude, but Elizabeth had a type because her dead
ass husband had also worked in leather. He'd gotten rich
doing that and left her oodles of cash money. So
(06:30):
she went back to the leather industry and found herself
another husband, this time the young, scrumptious Timothy Dexter. When
they got married, Timothy was twenty one and Elizabeth was
thirty two, and so with her dead husband's money, Timothy
was able to open a business a boy boss. Elizabeth
(06:55):
also worked. She would make ornaments, her hats and stuff
like that. You might be thinking to yourself, so far,
Timothy Dexter doesn't sound that dumb. He did something very reasonable.
He apprenticed, worked his way up the ranks, was able
to start his own business by facilitating a marriage to
(07:16):
a hot mill. Sounds pretty smart. But after this part
of his life, it does seem as if some sort
of higher being intervened in Timothy Dexter's life because he
made a lot of random and bad decisions that worked out.
(07:39):
So the American Revolution started, remember that, and Timothy's business
tanked because people didn't need fancy women's shoes at the time.
You know, they had to do war and stuff. And
at the beginning of the war, the Continental Congress had
printed currency that they called continentals. They're like, we're free,
(08:02):
we have our own bills. Only issue is that they
printed too much money, so there was rampant inflation and
the currency became worthless. The currency was so worthless that
by the end of the war there was a new
expression being like, oh, that's not worth a continental. So
(08:25):
someone was like, hey, you're not worth a continental. What
they're trying to say is you ain't shit. The thing
about Timothy Dexter is he was a sent for the
Founding Fathers, like he loved John Hancock, who had become
the governor of the state of Massachusetts, and Timothy saw
John Hancock doing something a little suspicious. John Hancock started
(08:47):
buying up all the continental currency. Timothy Dexter is like,
I have no idea why he's doing that. It's weird.
But because I like him, mister Hancock, I want to
put his cock in my hand, I'm going to do
what he's doing. So Timothy Dexter he was going around
going up to people being like, hey, can I buy
(09:09):
your worthless currency from you? And people were like, yeah, please, God,
this shit sucks. Give me money that actually has value,
not this continental currency. Okay. So he started buying up
stuff and then what happened is that when Alexander Hamilton
was trying to fix the economy after the American Revolution,
he was like, something we're gonna do is we're gonna
(09:31):
buy people's continentals from them, like not for the full price,
not a one for one like dollar to continentals. But
Timothy Dexter had so many continentals at this point, he
got a shit ton of money from the government. Historian's
estimated he made around forty seven thousand dollars like in
money back then. That's like over one point five million
(09:54):
dollars today. So Timothy Dexter, he was rich as hell,
thank you American Revolution, and he was ready to take
on the world, and take on the world he did,
getting richer and richer by accident, be right back after
(10:16):
these soothing advertisements. So Timothy Dexter, against all odds, was
filthy rich by the end of the American Revolution. And
he's like, now that I'm rich, I will be welcomed
into the upper echelons of society. I'm sure of it.
(10:37):
But unfortunately nobody wanted to be his friend. They thought
he was dumb, they thought he was annoying. He acted
very self important. So Timothy he took Elizabeth and his
two kids, a son and a daughter, out of Boston
to a new city where he could start afresh. They
(11:00):
landed in Newburyport, Massachusetts, which was an up and coming
port town. When they got there, Timothy used his new
money to build two ships to start working in international commerce.
He worked in leather before. How much harder could this be?
(11:21):
That's the obvious progression. You work as a tanner and
then you go into international shipping. Nuh. People seem suspicious
of him. They're like, who's this guy? He has no experience,
he has no legacy, he has no connections. Why does
he think he can just be a trader now? Like
(11:41):
just someone who works in commerce. That's crazy of him. Also,
people seem to hate him because he was so rich
and had made that money off of a scheme that
didn't make any sense. It's this time in his life
when you start asking the question, was this guy a
(12:04):
business or was he just the luckiest, dumbest man who
ever existed? Because all these people resented him, they didn't
like him, They thought he was a fool, so they
wanted to deceive him, trick him into making bad choices.
They're like, this guy's an illiterate, dumb dumb who was
(12:27):
all this money. He's not one of us. Let's give
him some terrible advice. For example, he had a clerk
who recommended sending warming pans to the West Indies. Now,
warming pans there are these flat, little pans that you
would put in the fire, it would get hot, and
then you would put them in your bed to warm
(12:48):
you up in the wintertime. The obvious problem here is
that the West Indies is a place that is hot.
Why would people buy warming pans. Timothy didn't seem to
think about this before. He was like, you're right, that's
a good idea. I should do that. So he sent
the ships down to the West Indies and everyone expected
(13:09):
him to fail, but they would be woefully disappointed because
Timothy's crew ended up selling every single one of the pans.
And how the heck did they do that? Because they
convinced people down there in the molasses industry that these
warring pans are actually big ladles, they could be helpful
(13:33):
in molasses production, and they're like, huh, that's actually a
really good idea. We'll buy them. So Timothy Dexter bamboozled
his bamboozlers. But that did not stop his haters. Oh no,
the clerks weren't done with him and recommended another bad idea.
(13:57):
So since the seventeenth century, there's this idiom that went
that's like carrying coal to Newcastle. Knew Castle in England
had a huge coal mining industry, So why would you
bring more coal to trade with them? Because they already
have so much of their own that would be a
fruitless task. Only a dumb dumb would bring coal to Newcastle.
(14:21):
But I guess Timothy had never heard this expression before,
so when his clerk suggested that he sell coal to Newcastle,
Timothy was like, oh my god, that's such a good idea.
I'll do that. So Timothy loaded a bunch of coal
into his boats. They arrived in Newcastle and the clerks
were like, ha ha ha. We finally fooled the fool.
(14:42):
But when the boats arrived at Newcastle, the people there
ended up buying all of the coal. What that's crazy.
That goes against the very foundation of the idiom. The
reason why is because the ships happened to arrive during
a mining strike, so they didn't have any coal. So
(15:06):
Timothy Dexter made a shit ton of money, and I
guess also kind of ruined the strike. Oh well, so
yet again Timothy was able to make huge profits off
of really bad ideas. And it didn't stop there. Timothy
(15:29):
made a killing after misunderstanding what somebody was saying to him.
What happened is that he had a guy working on
one of his ships to repair stuff, and the repairman
was like, Hey, Timothy, I need you to go get
me some stay stuff. Stays are the ropes, wires, or
(15:49):
rods on sailing vessels which served to stabilize the mast. Duh,
everybody knows that about boats, especially people who own boats
for their living, like Timothy Dexter. But in fact, it
appears Timothy Dexter had no idea what this guy was
talking about. He thought the repair guy was saying that
(16:10):
he needed to buy stays aka the stiff parts in
the body of a corset, like a corset that a
lady would wear, you know, like the shapewear of your
which why would a boat repair man tell him to
get stays of corsets He's working on a boat. That
(16:30):
would be like if a guy was trying to hang
up power lines in your neighborhood. And then was like, hey,
I need some wire, and you went and got him
like underwire from Bras. That doesn't make any sense. So
Timothy was like, well, I guess I better get all
this stuff for corsets because that's what my boat repairman
told me to do. So he went all around Massachusetts
(16:54):
and bought up as much whalebone as he possibly could,
because whalebone was a new product people were using in
corsets at the time. So instead of having materials or
his boat, which would be helpful in his whole like
trading career, he had a bunch of whalebone. What a
(17:15):
fool people thought he was. But turns out Timothy Dexter
was by accident a forward thinker in the fashion industry
because after he bought all of that whalebone, whalebone became
ubiquitous in women's corsets. Before it wasn't used all the time,
(17:36):
but after everybody was wanting it. They're like, we need
our whalebone. Especially in France. They were like, oh la lah,
I need to be skinny height now with my whale bone.
The sorry, there was a terrible accent, but the French
they wanted to be skinny. They needed their whalebone, and
so Timothy Dexter was able to sell all that whalebone
(18:00):
to traders in France and made a killing. So yeah,
he made a bunch of money because he doesn't know
how a boat works. Like a lot of salesmen, he
was also a bit of a grifter. For example, one
time he had a bunch of Bibles that he needed
to sell off. So he sent his ships back down
(18:21):
to the West Indies with the bibles, and inside each
one of the bibles there was a note that said,
if you don't purchase this Bible, you're gonna go to Hell.
And apparently that worked, all the bibles got bought. Another
thing he did was Newburyport had an issue with cats.
They had too many stray cats. They wanted to get
(18:42):
rid of them, and Timothy one day was like, Hey,
if you pick up a stray cat, come bring it
to me. I'll buy it from you. People were like,
what the hell he wants to buy the stray cats.
That's so weird. But what he did is he took
those cats, put them on his boats and sailed those
(19:04):
down to the West Indies where he sold them to
people who needed rodent control in their warehouses. God for
the people who didn't like Timothy Dexter, this must have
been so annoying. He kept accidentally making a bunch of
(19:24):
money on terrible schemes. So, guys, any business idea that
you have, it's not too dumb. In fact, make it dumber.
So at this point Timothy Dexter was super rich. He
and his family were living in this huge mansion, super gaudy,
(19:50):
super crazy. One of the craziest things about it was
the garden. He had built huge sculptures of some of
the founding fathers, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, men he esteemed.
You know, there's also a sculpture of Napoleon and one
of himself. Under the one of himself he had engraved,
(20:14):
I am the first in the East, the first in
the West, and the greatest philosopher in the Western world.
But he had a bit of an issue while he
was getting these sculptures made, because Timothy had a vision.
He was like, I want the one of Thomas Jefferson.
I want him to be holding a scroll. And the
artist was like, oh, yeah, you want it to be
(20:35):
the Declaration of Independence, because that's what Thomas Jefferson wrote.
You know, yeah, he's holding the Declaration of Independence. That
makes sense. But Timothy came out and yelled at the artist.
He was like, why are you making this a declaration
of independence? He needs to be holding the Constitution. The
sculpture was like, why he didn't write that, and Timothy
(20:55):
was like, yes he did. He wrote the Constitution, not
the Declaration of Independence, idiot, make it the constitution. So
the artist in the end made a sculpture of Thomas
Jefferson holding the Constitution, which apparently he wrote. Despite all
(21:17):
of his business success, which he attributed to his business acumen,
even though it mostly seems like it was all just
good luck, people still didn't like Timothy. He really thought
he was the best and that everybody should, you know,
respect him. Clearly he's the greatest philosopher of our time.
(21:39):
Like one time he was vacationing in New Hampshire and
the people around him started mockingly referring to him as
Lord Timothy Dexter. But Timothy heard this and he was like,
I'm not insulted. I actually like that. So when he
came back to Massachusetts, he was like, everyone referred to
me as Lord. Please, if any of the kids in
(21:59):
newbury Port called him lord. He would give them money
and then invite their parents to whine and dine at
the mansion. And he was so self important that he
actually petitioned newberry Port to make him an official of
the city. He's like, clearly, I have a lot of
genius to offer this town. He sent so many petitions
(22:22):
that the political body of newberry Port conceded. What they
ended up doing was they made him the informer of Deer.
Timothy accepted this position and stopped petitioning the government. He's like,
I'm the informer of dear. What an important position. Thank
(22:43):
you so much. I will make sure to know all
about the comings and goings of deer. But unbeknownst to Timothy,
it seems there are actually no deer in newberry Port. However,
some people did glom on to Timothy because of his wealth.
(23:04):
He would host these huge parties at his mansion, and
some people were like, yeah, the vibes of those parties,
it's kind of like a brothel, very debaucherous, very crazy.
But Timothy he seemed a bit paranoid. He was like,
people only liked me for my money, which was probably true.
(23:25):
But he came up with a plan to see if
people actually liked him and how they felt about him,
He decided to fake his own death. Another big fixture
in his garden was a huge mausoleum that he had
built for himself. Timothy loved his mausoleum, and he had
(23:49):
also gotten a coffin made out of mahogany made for
his last resting place. He liked his mausoleum and coffin
so much that he would take naps, you know, just
curled up in the mahogany. So perhaps that's where he
came up with this scheme to fake his own death
(24:10):
to see how people felt about him. So he did it.
He died, and about three hundred people showed up to
his funeral, and from the upper floors of his house,
he watched to see how everybody was acting. Toward the
(24:31):
end of the funeral, his guest got a shock. They
heard some loud sounds in the kitchen and oh my god,
there was the alive Timothy Dexter beating his wife because
he didn't think she looked sad enough. Timothy and his wife, Elizabeth,
(24:53):
had had a bad relationship for a long time. I mean,
I can't understand Timothy seems like such a reasonable person.
The relationship got so bad that Timothy refused to acknowledge
his wife's existence. He even told people that she was dead,
and then when they would see her walking around the house,
(25:14):
he'd be like, ignore her, that's just a ghost. Can
you imagine that you go over to some rich guy's
house and you see a woman and you're like, who's that?
Is that your wife? And he's like, no, that's a ghost.
Ignore it. But you're like, but I could see her.
(25:34):
It's like that was a ghost. Back to Tea. So yeah,
people still didn't really like Timothy, and they also didn't
like his children. He had a son, Samuel. He grew
up an entitled little brat, and he was so disliked
in school that he would bring cakes and try to
(25:55):
bribe his bullies, being like, hey, stop beating me up,
you can have this cake. When he was older, he
asked his dad if he could borrow a boat to
take over to Europe and try to make some trades.
He's like, Dad, you're a genius businessman. Obviously I've inherited that.
Let me go to Europe with some goods. Timothy was like, yeah, sure,
(26:17):
let's see what she got. And when sam reached Europe, well,
he gambled all of the cargo in a card game
and lost all of it. When he got back home. Obviously,
his dad was very mad at him. After that, Samuel
spent his time either squandering away his inheritance or being
(26:38):
an alcoholic, which you can actually do. At the same time,
his younger sister, Nancy also became an alcoholic. Her story
is quite tragic because Timothy and Elizabeth they were suspicious
of everybody. They're like, people are only going to want
to marry her for her money. But apparently not even
the money was enough, because when suitors would come to
(26:59):
meet her, they found her so unrefined that they didn't
want to marry her even with a bazillion dollars. I
do you know how unrefined you have to be for
people to not marry you for your money. She did
eventually marry this guy, and he sucked. He physically abused her,
and luckily she was able to get a divorce. But
after that she'd moved back home and spent a lot
(27:22):
of her time drinking alcohol. When Timothy Dexter wrote his
book A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, he spent a
lot of it complaining about his wife. He said, now
to all honest men, to pity me that I have
been in hell thirty five years in this world with
(27:44):
the ghost a woman I married and have two children
now living. Timothy Dexter hated his family. He's like, all
I've done in my life is be awesome, be a
business genius, and you guys suck. That's right. Hating your wife,
paying your family, It's not a new phenomenon. Men have
(28:07):
been doing it since the dawn of time. And Timothy Dexter, well,
he took that self victimizing attitude to the grave. He
died in eighteen oh six, just a few years after
his book came out. His son died the next year,
his wife the one after that. But his daughter lived
(28:28):
into the eighteen fifties. She had a daughter, but that
daughter didn't have any kids, and so Timothy Dexter's line
ended there. The good luck ran out quick. He wasn't
the worst, though. He donated a lot of money to
his hometown, to newbury Port. Though he mostly donated bells.
(28:53):
He was like, this place needs a bell. You need
a bell. Everyone needs a bell. If you don't have
a bell in the square of your town. Is it
even a town? No, you need a frickin' bell and
perhaps out a spy. After he died, his family and
the people of Newburyport did not lay him to rest
in his mausoleum. Oh no, that coffin he used to
(29:16):
nap in. They're like, we're not putting you there, buddy. Instead,
they buried him in the local cemetery under a very
humble gravestone. Timothy Dexter would have hated it. Every episode
of American Felt, we learn a lesson, and Timothy Dexter
(29:36):
he teaches us a lot. He shows us that the
American dream not only is it rare, and not only
will people resent you for making it, he also shows
it's a lot of dumb luck, emphasis on dumb. So
to everyone out there who was worrying about a choice
that you have to make, worrying about the future, just
(30:00):
remember Timothy Dexter. He shows that everything is random and
have no control over your life. So stop worrying, go
collect some stray cats. Why not queue the credits. American
(30:22):
Filth is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcast.
This episode was written, hosted, and produced by me Gabby Watts.
Our theme song is by Jesse Niswanger. Our executive producers
are Virginia Presscott, Elsie Crowley, and Brandon Barr. You can
follow along with a show on Instagram at American Filth Pod.
Also make sure to leave a review, leave some stars,
and send the pod to your friends, your family, your enemy,
(30:44):
and everyone you know so that they'll listen and we'll
continue the show and learn about all the filth, all
the scum, all the dumb luck that's happened in American history.
Be do betoo, bey bet doo, bet doo. Beato beat doo,
beaty beaty, beaty bit. Talk to you next time. School
(31:08):
of Humans
School of Humans. On today's episode of American Felth, I
don't know if I'm going to be telling you about
a guy who I despise or who I love, because
(00:29):
the guy who's the subject of today's episode has been
the subject of a lot of debate. The debate being
was this guy smart or a huge imbecile genius? Are idiot?
It was hard to tell which I admire because that's
one of my goals is people in the future they
(00:51):
look back at these American filth episodes and they ask themselves,
is Gaby Watson genius or the dumbest lady whoever existed?
But what happened in this guy's life is that he
made a lot of terrible business decisions, but they all
ended up working out against all odds, like he would
(01:17):
get himself in a pickle, but somehow end up on
top of the pickle jar. Speaking of pickles, he wrote
a book called A Pickle for the Knowing Ones. It
came out in eighteen oh two. It was an autobiographical
book about his commerce genius. And you might be wondering
(01:39):
why did he say a pickle, Well, that's what he
thought of himself as he was a Pickle. He was aged,
he was wise, he was filled with brine. All of
the rest of you are just dumb little cucumbers who
have no experience. Let me, the wizard Pickle, tell you
(02:00):
how to live. One of the big problems with this
book is that it is impossible to read. There are
so many spelling errors in each sentence that historians have
actually had to translate it into English, even though it's
(02:20):
written in English. Also, the book was missing one very
important thing, which was punctuation. Yeah, throughout the entire thirty
two page long book, there is nary a piece of
punctuation in there. Initially, he handed out his book for free,
(02:42):
but it became so popular that there ended up being
multiple reprints of it. And you might be like, why
do people buy something so awful? Well, I feel like
this guy has the same energy as Tommy Wizzo, who
made The Room, which is a movie that has been
called the worst movie that's ever been made. And I
can agree it's very bad, but it is so enjoyable.
(03:04):
This is kind of what this guy's But people still
complained about the punctuation. So in one of the reprintings
of it, what he did is on the last page.
He got printers to put a lot of periods, a
lot of commas, a lot of exclamation points, question marks,
and then he said, hey, if you want punctuation in
the book, here it is. You can put it wherever
you want. Sassy or also extremely annoying. This guy's name
(03:34):
was Timothy Dexter, and he said about himself that he
was the greatest philosopher in the Western world. And I
think he adds a lot of nuance to the American
dream because his life shows that you don't have to
work harder. You also don't have to work smarter. In fact,
you could work dumber and all of your dreams might
(03:55):
still come true. That's America for you. Cue the theme song,
This is American Filth and I'm Gabby Watts. Every week
I tell you a filthy story for American history. This
week's episode how to be Successful. According to a pickle bead,
(04:35):
Timothy Dexter was born in seventeen forty seven in the
province of Massachusetts. He was born into a very poor
Irish family and he wasn't able to finish school. He
had to drop out when he was eight and work
as a farm laborer. So unfortunately he was not able
(04:56):
to learn how to fully read and write. Which that's
another inspiring thing about his story, because we know he
wrote a book, but he didn't even know how to
read or write. Incredible inspirational. In America, you can do
anything even if you can't do anything. Isn't that great?
(05:20):
When he got older, he moved to Boston and he
started working in the leather industry. And I know some
of you American filth listeners are freaks and you might
be like, ooh, leather, that's so hot, but no, he
was mostly making leather products for shoes, not for any
of your freaky bondage stuff like whips and whatever. And
(05:44):
after he finished his apprenticeship, he opened his own business.
And how was he able to open his own business? Well,
he met a rich milf named Elizabeth Frothingham. And technically
she wasn't a milf, you know, she didn't have kids yet,
but she was hot, you know, she would fall into
that older woman category. But even hotter than being a milf.
(06:09):
She was a widow. Yeah, her husband had up and died,
so rude, but Elizabeth had a type because her dead
ass husband had also worked in leather. He'd gotten rich
doing that and left her oodles of cash money. So
(06:30):
she went back to the leather industry and found herself
another husband, this time the young, scrumptious Timothy Dexter. When
they got married, Timothy was twenty one and Elizabeth was
thirty two, and so with her dead husband's money, Timothy
was able to open a business a boy boss. Elizabeth
(06:55):
also worked. She would make ornaments, her hats and stuff
like that. You might be thinking to yourself, so far,
Timothy Dexter doesn't sound that dumb. He did something very reasonable.
He apprenticed, worked his way up the ranks, was able
to start his own business by facilitating a marriage to
(07:16):
a hot mill. Sounds pretty smart. But after this part
of his life, it does seem as if some sort
of higher being intervened in Timothy Dexter's life because he
made a lot of random and bad decisions that worked out.
(07:39):
So the American Revolution started, remember that, and Timothy's business
tanked because people didn't need fancy women's shoes at the time.
You know, they had to do war and stuff. And
at the beginning of the war, the Continental Congress had
printed currency that they called continentals. They're like, we're free,
(08:02):
we have our own bills. Only issue is that they
printed too much money, so there was rampant inflation and
the currency became worthless. The currency was so worthless that
by the end of the war there was a new
expression being like, oh, that's not worth a continental. So
(08:25):
someone was like, hey, you're not worth a continental. What
they're trying to say is you ain't shit. The thing
about Timothy Dexter is he was a sent for the
Founding Fathers, like he loved John Hancock, who had become
the governor of the state of Massachusetts, and Timothy saw
John Hancock doing something a little suspicious. John Hancock started
(08:47):
buying up all the continental currency. Timothy Dexter is like,
I have no idea why he's doing that. It's weird.
But because I like him, mister Hancock, I want to
put his cock in my hand, I'm going to do
what he's doing. So Timothy Dexter he was going around
going up to people being like, hey, can I buy
(09:09):
your worthless currency from you? And people were like, yeah, please, God,
this shit sucks. Give me money that actually has value,
not this continental currency. Okay. So he started buying up
stuff and then what happened is that when Alexander Hamilton
was trying to fix the economy after the American Revolution,
he was like, something we're gonna do is we're gonna
(09:31):
buy people's continentals from them, like not for the full price,
not a one for one like dollar to continentals. But
Timothy Dexter had so many continentals at this point, he
got a shit ton of money from the government. Historian's
estimated he made around forty seven thousand dollars like in
money back then. That's like over one point five million
(09:54):
dollars today. So Timothy Dexter, he was rich as hell,
thank you American Revolution, and he was ready to take
on the world, and take on the world he did,
getting richer and richer by accident, be right back after
(10:16):
these soothing advertisements. So Timothy Dexter, against all odds, was
filthy rich by the end of the American Revolution. And
he's like, now that I'm rich, I will be welcomed
into the upper echelons of society. I'm sure of it.
(10:37):
But unfortunately nobody wanted to be his friend. They thought
he was dumb, they thought he was annoying. He acted
very self important. So Timothy he took Elizabeth and his
two kids, a son and a daughter, out of Boston
to a new city where he could start afresh. They
(11:00):
landed in Newburyport, Massachusetts, which was an up and coming
port town. When they got there, Timothy used his new
money to build two ships to start working in international commerce.
He worked in leather before. How much harder could this be?
(11:21):
That's the obvious progression. You work as a tanner and
then you go into international shipping. Nuh. People seem suspicious
of him. They're like, who's this guy? He has no experience,
he has no legacy, he has no connections. Why does
he think he can just be a trader now? Like
(11:41):
just someone who works in commerce. That's crazy of him. Also,
people seem to hate him because he was so rich
and had made that money off of a scheme that
didn't make any sense. It's this time in his life
when you start asking the question, was this guy a
(12:04):
business or was he just the luckiest, dumbest man who
ever existed? Because all these people resented him, they didn't
like him, They thought he was a fool, so they
wanted to deceive him, trick him into making bad choices.
They're like, this guy's an illiterate, dumb dumb who was
(12:27):
all this money. He's not one of us. Let's give
him some terrible advice. For example, he had a clerk
who recommended sending warming pans to the West Indies. Now,
warming pans there are these flat, little pans that you
would put in the fire, it would get hot, and
then you would put them in your bed to warm
(12:48):
you up in the wintertime. The obvious problem here is
that the West Indies is a place that is hot.
Why would people buy warming pans. Timothy didn't seem to
think about this before. He was like, you're right, that's
a good idea. I should do that. So he sent
the ships down to the West Indies and everyone expected
(13:09):
him to fail, but they would be woefully disappointed because
Timothy's crew ended up selling every single one of the pans.
And how the heck did they do that? Because they
convinced people down there in the molasses industry that these
warring pans are actually big ladles, they could be helpful
(13:33):
in molasses production, and they're like, huh, that's actually a
really good idea. We'll buy them. So Timothy Dexter bamboozled
his bamboozlers. But that did not stop his haters. Oh no,
the clerks weren't done with him and recommended another bad idea.
(13:57):
So since the seventeenth century, there's this idiom that went
that's like carrying coal to Newcastle. Knew Castle in England
had a huge coal mining industry, So why would you
bring more coal to trade with them? Because they already
have so much of their own that would be a
fruitless task. Only a dumb dumb would bring coal to Newcastle.
(14:21):
But I guess Timothy had never heard this expression before,
so when his clerk suggested that he sell coal to Newcastle,
Timothy was like, oh my god, that's such a good idea.
I'll do that. So Timothy loaded a bunch of coal
into his boats. They arrived in Newcastle and the clerks
were like, ha ha ha. We finally fooled the fool.
(14:42):
But when the boats arrived at Newcastle, the people there
ended up buying all of the coal. What that's crazy.
That goes against the very foundation of the idiom. The
reason why is because the ships happened to arrive during
a mining strike, so they didn't have any coal. So
(15:06):
Timothy Dexter made a shit ton of money, and I
guess also kind of ruined the strike. Oh well, so
yet again Timothy was able to make huge profits off
of really bad ideas. And it didn't stop there. Timothy
(15:29):
made a killing after misunderstanding what somebody was saying to him.
What happened is that he had a guy working on
one of his ships to repair stuff, and the repairman
was like, Hey, Timothy, I need you to go get
me some stay stuff. Stays are the ropes, wires, or
(15:49):
rods on sailing vessels which served to stabilize the mast. Duh,
everybody knows that about boats, especially people who own boats
for their living, like Timothy Dexter. But in fact, it
appears Timothy Dexter had no idea what this guy was
talking about. He thought the repair guy was saying that
(16:10):
he needed to buy stays aka the stiff parts in
the body of a corset, like a corset that a
lady would wear, you know, like the shapewear of your
which why would a boat repair man tell him to
get stays of corsets He's working on a boat. That
(16:30):
would be like if a guy was trying to hang
up power lines in your neighborhood. And then was like, hey,
I need some wire, and you went and got him
like underwire from Bras. That doesn't make any sense. So
Timothy was like, well, I guess I better get all
this stuff for corsets because that's what my boat repairman
told me to do. So he went all around Massachusetts
(16:54):
and bought up as much whalebone as he possibly could,
because whalebone was a new product people were using in
corsets at the time. So instead of having materials or
his boat, which would be helpful in his whole like
trading career, he had a bunch of whalebone. What a
(17:15):
fool people thought he was. But turns out Timothy Dexter
was by accident a forward thinker in the fashion industry
because after he bought all of that whalebone, whalebone became
ubiquitous in women's corsets. Before it wasn't used all the time,
(17:36):
but after everybody was wanting it. They're like, we need
our whalebone. Especially in France. They were like, oh la lah,
I need to be skinny height now with my whale bone.
The sorry, there was a terrible accent, but the French
they wanted to be skinny. They needed their whalebone, and
so Timothy Dexter was able to sell all that whalebone
(18:00):
to traders in France and made a killing. So yeah,
he made a bunch of money because he doesn't know
how a boat works. Like a lot of salesmen, he
was also a bit of a grifter. For example, one
time he had a bunch of Bibles that he needed
to sell off. So he sent his ships back down
(18:21):
to the West Indies with the bibles, and inside each
one of the bibles there was a note that said,
if you don't purchase this Bible, you're gonna go to Hell.
And apparently that worked, all the bibles got bought. Another
thing he did was Newburyport had an issue with cats.
They had too many stray cats. They wanted to get
(18:42):
rid of them, and Timothy one day was like, Hey,
if you pick up a stray cat, come bring it
to me. I'll buy it from you. People were like,
what the hell he wants to buy the stray cats.
That's so weird. But what he did is he took
those cats, put them on his boats and sailed those
(19:04):
down to the West Indies where he sold them to
people who needed rodent control in their warehouses. God for
the people who didn't like Timothy Dexter, this must have
been so annoying. He kept accidentally making a bunch of
(19:24):
money on terrible schemes. So, guys, any business idea that
you have, it's not too dumb. In fact, make it dumber.
So at this point Timothy Dexter was super rich. He
and his family were living in this huge mansion, super gaudy,
(19:50):
super crazy. One of the craziest things about it was
the garden. He had built huge sculptures of some of
the founding fathers, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, men he esteemed.
You know, there's also a sculpture of Napoleon and one
of himself. Under the one of himself he had engraved,
(20:14):
I am the first in the East, the first in
the West, and the greatest philosopher in the Western world.
But he had a bit of an issue while he
was getting these sculptures made, because Timothy had a vision.
He was like, I want the one of Thomas Jefferson.
I want him to be holding a scroll. And the
artist was like, oh, yeah, you want it to be
(20:35):
the Declaration of Independence, because that's what Thomas Jefferson wrote.
You know, yeah, he's holding the Declaration of Independence. That
makes sense. But Timothy came out and yelled at the artist.
He was like, why are you making this a declaration
of independence? He needs to be holding the Constitution. The
sculpture was like, why he didn't write that, and Timothy
(20:55):
was like, yes he did. He wrote the Constitution, not
the Declaration of Independence, idiot, make it the constitution. So
the artist in the end made a sculpture of Thomas
Jefferson holding the Constitution, which apparently he wrote. Despite all
(21:17):
of his business success, which he attributed to his business acumen,
even though it mostly seems like it was all just
good luck, people still didn't like Timothy. He really thought
he was the best and that everybody should, you know,
respect him. Clearly he's the greatest philosopher of our time.
(21:39):
Like one time he was vacationing in New Hampshire and
the people around him started mockingly referring to him as
Lord Timothy Dexter. But Timothy heard this and he was like,
I'm not insulted. I actually like that. So when he
came back to Massachusetts, he was like, everyone referred to
me as Lord. Please, if any of the kids in
(21:59):
newbury Port called him lord. He would give them money
and then invite their parents to whine and dine at
the mansion. And he was so self important that he
actually petitioned newberry Port to make him an official of
the city. He's like, clearly, I have a lot of
genius to offer this town. He sent so many petitions
(22:22):
that the political body of newberry Port conceded. What they
ended up doing was they made him the informer of Deer.
Timothy accepted this position and stopped petitioning the government. He's like,
I'm the informer of dear. What an important position. Thank
(22:43):
you so much. I will make sure to know all
about the comings and goings of deer. But unbeknownst to Timothy,
it seems there are actually no deer in newberry Port. However,
some people did glom on to Timothy because of his wealth.
(23:04):
He would host these huge parties at his mansion, and
some people were like, yeah, the vibes of those parties,
it's kind of like a brothel, very debaucherous, very crazy.
But Timothy he seemed a bit paranoid. He was like,
people only liked me for my money, which was probably true.
(23:25):
But he came up with a plan to see if
people actually liked him and how they felt about him,
He decided to fake his own death. Another big fixture
in his garden was a huge mausoleum that he had
built for himself. Timothy loved his mausoleum, and he had
(23:49):
also gotten a coffin made out of mahogany made for
his last resting place. He liked his mausoleum and coffin
so much that he would take naps, you know, just
curled up in the mahogany. So perhaps that's where he
came up with this scheme to fake his own death
(24:10):
to see how people felt about him. So he did it.
He died, and about three hundred people showed up to
his funeral, and from the upper floors of his house,
he watched to see how everybody was acting. Toward the
(24:31):
end of the funeral, his guest got a shock. They
heard some loud sounds in the kitchen and oh my god,
there was the alive Timothy Dexter beating his wife because
he didn't think she looked sad enough. Timothy and his wife, Elizabeth,
(24:53):
had had a bad relationship for a long time. I mean,
I can't understand Timothy seems like such a reasonable person.
The relationship got so bad that Timothy refused to acknowledge
his wife's existence. He even told people that she was dead,
and then when they would see her walking around the house,
(25:14):
he'd be like, ignore her, that's just a ghost. Can
you imagine that you go over to some rich guy's
house and you see a woman and you're like, who's that?
Is that your wife? And he's like, no, that's a ghost.
Ignore it. But you're like, but I could see her.
(25:34):
It's like that was a ghost. Back to Tea. So yeah,
people still didn't really like Timothy, and they also didn't
like his children. He had a son, Samuel. He grew
up an entitled little brat, and he was so disliked
in school that he would bring cakes and try to
(25:55):
bribe his bullies, being like, hey, stop beating me up,
you can have this cake. When he was older, he
asked his dad if he could borrow a boat to
take over to Europe and try to make some trades.
He's like, Dad, you're a genius businessman. Obviously I've inherited that.
Let me go to Europe with some goods. Timothy was like, yeah, sure,
(26:17):
let's see what she got. And when sam reached Europe, well,
he gambled all of the cargo in a card game
and lost all of it. When he got back home. Obviously,
his dad was very mad at him. After that, Samuel
spent his time either squandering away his inheritance or being
(26:38):
an alcoholic, which you can actually do. At the same time,
his younger sister, Nancy also became an alcoholic. Her story
is quite tragic because Timothy and Elizabeth they were suspicious
of everybody. They're like, people are only going to want
to marry her for her money. But apparently not even
the money was enough, because when suitors would come to
(26:59):
meet her, they found her so unrefined that they didn't
want to marry her even with a bazillion dollars. I
do you know how unrefined you have to be for
people to not marry you for your money. She did
eventually marry this guy, and he sucked. He physically abused her,
and luckily she was able to get a divorce. But
after that she'd moved back home and spent a lot
(27:22):
of her time drinking alcohol. When Timothy Dexter wrote his
book A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, he spent a
lot of it complaining about his wife. He said, now
to all honest men, to pity me that I have
been in hell thirty five years in this world with
(27:44):
the ghost a woman I married and have two children
now living. Timothy Dexter hated his family. He's like, all
I've done in my life is be awesome, be a
business genius, and you guys suck. That's right. Hating your wife,
paying your family, It's not a new phenomenon. Men have
(28:07):
been doing it since the dawn of time. And Timothy Dexter, well,
he took that self victimizing attitude to the grave. He
died in eighteen oh six, just a few years after
his book came out. His son died the next year,
his wife the one after that. But his daughter lived
(28:28):
into the eighteen fifties. She had a daughter, but that
daughter didn't have any kids, and so Timothy Dexter's line
ended there. The good luck ran out quick. He wasn't
the worst, though. He donated a lot of money to
his hometown, to newbury Port. Though he mostly donated bells.
(28:53):
He was like, this place needs a bell. You need
a bell. Everyone needs a bell. If you don't have
a bell in the square of your town. Is it
even a town? No, you need a frickin' bell and
perhaps out a spy. After he died, his family and
the people of Newburyport did not lay him to rest
in his mausoleum. Oh no, that coffin he used to
(29:16):
nap in. They're like, we're not putting you there, buddy. Instead,
they buried him in the local cemetery under a very
humble gravestone. Timothy Dexter would have hated it. Every episode
of American Felt, we learn a lesson, and Timothy Dexter
(29:36):
he teaches us a lot. He shows us that the
American dream not only is it rare, and not only
will people resent you for making it, he also shows
it's a lot of dumb luck, emphasis on dumb. So
to everyone out there who was worrying about a choice
that you have to make, worrying about the future, just
(30:00):
remember Timothy Dexter. He shows that everything is random and
have no control over your life. So stop worrying, go
collect some stray cats. Why not queue the credits. American
(30:22):
Filth is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcast.
This episode was written, hosted, and produced by me Gabby Watts.
Our theme song is by Jesse Niswanger. Our executive producers
are Virginia Presscott, Elsie Crowley, and Brandon Barr. You can
follow along with a show on Instagram at American Filth Pod.
Also make sure to leave a review, leave some stars,
and send the pod to your friends, your family, your enemy,
(30:44):
and everyone you know so that they'll listen and we'll
continue the show and learn about all the filth, all
the scum, all the dumb luck that's happened in American history.
Be do betoo, bey bet doo, bet doo. Beato beat doo,
beaty beaty, beaty bit. Talk to you next time. School
(31:08):
of Humans
Host
Gabbie Watts
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