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- [00:03]
Alex Goldman
Hey, psst. You didn't hear this from me, but Normal Gossip is back for its eighth season. Join new host Rachel Hampton as she shares the juiciest gossip from the real world. Each episode she's joined by a special guest, and you might even recognize a couple this season from the Radiotopia universe. Normal Gossip, named one of the best podcasts of 2024 by Time magazine and Vulture, is out now on all your favorite podcast platforms. New episodes starting April Nint and this September, Normal Gossip is going on tour. For more information, check out normalgossiplive.com this episode of Hyperfixed is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates pricing coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. Hey, this is Alex. Really quick, before the show starts, I wanted to ask everyone to consider becoming a premium hyperfixed member. And I am asking, actually pretty selfishly, not because we need more money, though we do. We're all taking much lower salaries than we would in an established show because we believe in what we're doing. But the selfishness is because at this point, we have released three 14 bonus episodes. And I know a lot of people feel like bonus episodes are where podcasts just phone it in and to be sure, we're taking a lighter touch in terms of editing them. But if I'm being honest, some of my favorite episodes we've done so far are bonus episodes. And right now we have 2300 premium subscribers, give or take, which means only a small fraction of our audience is getting to hear them. So if you sign up, you will get a backlog of 14 episodes and as well as two a month going forward. And it'd mean a lot to us if you'd consider. Also, we're going to be working on some merch soon and it'll only be available to premium subscribers. And it is going to be good. I'm very excited. You can become a Premium member@hyperfixpod.com join and look, I know the world feels completely upside down right now and a lot of people are not feeling super financially secure, and I totally get that. So if you can't afford a premium membership, here's another way you can help. If you tell one of your friends to start listening to the show and you provide us with documentation, a screenshot of texts where you're bullying them, a Video of you physically wrenching their phone from their hands and downloading the podcast. I will record a cameo style phone video for you for free. I don't care if that means I have to do thousands of them. I just want this show to reach as many people as possible. So email your proof that you are bullying your friends to listen to Hyper Fixed to problems@hyperfixedpod.com along with whatever you'd like me to say in your cameo and I'll make a video for you. Okay, thanks so much. Here's the show. Hi, my name's Alex Goldman. This is Hyper Fixed on the show. Listeners write in with their problems, big and small, and I solve them, or at least I try to. And if I don't, I at least give a good reason why I can't. This week, the world's greatest episode. So, Kyle, welcome back. Yep, this is Kyle, and this is not his first rodeo. He was actually on an earlier episode of Hyperfixed, the episode about the reliability of measuring tape. And after we answered that question for him, quite successfully, I might add, Kyle wrote back to us saying there was actually this other bigger question he had and he wanted to see if we could help with it. Now that you have any problem, is your first thought like, oh, I've got this friend at the podcast that solves problems. I'm just going to call him.
- [03:54]
Kyle
You know, last time I was thinking too small, I think. And then when I walked away, I'm like, I have, like, let's ask the biggest question I have in my life. So hoping that you can help us solve that.
- [04:04]
Alex Goldman
The thing that makes Kyle's question feel so big is that it's both extremely specific and intergenerational. It involves secret societies and strange symbols. It spans over a hundred years, and it originates from a time when records aren't always easy to access. Also, there's just a lot of information to keep track of here. So with all that in mind, I think the best place to begin this story is is where it begins for Kyle. At home on the sofa watching TV with his mom.
- [04:35]
Kyle
So when I was really little, I want to say I was like 10 years old. I have this murky memory and it's of us watching a TV show. I want to say I was like.
- [04:42]
Alex Goldman
Kyle can't remember what the program was exactly, just that there was a magician on the screen. He was performing some kind of trick and Kyle was loving it. And then out of the blue, his mom turns to him and says, you.
- [04:53]
Kyle
Know, we're related to a famous magician.
- [04:56]
Alex Goldman
For 10 year old Kyle. It was like hearing he was related to Santa Claus.
- [05:00]
Kyle
It was super exciting, like, who is this person?
- [05:03]
Alex Goldman
Kyle's mom didn't really have any information about this person beyond the fact that he was a magician. But she knew he existed because back when she was a child, she found one of his possessions, an artifact, tucked inside her mother's jewelry box. It was a gold medal, the kind that gets pinned to your lapel typically in recognition of some distinguished service or military achievement. Except in this case, under the forgotten name of the forgotten ancestor, there was an unforgettable inscription.
- [05:33]
Kyle
It said, the world's greatest mind reader.
- [05:46]
Alex Goldman
After that day, the medal became kind of an object of fascination and fantasy for Kyle. At bedtime, Kyle's mom would make up stories about this magical ancestor and what he might have done to earn this thing. But to Kyle, this man and this medal, they felt as much like fairy tales as the stories being told about them. Until one day about a decade ago, Kyle's grandfather had just recently passed away, and his grandmother needed help sifting through her old things.
- [06:13]
Kyle
She told us we could go through. Look, is there anything that we really wanted? And my mom said, do you have that metal?
- [06:19]
Alex Goldman
Hidden in the basement, inside of an old envelope, they found it, the object of Kyle's childhood fantasies. The mysterious gold medal. Time and neglect had worn away some of its original splendor. The gold plating was starting to chip away. The copper underneath was turning green. But the inscription on the front was as clear as day. It said, presented to Andrew J. Seymour, March 21, 1891. The world's greatest mind reader.
- [06:54]
Kyle
And then it was like, wow, this is real. It kind of felt like I was like, actualizing a fairy tale kind of, you know, like I'd heard about it and now it's in front of me. So it felt like, important to figure out why. Like, what is it and why is it a thing?
- [07:08]
Alex Goldman
For the last five years, Kyle has been trying to answer these questions about the metal, and he's amassed an insane amount of information in the process, especially about its recipient, Andrew J. Seymour, who, it turns out, is Kyle's great, great, great grandfather. Andrew J. Seymour was a touring magician during the later Gilded Age. Kyle has found hundreds of newspaper articles about his exploits. And because Andrew was working in the heyday of yellow journalism, the stories written about him were absolutely bonkers. Kyle's found stories about Andrew using telepathy to solve crimes, and ones about how he drove blindfolded to find hidden objects around the city, scaring all the passengers who drove with him, but delighting them with his abilities as well. And then toward the end of his career, there was this absolutely epic showdown between Andrew and the state of Illinois over the right to bury himself alive.
- [08:01]
Kyle
And this article was seen in every newspaper in the United States. People followed this like it was gossip drama. It's probably what he's most famous for, trying to bury himself alive for 30 days and the city wouldn't let him. And they went back and forth, and he eventually lost for 30 days. He thought he could seal his mouth shut with, like, beeswax and put himself into a coma, basically in a box underground for 30 days.
- [08:27]
Alex Goldman
So, yeah, Kyle has found a ton of public information about Andrew J. Seymour and his magical shenanigans, but the world's greatest medal has never been mentioned in any of them. And maybe that doesn't seem weird to you, but how about this? Kyle also found a book that Andrew wrote.
- [08:43]
Kyle
It's at the Library of Congress, and it's called the World's Greatest.
- [08:48]
Alex Goldman
Get out of here.
- [08:50]
Kyle
Yeah, they have a PDF online. So I'm like, here it is. This book is going to have everything I need to know about the medal in it, right? Not one single mention of the medal in this book.
- [08:59]
Alex Goldman
In all these years of searching, Kyle hasn't found a single reference to this medal anywhere. But Kyle and his mom have some theories about where this medal came from and why there's no information about it available to the public. And the answer to both of those questions lives on the back of the medal.
- [09:16]
Kyle
On the back. I don't know if you can see. There's all these, like, little inscriptions and messages and symbols, right?
- [09:23]
Alex Goldman
Oh, yeah. It's a bit hard to make out, but it says, presented to Andrew J. Seymour by his friend Dr. Albert Merlin at Austin's Nickelodeon in Boston, Massachusetts, which, I googled it. It is a theater for accuracy, diversity, and rapidity. You excel all mind readers, living or dead, for I have met them all. And right in the center of all this writing is a symbol, or maybe I should say an amalgam of two symbols which represent two historic fraternities, the three linked chain of the Odd Fellows and the square encompass of the Freemasons.
- [10:01]
Kyle
So secret organizations storied.
- [10:03]
Alex Goldman
You know, full disclosure, I don't know a ton about secret societies, but back when I was in college, I read this book by Umberto Eko called Foucault's Pendulum. And it's this novel about conspiracies and how secret societies are actually the engine behind all almost Every significant event in recorded history. And the more I encountered secret societies in things like Dan Brown, Alan Moore's Jack the Ripper story from hell, even the Stonecutters on the Simpsons, they always wield this massive amount of influence from somewhere in the shadows. And the thing is that because these groups, the Masons and the magicians, are so famously secretive about their activities, Kyle hasn't been able to get anyone to talk to him about this medal, which is why he came to us. What would help you feel like this is solved? Do you just want to know why he got this medal?
- [10:57]
Kyle
So what I want to know is all of this research was really to find out where this. As much as it's interesting to learn about my family history, what I want to know is what this medal is. Is it a Masonic secret organization thing which possible because of the symbols? Is it a gag? Was it part of a rite of a secret magic organization? I'm not sure. And that's what I'm really hoping you can help me with because my research has really come up blank in that area of like, what is this thing? And that's kind of what I want to know is, is this an important piece of history or is it. Or is it just kind of like a fun thing that two guys traded?
- [11:30]
Alex Goldman
More than anything, Kyle wants context. He wants to know why his great, great, great grandfather was awarded this medal and whether he'd actually done anything to warrant being called the world's greatest mind reader. So that's what we're going to be chasing, and we have a lot of clues to help us do that. But just to recap what we know so far, the medal has two names on it. Andrew J. Seymour and Dr. Albert Merlin, both of whom were known to be magicians. We have these two fraternal symbols on the back belonging to the Freemasons and the Odd Fellows. And we have the date and location of the event. March 21, 1891, at Austin's Nickelodeon in Boston, Massachusetts. With all these clues at our disposal and multiple avenues to explore, we toyed with the idea of splitting the research up with one producer chasing the magic angle, the other producer chasing the Masonic angle. But as luck would have it, we found a source who embodied both in.
- [12:25]
Brent Morris
The United states from approximately 1870 to approximately 1920 is known as the golden age of fraternalism.
- [12:34]
Alex Goldman
This is Brent Morris in his professional life. He spent 25 years as a cryptologist for the NSA. And don't think for a second I haven't put his name in my back Pocket for future stories about cryptology, government secrecy, code cracking, programming, Believe me, we're going to come back to this guy. But the reason we're talking to him today is because he is both a magician and a master Mason. And when we came to talk to him about Kyle's question, the first and most important thing he wanted us to understand is that back in the Gilded Age, when Andrew was coming up in the world, as many as 40% of all men in America were estimated to belong to one or more of these secret societies.
- [13:14]
Brent Morris
At its peak, 300 fraternal organizations were created. During that 50 year period, at least that means that is six a year for 50 years. Every other month, non stop for 50 years, a new fraternal organization was created.
- [13:33]
Alex Goldman
Wow.
- [13:33]
Brent Morris
Out of this period we get the Elks, the Knights of Columbus, the Moose, the Shriners, the list goes on.
- [13:42]
Alex Goldman
And it wasn't because everyone had suddenly become interested in secret knowledge or ritualistic butt peddling, because apparently that isn't even a thing they do. But in the post Civil War era, most fraternal groups, and particularly the Odd Fellows, offered their members a social safety net that the government simply didn't provide yet.
- [14:02]
Brent Morris
You could meet a stranger who'd identify himself as a member of your fraternity and you would promise to take care of him. You'd feed him, you'd house him, you'd help him find a job. And that was an odd thing to do. So, so they started calling themselves Odd Dwellers.
- [14:16]
Alex Goldman
That's really, that's pretty great, honestly.
- [14:19]
Brent Morris
Yeah, I mean it's, it's pretty cool. And, and it provided very practical benefits. You know, essentially burial insurance, health insurance, job insurance. This is at a time where you're working in the shop and you cut your hand on Monday morning and by the next Monday you could have sepsis and be dead.
- [14:38]
Alex Goldman
Right.
- [14:39]
Brent Morris
You know, there are no antibiotics, you know, who's going to take care of the children? So the Odd Fellows at one point had retirement homes and orphanages all over the countryside.
- [14:49]
Alex Goldman
Typically one per state membership meant taking an oath that you would come to your brother's aid whenever he needed it and he would have to come to yours. Which Brent pointed out would be tremendously helpful for a traveling magician like Andrew. So if he like rolled into town and there were no hotel rooms available, he could invoke what's called the Mason word. And, and the brother would have to help him find a place to stay.
- [15:12]
Brent Morris
Now when, when you read about the Mason's word, it says that the Mason word enables a Mason to Summon another brother to come to his aid. He can summon him from the highest steeple in Christendom. Well, that's kind of cool.
- [15:27]
Alex Goldman
That is cool. And according to Brent, that's also a significant part of why these organizations have developed a reputation for being conspiratorial. For example, Brent told me that one time he was on vacation with his wife in London, and as she's unpacking, she realizes she didn't pack her medication and she needs to take it in the next 24 hours or it's going to be a problem. So the next morning, Brent calls a local friend who's a Mason.
- [15:51]
Brent Morris
And I said, we need to find a physician who can prescribe this. This medication to my wife, and we need to do it within, you know, the next eight hours. He said, let me give you a call back. So 15 minutes later, I get a call from him, and he says, my cousin is a physician. He has an opening in his office at 10:45. And your wife has an appointment.
- [16:13]
Alex Goldman
Oh, wow. Okay. I gotta say, this whole secret society thing sounds like a pretty good deal. Like, I think we would all be better off if we had an oath bound collective that helped us cut through some bureaucratic bullshit of navigating life on our own. But also, I can see how if the brother you called upon happened to be in a position of power, say, chief of police or the President of the United States, which I mention because there have been over a dozen presidents who are also Freemasons, that system of bypassing bureaucracy could easily turn into something more sinister. But maybe we can talk about that in a bonus episode. For now, we've got a medal to discuss. I'm wondering if you have any theories as to why this medal might have been awarded to Andrew Seymour.
- [16:57]
Brent Morris
A couple ideas come to mind.
- [16:58]
Alex Goldman
Okay.
- [16:59]
Brent Morris
One is it could be sort of a gag gift. Maybe he was the guy who was in charge of the summer picnic where the Odd Fellows and the Masons had had their annual fundraiser. And then he got exactly the right number of cakes to serve for dessert. There's none left over. And so they said, you must be a mind reader every year. Good old Bill knows the right thing to do. And so. So this is some type of an inside joke.
- [17:27]
Alex Goldman
To me, this theory seemed silly to the point of being unbelievable, because this medal, it wasn't like it was a participation trophy they gave to kids at the end of soccer season. It's gold plated. And I just don't know why anybody would bother doing that if it was going to be A gag gift. But Brent's second theory was actually pretty interesting. And it presented us with a possibility that we had never even considered.
- [17:49]
Brent Morris
Maybe he was a performer and he made his living performing. And either he came through town where this is where he lived, and the Odd Fellows and the Masons are sponsoring a show and they're going to give him a medal that says World's Greatest Mind Reader because he did that as an act.
- [18:06]
Alex Goldman
In other words, maybe Andrew J. Seymour wasn't a Freemason after all. According to Brent, fraternal organizations do occasionally give awards to non members, typically for acts of service or when they've contributed to one of the organization's charitable endeavors. So maybe this thing at Austin's Nickelodeon was some kind of Masonic charity event and Andrew's magical mind reading powers had been volunteered as an attraction that people paid to see. Either way, we realized we needed to settle the issue of Andrew's affiliation. The thing is, finding out if Andrew was a member of one of these fraternal organizations turned out to be a shockingly complicated endeavor. There's actually no central database where you can go to find out if someone is a member of of one of these fraternal organizations. In the US Each state had its own Grand Lodge, and each Grand Lodge manages its own database of members. For some Grand Lodges, particularly the one in New York, if you're looking for someone who joined the organization before 1920, then you need to know the specific lodge with which that person was affiliated. And in a state like Massachusetts, for example, there may be hundreds of lodges that are active at the same time. And remember, Andrew was a traveling magician. He lived in at least four states over the course of his lifetime. So we dug up some census data and we found Andrew's 1880 and 1900 federal census info. He lived in Illinois and New York respectively. But then it turned out that even if we knew Andrew's membership number and the lodge he was affiliated with, we still wouldn't be able to verify his membership. Because this is a secret society. And it doesn't matter if the person you're asking about died more than 100 years ago. Unless you're a member of that person's family, they are not letting you in on their secret. I do want to say that everyone we connected with was actually very cool about the whole thing. And we were eventually able to confirm Andrew's affiliation two ways. First, we asked Kyle if he could let the Grand Lodge of Illinois know that he was in fact a descendant of Andrew J. Seymour so that they could Forward any membership documents over to him, which they kindly did. And second, by digging up Andrew J. Seymour's obituary. Remember how Brent said that one of the appeals of membership was burial insurance? Well, when Andrew died in 1913, according to his obituary, he was buried by the Benevolent Order of the Elks in their lodge owned cemetery plot. So Andrew was part of three fraternal organizations over the course of his life. The Freemasons, the Odd Fellows, and the Elks. And you know, all of this secrecy is kind of ridiculous when they published his affiliation in the newspaper. But anyway, once we got that settled, Brent connected us with someone based in Massachusetts who specializes in Masonic artifacts. So the first thing I'd love to know is if you could start by introducing yourself and telling us what you do for a living. Sure.
- [21:05]
Hilary Anderson Stelling
My name is Hilary Anderson Stelling, and I'm the director of exhibitions and collections at the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library in Lexington, Massachusetts.
- [21:13]
Alex Goldman
The Scottish Rite Museum explores both Freemasonry and fraternalism through the lens of American history. But Hillary's curatorial specialty is in material culture, which means she studies the kind of objects that make up daily life. Things like chairs and teapots and even Masonic medals to help contextualize their significance in a way that the public can understand. We'd emailed our photos of the medal about a week before this interview, thinking if anyone can help us understand it, it would be Hillary. And now that we were finally here, we were excited to ask her, do you see this? And think like, oh, this is a Masonic. This is a Masonic mark on here. This is a Masonic medal.
- [21:53]
Hilary Anderson Stelling
No, I did not think it was a Masonic medal, and I don't think it's Masonic metal.
- [21:58]
Alex Goldman
Interesting. Why not?
- [22:00]
Hilary Anderson Stelling
Well, because there is no, there are no Masonic symbols on the front, the presentation side of that metal.
- [22:05]
Alex Goldman
And generally they would want to be loud and proud about their. About their affiliation.
- [22:13]
Hilary Anderson Stelling
Well, a Masonic metal might. Or a jewel might have a sort of a Masonic purpose. This is not a badge with a Masonic purpose.
- [22:23]
Alex Goldman
What is a Masonic purpose? Like, what would a Masonic purpose be?
- [22:27]
Hilary Anderson Stelling
Like, it might be an officer's jewel. Like a jewel that you would. A badge or jewel that you would wear to show that you are the treasurer of a lodge or the secretary of a lodge, or that you've achieved a certain honor.
- [22:37]
Alex Goldman
Yeah, well, I mean, he has achieved the honor of world's greatest mind reader.
- [22:42]
Hilary Anderson Stelling
I guess, as you said, loud and proud. That's what's loud and proud about that.
- [22:47]
Alex Goldman
What Hillary is very politely trying to communicate to me Is that if this medal had been conferred for some official Masonic purpose or even at some kind of Masonic event, the iconography would be on the front, not the back.
- [23:01]
Hilary Anderson Stelling
Also, the fact that there is the square encompasses and the links of odd fellowship together. To me, that says this is someone's personal identification. I don't know if this is a good analog, but, you know, sometimes you can see people wearing crocs and they have little.
- [23:19]
Alex Goldman
The word she's looking for here is.
- [23:20]
Hilary Anderson Stelling
Gibbets related to, I don't know, your hobby. Things that you like, colors you like. Whatever it is, it's like you're. You're wearing those and you're at the grocery store and you're sort of saying, this is part of my identity. Like, I'm a person who loves cats. Whatever.
- [23:33]
Alex Goldman
I've been a reporter for, like a hot minute now, and I've had plenty of highs and plenty of lows. But until this moment, I had never experienced the singular low of a source telling me not only is the question I've been chasing irrelevant to the story, but the cultural significance of this symbol is more or less equivalent to a cat lover gibbet.
- [23:55]
Hilary Anderson Stelling
There is a little more information on the back, and I did come across one thing that might be helpful to you.
- [24:01]
Alex Goldman
Ooh, okay. While we were busy fixating on these fraternal symbols, Hillary was focusing her research on two other pieces of information. The location and date that are listed on the medal itself. Austin's Nickelodeon in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 21, 1891. And because we were so enthralled by this fraternal iconography imbuing the metal with some kind of ritual and secretive significance, we hadn't turned our attention to the one place we have always known to say something about the past. The newspaper. Luckily for us, Hillary is much sharper than we are. And doubly lucky for us, she found something.
- [24:40]
Hilary Anderson Stelling
There are a couple of notices in the Boston Globe of Andrew J. Seymour being the chief attraction at Austin's Nickelodeon in March of 1891. Oh, he was the chief attraction at Austin's Nickelodeon on. And this is a paper from Sunday, March 15th for six days longer.
- [25:07]
Alex Goldman
Savvy listeners will notice that six days after March 15th, Jay Seymour's run at Austin's Nickelodeon will be ending is March 21, which is the date listed on the medal, presumably the day it was awarded to Andrew J. Seymour.
- [25:22]
Hilary Anderson Stelling
So I wonder if maybe this was something that was given to him as part of a performance, as sort of a presentation at the end of a run. I wonder if you dug around some more newspapers, you might be able to find some mention of it. Or if you got in touch with a theatrical collection, maybe they would have other resources.
- [25:42]
Alex Goldman
Oh, my God. We need to look this up. Look, I know this advice is pretty much reporting 101, but if I'm being honest, Kyle's research was so thorough, we hadn't thought to, like, re research his research, if that makes sense. I mean, we knew we would get around to it eventually, but it seemed like if Kyle wasn't able to find anything of note in the newspapers, then we ought to use our time wisely to pursue the paths he didn't have the same access to. But this was definitely something he'd missed. And even though we felt pretty sure that Hillary was right, the medal must have been awarded to Andrew at the end of his run. We still needed to find something to verify that. And once we found it, we'd still need to figure out why a run like this would be worthy of a gold plated medal. Hillary suggested we start focusing more of our research on Austin's Nickelodeon, which was definitely an angle we'd been neglecting. So we pulled up newspapers.com and started working our way through every single article. And when we reached the end of our digital results, we turned to the Analog archives by reaching out to the Boston Public Library and asking directly. And a few days later, I got a message from Hyperfix producer Amor Yates.
- [26:57]
Amor Yates
Hey, Alex, I'm on a walk right now, but I just heard back from the Boston Public Library. Do you want to jump on a huddle with me when I get back.
- [27:17]
Alex Goldman
After the break? We find out if this is going to be the world's greatest episode or the world's greatest letdown. Or maybe a little bit of both. Man, we are really setting you guys up to be disappointed. Come on, you know we figured it out. This is hyper fix. We fix everything. Kind of like we've fixed a lot of stuff. Just stick. Just listen after the break. It'll be good. Okay.
- [27:49]
Hilary Anderson Stelling
You must remember, this is the podcast dedicated to stories from the secret and forgotten histories of 20th century Hollywood. Stories of sex, murder, institutional racism, bad men, sad women, fascist gossip columnists, and much more. Our new season is called the Old Man Is Still Alive, and it's about directors like Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford.
- [28:08]
Alex Goldman
Who got started in the silent era.
- [28:09]
Hilary Anderson Stelling
But we're still making movies in the psychedelic 60s. Follow and listen to youo Must Remember this on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [28:22]
Alex Goldman
This episode of Hyperfixed is brought to you by blueland. So I don't know if I've complained about this on the air before, but my town picks up paper recycling and plastic recycling on alternate weeks, which inevitably means that I have piles and piles of recycling by my back door at all times that I'm constantly tripping over, which drives me insane, especially when I forget to take it out to the curb the night before, which definitely happens probably once a month. That's why I've been appreciating blueland, because blueland is on a mission to eliminate single use plastic containers. Not only are all Blueland products like hand soap, toilet bowl cleaner, laundry tablets, dishwasher tablets certified safe by the epa, they also give you these little reusable metal tins to put all of your refills in. And their packaging is all paper and very low profile, meaning you are wasting less and the products you're giving your family are safe. And while it won't eliminate the recycling nightmare at my house, it will make it significantly more manageable. Blueland has a special offer for listeners right now. Get 15% off your first order by going to blueland.com hyperfixed. You won't want to miss this. Blueland.com hyperfixed for 15% off. That's blueland.com hyperfixed to get 15% off this episode of Hyperfixed is brought to you by ExpressVPN. Going online without ExpressVPN is like not having a case for your phone. Most of the time you'll probably be fine, but I can speak from experience when I say that all it takes is one drop and you will wish that you had shelled out the extra couple bucks to get a case. Every time you connect to an unencrypted network in CAFES, hotels, airports, etc. Your online data is not secure. Any hacker on the same network can gain access to and steal your personal data, stuff like passwords and bank logins. When I was a young Internet punk, I used to do a thing called war driving, where I would drive around the neighborhood trying to find unsecured wifi signals to see what kind of access I could get. ExpressVPN will help you thwart other less benign young Alex Goldman type threats. It's super easy. It's super secure. It works on all your devices. It's rated number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and the Verge. You can't go wrong with ExpressVPN. So what are you waiting for? Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com hyperfixed that's E X P R E S s v p n.com hyperfixed to find out how you can get 4 extra months free expressvpn.com hyperfixed welcome back to the show. Before the break, we got confirmation that even though Andrew J. Seymour was a freemason, the medal that Kyle found at his grandparents house had no masonic significance. So we redirected our focus toward Austin's Nickelodeon and any mention of Andrew J. Seymour in newspaper articles up until he died in 1913. But when we'd read everything we could read, we took it to the best place on earth. The library. Hyperfix producer Amor Yates asked the Boston Public Library if they had anything in their archives about Andrew J. Seymour or Austin's Nickelodeon and more importantly, the metal. And a couple days later, I jumped on a zoom call with Amor.
- [31:53]
Amor Yates
Hey, Alex.
- [31:54]
Alex Goldman
Hey, Amor. What's going on?
- [31:56]
Amor Yates
Okay, so I heard back from the Boston Public Library, specifically from Diane Parks, their local history specialist, and she found something. I'm gonna upload the link to Slack right now. Okay, it's uploading. This clip you're opening up is from the Boston Journal. Let me know when you have it open.
- [32:23]
Alex Goldman
Okay, here we go. I can't wait. Professor Andrew J. Seymour, the mind reader who has been giving exhibitions in Boston the past fortnight and on Tuesday evening last, gave some of his best tests. The entertainment of the members of the press club, was presented with a handsome gold medal Saturday evening at the close of his engagement. The Medal, valued at $75, is the gift of Dr. Albert Merlin. The presentation was made by professor Wendell H. Ordway, who was Barnum's lecturer in London and will be with the great showman again this season.
- [32:58]
Amor Yates
Oh.
- [32:58]
Alex Goldman
Oh my. Oh my God. You foul. I am so impressed. The medal is in the fucking newspaper.
- [33:08]
Amor Yates
I mean, honestly. All kudos to Diane Parks at the Boston Public Library. She told me that this was published in the local miscellaneous section on March 24, 1891, which is three days after Andrew's medal, which is how we know that this medal they're talking about is Kyle's medal.
- [33:27]
Alex Goldman
Okay, so this is incredible. We know when the. We know conclusively when the medal was awarded. We have some context for that. But did you find anything explaining why this medal was awarded at the end of this particular run?
- [33:40]
Amor Yates
Not initially, but. Okay, so you know how I'd been focusing all of my attention on articles about Andrew J. Seymour? Well, when I ran out of those, I decided to pull back and try focusing on the world in which this thing was awarded. And so I'm going through this local miscellaneous article, searching the other names and entities that are mentioned. And I'm reading about the Boston Press Club. I'm reading about Wendell H. Ordway, and I'm also starting to dig into this guy, Dr. Albert Merlin, who we know is the person who gave Andrew the medal.
- [34:14]
Alex Goldman
Right, because it's on the back of the medal, it says, presented by Dr. Albert Merlin, which I thought was like a pretty on the nose dope name for a guy who practices magic.
- [34:23]
Amor Yates
Yeah, well, it's fake.
- [34:26]
Alex Goldman
Of course. That makes perfect sense.
- [34:28]
Amor Yates
Yeah, his real name was Martin Mahoney, and you'll be shocked to hear this, but turns out he was also not a doctor. Apparently, he added the doctor to his name because he claimed to have the power to heal ailments.
- [34:40]
Alex Goldman
That seems like it could probably get him in trouble, but.
- [34:42]
Amor Yates
Okay, okay, but the reason I'm telling you all of this is because this guy, Dr. Albert Merlin, he turned out to be the gateway to answering Kyle's question. So while I'm reading all of this stuff about Mr. Merlin, I find out that he's married to this woman who also has magical abilities. Her stage name was Margaret Hayden, and she was known for her second sight act, which is seeing the future.
- [35:08]
Alex Goldman
Right. Okay.
- [35:09]
Amor Yates
For whatever reason, and I have to pause and say that the fact that this unfolded this way is such a testament to the power of uncontained curiosity. But I started to wonder if Margaret Hayden and Andrew J. Seymour ever crossed paths because they sort of have similar vibes.
- [35:26]
Alex Goldman
Right?
- [35:26]
Amor Yates
And if I'm being honest, I kind of wondered if they were friends. So I went back to the clip that Hillary found and checked this out. Okay, so up at the top of the article, we have our mention of Andrew J.C. moore. We already know this. He's the chief point of interest here. Yada, yada, yada. Now, when I scroll down to the very bottom of the article, it lists the other acts that were performing. There's a Japanese wire walker, whatever that is, some couple with exceptionally beautiful tattoos. And at the very bottom of the list, it's our girl, Margaret Hayden.
- [36:01]
Alex Goldman
Okay, so what does that tell us?
- [36:04]
Amor Yates
Right? I mean, all this establishes is that Margaret Hayden was also performing at Austin's Nickelodeon around the same time as Andrew J. Seymour. But that fact brought me to this article. Okay, Alex, can you go ahead and read this? I just linked it here for you.
- [36:19]
Alex Goldman
Yes, Margaret Hayden, who has delighted with her second sight act, was given a handsome medal at Austin's nickelodeon last evening. Okay. Policeman P.J. kenny was presented with a gold watch and chain. And Wendell H. Ordway, the lecturer for many years with the Barnum show, was given a solid gold medal. So they're just like, this particular industry is like lousy with metals, where they just giving them away. Gold isn't cheap, you know, I mean.
- [36:45]
Amor Yates
It is the Gilded Age. I was telling Emma about this and I said, they're handing out medals like they're going out of style. And she said, actually, it sounds like that's exactly what's happening, because just 15 days after Andrew was given this medal, this venue, Austin's Nickelodeon, it closed. And when the owner of this place, Colonel William Austin, was asked about why, the answer he gave was this. And I'm going to read a clip from this article.
- [37:14]
Alex Goldman
Okay.
- [37:15]
Amor Yates
Last fall, Mr. Haynes and myself. Mr. Haynes is the co owner. Mr. Haynes and myself realized that the days of the freaks were numbered. As a paying attraction, they may be good for a few years yet, but the public want novelty.
- [37:28]
Alex Goldman
Okay, so maybe it's because he calls his axe freaks, but it doesn't seem like people want to watch them so much anymore. Okay.
- [37:36]
Amor Yates
And it gets worse. He says, I bid the freaks goodbye and I wish them luck, but they have lost their usefulness so far as I'm concerned.
- [37:45]
Alex Goldman
Oh, damn. It really does sound like that. It was going out of style.
- [37:50]
Amor Yates
Literally. Right after this, the venue is converted to an opera palace or like an upscale theater establishment. And Colonel Austin is not the only one making this kind of move. Because right around the Corner in like 1894, the first silent movies are going to start coming out. And this whole world of live variety shows where acts like Andrew and Margaret and that tattooed couple and the Japanese wire walkers, those people had been not famous famous, but like, definitely talk of the town type of people. They were going to lose their audiences to this new form of entertainment, cinema.
- [38:23]
Alex Goldman
Okay, so the answer to Kyle's question about whether or not this medal is historically significant is like, kinda. Yeah, like in some way they were like, obviously giving them out to a lot of people. But it is also a relic from the beginning of the end of this era where people would go see novelty performers. And that was the pop culture that people consumed.
- [38:49]
Amor Yates
Yeah. And these performers still existed. Like vaudeville performances were still active for another 30 years or so. But in this moment, it seems like these performers are looking into the horizon and seeing their competition, which we know is going to consume the culture.
- [39:05]
Kyle
That is incredible. That is amazing.
- [39:09]
Alex Goldman
When we circled back with Kyle a few days later, he was so Stoked to finally have the answer to this question he has been chewing on since he was a kid. He told us that he had been so focused on Andrew himself, he hadn't even thought to investigate the world that Andrew was living in at the time this medal was awarded. But once we told him about the context, it recolored everything that Kyle thought he knew about the rest of Andrew's life.
- [39:33]
Kyle
Also, what's interesting, and I'm sure Amor and. And Alex, if you guys have been doing research, you probably saw all the buried alive articles that there's like tens of thousands of out there. Like, it feels like he's at the end of something. He sees his expiration coming, and then he tries this big stunt to bury himself alive in Illinois, and he kind of goes off to deep end. Like, he. He goes from a very together vaudeville act. He looks like he's very professional, his ads are very nice. And then all of a sudden, he's kind of doing some crazy stuff. And I think that gives merit to your story of, like, he's at the tail end of something. He sees it coming. There's like a lot of, like, celebrations and then what. So I think this is very. It's fascinating. This whole idea is fascinating to me.
- [40:12]
Alex Goldman
In addition to the metal's historical value, we also discovered that the medal had a pretty significant material value as well. According to one of the articles and more found in the Boston Public Library, Kyle's medal was valued at $75. And in 1891, according to a variety of currency calculators, that is roughly equivalent to about $2,000 today.
- [40:33]
Amor Yates
I won't take it personally if you still feel like it isn't. Does this feel solved for you?
- [40:39]
Kyle
Yes. I mean, for. For me, it feels solved. There's a little bit of mystery that lives with me, but I love that we know why it was made and what it was given for. We know that they were playing up this act at the end of. At the end of that era, basically. And I think that that's a really cool story.
- [40:57]
Alex Goldman
This episode of Hyperfix was produced and edited by Amor Yates, Emma Cortland and Sari Safer Sukanek. It was hosted by me, Alex Golden. Fact checking by Sari Sofer Sukanek. The music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder and me. The show was engineered by Tony Williams. This episode would not have been possible without the efforts of the following people. Diane Parks at the Boston Public Library, Zoe Hill, Jane Crone at the Grand Lodge of Illinois. John Overholt, Dean Carnegie and Thomas Yueh. You can get bonus episodes. Join our Discord and much more@hyperfixpod.com join and this is a great week to become a premium member because we are going to have a ton of primary documents about Andrew J. Seymour, the Metal, Robert Merlin, all these crazy cats on our website. Again, that's Hyperfix pod.com join Hyperfixed is a proud member of the of Radiotopia from prx, a network of independent, creator owned, listener supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at Radiotopia fm. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you soon. Radiotopia.
- [42:07]
Hilary Anderson Stelling
From PRX.