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Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts. This episode is brought to you by NBA on Prime. This Tuesday at 8:30 Eastern, it's the Emirates NBA cup championship game on Prime. This year's quest for the cup has been building to this the championship game live from Las Vegas. Not a Prime member sign up for a 30 day free trial to get started today. The Emirates NBA cup championship game this Tuesday at 8:30 Eastern only on Prime. Restrictions apply. See Amazon.com amazonprime for details. Hello and welcome to My Victorian Nightmare. I'm your host, Genevieve Mannion, and I'm here to talk about mysterious deaths, morbid fascinations, disturbing stories, and otherwise spooky events from the Victorian era. Because to me there's just something especially intriguing, creepy and oddly comforting about horror and mayhem from the 19th century. So listener discretion is advised. Hello friends and welcome to this, my 73rd episode. I hope that you had a cozy week. I had my coven over for Swedish meatballs and early winter solstice festivities. I made a teeny tiny little yule log out of a branch. I tied it with like little pine needles and a little pine cone and berries and other yummy smelling things. And you may not be aware, but a fun pagan tradition is to write some kind of misfortune that happened over the past year and burn it with the yule log to leave it in the past. I wrote down all of the cigarettes that I have not smoked. I quit a couple of years ago and I have regretted every single one that I have not smoked. If I die of something stupider than a smoking related illness, I am going to be furious. Okay, let us have a little haunted housekeeping before we get to the sheer madness and corpse related practical jokes of today's episode. Thank you all so much for rating the show on Spotify and Apple podcasts. Thank you for your lovely, lovely comments and thank you everyone who has subscribed to the podcast. Thank you Rebecca. Thank you Harry, Billy, Emma, Janella, Ashley and Corinne. These are new members. You guys and everyone who subscribes are the reason why I can continue to create this show, to listen ad free and to receive extra witchy and bloody true crimey content. Either click the link in the show description or go to myvictorianightmare.com to find out more about the fan coven. Okay guys, we are halfway through December, it has not killed us yet, and I owe a great deal of what's left of my sanity to Lumi Gummies. Consistent with mellow and super delicious, Lumigummies are specifically designed to make you feel good, not stoned. Whether you are looking for an end of day de stressor, a midday mood boost or help getting the best sleep ever, Lumi Gummies has a strain that's right for you. I personally love their Indica dominant gummies to help me sleep. They help me relax with a terrible movie at the end of the day. Those are the Plum Berry Runts ones, Granddaddy Sour Og and my favorite Cotton candy Kush Gummies. But if you want a little pepper in your step, you may want to try their Sativa or hybrid strains like their watermelon Sorbet or Orange cream cookies ones. Now I've said it before, I hate being high. It is not fun for me. I start by being terrified that I'm going to have a panic attack and then I have a panic attack. These don't do that to me. They are designed to just make you feel good, feel relaxed or feel energized, not blitzed. And then in my case, terrified. I also appreciate that they don't make me feel like groggy the next day when I take them to help me sleep. Lumi Gummies are available nationwide. Go to lumigummies.com that's L U M I gummies.com and use code victorian for 30% off your order. Again, that's L U M I Gummies.com code victorian lumigummies.com code victorian okay, for you today, dear Listener, we will have as mentioned corpse related practical jokes, jealousy and suicide, an insane pioneer pistol murderess, a religious maniac, family annihilation, men bitten by mad dogs, and the madcap frolic of a cross dressing widow in New York City. All courtesy of the Illustrated Police News, Law Courts and Record, our favorite Maniac Murderess Corpse Obsessed publication from the 1800s. But first let us have our first segment with their own eyes where I share with you the personal haunting accounts of petrified Victorians. And today we have the last installment of a budget of ghost stories told in the Cheshire observer that we have been enjoying lo these past three or Four weeks. This one is positively bone chilling. And it is called the crikeith ghost, and it reads, cricketh was at one time celebrated for its ghost. The crikeeth ghost was a name of fear to the whole neighborhood, often appearing after dark, wandering about the roads and fields. Upon one occasion, a man was returning home through crikeath in his gig with a companion. It was dusk, but not too dark for the driver to see. As they approached a bend in the road, a person was standing in the midst of the way. A ghastly white, glowing figure with mouth agape, arms extended downward, wrists upturned with claw like fingers. The travelers drove up, turned out of their course to avoid running down the figure, and as he passed, the driver lightly struck it with his whip. No sooner had he done so than instinctively, he felt he had made a mistake. Time for repentance, however, was not given. For in a second after the rash stroke, the harness dropped from the horse and the travelers were pitched from the gig into the road. Then they knew that they had met and ill treated the cricketh ghost. The horse, released from his harness, galloped home, alarming its owner's family. The servant was at once sent along the road to render assistance, who shortly met his master coming on foot. The servant, finding that the gig was left behind, volunteered. Volunteered to run back and fetch another horse to bring it home. But the alarmed employer replied, no, leave it till morning, and for a time refused to give any account of what had happened. The villagers continue to live in fear of the crikeith ghost walking the earth. End quote. Okay, when I'm getting the show together, I spend about a day getting my articles organized, doing the research, finding the sources, and then the next day, I reread everything and flesh out the details into a nice, tidy little shell. But here's the thing. I hadn't read that full ghost story until yesterday when I was getting everything together. And I got, I'm gonna say, three hours of sleep last night because I couldn't get the image of that ghost with its mouth open, wrists turned up, and fingers claw like out of my head. And I was too afraid to sleep. I had to get up. I turned on all of my lights, and I spent a couple of hours with my Christmas tree to keep myself from being screaming at every little noise that I heard in my apartment. I do this to myself. I have no one else to blame. Now, won't you follow me into the seance room where I share with you the goings on in the spiritualist society of the 1800s? I have a pretty special article for you today from the spiritualist newspaper from 1869. I usually have a very open mind, as you know, to stories about mediums and seances from this era. Even though there were many frauds and people who took advantage of people in this industry left and right. I like to keep an open mind because I find a lot of it beautiful regardless, people finding peace in the ideas that their family members are somewhere and they can still speak to and connect with them, etc. But this next story about a particular kind of medium that I've never heard of before is so upsetting and hilarious. This article is called what is the Use of Spiritualism? And it reads Friday, May 22nd of the present year, 1869 will forever remain one of the most memorable days of my life. It was on that day, when the sun was shining brightly and bathing the world with its light and heat, that I arrived at Newport, Rhode island, and first came under the healing powers of Dr. J. A. Newton. I had heard of him through the Spiritualist magazine, Mr. William Howitt, and Mr. Coleman, and was assured that if I placed myself in his hands, I should be speedily and radically cured of the neuralgic affection in my head for which I had been suffering for 11 years. It was not until I had become a little more familiar with some of the facts and phenomena of modern spiritualism that I felt a quiet faith in the power of Dr. Newton to remove my disease. The moment Dr. Newton and I met, I found in his face a simple, kindly manner, a human image of the outside sunshine, and but a few words had been spoken when I was convinced that the errand upon which I had come would be fulfilled. I was about to give him the history in detail of my affliction when he stopped me by saying that after I had been cured, he would be very glad to listen to anything I might wish to say, but that the cure itself was the first matter to be attended to. I was made to sit upon a movable seat similar to a music store, the doctor standing behind me and placing my head against his chest with his hands crossed upon my forehead. He then moved my head in various directions until all at once a clicking noise was heard at the top of my spine. The doctor immediately cried out, that noise is the sign that you will be cured. The dark disturbance of the nerve current has been removed. He then faced me and looked, lifting both his hands toward heaven. He looked me hard in the face, saying, look at me. In the name of God, our Heavenly Father, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, the great healer, I bid this disease depart from this dear suffering brother and nevermore afflict him. It is gone forever. My brother, you are cured. Rise up on your feet and be cured. At that instant I felt a strong current of new life flowing into and through every part of my body, and I was conscious that I had entered upon an altogether new phase of existence. From that day to the present hour, July 13th, I have been entirely free from my pain and have felt as well, I should think, as it is possible for any human being to feel. Physically speaking, I am a new creature. Old things have passed away and all things have become new. It is only only one of thousands so far as Dr. Newton is concerned. He tells me that he has cured something like a quarter of a million people. End quote. Oh darling. I wonder how many other chiropractor mediums existed in this era, adjusting the dark spirits out of spinal columns and such. Incidentally, chiropractic healthcare wasn't officially developed until 1895 by a man named Daniel David Palmer. He performed an adjustment on a deaf janitor named Harvey Lillard and restored his hearing. Chiropractic manipulation has actually existed for centuries in different parts of the world, but Dr. Palmer formalized it into a distinct health profession in the west in 1895. Also, the word chiropractic comes from Greek words meaning done by hand. Just a fun fact there. I wonder if the gentleman in that article lived to see the dawn of Western chiropractic therapy, and I wish I knew what he had to say about it if he did. Okay, we are off to the races with this first article that has a simply fabulous illustration on the Instagram link in the show. Notes this article is called A Ghastly Practical Joke. A medical student locked up in a dissecting room with two corpses and it reads Medical students are noted for their love of rough practical jokes. Some of them in an eastern city once placed in a bag a number of human hands taken from subjects of dissection, which they left in a lonely place, alarming the whole neighborhood by creating the belief that some horrible and mysterious murder had been perpetrated there. On another occasion, a number of them in a college one night frightened a gawky boy almost out of his senses by thrusting the ghastly dissevered hand of a subject in his face and grimly asking him if he would like to see a corpse. These jokes, however rough as they were, were mild compared with one which was perpetrated in the Medical College in San Francisco. One of the students attended a lecture in a state which indicated a much closer worship of the rosy than of his books. That means booze. When the doctors had dispersed, the students solemnly concluded to show their disapprobation of the intemperance in general and of their erring brother in particular. Four brawny students took the sleeping inebriate and carried him into the dissecting room. Upon the long table of which, devoted to the deposit of stiffs they slowly and sadly laid him down to take his rest. The corpse of an aged gentleman and of a brawny one were tucked up alongside him to each of which the inebriate was tied that there might be a proper bond of brotherhood between them. God. The door of the dissecting room was then carefully locked and the students retired with the consciousness of duty well performed. Even a drunken sleep, however long as it generally is like the traditional lane, must have an end. And so, about 11pM not quite at witching hour but unpleasantly near it, the sleeper's senses began to revisit the earth. He gradually came to and after many yawns, the hardness of his bed and want of a pillow at last struck him and he rose on his elbow to see where he was. The half grown moon was shining with a strange uncertain and ghost like light through the room. The inebriate rubbed his eyes and stared, but as he could remember nothing except that he had been drunk when he lost his consciousness he could not make out where he was. Finally he jumped up, which movement dragged his sleeping partners with a heavy thud on the floor after him. He was a man of iron nerve or he would have been frightened almost entirely to insanity. But as it was, he stood not upon the order of his going but went at once for the door, dragging his new friends at his heels. The door was locked and on it he pounded with knuckle and heel, furiously yelling for help the while savagely. The porter in the barn was finally startled from his peaceful slumbers and was far more frightened than the inmate of the dissecting room. When he became convinced that the other uproar was in the room of the corpses he thought he had awoken with an unearthly life and were to visit vengeance on him for the liberties taken with their late earthly tenements. Half naked and with the speed of Tam o' shanter, with the witches at his heels, he rushed up Stockton street, pausing not until he had summoned a small and hurriedly recruited army of stray nightwalkers real quick. I don't know if by streetwalkers that means sex workers but I love the idea of this guy appealing revealing to a group of sex workers who all agreed to come help him find out if there was a reanimated body in the school morgue. It just sits right with me. I continue with these he made a nervous return to the college and cautiously, with well lighted steps, he led the way to the dissecting room where the knocking and infernal noise was still heard. A few moments sufficed to explain the situation and to bring forth torrents of curses on him, whom it was, but too truthfully suspected had put the students up to the rascally joke as an illustration of perseverance and wicked course. It may be stated that after the imprisoned student finally stopped cursing, he immediately resolved not allowed to drink no more, but that it was his duty to stand drinks for the crowd, which relieved him from his horrid company. The drinks were accordingly taken and the crowd separated. End quote I've mentioned before just how important it is that despite the many troubles, injustices, terrors we face in the modern era, we must take note of progress where it can be found. And I'll say this, students tying their classmates to dead bodies as practical jokes I'm fairly certain is a thing of the past. We don't really need to worry about events like this taking place anymore. Take solace, is what I'm trying to say. I don't think anybody needs to worry about becoming the butt of a corpse Related Practical Joke in our lifetime, at least now it is highly unlikely this episode is brought to you by ebay. Before all the algorithm fed blah and the endless sea of dupes, shopping used to feel more fun. Find that feeling again on ebay. It's not mindless scrolling, it's a fashion pursuit. And when you score that rare Adidas Collab or the Dior saddlebag you've been manifesting, it's a rush. Ebay has millions of pre loved finds from hundreds of brands backed by authenticity guarantee. Ebay Things People Love okay, this next one is pretty terrible for a few reasons. It is called a termagant Hangs herself in Brooklyn, New York. And it reads Honora Byrne, aged 35, hanged herself at Quincy street and Yates Avenue, Brooklyn, Tuesday afternoon the 12th. She was a dissipated and quarrelsome woman and often fought with her husband. On Tuesday, Thomas Byrne, her husband, who works in a dry goods store on Franklin Street, New York, was compelled to go home unexpectedly as his foot was so sore that he could not work when he entered the house, Mrs. Byrne said, so you have come to watch me have she tore around in a furious rage, smashed the looking glass and most of the crockery, and finally drove Mr. Birne out of the house with a hatchet. When he was gone, Honora took a piece of muslin, tied it around her neck, and then, by standing on a chair, fastened it to a self supporter in the closet. She then stepped from the chair and was strangled. When Thomas thought the storm had subsided, he ventured in and found the his wife hanging in the closet. He felt her pulse to see if she was dead, then coolly walked into the next house and told Mr. Fay, who rushed in and cut the body down. The woman had not been long dead. Mr. Burns said the reason why he did not cut his wife down was that he supposed that she was dead. And he wanted someone to see her there so that it would not be supposed that he had choked her to death. Three children, the eldest only 12 years old, saw their mother cut down. Like I said, horrible. For a number of reasons. All of this is clearly just the word of this husband and written in a way that makes it seem like she was just an indignant, angry woman and disliked her husband so much that she hanged herself. A termagant, by the way, meant a harsh, overbearing woman. Women don't hang themselves because they're angry at their husbands. I dug deeper into this story and found more details. Her husband had been cheating on her with numerous women and on the night of this event. And this was according to him. He spoke to her about her shortcomings before she stormed out of the house to buy liquor. She was also drinking heavily due to a depression about her husband's infidelity. One of the children even admitted that the father brought one of his mistresses to the house while she was away. But she returned to find them and screamed. And that's when she began drinking heavily. So these details paint a very different picture. Again, it's hard to say where some of those details are coming from. Did the husband admit to be cheating on his wife to reporters? Did the children give those details? Regardless, these other articles paint a very different, very sad, bad story for this poor woman. Oh, honey, that breaks my heart. The way infidelity was and for some is still considered to be nothing but like an indiscretion and not something that tears a partner apart, violates a sacred trust. I just find it sickening personally. Okay, let's move on to an insane pioneer pistol murderess, shall we? This. This article is called the Pioneer Pistol Murderess Insane. And it reads, Ms. Mary Harris, the young Indiana lady who shot and killed Burroughs in the Treasury Department building for breach of promise and was acquitted on the ground of emotional insanity is now actually insane. She was the pioneer female pistol shootist. End quote. That's the whole article. Okay. Luckily, I found many more details here. The full name of the man that she shot was Adoniram Burrows. She was a poor woman living not in Indiana, but Iowa. This man courted Mary, and he said that he intended to marry her, but he moved to Chicago. He continued to write to her and continued to express that he was interested in marrying her. One day, she came to visit him unannounced in Chicago and found that he had secretly married another woman. She sued him for lying about wishing to marry her, which was a crime in these days. Promising marriage to a young lady and then stringing her along meant that she would potentially turn down other suitors. She would, dare I say, age, making her less appealing as a wife to other men, which would endanger her financially. While the suit was being pursued, she began to act very erratically. Crying constantly, tearing at her clothes, sleeping, sleeping on the floor. He moved from Chicago and didn't tell her where he was going. But she eventually traced him to his new job as a clerk in the U. S. Treasury department in Washington, D.C. where she shot him twice in the back and killed him. And this story gets crazier. Her defense team tried to get her off on an insanity plea, but not just insanity, but menstrual insanity. They claimed that she had an intense, intensely painful menstrual disorder called dysmenorrhea, and this caused her to have temporary insanity. And this was one of the first US Murder trials where expert medical testimony was used to support a plea of temporary insanity in a woman. And get this, she was found not guilty on these grounds and was released because it was temporary insanity. She wasn't sent to an insane asylum. It if she was found guilty of just insanity, she would have been sent to an asylum for the criminally insane. However, two years later, it appears that she had some kind of mental health crisis and was admitted to an asylum, but not permanently. Details are murky, but it appears that she was released in the 1880s and potentially married one of her lawyers. That article was written in 1872, so she may have only stayed for a short amount of time or a few years. I was not expecting that story to take me on those wild twists and turns when I started to dig in. But I'm really happy I decided to keep digging. Okay, this next one is simply awful. It is called a drunkard's baby gnawed by a dog. And it reads, A Biddeford, Maine correspondent writes that a terrible circumstance took place during the severe cold snap of Tuesday of last week. Week. He had not been able to ascertain the names of the parties, but the facts are as follows. The man and wife living at the farm, being sadly addicted to the use of spiritous liquors during the evening, went away from the house, both being intoxicated. Their infant child was left in a cradle and the terrible cold overcoming it and being scantily clothed, it died. A hound was in the room, and as he was nearly starved upon going to the cradle and finding the dead body ate off one of its tiny arms and horribly mutilated the head. End quote. Oh, God. I have no more details here, but we have no names and I didn't find this story anywhere else. Hopefully it is likely untrue. God willing. This was also one of those stories all the way at the bottom, bottom of the page where editors often needed to fill up. And this one has all the hallmarks of a made up story to me. Again, God willing. Okay, this next one is next level madness, and it is a true story. It is called a bloody domestic drama. And it reads, leonard Margart, who on Saturday last murdered his wife and four children. And at his house on the Covington pike, about four miles from this city, is a man with whom your correspondent has had some slight acquaintance for a long time. By birth he is a bohemian and emigrated to this country several years ago. He is a man of nervous temperament, although at first sight one would not think so. And he has received but the merest rudiments of education, just enough to enable him to read and write. His natural disposition is sombre and melancholy, and occasionally he is subject to fits of the most profound despondency in which his gloomy and untutored imagination is absorbed in contemplation of evil. He thinks then that he is bad, and the world is given over to the power of the evil one from which nothing can save it. At such times his mind reverts to the old superstitions of his ancestry and country, and he feels that the devil must in some way be appeased. God is good to all, and so there is no necessity of praying. To him it is the malignant fiend who must be conciliated. At other times his melancholy takes another form. And then he prays fervently that God will keep him from an evil which he knows is depending over him. But which he cannot define. He always was a religious, insane man and now has become a religious maniac. On the Wednesday evening preceding the tragedy, he was more than unusually melancholy and wandered about his little farm, looking up at the clouds driving wildly overhead, beating his breast, and absorbed in the images of malignity conjured up by his distorted imagination. By this time his insanity had progressed so far that he heard spirits commanding him to. To murder his offspring, as this was the only means of saving them. His wife's mind was also completely given over to her hallucination. And though trembling with fear and horror, she agreed to the proposal. They then rose and went to the children's bed, whence they took two of the elder children and a male babe about six months, stripped them of even the scanty clothing in which they were sleeping, led them out of the house, across the the field, through a narrow belt of woods, and there deliberately drowned the two eldest in a brook there flowing and broke the baby's skull. Then they pulled the children from the water. One was a boy called Samuel, and the other a girl named Leah, and Both were about 7 years old. And laid them on the bank of the stream, carrying the dead baby about a hundred and fifty yards farther and depositing it on the snow. They did this in a state of complete nudity and with lamentations heard only by themselves. And the night birds, which, startled by the unusual sounds, flew crying about them. Then they returned to deal in the same way with the remaining children, a boy and a girl. But the poor children had seen the dreadful sight and had hidden themselves in terror unspeakable. The parents hunted long for them, but they called could nowhere be found. The two murderers, shivering with fright and cold, then retired to bed. Suddenly Margaret sprang up in bed, put his hand on the wife's throat and told her that the spirits had warned him that he must send her too to heaven to meet the children and take care of them. For the demons were abroad and might stop the children's souls before the angels could get them. This was too much in the insanity, even for the wife. And she remonstrated with the man, telling him that he was the person who should die. She was but a weak woman and unable to struggle with the fiends. But the logic failed to have its effects on poor Margaret, who without the slightest doubt was actuated in his deed by what seemed to him the purest motives. His wife must die and buy his hand. She must guard the children and go with them far beyond the burning stars and the power of the devil. A fierce struggle took place, for both were strongly built. The woman was not yet past her prime and possessed all the vigor of a hard working German wife. Margart had his hands on her throat, as he has since said, but she threw them off and then both sprang from the bed and engaged in a mortal king struggle for the mastery. The scanty furniture was scattered in all directions, chairs broken and everything movable was overturned in the fearful fight. Visiting the house afterwards, I could not help but picture to myself what a scene that must have been. A strife more terrible than that of Cain and Abel, for it was between man and wife, and both of them naked maniacs. In such a time as that, it was inevitable that that insanity should culminate in deadly hate, for the passions of both must by the mere act of strife have been wrought to the highest pitch. Here the two had grappled for an instant, the woman cowering in the corner and the eyes of her husband glaring down upon her with the baleful light of maniacal insanity. Here she escaped him and ran behind the table, making it a barricade against him. How long, long they struggled, no one can tell. But at last the hands of the husband fastened like a vice upon her neck. There was a gurgling sound. The eyes, almost starting from their sockets, opened for the last time. A rattle. A shiver running along the frame. And then all was over. The wife had found her children. Oh, my God. But all was not yet over, though the deed was done. Margaret lifted the dead woman and laid her upon the be bed, composed her limbs decently, then sat down beside the couch while the night wearily grew to dawning. In the morning he dressed himself, attended to his horses, and worked for a while about the farm. But such a deed is not long in the hiding out, and early this morning Dayton was filled with rumors that a horrid murder had been committed, such as made the blood curdle in the veins. Two policemen immediately left town and when they came, came to within about a mile of Margart's house they met a wagon in which was the murderer in charge of three farmers who had arrested him. He was much excited, his eyes glared wildly, and he talked and gesticulated as madmen will. He was immediately taken in charge and lodged in the jail. But soon an excited mob gathered about the building, demanding that he should be given to them and lynched. But he was secure in the hands, hands of the law. God Almighty. Okay. This story, or at least parts of it, is, like I said, true. I found it in a number of more Respected news sources. However, the Illustrated Police News actually got his name wrong, which made this a little tricky to find. More info on his name was actually Leonard Marquart. Reading this, I was unsure where all of these details were coming from. From from the other articles I read, I discovered that they were from his own testimony, but also the testimony of the two surviving children. It doesn't appear that he had a court trial. He was sent directly to an asylum. He and the two young children gave their statements to the coroner's jury. The children gave their statements in, quote, a plain and straightforward manner. They said that their father, however, didn't kill their mother, but they thought they that she died by falling out of bed. That is the most heartbreaking detail to me, that they thought that she died simply from falling out of bed. Heaven knows, the reality of everything must have been too difficult to face. That their father killed their mother and the rest of their family. Oh God, what a story. Coca Cola for the big, for the small, the short, short and the tall. Peacemakers, risk takers for the optimists, pessimists for long distance love for introverts and extroverts, the thinkers and the doers for old friends and new. Coca Cola for everyone. Pick up some Coca Cola at a store near you. Okay, Our next one hopefully has a happy ending. It is called Men Bitten by a Mad Dog in Kansas. And it reads, There is a farmhouse about two miles from Arnold Station, Kansas, over which sadness and sorrow and terror are brooding. For in one of its rooms are two strong men, heavily ironed and chained to the floor. They were bitten by a mad dog a few days previous. The mad stone was applied, but fearing and doubting its efficacy, they prepared for the the fearful ordeal of an attack of hydrophobia. Not knowing at what hour the fell disorder might make its appearance, and fearing for the safety of their wives, little ones and friends. They had heavy irons made for the purpose and bound themselves so securely that it would require almost the strength of a Samson to break their fastenings. Their hands are securely manacled. A strong iron band is locked around their waist waists and to this band is wielded a heavy chain, one end of which is fastened to a heavy ring bolt in the floor. And there they stand, waiting. Little children with saddened faces fondle and caress them with increased love, for the dreadful fate of their fathers has been whispered in their ears. These loved ones are also waiting, watching, not knowing what hour they will be drawn away, out of the reach of the two men whose very touch may soon be almost sudden death. Up until this time, no indication of madness has been manifested. And as the time has already passed in which the disorder attacks its victims after the poison has been infused into the blood, the friends are very hopeful that the Madstone has proved effective. But the men declare that they will wear their irons several days. Days. Yet so fearful are they that the poison is still lurking within them. End quote. Good God. So horrifying. I couldn't sadly find any more information about these poor men. But I did look up if it's possible to not develop rabies if you've been bitten by an infected animal without treatment. And yes you can, because not every bite transmits the virus, even if they break the skin skin. But if the infection does spread, once symptoms on set, it is nearly 100% fatal. So hopefully these men were lucky and the bites didn't transmit the disease. Also, they mentioned that something called Madstone was used to treat their condition. This was a kind of folk magic remedy to draw poison out of bites. It was essentially a hairball and mineral buildup from the stomach or intestines of deer primarily, but sometimes also cattle and buffalo. It was also used on snake and spider bites. This had been used since the 13th century in Europe, China and India. Although this did not work whatsoever, there is no chemical property in it that would prevent rabies from spreading. Using this substance incident, if you yourself are bitten by a rabies infected animal, you are supposed to immediately wash the wound, then get to the hospital as quickly as you possibly can to receive a pep shot to Prevent the nearly 100% fatal spread of the disease. Little PSA there. Okay, our final article will make you smile. It is called Madcap Frolic of a Beautiful New York Widow. And it reads, Mrs. Elizabeth Ross, a beautiful widow, resides in Fifth Avenue, New York City, in a palatial residence. A strange fancy took possession of Mrs. Ross's mind. And she's a lady that turns all her fancies and ideas into practical results. Mrs. Ross doffed her lady's attire and attired her graceful proportions in the unnatural garb of a man. One evening last week she dressed herself in a tight fitting pair of pants, a double breasted vest across which swung a ponderous gold chain short overcoat, somewhat after the fashion of the late Colonel Fiske's admiral's jacket, a little felt hat and a cane. Dolled up in this masculine rig, she, accompanied by two ladies, one on each side, went to Woods Museum and took seats in the orchestra. Mrs. Ross attracted so much attention from the gentlemen that it became an all absorbing question among the audience whether she was really a man. Seeing the undue and dangerous attention which was paid to the group, the two ladies accompanying Mrs. Ross went out together and forgot to return. The play attracted no attention. Mrs. Ross was the center of attention attention and the heroine of the hour. Mr. Lilienthal, the museum manager, had his attention attracted to the matter and brought Officer Hutchinson of the 29th Precinct who was detailed at the theater who arrested the frolicsome Fifth Avenue widow. She was taken to the 29th Precinct station house. Sergeant Mullen was in charge and Captain Burden was present. Mr. Lilienthal made a charge of disorderly conduct against the prisoner and then returned to the theater, believing that Mrs. Ross would be treated as any other offender. After he left, she told Captain Burden that she wished to see Police Commissioner Smith. Roundsman Crocker, who is well known in the ward, said he would go after Mr. Smith, who Mrs. Ross said was her friend. Mrs. Ross was speedily released. End quote. Here's to you, Comrade Smith. I like to imagine this fabulous woman in her suit with a cigar in her teeth, just waiting for her friend to come out and release her and the fine chuckle they must have had before she waltzed right out the door. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please rate the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Leave me comments because I love them so much and join the fan coven to directly support my show. Listen ad free and for even more creepy and witchy content. Until next time, be kind to yourselves and I will see you in your nightmares. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with Lifelock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply.