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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home in auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. What they did to your family. You're lucky to make it out alive. Streaming on Peacock. These men are going to come after me. Taking them out. It's my only chance. Put a bullet in their head. From the co creator of Ozark. Looks like a family was running drugs. Execution style killing. It's rare for the Keys. Any leads on who they might have been running for? The cartel killed my family. I'm gonna kill them. All of them. MIA Streaming now only on Peacock. Hello and welcome to my Victorian Nightmare. I'm your host Genevieve Manion 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 adv foreign. Hello friends and welcome to this, my 94th episode. And do I have a spooky, weird and deeply concerning episode for you today. In the shadowy country lanes and moss covered churchyards of Hammersmith, West London, a white clad ghost is terrifying locals to death. Some believe it is the ghost of a scarlet suicide victim. Some believe it is a man wrapped in sheets. But panic over the so called Hammersmith ghost will end in paranoia, bloodshed and one of Britain's strangest murder cases. And miles away in Liverpool, fresh graves are being robbed under cover of darkness. Grieving families are guarding cemeteries with loaded guns. And the dead themselves have become commodities. Dozens of bodies have been found in barrels and the basement of a boys school, exposing the largest body snatching scandal in history. And beyond the ghosts and resurrection men Victorians are cultivating strange and hilarious obsessions. Descend with me into the eerie heart of the Victorian era where superstition, death, science and spectacle blur together in ways both haunting and bizarre. For you today, dear listener, I will have the case of the Hammersmith ghost, the Hope street body snatching scandal and little known strange and downright silly Victorian fads. But first, thank you to everyone who is joining the Patreon. A bunch of you joined in the last two weeks it has brought a tear to my eye more than once many tears have fallen into my morning coffee. Seriously, without you guys my show would not be able to continue. So I am so so grateful. Until May 25, those of you who join any of the Patreon tiers will get a little surprise in the mail from Toby, my sweet Pomeranian. He wants to thank you for subsidizing his favorite treats and taking care of his mom. We just started sending them out this week, so if you join, be sure to leave an address so that we can send out our little token of our gratitude. Your address will be for absolutely nothing other than to send you this little present. And if you're not sure if you want to join, you just want to get a little sample first. You are in luck. There is a free trial so just go to myvictorianightmare.com to find out how to listen. Ad free Receive True Crime Extras Dark Poetry or Witchy Content Every single week I talked about protecting our energy from ourselves. This week on the Fan Coven, I included some very handy techniques that I have learned as a practicing Theravadan Buddhist, eclectic witch and spaz for lo these many, many years. Protecting my energy is something I've had to put a hell of a lot of work into. I also Talked about the 1840 murder of Charles Lafarge on the True Crime Extras podcast, one of the very first murders to include forensic evidence successfully. That was a wild case. So again, if you would like to join, I will be sending you a token of mine and Toby's gratitude. Until May 25th. Just go to myvictorianightmare.com or click the link to the Patreon in the show Notes My diet is mostly veggies, dairy gummy bears obviously, but about every two weeks or so I like to treat myself to a nice burger, but I do not trust grocery store beef. I can tell it's dyed to look redder. It tastes flavorless to me. So that is why I order ground beef from Omaha Steaks. They send it in perfectly shaped burger patties so all I have to do is thaw them out and make my obscenely large burgers. I am a burger burger artiste. The quality of their beef is so much better than anything that I've gotten at the grocery store. They don't just have ground beef and steaks though. They have high quality pork, seafood, chicken and even desserts all frozen at peak freshness, flavor and quality. The delivery is fast packed in dry ice, not those huge frozen gel filled packs that weigh so much and just create so much trash. And you get to play with the dry ice. I like to make my sink look like a witch's cauldron. Their steaks are so good that they've earned the coveted distinction of USDA Certified Very tender and I can confirm Omaha Steaks delivers premium protein right to your door and dinners could be made in minutes. You also get a 100% satisfaction guarantee so you can order with confidence that you're getting the very highest quality meats out there. Everything is portioned and individually vacuum sealed so there's far less food waste and packaging to throw away. Taste the Omaha Steaks difference and never settle for grocery store proteins again. Get flavorful high quality proteins delivered by visiting omahasteaks.com/35 off when you use Promo code Victorian at checkout. That's omahasteaks.com code Victorian terms apply. See site for details. Now let us have our first segment with their own eyes where we discuss the personal haunting accounts of petrified Victorians or personal haunting accounts of people petrified by dead Victorians in other centuries. Today, our ghost appears only slightly outside of the official Victorian era in 1803. Let's discuss the Hammersmith ghost, an allegedly spectral incarnation with a horrifying backstory that tormented the inhabitants of a small English town until his shenanigans led to a genuinely terrible murder. There is plenty spooky about this story, but for me, some of the spookiest aspects are between the lines. For example, and I will get to the specifics, but there are people who are attacked at night strolling through cemeteries by this ghost. Why are people just hanging out in cemeteries by moonlight in the first place? Like, I love the vibe, but what are they doing in the cemetery at midnight? And also the way folks dealt with this situation was to go to local pubs, get tank and roam the town with guns looking for this ghost. That's a far scarier situation than running into any ghost. Drunk dudes in mobs ready to shoot anyone wearing white. Essentially, there is horror found in every nook and cranny of this story. Heavens. Let's begin at the beginning. Starting In November of 1803, folks in the sleepy town of Hammersmith began to report terrifying encounters with what they believed to be a ghost who would not only flit and float around churchyards and back alleys, but also had the strength to physically attack people. Local folks believed it must be the ghost of a man who died by slitting his own throat the previous year. Goodness. And had been controversially buried in Hammersmith churchyard. Many folks were of the belief that if someone died by suicide, they should not be buried in consecrated ground because their soul would never be at rest. The history of suicide, perception and judgment Is such a heartbreaking one to me. Quick side note. One of the first times that I ever realized that grownups don't know everything or that their opinions are just that, like just because they're older, their opinion isn't more important was when I was at a Christian summer camp and my counselor said, if you kill yourself, you fall straight to hell. Kurt Cobain had just died and it was absolutely devastating to me. I was 13, 14 at the time. And I said, but aren't there times when people get so sad that they become unable to believe there's any other way to stop the pain? But they're still good people, and wouldn't God take that into account? And she said, absolutely not. Straight to hell. I wasn't buying it. Still don't I digress. One of the very first encounters reported of this ghost was by two women who were walking by a churchyard and out of nowhere a figure dressed in flowing white jumped out and tried to grab them. But on the two occasions that this happened to them, they were able to escape. You'd think they may try another route after being attacked by a ghost once after this second occurrence, allegedly they both died of fright a few days afterward. Little known fact, and I'm sorry for all the side notes, but this is fascinating. Dying of fright in these days was a common occurrence. I read about it all the time in papers of the day. Certainly many of these cases were exaggerated. But the smelling salts that ladies would keep with them to prevent fainting could in many cases be deadly. They were made of ammonia inhalants and other chemical compounds that could cause chemical burns to airways or fatal respiratory spasms. If you were suffering from any of the common respiratory illnesses of the day like tuberculosis, and regularly found yourself in pearl clutching situations and used smelling salts to jolt you back to consciousness, it's likely you could have a respiratory spasm that could kill you. I believe a lot of these folks who died from fright likely died from smelling salt inhalation. It's just a theory of mine though. Now, these two ladies were not the ghost's only victims. A brewer's servant named Thomas Groom and a lady friend were strolling through the cemetery in the wee hours of the night when, according to this man, something rose from behind a tombstone and seized him by the throat. His lady friend turned around and just as she did, the ghost quote gave me a twist round and I saw nothing. I gave a bit of a push out with my fist and felt something soft like a great coat. End quote. A night watchman claimed to See the ghost when he was walking down a street and he began to chase after it. But the ghost was somehow able to outrun him. One report said that the ghost jumped out in front of a horse carriage and scared the horses so badly that they bolted. Another local man claimed that the figures stared at him with glowing glass like eyes before silently drifting away. Some other folks claimed to be see the ghost wearing a calfskin garment with horns. And some claimed to see him with a slit throat. I'm sorry. One more side note. It is interesting to me that it wasn't really until the dawn of spirit photography, the double exposed hoax photographs that showed ghosts floating around people, that people began to think of ghosts as transparent, semi opaque like in double exposed photographs. Throughout the early 1800s, ghosts were almost always described as flesh and blood, chain dragging sheet wearing figures that were as solid as living people. It's not really until photography of ghosts showed them another way that people thought of them differently and still do to a degree. So there's a spooky cutthroat ghost spinning people around in graveyards, scaring women to death. What is to be done? Mobs of armed drunk dudes is what is to be done. Apparently they thought that that would be a good idea. Several patrols of armed citizens were formed to catch and shoot this ghost. These men likely didn't it was a ghost at all. They thought it was just someone running around misbehaving and they wanted to be the ones to catch him in the act. But I'm sure for some they did believe it was a ghost. But it was a fun way to prove what an alpha they were. Typical bro stuff. On the night of January 3rd, two men planned to catch and kill the ghost together. Frances Smith and William Girdler met at the White Hart pub to have a few before making their way toward the churchyard. So they gave a couple of bottles a couple of black eyes and they hit the street. And if you would follow me down this moonlit road past this spooky old churchyard, I want to show you something. It is January 3, 1804, 10:00pm or so and we are strolling by moonlight in Hammersmith, West London. A locksmith's wife was allegedly scared to death just a few nights ago and two others are still ill with shock after having it encounter with the ghost. So there are quite a few tipsy vigilantes on the hunt this evening, not just Mr. Smith and Mr. Girdler. We are not going into the churchyard by the way. We are scooting past at a jaunty Pace here to the still equally creepy dark path ahead. This town marks the point where London meets the countryside. And it is surprisingly, not as cold as I thought it would be. It's chilly, but, like, low. Mid-40s maybe, wouldn't you say? Although the damp chill triggers my Raynaud's syndrome. I get cadaver fingers and toes in this kind of weather. Seriously, all the blood runs out of them and they go completely numb and white. It's really interesting to see how you'd look as a corpse. Yeah, look at that. Ugh. I'm disgusting. I'm sorry. What do you say we warm our cadaver paws with a hot toddy? Here, take a cup. Oh, that's nice. We are walking along Black Lion Lane, and we are going to safely nestle down by this old ivy covered barrel along the road here. I'm not even gonna attempt to pop a crouch. I'm just sitting down. You'll be so proud of me. I've been going for hour long walks every morning now, but my knees are still made of Captain Crunch. Okay, shh. Just coming up the road there, you'll see a man, somewhat glowing in the moonlight. He is not a ghost. His name is Thomas Millwood, a bricklayer who is wearing what bricklayers wore at this time. Linen trousers, entirely white, washed very clean. He has a waistcoat of flannel and a white apron. He just left his parents and sisters home along the lane. And that is drunk Mr. Smith yelling from further down the lane. Now, you may want to look away. Oh, poor Mr. Millwood. Francis Smith just shot him in the face. William is now running up the street, and those two gentlemen are John Locke and George Stowe, all running toward Mr. Millwood, who was killed instantly. A constable has already been alerted. Mr. Smith will not be going home tonight. Here, let's creep creepily away so no one can see us. Mr. Millwood would walk home along that lane almost every night and had already had encounters with folks who thought he was the ghost. A few nights earlier, a man and two ladies screamed, there goes the ghost, as they passed by in a carriage. At Mr. Smith's trial, his wife told the court that her husband, quote, said he was no more a ghost than they were, and asked them, using a bad word, did the man want a punch of the head as I begged of him to change his dress? Thomas says, I, as there is a piece of work about the ghost, and your clothes look white, pray do put on your greatcoat that you may not run any danger. But Mr. Millwood didn't think much more of it. Sadly, this was a terrible mistake. His body would be taken to a nearby inn where surgeon Dr. Fowler examined his wounds. He pronounced his death to be the result of a gunshot wound on the left side of the lower jaw with small shot about size number four. One of which had penetrated the vertebrae of the neck and injured the spinal marrow. Smith was tried for willful murder. Millwood's sister, who had only just said goodbye to her brother, claimed that she could hear Smith yelling to her brother down the road, but testified that he fired the gun almost immediately before her brother could have even known what he was saying. This was a very particular kind of murder case, not one that had ever been considered before. Is it murder if you killed someone you believed was a killer? Of course, you can't just shoot someone you think is a murderer today, even if you're right, unless they're in the process of killing someone. But you could back then. And of course it's murky if this ghost was really killing anyone again. Allegedly a number of people died of fright, but no one was like choked to death by this ghost. As the Lord Chief Baron was concerned, the judge, he advised the jury that all killing whatever amounts to murder, unless justified by the law or in self defense. In cases of some involuntary acts or some sufficiently violent provocation, it becomes manslaughter. Not one of these circumstances occur here. End quote. He observed that this man neither acted in self defense nor shot Mr. Millwood by accident. It doesn't matter if he thinks the guy was a murderous ghost. He was not provoked, he was not in any kind of danger. He intended to kill and he killed. He also noted that even if Mr. Millwood was running around pretending to be a ghost, and even if people were scared to death by him, scaring people isn't a felony. It isn't murder. Menacing people was a small misdemeanor. The jury took an hour to decide that Mr. Smith was guilty of willful murder. He was given a sentence of hanging, then drawing and quartering. In other words, hanging until you're almost dead, then cutting you in four pieces. The king, however, commuted his sentence to a year's hard labor instead. God, I think I would die of fright of how I would be executed before they could even string me up. No toxic smelling salts necessary. I would just die of fright. And that would be the story of me. So did the ghost keep haunting the good folks of Hammersmith after the trial? Well, not long after Mr. Millwood's murder, a shoemaker was dragged in for questioning by Local magistrates, a man named James Graham. He admitted to being the Hammersmith ghost, or at least one incarnation of the ghost. There were no doubt copycats, but this man appeared to be the first. He told them that his shoemaking apprentices scared his own children half to death by telling them ghost stories. So he thought that he would teach them a lesson. One night a few months prior, while the apprentices were walking home in the dark, he dressed up as a ghost and jumped out at them, scaring the freckles off of them. He got his revenge. But then a bunch of people died. So again, it's likely that his incarnation was the first. But others certainly got a kick out of the hysteria and whipped up some of their own. In fact, 20 years later, in 1824, another creep dubbed the Hammersmith Monster took to leaping out at women in the streets at night and scratching their faces. That guy turned out to be a farmer from Harrow. He went to prison. Prison. Luckily. Incidentally, some people do think that St. Paul's churchyard in Hammersmith is actually haunted. According to legend, a ghost appears every 50 years on the full moon in July at midnight. A newspaper in 1955 claimed that that month's full moon would be the night that the Hammersmith ghost will waft through the churchyard. And so many people showed up to the cemetery that police had to cordon off the churchyard to hold back the crowds. Some folks claimed to have seen a figure wafting among the tombstones from afar at 1am as they were being held back by cops. I would absolutely have gone myself though. That sounds like such a fun party. So that was the Hammersmith ghost story of 1803. I have been really focusing on my health and well being lately and I have been mixing up my Biologica first thing in the morning and taking it with me. Me on my morning walks with Toby to make myself feel extra healthy. But I am not just making myself feel that way. Biologica is a daily supplement with all of the vitamins, minerals, probiotics, electrolytes and clinically researched botanicals that my perimenopausal body has been begging me for. It also tastes delicious. It's lightly effervescent and so refreshing. They have three different formulas to suit ladies in easy each hormonal life stage. I am currently enjoying their midlife essentials, but they also offer primary essentials for women between 18 and 45 and postmenopause essentials for women over 50. It helps with my mood, sleep, energy and bloating, which is such a bummer. I do not appreciate looking 7 months pregnant all the time like I used to before I started this. Biologica also supports lean muscle mass cell cellular health and can help you maintain bone health, which each and every one of us should be investing in, especially us ladies over 40. No need to keep 10 different supplements in your cabinets, just treat yourself to biologica. Head to biologica.com Victorian to get started. Take their quick Hormonal Life Stage quiz to find the formula that is right for you. And right now subscribers can receive up to 32% off their purchase. Again, make sure to go to Biologica.com Victorian and get up to 32% off your first subscription order today. Okay, let us now talk about the Hope street body snatching scandal of 1826. When I came across this, my jaw dropped. It is simply horrible. I speak often about the body snatching scourge of the 19th century and did an entire episode on this hideous trade. Episode 34 but for those perhaps just joining us, body snatching was the theft of freshly buried bodies. Body snatchers, otherwise known as resurrection men, would sneak into cemeteries late at night, dig up bodies and sell them to surgeons and medical schools who were rapidly expanding. Surgical science was rapidly developing in the 19th century and the cadavers provided by the gallows simply could not keep up with demand. The only bodies that could legally be cut into after death were those of executed. Criminal laws varied somewhat from place to place, but in both England and the United States it was a deeply held religious belief that cutting into bodies after death would sever the soul from the body. And the Bible states that on Judgment Day the dead would rise from their graves to spend eternity with the Lord. But that couldn't happen if your body had been dissected cut up. So only those whose souls were considered damned were fair game for the surgeons. Legally at least, this led to the heinous trade of body snatching. Medical schools were willing to pay top dollar for bodies and there were plenty of folks willing to do the horrid work of finding and delivering them. Usually this would be done in small scale ways. Individuals would raid cemeteries at night and deliver their night's haul directly to surgeons either that very night or very soon thereafter after. The fresher the corpse, the higher the price generally. But some more enterprising body snatchers used techniques to extend the freshness of their merchandise so that they could operate in bulk deliveries as opposed to the back and forth nature of one off deliveries. I am fighting for my life right now trying to describe this kind of thing without getting too graphic. Let's just get into it. On the morning of October 10, along George's Dock in Liverpool, England, a horrid odor hung in the air. So horrid that dock workers simply couldn't take it anymore. They called their boss, a captain of a ship, down, to help them inspect where the hell it was coming from and help them figure out what to do about it. They came upon what appeared to be three hastily stored barrels between decks on a docked vessel called the Latona. The barrels were labeled bitter salts, essentially Epsom salts. They determined these were the source of the odor. The captain had the men pry the tops off of the barrels and indeed there was salt inside. But he figured he'd just plunge his entire hand into the barrel to see if anything else was in there. And there was something else in there. At least one dead body. He had the lid promptly returned and the barrels delivered to what was called a dead house on Chapel Street. A dead house was a specialized structure, often located in or near cemeteries or hospitals. Used as, like a temporary mortuary, they were also referred to as receiving tombs. Heavens. Those delivering the barrels called upon Constable Socket to join them. Once the lids of all of the barrels were removed, they discovered each barrel contained not just one naked dead body, but about four each. It was determined that the salt was being used to preserve them. And little did they know, they had just stumbled upon the biggest wholesale transportation of cadavers ever discovered, or would be discovered in the entire century. These poor folks in these three barrels were just the beginning. It was quickly ascertained that this was likely part of an operation, and these kinds of operations were generally executed by gangs of body snatchers. So Constable Robert Bowie of the dock police was put in charge of hunting down this gang. Poor chap, he didn't have much to go on, so he started asking questions, trying to find leads. But not much was bubbling to the surface until a noxious odor was reported at 8 Hope street by boys in a boys school owned by a Reverend James McGowan. This reverend owned the building and recently leased the cellar to a man named John Henderson, who claimed that he needed somewhere to store fish oil. It wasn't just the young children complaining of a terrible smell. The neighbors of the building were also making complaints that at certain times of day a terrible smell would waft around the entire area. The reverend told neighbors that it was just fish oil, apparently. But some folks had suspicions, and so did this constable. He made his way there, opened the cellar door, and was nearly knocked over by the smell. Despite this, he boldly descended the steps to investigate. And what he found lined around the cellar were burlap sacks and more barrels filled with bodies, all stages of decomposition. He also found clothing hung on walls that he believed belonged not to the bodies but to those who snatched them. He also found a brass syringe that was believed to be for injecting preservative liquid into cadavers before shipping. 22 bodies were discovered in the cellar that day and the other barrels contained about 11. So they were dealing with 33 cadavers. There were men, women and children. How these body snatchers were so inept at this clear it was obviously their first time at the rodeo. Perhaps they had a much smaller operation and expanded too quickly. Body snatchers didn't tend to be the most educated of the population. They also gave their full names to the reverend who leased the cellar to them. So that was nice for the constable. At least five men made up the body snatching gang and it was quickly determined that they used St. Mary's Churchyard, a workhouse cemetery that was a hop, skip and jump away from the boys school to find their conditions. Cadavers. Workhouse cemeteries, meaning cemeteries for people so poor that they were forced to do back breaking labor in return for shelter, did not have any safeguards against body snatchers. Like more well to do. Folks would invest in. I've discussed mort safes. Some folks would have cages installed over their graves to prevent body snatching. Some cemeteries kept 24 hour security. In episode 34, I discussed other contraptions that some folks would use to deter body snatchers, including coffins. Torpedoes, literally guns that would shoot someone who tried to tamper with a grave. Some even installed tripwire explosives. Cemeteries like St. Mary's wouldn't have any of these deterrents and bodies were likely not even buried six full feet deep. They were likely placed in mass open graves. So suffice it to say, easy work for these kinds of gentlemen. It became known that at least four of the men in this gang had lodgings not too far away on Caroline Court Court off Watkinson Street. But as soon as Constable Bowie was on their trail, they hightailed. Word got around as quickly as you would think that 22 bodies were found in a Catholic boys school basement. The first man to be caught was a man named James Donaldson. A neighbor ratted him out. He was picked up, tried and given a year in prison and a 50 pound fine. But it was a year in prison. But he couldn't leave until he paid that fine and he couldn't. So it's actually unclear how long he stayed in prison. Two other gentlemen in the gang, Peter McGregor and John Ross, must have been fearless. Constable Bowie had other police fanned out all over the city and in the cemeteries just in case. These guys would be stupid enough to A, not skip town, and B, if they tried to snatch more bodies, which they did both. Even after they knew police were looking for them, they just couldn't stop themselves. Snatching bodies was all they knew. MacGregor was arrested after trying to load a body in a box on to a trip train to a medical school in Edinburgh. He had already tried to send a body the same way a few days earlier, but it was intercepted by employees at the train station. Suspicions were aroused at the White Horse Coach office when a box waiting to be loaded onto the train smelled terrible. They opened it up and found the body of a woman and delivered it to the police. They were told to keep an eye out for any similar boxes. And some of the employees already had a good deal description of the guy again. Just a few days earlier, he tried to do the same thing. And this time they nabbed him. He tried to escape. He tried to make a break for it, but they caught up with him. The second box contained the body of a young woman named Margaret Kelly, who had been buried the day before she had died of fever. It's unclear how they were able to identify her, but she may have been the only one of all of these victims to be identified. Really for me, and this is just like a personal opinion as someone who absolutely will be donating my body, body to science if they'll take me, is that it is obviously abhorrent to steal a body. But I believe the greatest victims of this trade were the families of those folks. I don't personally believe that our souls stay tethered to our bodies per se. Not in a manner that cutting into us will sever anything important. But that's just my personal belief. I understand these folks believed differently, but it does break my heart to think of all of the folks who would come to discuss the bodies of their loved ones were stolen from their graves. This is a particular kind of grief so few of us will ever have to comprehend. Ugh. John Ross was captured just strolling down Poole Street. There was a dragnet out for this guy, and he's just taking the afternoon air down by the docks. He was the one who originally transported the first three barrels to be found on the docks. He was spotted and also tried to make a break for it. They chased him along along the docks. And he hid in a privy like an outhouse on Chapel Street. But they tossed him out and threw him in the clink. He and MacGregor got similar sentences to James Donaldson. A year in prison and half the fine of James. Which is interesting. They only had to pay 25 pounds apiece at the end of that year. Gang leader John Henderson was smart enough to get out of Dodge. He scrambled. They never caught the guy. And another case was dismissed. For a man named William Gillespie, the discovery of the Hope street bodies shook the city to its core. This wasn't just a story that blew over quickly. People weren't just afraid that their family members bodies could be stolen from graves. But that their own bodies could be stolen if they were to die again. Folks had a deeply held belief that they essentially wouldn't get into heaven. They wouldn't walk with Jesus in the afterlife if this happened to them. Those who worked in the workhouse beside the churchyard were especially, especially terrified. Less than a month after the bodies were discovered, St. Mary's churchyard was ordered to build a high wall and a railing around the cemetery to deter body snatchers. You'll find a lot of cemeteries in England had high walls built around them in the 1800s. This was to keep these men and sometimes women out primarily. Events like this also led to the eventual passing of laws like the English anatomy Act in 1832. Which allowed for the expansion of legally procured corpses. Education. This law allowed for next of kin to donate bodies in exchange for full expenses paid for a proper burial after a body was studied. It also allowed for bodies of unclaimed paupers to be used for medical research. This law was not easy to pass. Many people especially took offense at the idea that the unclaimed bodies of the poor would be, as far as they believed, denied an afterlife with God because they would be dissected. Even with this law passed, demand for bodies still outweighed supply. And the practice of body snatching continued all throughout the century. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney. Let's go get ready for a new case. We're gonna crack this case and prove we're victorious partners of all time. New friends. You are Gary Desnake. And your last name. Desnake. Dream Team Hidden NEW HABITAT Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home. You're clearly working at Zootopia 2. Now available on Disney. Rated PG. Okay, finally, let's talk about some wild Victorian fads. Now, when you research Victorian fads, generally you'll find the seances, ferns, freak shows, arsenic related diets and beauty products products. But I dug real deep into some fads that I wasn't aware of, or at least some that I didn't understand just how deeply people were into some seemingly random things. But who am I to judge anything? I collect dead flowers. I love apple picking in the fall. Apple picking in October in New York is so out of control now that you have to make reservations at numerous farms upstate just to step foot on their properties. So we have plenty of fads ourselves. No judgment. I was just unaware how much Victorians loved headless photographic photography. Orchids, nipple piercing, etc. So let's talk about some more little known Victorian fads. We'll start with the headless photography because it's ridiculous. And I put some examples on the Instagram link in the show notes. Victorian headless portraits were a fad in Britain, and it's not as violent as it sounds. It's hard to tell exactly when this started, but a photograph of John the Baptist's head on a platter created by photographer Oskar Gustav Rejlander that was created by Combat combining two different negatives sparked some excitement. A few photographers began experimenting with combining negatives, painting out heads like 1800s Photoshop, so that heads could appear in the hands of someone. And the concept took off. Everyone who was anyone wanted a picture of themselves holding their own head. Some wanted to hold their head with both hands. Some people wanted to hold it with one hand and a murder weapon in the other. Some folks wanted their heads on sticks or just floating in the air. By the 1890s, these photographs were so popular and demand was so high that many photographers openly advertised that they were experts in this particular form of photography. The most prolific headless photographer of the day was Samuel K. Balberny. He ran advertisements in the Brighton Daily News offering, quote, headless photographs, ladies and gentlemen, gentlemen taken showing their heads floating in the air or on their laps. End quote. So again, link in the show notes. You gotta see these things. Now onto nipple piercings. Now, this was not a fad among all of Victorian society. It was a naughty little thing to do in the late 1800s. Historians believe this fad goes as far back as Isabella of Bavaria, Queen of France, in the late 14th and early 15th century. She allegedly wore tasteful diamonds on each nip, connected by pearl and gold chains. And no doubt stories about this ignited interest in the upper crusty, gaudy socialites of the 1800s. They loved scandalousness, pushing boundaries, but they had to be discreet about their scandals. This seems like a perfect way to create a discreet scandal. Some ladies got bosom rings, as they were called. There's even an article in a magazine called English Mechanic and the World of Science. That doesn't sound sound like Cosmo or the kinds of magazines young ladies would read, but it included an article that followed a young lady on her nipple piercing journey to Paris, of course, where the piercings were offered in specialty shops. So although this kind of thing just sounds like Internet misinformation, it really did happen. The ladies were into it, and I'm sure the gents were as well. Next, wealthy Victorians had an obsession, a deadly one, with orchids. Similar to the Dutch tulip mania, where the Dutch became obsessed with tulips in the 1600s, English Victorians became obsessed with orchids. They were brought to Europe through collecting expeditions and they were sold at auctions in London at extravagant prices, which is funny because they're incredibly temperamental and would often just die shortly after the sales. That didn't stop extremely wealthy Victorians from sponsoring expeditions to search for new species of orchids, especially in Peru, which has some 3,500 native species. And often those who went hunting for orchids were murdered due to conflicts with native people and other orchid hunters. These expeditions were often shrouded in secrecy and collectors would share misleading information to other orchid hunters to throw them off their trails. There were beliefs that man eating orchids existed somewhere and collected. Collectors were desperate to find them. How or why they believed this is unclear, but there are numerous tales of vampiric orchids. In the late 1800s, H.G. wells wrote a story called the Flowering of the Strange Orchid. And Fred M. White wrote a story called the Purple Terror, both about vampiric orchids. The situation got so bad that international trading of orchids harvested in the world is is now banned by the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. So insane. And finally, just as we have endless health craze fads in our day that don't do anything green coffee, detox diets, drinking alkaline water, there was a cotton ball swallowing trend that I must have missed. In the 2010s, people were swallowing cotton balls dipped in juice. The purpose was to reduce hunger, but it just caused serious intestinal blockages. So just like us, the Victorians had plenty of these ridiculous, often dangerous or deadly health fads. I've discussed arsenic eating. The belief that eating small amounts of arsenic was actually good for you. It was not at all. But I don't want to talk about a dangerous health fad. At least I don't think it was. It might have looked that way, but you remember those vibrating belt machines that they had in the 50s? All the way through the 80s? These were called passive workout machines. The idea was that you could do nothing but stand there and they would jiggle the fat away. They didn't work at all. The Victorians had similar workout machines and they look amazing. You'd think they were AI. They're not. I put them on the Instagram. A man named Gustav Zander patented a number of fantastic looking contraptions that would enable you to stay perfectly still or with minimal effort. They would make you thinner, stronger, healthier somehow, etc. They didn't, but again, they looked awesome. You gotta check these out. Some of these machines were powered by steam, gasoline or electricity and were marketed as mechanized workouts. His machines could be found in elite health spas in early incarnations of gyms that we have today. Now, some of these machines may have provided some resistance aspects that did help in building strength, but most of them just look similar to the jiggle machines from the 50s. It's especially funny to see women strapped into what is supposed to be a workout machine and like dresses with five layers of heavy cream, cotton and velvet and corsetry. Workout clothes for women wouldn't really be a thing until the 1920s, so those are just a few of my favorite stranger fads of the 1800s. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please rate the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Please leave me comments because I love them so much. And for ad free listening, true crime extras and witchy content, join the fan coven@myvictorianightmare.com until next time, be kind to yourselves and I will see you in your nightmares.