Author: jake

The Magician and the Medium Margery (episode 244)

This week we’re featuring a magician.  And not just any magician, one of the most famous of all time, Harry Houdini.  When he wasn’t busy escaping from locked jail cells and underwater safes, the Great Houdini made it a personal mission to unmask fraudulent mediums.  In the early 20th century, mediums, spiritualists, and psychic practitioners of all kinds were undergoing a massive boom.  With all the death associated with the Great War and the global flu pandemic, the public was desperate for a message from the other side, and there were plenty of practitioners who were willing to sell it to them.  The practice of spiritualism was so widespread and accepted that the journal Scientific American was on the brink of giving it the stamp of scientific legitimacy.  The leading contender for their approval (and their large cash prize) was a Beacon Hill medium who went by the stage name Margery.  And she might have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for that meddling magician, too!


Continue reading The Magician and the Medium Margery (episode 244)

The First Ladies Forum (episode 243)

This week, the show gets a visit from four veteran historical interpreters who have joined forces on a new collaborative project called The First Ladies Forum.  Together, they portray four of America’s First Ladies, including both interpreters and First Ladies with ties to Boston.  We’ll discuss the lives of Dolley Madison (portrayed by Judith Kalaora), Louisa Catherine Adams (portrayed by Laura Rocklyn), Mary Lincoln (portrayed by Laura Keyes), and Jacqueline Kennedy (portrayed by Leslie Goddard) and how the actors choose to embody them.  We’ll also talk more broadly about what it’s like to be a costumed historical interpreter and the role of historical interpretation in helping people understand the people and events of America’s past.


Continue reading The First Ladies Forum (episode 243)

The Valentines Day Blizzard (episode 242)

During a legendary New England blizzard, trains and trolleys ground to a halt in Boston, stranding commuters at South and North Station.  Thousands of drivers were forced to abandon their cars in the middle of traffic and just walk away in search of shelter.  Dozens of people were killed in the storm.  Much as it may sound like the great blizzard of 1978, or even a typical Monday in February 2015, this week’s show is actually about the Valentine’s Day blizzard of 1940 that hit Boston without warning and left chaos in its wake.


Continue reading The Valentines Day Blizzard (episode 242)

The Boston Harbor Hermit (episode 241)

For about 12 years, the eccentric Ann Winsor Sherwin and her son William made a cozy home on an abandoned four-masted schooner that ran aground off Spectacle Island.  Against all odds, she managed to hold off agents of the ship’s owners, the health commission, the Coast Guard, and the Boston Harbor Police.  Abandoned by her no-good husband who thought he could make it big in Hollywood, Ann and her three children were destitute and homeless until they set up a home on the schooner, riding out the Great Depression rent-free on Boston Harbor.  They were a family out of time, until the world (in the form of the US Army) came calling for young William.


Continue reading The Boston Harbor Hermit (episode 241)

Reading David Walker’s Appeal: The Pen as the Sword (episode 240)

This week, we’re trying something a little bit different.  This fall and winter, the Old North Church historic site has been hosting a series of conversations about radical Black abolitionist David Walker, and his book An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World.  As part of their Digital Speaker Series, education director Catherine Matthews moderated a discussion between artist, educator, and activist L’Merchie Frazier and playwright Peter Snoad on December 15.  This edition focused on the text of the Appeal as a piece of rhetoric that pointed out the brutality and hypocrisy of slavery and urged the enslaved to rebel by any means necessary.  Thanks to our friends at Old North for allowing us to share this panel with you.


Continue reading Reading David Walker’s Appeal: The Pen as the Sword (episode 240)

Urban Archipelago: An Environmental History of the Boston Harbor Islands, with Dr Pavla Šimková (episode 239)

The new book Urban Archipelago: An Environmental History of the Boston Harbor Islands explores how the city of Boston has transformed the islands on its doorstep time and time again, as the city’s needs shifted over the centuries.  From a valuable site for farming, to a dumping ground for all of Boston’s problems, to a wilderness of history and romance, to an urban park, these many transformations reflect a changing city.  Author Dr. Pavla Šimková joins us this week to discuss how Boston initially embraced the islands, later turned its back on the Harbor, and more recently has embraced them both again.  You’ll hear us argue about the 1960s plan to hold a bicentennial expo on the harbor and the role of storyteller Edward Rowe Snow in promoting the Harbor Islands to a new generation, and you’ll hear us agree about the beauty and importance of this urban asset.


Continue reading Urban Archipelago: An Environmental History of the Boston Harbor Islands, with Dr Pavla Šimková (episode 239)

The Hyde Park Hermit (episode 238)

The early years of James Gately, who was better known as the Hermit of Hyde Park, were shrouded in mystery.  Gately was an Englishman who came to Boston after his life took a bad turn.  He had trouble making money when he got here, got robbed of his last cent, and decided to give up on humanity and disappear into the wilderness forever.  For almost thirty years, he scratched out a meager existence living off the land in the woods of Hyde Park, while his legend grew.  By the time he died in 1875, he was so well known that treasure hunters beat a path to his door to search (unsuccessfully) for the fortune they believed he had buried in his woods.


Continue reading The Hyde Park Hermit (episode 238)

Revolutionary Surgeons: Patriots and Loyalists on the Cutting Edge, with Dr. Per-Olof Hasselgren (episode 237)

Dr. Per-Olof Hasselgren is a practicing surgeon and author of the recent book Revolutionary Surgeons: Patriots and Loyalists on the Cutting Edge, which is a profile of eleven Revolutionary War surgeons.  Dr. Hasselgren joined Jake to discuss the Boston physicians, brothers, and brothers in arms Joseph and John Warren.  Joseph is famous for arranging the lantern signal from Old North and dispatching Paul Revere on his famous ride, as well as for his heroic death at Bunker Hill.  His little brother John followed him into politics and medicine, and went on to found Harvard Medical School. 

Dr. Hasselgren brings a unique perspective to the conversation, examining the medical careers of these eminent physicians through a physician’s eyes.  The episode explores how 18th century physicians learned their craft, how they earned a living, and how they intermingled medicine and politics, as well as how surgery was changing during the Revolution and the groundbreaking surgery pioneered by John Warren and his son John Collins Warren.


Continue reading Revolutionary Surgeons: Patriots and Loyalists on the Cutting Edge, with Dr. Per-Olof Hasselgren (episode 237)

Combat Zone: Murder, Race, and Boston’s Struggle for Justice, with Jan Brogan (episode 236)

In the book Combat Zone, Murder, Race, and Boston’s Struggle for Justice, journalist Jan Brogan turns her impressive research and reporting skills on the case of Andy Puopolo, a 21 year old Harvard football player who was killed in a fight in the Combat Zone in 1976.  The case would pit the most privileged group at the most privileged school in the world against three poor Black men on the margins of society, while in the background Boston tore itself apart on racial lines.

The book plumbs the depths of white, working class Boston’s racial resentments during the busing era, a criminal justice system that stacked the deck against Black defendants, and a police department that was compromised at its core by organized crime.  It highlights the street violence that helped cement Boston’s reputation as the most racist city in the country, as well as the two trials that came to diametrically opposite verdicts in the same city, just a couple of years apart.  It also puts the reader in the mind of the younger brother of the victim, left behind to deal with his feelings of grief and guilt, while wrestling with the possibility of revenge.


Continue reading Combat Zone: Murder, Race, and Boston’s Struggle for Justice, with Jan Brogan (episode 236)

Spring Gun in the Grape Vines (episode 235)

This week we’ll explore the strange case of a 1907 shooting in Jamaica Plain.  There was a gun, a gunshot, and a gunshot victim… a child, in fact.  But there was no shooter, or at least no human shooter.  If this was today, we might be talking about a terrifying robot machine gun, but 1907 was a little early for that.  Instead, we’re talking about a deadly trap laid by a homeowner to protect his grape arbor.  For setting this deadly trap, the homeowner would face criminal trial for assault, but pay only a trivial fine.  As bizarre as the case sounds, it was part of a trend that was sweeping the nation at the time, with many spring gun cases arising in the Boston area, until the matter was finally settled in a state supreme court case that every first year law student still studies today.  


Continue reading Spring Gun in the Grape Vines (episode 235)