470 - Accept No Dare

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Subject to change. Have you ever felt that uneasy anxiety when the 4 p.m.
hour strikes? The creeping meal-related distress that happens when you don't quite feel prepared? You know, dinner dread. Let's get rid of that unpleasant feeling forever.
I feel so alone. I'm embarrassed to talk about it.
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Find support now at calhope.org. My favorite murder for you women and women lovers.
That's right. It's Women's History Month.
Do we have any history? No. We haven't done much.
We've just been hanging out, brushing our hair. Waiting to get our rights taken away a little more.
You know, guys, we have these pins, and they're for sale, and we just wanted you to see them in our hands because we love them very much. Yeah, they're going to let us play with our merch now, which is so fun.
They let us touch it. So you could get a 12-foot skeleton pin if you would like to with articulated arms and legs.
And yeah, I was going to say hips, but it's just the arms and legs. Or this little spinner guy.
And every morning when you wake up, you can spin it and see, is today's day sexy, don't get murdered. Is today, here's the thing, fuck everyone.
Is today, this is terrible, keep going.

Or is today, stay out of the forest. It's like a wheel of fortune slash advice thing.
How cute is that? I mean, that's a good gift for the people who know. Ooh, look how cute it looks on here.
I put that on my leather jacket. I put this on this.
That looks good there. This right here.
It actually really works. Instead of an alligator.
I was going to tell you that over on blue sky which is a brand new platform that a lot of people don't know how to use a user named obbs handle obbs said hey did you guys know that you're on one of the top recommendations on goodreads for women's uh history month like autobiography read first Stay Sexy and Don't Get our memoir our one and only book oh my god pretty cool right yeah thanks obbs for letting us know because we didn't know obviously obviously we didn't know obbs is there making sure let's get that book going again yeah that was so fun oh my god the book days the book days like writing that book and i'm still of it, even though I haven't read it in a long time. It might not hold up, but that doesn't matter.
No. Really? Whose books? They're not supposed to hold up.
It's none of our business. Wouldn't it be funny if, like, all the great Russian novelists were like, eh, just make another one.
Yeah. It's not supposed to hold up.
Just read it while you're, yeah, read it in the moment. speaking of reading, I have an email about my story last week.
Perfect. About the great train robbery that I covered.
It says, hi all. On Wednesday, February 26th, I went to a weekly bar trivia with my friends down in San Diego.
We've been going off and on to a handful of bars for about 10 years, which I think I want to start doing now. Bar trivia? Yeah.
Absolutely. During the second round, which is typically very easy, they asked the question, what vehicle was used in the 1963 British crime that broke the record for most money stolen at once? But it was Wednesday.
As someone who has listened to every episode and Minnesota of MFM, let alone many other true crime podcasts and lots of stuff you should know, I was completely stumped and baffled that I would not know this answer. We ended up guessing a double-decker bus since it was the most quintessential British vehicle we could think of.

I love that. That's so hilariously American.
Like a Mini Cooper or something.

And then the answer was simply train. I was chagrined.
And to add insult to injury the next

day, Thursday, February 27th, what pops up on my podcast playlist about the newest episode of MFM

about the 1963 British train robbery. As you listen to the episode with mild ire, you mentioned that you were helping stack up Intel for someone's pub trivia.
Remember? What? Because of the Sopranos song that one of the sons of one of the robbers wrote, and we're like, this is good for you for your future pub trivia. I was stopped in my tracks with the glitchy matrix of it all.
That That is weird. That's weird.
Anyway, love you all. Thank you.
And maybe I'll switch to a Thursday night trivia bar from here on out. Thanks, Laura, like Laura.
Perfect, Laura. Thank you.
That must have really freaked Laura out. I would have been so angry.
Also, it does seem like it would be a good idea

to listen to all of your trivia-ish

or kind of like specific information podcasts

before you go to those trivia nights.

Yeah.

But what if it hasn't even come out yet?

The trivia?

Yeah.

No, the podcast.

Oh, right.

Because it was on Wednesday.

You can't know.

You can't listen in the future.

You can't go around and learn things that aren't out in the world yet. You can't know what you don't know.
You can't, literally. And you shouldn't probably, too.
But I think that's what kind of pub trivia nights are all about, is you're supposed to know everything in the world. I know.
And if you don't, you better go drink in the corner. Or you have enough friends that do.
Yes. And make you not seem stupid.
Everyone comes in with their specific thing where it's like, yes, I'm TV from 1978.

That's like what I love about pub trivia, though, is like you hang out with people you normally wouldn't hang out with because like they're not the people that know everything that you know.

And we have this like sinky thing.

It's like the people who are like, oh, that's random so-and-so.

And he knows every single fucking thing about coding or everything.

Yes.

Everything about politics.

I never see him.

And it's like, well, that's perfect for come to pub trivia. Come and I will talk to you, geography guy.
Right. Yes.
Yeah. What do you got? I just have this little skeleton friend.
I have nothing else. Should we do some highlights? All right.
We have a podcast network called Exactly Right. And we want you to listen to all the podcasts on it, which is why we're giving you some highlights.
Like, for example, this week on this podcast, We'll Kill You, Erin and Erin are launching their brand new four-part pregnancy series. Huge.
Amazing. So on Tuesday, March 11th, you can be part of the excitement by going to YouTube.
They're doing a special YouTube premiere of the very first episode. So it's a video episode of this podcast will kill you.

If you've been listening to the errands explain every disease and body part and thing to you over the years, you can now go watch them do it.

It's very important series and just get to interact video style with that podcast.

So on March 11th at 5 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, you can watch the show, you can chat with everyone and get your questions answered, your pregnancy questions answered in real time.
Please go to youtube.com slash exactly right media. Make sure you subscribe because we're going to be throwing some cool videos up there.
And this is just like the very first of many to come. It's video time over here.
You can see them in our studios and our actual that came and saw us. It was exciting.
Yes, the errands are here. It's like the characters from another place come and interact in this board game.
And the pregnancy thing. I mean, I am a weirdo and I'm fascinated and I know a ton of stuff about pregnancy.
And so I love the idea of just like, and I'm never going to do it. But this is a great way to relate to your friends who are and will and can and should.

Totally.

What they go through and all of it and understanding or if it is what you are going through and you have questions and whatever. These are two amazing doctors who love to teach through their podcast.
Yeah. Sorry.
That's good. I didn't mean to do a speech.
over on dear movies i love you millie and casey take a deep dive into quentin tarantino's film the

hateful Good cast. Yeah.
Sorry. That's good.
I didn't mean to do a speech. Over on Dear Movies, I Love You, Millie and Casey take a deep dive into Quentin Tarantino's film The Hateful Eight.
And they also chat with Brian Soar from the Pure Cinema podcast to tackle an essential question. How to sound like a movie buff without being insufferable.
Spoiler alert. It's impossible to do.
Absolutely. And on That's Messed Up, Lisa and Kara break down SVU episode six, season three, titled Redemption, to explore the wrongful convictions tied to the crimes of Eddie Mosley.
And they also sit down with actor David Keith to talk about his time on SVU and his incredible career. They have David Keith on their podcast.
That's fucking insane. That's like one of my foundational memories.
He was on TV when I started to understand there was a TV in the room. Wow.
This man is a legend. Legendary.
So cool. Okay, also this week on Ghosted, Roz welcomes filmmakers Shannon Alexander and Ashley Roland White to share some spine-tingling stories from Ashley's haunted Brooklyn home, which is the eerie setting of their documentary entitled It's Coming.
Hell yeah. Which is the scariest title maybe I've ever heard.
It's so scary. So if you like ghost stories that keep you up at night, go listen to this episode.
It's for you. You know, my sister recently found out she had a gas leak in her house.
And I was like, have you been seeing ghosts? Because that's my big theory, you know? And she hasn't. She's just been tired.
She's been snapping 18 hours a day. God, that's so scary.
And it's been for like a year. She goes, tell me you're the child of a narcissistic parent without telling me.
And it's like, because I ignored a gas leak for a year and said it must have been in my head. Don't worry about it.
Don't be annoying. Yep.
Don't have needs. Yep.
Don't need clean, fresh air for you and your family. Right.
Okay. Anyway, speaking of hauntings.
Speaking of sorrow. Some of our most popular merch has returned from its sold out purgatory because you guys loved them so much.
For those looking to upgrade their jean jacket, as we said, we have the skeleton pin and the MFM mood pin. They are restocked.
These both sold out. So make sure you go get them at exactlyrightstore.com.
Yay. Yay.
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As the weather starts to get warmer and we can finally go places again, it's time to face a hard truth. Your travel wardrobe is not ready.
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Georgia, I don't want to brag or anything, but I just got a box of three brand new Quince sweaters because I wear my $50 Mongolian cashmere sweaters that I got years ago so much that I was finally like, I need to freshen this up a little bit. For your next trip, treat yourself to the luxe upgrades you deserve from Quince.
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Quince.com slash MFM. Goodbye.
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Or like, you know, walking at my driveway because I live up off the street and you shouldn't be there if you're not meant to be there. So like if I get the ping that someone's on my lawn and I'm like, I know something's up and I can check it before they even get to the door or break in in the window.
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Goodbye. OK, this is kind of I'm not going to call it a fun one because this podcast is called My Favorite Murder.
However, it is a caper, I would call it, like an adventure caper that was really big in the UK in the early, mid-2000s. Huge story that I maybe had heard of, but didn't remember, I bet you'll know it.
So it's 5.30 p.m.

It's December 1st, 2020. that I maybe had heard of, but like didn't remember.
I bet you'll know it.

So it's 5.30 p.m.

It's December 1st, 2007.

Oh, what?

I know.

We're at the West End Central Police Station in the middle of London, busy, beautiful London.

You know, people are shopping.

There's tourists.

People are meeting for drinks after work.

They're on their way to the theaters.

They're talking in British accents. Beautiful British accents.
Oh, my God. Double-decker buses.
Pipes. Robbing trains.
101 Dalmatians. Oh, my God.
So a man walks into the police station. He appears to be in his mid-50s.
He's like clean cut. He's in good health.
He's got a tan, which is rare for London, frankly. And he says to the officer, quote, I think I may be a missing person.
So they do some probing and they realize he is a man who very famously went missing five years earlier in 2002. His name is John Darwin.
He had set out in a kayak. Here's the thing for the rest of this.
Kayak and canoe are going to be interchangeable because either they're the same thing over there or they are interchangeable over there. But when I say canoe, I mean kayak.
When I say kayak, I mean canoe. I'm going to stick with canoe.
The fact that you have said this though, I'm pretty sure I've seen this made for TV movie's a made-for-TV movie and a great documentary. And is Mr.
Darcy the star of the made-for-TV movie? I didn't watch it. Is he? I think he is.
Oh, shit. I watched the documentary.
No, no, no. I'm sorry.
Not Mr. Darcy.
But I think I've seen it. But can I tell you who he looks like, just so you can picture it? Yes.
And it's like a spitting image of, he's a British John McEnroe, the famous tennis player. Oh, okay.
Spitting image Spitting image to me. So he had set out on a kayak from a beach near his home and was presumed dead, lost at sea.
But John, this guy who walks in, says he can't remember anything that's happened to him in the past seven years, basically from two years before he paddled away. He basically is like, I must have amnesia.
He says, quote, I have hazy recollections of being in a kayak, but I cannot remember the accident or anything leading up to it at all. It is therefore true to say that I do have some form of amnesia, end quote.
That's his story. You know how amnesiacs always talk like that, where they're like, well, it could be this or it could be that, as opposed to just, I don't know, help me, I don't know where I am.
Yeah, I would imagine. But the neurologist who examines him is immediately skeptical about his amnesia claims.
And from there, the story begins to unravel into what will very quickly become a British tabloid sensation. This is the story of the disappearance of John Darwin.
The main sources for the story are a reporting from The Guardian and a book called Out of My Depth by Anne Darwin, the wife, and the rest of the sources can be found in our show notes. Okay, so let me tell you about the Darwins.
Let's back up to the day Darwin first became a missing person. So that was March 22nd, 2002, and Ali Elkin, my researcher, wrote, And Nickelback's How You Remind Me is the top of the U.S.
charts and at number four in the U.K. I love the time and place.
Nickelback. That's all you need to hear.
That's all you need. It was the peak of Nickelback season.
And it's number four in the U.K. where our story takes place.
Beautiful. I love the way she just brought it around.
John and his wife Anne live in the seaside town of Seton Carew. Huh? It's on the northeast coast of England, not too far from Newcastle.
It's like a beach town, a little bit run down. You know, it used to be a big touristy thing, and I think it's not so much anymore.
John and Anne Darwin are a couple in their early 50s. Anne works as a receptionist in a doctor's office.
And John is a corrections officer in a prison and seems to get along with the prisoners really well, which is interesting. He had previously been a math and science teacher and had worked for a bank before that.
And the couple are also landlords. They rent out bedsits, which basically to us would be if you rented like a bedroom and then the bathroom is down the hall and you share that with all the other tenants.
So a bedsit. Single room occupancy apartments, basically.
That's for when you're writing your novel down by the seaside. It is a beautiful like old Victorian looking place down by this like, you know, overcast British sea.
It's really beautiful, picturesque. The darwins own 12 houses in the area and they've all been converted into these bedsits so they're not that expensive like that's that's the thing too about the the area where they can they people who are just have normal jobs can buy these houses and turn it into this and make money off of them so it's not like they're not in london you know yeah john has always been involvedles, which a.k.a.
get rich quick schemes. One involved, and this is a great idea, breeding snails to sell to restaurants for escargot.
Like, yeah, where do those snails come from? Someone's got to do it. Farm those snails.
I mean, now I just want to ask somebody all about, like, is there a certain way you have to do it that makes it food grade quality? Exactly. And then also, like salmon where you're like that's farm raised i can tell because of the color and like it's better to get it the texture have you ever had escargot i've had it a couple times what do you think it's a really good chewy thing do you think it'd be as good without all the garlic no no no no it's the garlic and butter that makes it parsley that makes it good on the bread it's not bad it's you don't taste snail but you just know you're eating snail now i truly want to listen to a podcast about how escargot became any kind of a thing that people are aaron and aaron this podcast will kill you actually because i there is that one boy who ate a slug in like australia and fucking died oh ate a like poisonous slug as a dare.
Don't eat. Don't do.
That and the fuzzy caterpillars are my like worst nightmare. If someone dares you.
No. What you say back to that person is, why is there no one at home with you? What's wrong with you? Why am I a teenage boy? Why are you? What's happening? Teenage boys.
Oh my God. Okay.
Here eat a poison pig. Okay.
Which in nature we know are poisonous because they're like bright yellow. Right.
Or black and white stripes. Don't do it.
Okay. So tell us about snails, snail-erenos.
Oh, my God. It's got to be.
The subgroup that loves escargot needs to be uniting right now. They're a French subgroup of murder-erenos.
Murder-erenos. How do they call themselves? Murder-erenos.
There you go. Thank you.
Okay. Another get rich quick scheme involves painting gnomes to sell at flea markets.
Because, you know, they just come into like, and then you just paint them. I know.
Red hat. Yeah.
Right. Or like maybe they're kitschy and like different.
Some have really red cheeks. Like me.
Some are Irish. By 2002, John and Anne's two sons, Mark and Anthony, are in their mid-20s and kind of hot too.
Oh yeah? Yeah, they're kind of like, you know, hot British dudes. Fit, as the British would say.
Fit, they are fit. They no longer live at home.
John and Anne live in a big Victorian townhouse in a row of similar townhouses that line this cliff overlooking the sea. Very beautiful.
They actually own two properties in this row, the one they live in and then the one next door that is converted to bed sits. This will be important, I swear.
So at 8.30 in the morning on March 22nd, 2002, John sets out in his red kayak or canoe paddling out to sea. It's just a hobby of his.
That morning, a neighbor sees John in the distance paddling in the water. He's the last person to see John and John doesn't come back from his morning paddle.
But no one reports him missing until 930 that night, which is when Anne comes home from work and running errands. And here's the message on the answering machine from the prison where John works saying that he never shut up for his night shift.
So he left early in the morning and it wasn't until 930 at night. By midnight, a huge search and rescue operation is underway and continues into the next day.
Five crews from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, two boats from the Coast Guard and one police aircraft with heat seeking equipment search a 62 square mile area around the waters where John is last seen paddling. So this is a big deal.
Yeah. This is a big, scary deal that this person could be lost at sea.
Police search the shoreline, and at about 1.15 the following afternoon, one of the searchers finds a kayak paddle. It's found by the shore not too far from the town they live in, and not too far from where John had set off.
Of course, without his paddle, they know John would be adrift. So this is even a bigger emergency.
But the rescue teams are puzzled because the North Sea where John was in has been unusually calm and everyone is wondering how John could have had any issues in such good weather. But the search and rescue teams find no sign of John or his kayak and people begin to fear the worst.
Anne Darwin asks relatives to go tell her two sons that their father is missing and that it doesn't look good. And the sons are, of course, devastated.
They're even more devastated four days later when the rescue mission is called off. About six weeks later, on May 8th, the wreckage of John's kayak is found.
It's in several pieces, but it's washed up on the shore in that same area his paddle had been found. The family confirms that the wreckage is John's kayak.
So April of 2003, the coroner declares John legally dead. At this point, Anne can file a claim on his life insurance policy, which is worth about 250 pounds in 2003, which in today's U.S.
dollars. Hold on, 250,000 pounds? 250,000 pounds.
Okay. You said 250 pounds.
I didn't mean that. 250,000 pounds, which in today's U.S.
dollars, I mean, just take a wild guess. From 2003? Mm-hmm.
And then you have to convert it from pounds to dollars. Can't do that.
No. Won't do that.
Here's my American answer. Okay.
$400,000? $690,000. Damn it.
I know. I just want that day where I say the exact number.
One day one of us is going to get it and the podcast is over. That's the day that all done.
The lights immediately shut off and we walk away. The landlord comes in and gets the keys back to these offices.
It's over. It's a lot of money.
And John also had a few pensions from his various jobs. And so Anne is able to collect benefits on those too.
And life seems to go on for the rest of the family. Now, obviously, at this point, we know what's going on, you and I and everyone else.
Spoiler alert, John had faked his own death. So he and his wife could collect on the insurance money.
Shocker. But she, Anne doesn't know this yet, right? Or does she? Are you going to tell us? I'm going to tell you.
Okay, sorry. Because I'm trying to remember this TV show.
So I'm like, what happened? I'll tell you. Okay.
The answer is yes. Anne was in it all along.
The way she later tells the story, she says John had put immense pressure on her to go along with his life insurance fraud scheme. The couple were very overextended on all of their real estate.
And John came up with this idea of faking his own death to get them out of debt. I think they were like $60,000 in debt.
And they had all these, you know, rental properties they couldn't cover their mortgage for. So on the day that John went out to see, and I can't imagine being talked into this.
So either he was very persuasive or she was like, let's do it. Here's a fun factoid.
The woman that plays the wife in the Made for TV, I guess it was a miniseries. That was Monica Dolan, who's the same actress who played Rose West in the miniseries about Fred and Rose West.
Yes. She is a powerhouse British actress, character actress, and playing this kind of beleaguered, put-upon wife.
You have so much empathy for her. Wow, she can do it all.
Yeah. And she's so great.
And she's so harried from the beginning, like freaked out from the beginning does seem a little bit just from yeah who knows the way they portray her but that he is kind of like won't leave her alone and there's a little bit like almost ocd about it and won't leave her alone about it and then she just has to give in i from the documentary i got that idea too she was like like you know she had been promised this life because he was like always in scheming and stuff like that and it wasn't happening and he just was like, this is the way it has to go and she went along with it. Kind of old school.
Yeah. Wifey type of thing.
Right, right. You know.
On the day when John went out to sea, he made sure he was seen struggling with his kayak down to the shoreline. Oof.
Acting. Bad physical acting.
Totally. He paddled to North Gare where his paddle and kayak

had ultimately been found and

it's a five minute drive from his house. So he

had packed camping gear and clothes

into the canoe with him

and he spent the rest of the day hiding

in the dunes and then he tried to throw

the paddle out to sea but it kept washing

ashore. Oh my god.
He winds

up leaving the paddle close to shore where it was found the next day. He just was, like, wanting people to find it.
He puts it right there. Right.
He sinks the canoe, and in the afternoon of the day he disappears, before he's reported missing, John actually calls Anne at work to remind her to pick him up from his hiding spot that evening. So she's in it from the beginning.
She had already been at work by the time John left the house. And she says that when she saw that he was calling, she'd hoped he was saying that he hadn't gone through with the plan.
But nope, John had gone through with the plan. After Anne picks him up at about seven in the evening, she drives him to a train station in Durham, not the closest one to their home because John thinks police will look at that station's CCTV footage.
She parks on a side street, still trying to avoid cameras. And then

John gets out of the car with his camping gear and clothes and gets on the first of a series of

trains. He winds up in Cumbria.
It's a scenic part of Northern England on the opposite coast

from where the Darwins live. First, he stays at a BNB, but then he sees himself on the news,

on a TV there. And so he quickly checks out and camps in the woods for about three weeks i know he had originally intended to stay away a lot longer but turns out living outdoors sucks and he's cold and hungry and so he calls ann and begs her to pick him up i just and and look you're desperate you to put a plan together.
Yeah. But not walking it all the way through to like, what about in one month, two months, three months, where it's like, he went and stayed at a bed and breakfast the night that he was supposed to have disappeared.
Yeah. And like, it sounds like an adventure when you're like mapping it out in your head.
I'll live in the forest and I'll have those camping gear. And it's like that lasts a week.
And then you're like, fuck this shit. It's freezing out here.
It's freezing. I have to fucking shit in a hole.
Like, no, thank you. Yeah.
There's no crisps. There's no crisps.
No one's fit. Also, trying to like manipulate the ocean to do what you want to do to back up your story, just as a person who grew up near the coast, is such bad idea right it's never like first of all there's experts that know the tides they know they watch it constantly i mean it kind of worked but there were people who are like right yeah you say there were people who were yeah they were skeptical of the story but they're just like nothing's happening why would anything be happening yeah i think everyone like the insurance adjuster everyone don't know about that, but there's no proof otherwise.
So, okay. They just didn't have any proof otherwise.
But yeah, I think people were not fooled. They were like, this is the one sneaker wave that hits this time of year.
Right. Or he went under a boat.
I don't know. So he calls in and begs her to pick him up.
So they return home. And then he now pretends to be a new tenant living in one of the apartments in the house next door in the bed sit next door.
So he's like, I'm going to pretend to be someone else. Okay.
In the exact spot that I just left three weeks ago. It's foolproof.
And you could have done it from the beginning. Right.
So the two houses actually have several connecting doors in between them. So John's able to hang out in his old house with Anne, have a cup of tea and chill there and like basically live there until people come over and he runs next door to hide.
And so no one else knows but Anne. And Anne will later say in an interview, quote, fortunately, we had a gravel driveway.
So if cars approached, we could hear them come come so they always had 30 seconds minimum right

to get to run yeah so i'm sure she got sick of him real fast staying home all day right well and also because he's pulled her into this thing yeah like yeah that would get old real quick very quick so he now goes by the name carl fenwick as this new tenant next door god damn it he had why i had a mouthful of diet Pepsi

and it just sounds so stupid.

It does.

It's just like,

you know,

Carl,

then... as this new tenant next door.
God damn it. He had, why? I had a mouthful of diapers.
And it just sounds so stupid. It does.
It's just like, you know. Carl Fenwick.
Carl Fenwick. You know me.
It's your old pal, Carl Fenwick. Hey, look at me.
I have a scraggly beard. I have an exaggerated limp for some reason.
I'm definitely not John Darwin. For real? And he basically, like, people see him, and they know that there's this guy, a new tenant who lives there, who helps Anne with stuff around the house, like repairs on the properties.
This man, this new John Darwin guy, also avoids interactions with any of the other tenants in the house who knew John, and he uses the back staircase know, his room. It's all just waiting for an online sleuth to like pick up on a couple things and then...
There is an online sleuth in the story. Sorry, sorry.
No, no, it's great. I'm going to keep doing that though because I already saw the show and then I'm just forgetting and then remembering.
No, it's good that you saw it and I didn't, even though I'm telling you the story. It's a good thing.
Okay. Somehow.
So then actually about a year after John's disappearance, John, as Carl Fenwick, actually bumps into another tenant. He sees this scraggly guy and he's like, he says to him, aren't you supposed to be dead? Like he knows it's John Darwin.
He's seen this guy before. And then John says, don't tell anyone about this.
And it seems like a couple people actually thought they saw him or were sure they saw him. And you know, British people, they're just like, none of my business.
Truly. Yeah.
Low key. They get embarrassed real easy.
Right. Like, I don't want to get involved.
I don't want to get involved. No one's going to start pointing and shouting over there in England.
No, there are no snitches in England. Not in the least.
They don't do that. No snitches and no stitches.

That's right. So John evades detection by authorities.
He spends a lot of time playing online computer games in his bed sit. It's a good life.
Sure. Then he applies for a passport by stealing the identity of a baby who had died in infancy the same year he was born, also named John.
and Anne says John got this idea from the book

The Day of the Jackal, and it works. He gets a copy of the baby's birth certificate and is able to use it to apply for a passport under the name John Jones.
So we have a third name now. What's the second name? Carl Fenwick? Yeah.
Fenny. We call him Fenny at the local pub.
John is like kind of fairly brazen. He goes out in public.
He then also like now that he has his passport, he flies to Spain in 2005. I think they go on a couple of holidays, as they call it, with that huge fucking windfall of money from his death.
In 2006, he uses his fake name to sign a petition against planned construction that's supposed to happen to the house next door like don't put your fucking name down he's got to yeah he's kind of just like well this is over now and i can move on because he believes that like the reality he's dictating is reality absolutely what is that sociopath or like i don't know is it what we're all we all do and then're just kind of like, it's a fight of... Delusional.
Or something. Yeah.
But I mean, to me, his delusion is that thing of like, it's as delusional the thing he did as now the way he's acting within it. Like, I just don't want to be doing this anymore.
Right. It's not like one is more than the other.
Right. But it's just what he decides the temperature is that day.
It's all a Carl Fenwick style plan. It surely is.
So at this point in 2006, Anna and John start making a plan to move to Panama together. Like she's stuck by this guy's side.
She lists both of those properties in Seton Carew and the house sells. And so she has her sons come over to help her clean it out.
Now, the sons never know about the scheme. The sons think their dad was lost at sea, which is really the most heartbreaking part of this whole story.
She has them select items of their fathers that they want to keep, like keepsakes for him. And one of the sons actually selects a book that later they realized was the dad's that they later realized was published after he disappeared so john and ann do move to panama in the fall of 2007 and it's at the same time that the police start investigating them basically what happens is in the lead up to the move one of ann's colleagues who's a snitch turns out here's her having hushed conversations on the phone which weird.
The tone of the conversation is exactly the way she would have talked to her husband. So this chick's nosy as fuck.
And she's always whispering and covering the receiver. Just fishy business.
It was tough back then when everyone used the phone. Right.
And you'd kind of like, stuff would happen and then you'd have to do weird stuff that. Like you're in the doctor's office where you work and you're just like.

You pull the long cord around into a different, like into the copy room.

Right.

So this coworker just has a gut feeling that she's talking to her husband and she reports her suspicions to the police.

So they start reinvestigating John's disappearance.

What's the.

She must have not.

What'd she get out of it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or she thinks it's something worse then. Oh, yeah.
Only just because knowing the overall crime, it's so self-serving that it's like. Yeah.
I don't know if citizen, like, I'd like to make a citizen's arrest. Yeah, it's really law-abiding in a way that, like, what was she like, really? I don't know.
You no shade a little bit of both half a cup of shade yes and just a droplet of shame that's it and so john and ann don't know yet that they're being looked into and so they make that plan to move to panama but they're only there for three months before john is like fuck this shit basically and has to go back to the UK because Panama had changed its visa rules. So if they actually wanted to continue living there, John and Anne will each need a letter from their local police force back home saying they are a good character.
So John, of course, can't do this with his fake identity. And so he's like, I have an idea.
Amnesia, let's do this. And he flies back to the UK and walks into that police station and is like, I think I'm a missing person.
And at this point, when he pitches that idea to her, she's just what? She's I'm begging you. I'm begging you to stop.
Just, just please. What do you do? So that's December of 2007 when he walks back into the police from the beginning of the story.
Again, neurologists are immediately doubtful, but the police still notify John's two sons, who are shocked and then absolutely elated to find out that their father, who they believe was dead for five years, lost at sea, is still alive. The story catches on that the man who was thought dead in a canoeing accident has turned up alive in London and that he seemingly can't account for the past five years.
The detail that his wife had moved to Panama also becomes part of the story. I think people at first were like, kind of believe the story.
I'm sure a lot were like, there's more to it than that. But this is interesting.
It immediately is like tabloid. It's like you understand why the tabloids pick the stories they pick.
Because it's almost like, what's your neighbor up to? Right. Oh, you think that guy with the beard is just, what's his name? Carl? Carl Fenwick? Yeah.
It's sensational. No, that's fucking John Darwin.
Everyone's known that. Okay, then here comes our citizen sleuth.
This random woman decides to Google something along the lines of John, Anne, and Panama. And when she goes to the images tab, she finds a picture from a Panama real estate agent's office.
It shows John, Anne, and the broker all smiling together with a date stamp from 2006 when they rented this apartment or they bought this house. I don't know which is.
But Anne this whole time had been saying that she thought her husband was dead and so they find this photo of them from like a year before smiling why would you take a picture don't let anyone take a picture of you don't sign any fucking forms like basics but don't you think that's because that is the last remnants of people who did not grow up with the internet don't understand why would that go on the internet yeah it's like it's a picture it's going to stay in south america yeah and there will be nothing that brings it out of this area it's just for the real estate agent it's 2006 we don't do that shit right now no and then it's like yeah totally so this like basically ann had been insisting that she knew nothing she thought her husband was dead everything falls apart this woman sends the photo to the police and the Daily Mirror. And the mirror, of course, runs the photo.
And the story goes from being kind of a simple, mildly interesting story to causing a complete uproar. And John becomes known around the UK as Canoe Man.
Like front page, the photo of them from the real estate office smiling like nobody's business. On December 5th, the same day the photo runs in the mirror, John is arrested for fraud, which is not surprising at all.
Right. Like you just kind of humiliated the police, even though they were on to you.
But it's been five years and they believe that. Yeah.
And no one could kind of do anything about it. Right.
Anne flies back to the UK and is also promptly arrested. just a few days after these arrests, Mark and Anthony, the fit sons, release a statement saying they had no idea that their father was alive and they are cooperating with police and that they are no longer speaking to either of their parents.
I know. Devastating.
They are truly the victims. It seems like also the wife, but she did go along with it.
Because that Because that is kind of what that whole. She deceived them.
Made for TV movie is where it's like that's the part she can't explain. Totally.
And they're like, what the hell? I mean, it's almost worse for her because she had to lie to their faces for five years when he could just skedaddle. Yeah.
You know? Typical. I mean, like she's carrying the water for the big plan.
And then when the big plan falls, a plan she doesn't believe in falls apart.

She is the scapegoat because she's supposed to be better than her husband. Right.
Who would do such a thing? In March of 2008, John pleads guilty to seven charges of obtaining cash by deception and a passport offense. Some of his other charges are dropped in a plea deal.
He's sentenced to about six years in prison. And then Anne's case goes to trial in July of 2008.

She pleads not guilty

to six charges of deception

and nine charges of money laundering

because the money all went to her.

It was in her name.

You know what I mean?

So she takes the fall for that

and she gets over six years

more than him.

Yeah, got to remember that part.

If you are the bag man.

Right.

You're still in there.

I know.

Her defense team says John forced her to go along with his scheme, but it doesn't matter. She's found guilty.
Both John and Anne have since been released from prison and have gotten divorced. Like, all that for what? For what? Anne has reconciled with her sons and wrote a book about the scheme called Out of My Depth, which is one of the sources for the story.
Anne donated the profits from her book to charities, including the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which led the search

for John when he first faked his disappearance.

That's a very decent move.

Yeah.

That's very smart.

Yeah.

John now lives in the Philippines, and he married a woman who is 23 years younger than

him.

And that is the story of the disappearance of John Darwin.

Wow, that's good.

Oh, my God.

Can you imagine?

No, Vince, I'm not.

You can't do that.

Hey, come on.

And then he just keeps bringing it up at lunch.

Yeah, it's a bad idea.

It's not going to work.

No.

Let's just paint some more gnomes.

We got to do it.

We got to do it.

It's going to get us so much money.

Let's paint some more gnomes. Order double gnomes.
Grow some fucking snails. Grow some more snails from the snail tree and like get this.
Jesus. Jesus.
Also, I'm just blown away that having so much real estate didn't matter. That was like a minus to them.
Just the ego there of like, i can do this and then stop doing it whenever i want and and pull drag in whoever and like to not consider that your sons are losing their father in their minds and the devastation that comes with losing a parent in such a traumatic way to not even consider how that's going to affect them the rest of their lives the traumatic way that's a lie and then the traumatic way that's real either way it's almost it's like a worse where it's like oh no your dad you didn't tragically lose your dad at sea he did this to you with his your mother she should have taken all the money from that book and put it into their therapy account because that's going to be forever oh wow yeah that was great thank you nice one oh the um documentary is called The Thief, His Wife in a Canoe. And it's good.
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All right. Well, let's take a turn back to Women's History Month.
Let's go back. Can we please? Let's revisit it just for a second.
And then in doing so, also talk about my favorite topic, which is Victorian England. Hell yeah.
I will warn listeners, this story references a very disturbing old British police process, which was essentially the sexual abuse of women. And it's very upsetting.
So just listen with caution, please. So today we're going to talk about a little known British historical figure who, despite her very real impact on British society, is not as famous as she should be.
Historian Sarah C. Williams wrote a book on this person, and she put it this way, quote, this woman devoted her life to pursuing justice for women.

She played a pivotal role in the movement to gain equal constitutional rights for women in Britain. In fact, she was described by her contemporaries as, quote, the most distinguished woman of the 19th century, end quote.
Why is it then that we've largely forgotten her? End quote. Yeah, why is it? Well, given how passionately this woman went after Victorian double standards that overwhelmingly favored men while fighting for women's access to education, suffrage, and bodily autonomy, and the fact that she wasn't afraid to break social etiquette in the process probably is what made her much more controversial in her time than obviously she would be now.
Today, she's known to some as the, quote, patron saint of sex workers. This is a story of 19th century British activist Josephine Butler.
Okay. All right.
So the main sources used today are the writing and research of Sarah C. Williams, including her book, When Courage Calls, Josephine Butler and the Radical Pursuit of Justice for Women.

That book is heavily cited.

Also, an article by historian Michelle Higgs that was called How Poverty Drove Thousands of Women to Sell Sex on the Streets of Victorian Britain.

And that ran in the British magazine, Who Do You Think You Are?, which I got you a subscription to for your birthday this year coming up. Also, an article by Kimmy Harris in Christianity Today entitled Jesus Befriended Prostitutes, So This Victorian Era Woman Did Too.
The rest of the sources are in our show notes. Okay, so we're going to start at the beginning, and that is in 1828 in Northumberland.
This is the northern edge of England, and that's the year that Josephine Gray is born. Her family isn't exactly the aristocracy, but they are members of the upper middle class with serious political connections.
Josephine's father's cousin, for example, is a man named Charles Gray, who will go on to become the prime minister in 1830. Politically speaking, Josephine's father's cousin, for example, is a man named Charles Gray who will go on to become the prime minister in 1830.

Politically speaking, Josephine's parents are very, very progressive with their ideals and convictions being firmly rooted in their strong Christian faith. Her mother Hannah breaks from the norms of the day and gives her daughters lessons, like at-home schools them, while her father John is a vocal abolitionist and campaigner for social reform who openly discusses the topics of politics with his kids.
So in 1852, when Josephine is 23, she marries a classics professor at Durham College named George Butler. George is cutting edge when it comes to Victorian men.
He is ideologically totally on the same page as Josephine, and he respects her curiosity and intelligence, which is sadly rare in Victorian England. Curiosity and intelligence were ugly back then.
Josephine, in turn, is inspired by George's work in academia, and on the weekends, they like to study texts and scripture together. And then I just wrote, just kidding, the weekend hadn't been invented yet.
Think of all those children working in the workhouses. I'd say weekend.
Working, yeah. No weekend.
Okay, so eventually George accepts a job at his alma mater, Oxford University, and the couple packs up and relocates. And at first, Josephine is very excited by the idea of being surrounded by academics and people who value education.
But that excitement quickly fades once they settle in. One issue is that Josephine struggles with the bad air in Oxford, which it's described as, quote, damp, and that triggers respiratory issues that she's been dealing with since childhood.
But the other issue is social because at the time, all Oxford students are men, and they've been encouraged to remain single since having a family is seen as being in conflict with the life of an academic. Many Oxford students are in training to be priests and much of the faculty are already ordained.
So in short, life at Oxford is dominated by young single men who, unlike George, tend to ignore the intellect of women. At the same time, many of these male students and their professors are supposedly quote unquote cel, celibate, and yet they regularly visit sex workers.
Even though this is not allowed and theoretically punishable at Oxford, Josephine often sees women and girls being brought into town and picked up by well-to-do men affiliated with the school. Some of these girls look very young, like children, and that especially troubles Josephine.
So, of course, many sex workers today find empowerment in their work, but of course, in the 19th century, the polite and publicly prudish Victorian attitude around sex work is very, very negative on all fronts, with the women who sell sex being seen as pariahs. This is despite many women turning to sex out of financial desperation, like they've been widowed or they are unmarried women with children or they're flower girls or domestic workers who are not just basically making enough money to live and feed themselves.
Historian Michelle Higgs writes, quote, Referred to as the great social evil, prostitution was an ever-present fact of life in Victorian Britain and was considered by the upper and middle class to be a threat to society and morality as a whole. Fallen women was the label applied to those who had fallen from the ideal of passive womanhood and lost their purity or innocence by indulging in premarital sex.
With the people who are insulting them in that very sentence. With those same fathers and husbands in the families that are turning their noses up.
Right. That are utilizing their services.
Yes. So Josephine Butler does not judge female sex workers the way others at the time do, even though she herself is very, very religious.
She seems to be the rare Christian who genuinely ascribes to the idea that all people are equal in God's eyes. What really bothers Josephine is the huge double standard around sex and sex work.
Michelle Higgs again says, quote, in Victorian times, the sexual appetites of men and their use of sex workers was considered the norm. Women, on the other hand, were expected to be chaste and passive and to retain their virtue at all costs.
Sex workers were punished under the law for soliciting, and yet the men who used their services were not. Yeah, like what the fuck? Yeah.
This game is rigged and has been since day one. So at Oxford, Josephine sees how the school turns a blind eye to the male members of their community paying for sex while local police eagerly arrest and jail the women for providing it.
So Josephine starts visiting these women, not to try to reform them or to chastise them, but to befriend them. It's around this time that Josephine learns about a tragic case involving an unnamed teenage girl.
It is not clear if she was a sex worker or not. We know that that's an issue from telling stories about women in Victorian times, like in The Five, Hallie Rubin holds The Five, where she's like, there's no proof any of these women that were victims of Jack the Ripper were also sex workers.
Right. And then also, like, what does that mean? If like one time you were literally starving to death and, you know, you did something you had to do, does that turn you forever into a sex worker or? And also, are you somehow justifying this horrendous murder of this person? Right.
It's a, well, they get what they get. Is that supposed to be the message? Then the message then we don't have to care is the i mean this is a lesson we learned year one where and a lot of this stuff is handed down yeah it's like that super prudish like in my case very catholic approach to that where it's like well this is automatically bad so here's how you should be judging these people right instead of questioning we've been talking.
Fucking everything. Yeah.
So here's the story of this teenage girl. She was made pregnant by an Oxford scholar who then abandoned her.
She was left to carry the baby alone, which would be traumatizing and isolating in and of itself. Then shortly after she gives birth, she has no options.
She has no future. She kills the newborn baby.
So many Victorians see this girl as being the antithesis of what a woman, quote, should be. But Josephine sees a disempowered, abused, isolated girl being punished for a hypocritical morality system that allows the man who got her pregnant to walk away scot-free.
Right. So when this girl is eventually released from prison, Josephine and George do something unthinkable in Victorian society.
They take her in as a domestic servant. Wow.
Employing this, quote, fallen woman in their own home could very well mean social death for most well-to-do families. But as a write-up from the Salvation Army explains, quote, Josephine

remarkably retained a respectable reputation due to her additional adherence to the virtuous rules

assigned to her sex by Victorian society, marriage, motherhood, morality, and piety.

So they couldn't get her. They couldn't scratch her.
And then she's like, and I'm doing this with

this social power. I have this and I'm using it for good.
Yeah. So all the while, George

Thank you. They couldn't scratch her.
And then she's like, and I'm doing this with this social power. I have this and I'm using it for good.
Yeah. So all the while, George has noticed that his wife is neither happy or healthy in Oxford.
So in 1857, he takes a new position as a schoolmaster in Cheltenham College, which is 40 miles west of Oxford, in England's beautiful and idyllic Cotswolds region. And the move is an instant improvement for Josephine.
The environment is better for her health, so it starts to improve. Then also the butlers have a lot of space for their growing family.
At this point, they have four young children. They have Georgie, Stanley, Charlie, and then their young daughter, Eva.
Here in Cheltenham, the butlers live in a large four-story home that's owned by Georgia's employer. So it's big enough that it can house a dormitory of 30 schoolboys, reception rooms for entertaining, and a grand staircase with long banisters.
So they live with all the students? Yeah. Because that's, first of all, it's a college, which means it's a grammar school.
It's one of

those deals, I think, for the Brits.

And it sounds like it's like a

boarding school or whatever.

Those are all guesses, though. It could be wrong.

If you went to

Cheltenham College in

Victorian England, please write in.

Little Victorian ghost, and you went.

Please. Well, we do have something terribly tragic that happens in the family and in that house.
One night in August of 1863, the baby of the Butler family, five-year-old Eva, comes rushing out of her fourth floor nursery to say goodnight to her parents who are downstairs in the drawing room. But she runs toward the banister, loses her balance balance and falls over the banister four stories to her death oh no horrible yeah so of course as you can imagine the butlers are consumed by grief for years josephine will later call it quote a long drought in my soul the law stuns her so much that she isn't able to fully reflect on Eva's death for decades, which is totally normal.
But it does in a strange way awaken something inside of her because all the love that she poured into her daughter now fuels her deep desire to improve the lives of little girls like her daughter and the women they later become. So when the family relocates to Liverpool for Georgia's next job, Josephine brings this conviction and her deep grief along with her.
And Liverpool opens her eyes. It's the first big city that Josephine's ever lived in.
And she sees that it's a place where the rich and the poor basically exist side by side. Josephine will later write, quote, I became possessed with an irresistible urge to go forth and find some pain keener than my own to meet with people more unhappy than myself.
It was not difficult to find misery in Liverpool. I had no clear idea beyond that.
That's so interesting. Like in your grief, you want to be surrounded by people who can understand it.
Yep. Relate.
Yeah. You're not trying to be like with butterflies and fucking sunbeams.
No. You just, that's what you need in a time like that.
It's just someone who you don't even have to say anything. Right.
Just like, yep. Mm-hmm.
So Josephine starts at the very bottom. she begins visiting the Brownlow Workhouse, which is home to around 4,000 of the city's most impoverished residents.
We've talked about Victorian workhouses on this show before. They're institutions where the poor were housed as they're paying for their basically their debts to society through grueling labor.
Josephine begs to be let into the basement of the Brownlow Workhouse, and that's where the most destitute women are working. The work they're doing is called oakum picking, where they pull apart old ropes and separate the fibers so they can be reused for caulking for ships.
It's done for hours on end in exchange for scraps of food and a very uncomfortable bed for the night. Josephine will later write, quote, I was taken into an immense gloomy vault filled with women and girls, more than 200 probably at the time.
I sat on the floor among them. They laughed at me and told me my fingers were of no use for that work, which was true.
But while we laughed, we became friends. So this might sound maybe a bit tone deaf on her part, but Josephine seems genuinely interested in getting to know these women at the workhouse.
And these women must have felt that sincerity because she eventually earned their trust and their friendship. And in doing so, she learns that many of them use sex work to supplement their otherwise unlivable incomes.

Just like the women she met in Oxford, these ladies here in Liverpool have suffered disproportionately under a system that seems to forgive men their every sin and punish women for theirs.

So Josephine relays all of this back to her husband, and the two decide once again to open their home to these

women in particular the sex workers who are dying of sexually transmitted diseases the butlers offer them a safe place to either rest and recover or spend their final days dying with dignity wow yeah but as the butlers take in more and more women it becomes clear that they need more. They will eventually open a hostel and later a more humane workhouse that they build where steady work is available in a safe environment.
Josephine isn't asking anyone to change. She's certainly not forcing anyone to change.
And she doesn't see women who do sex work as lost causes. She's just gently offering them an alternative if they want it.
And while she's doing that, she's also fighting for women's access to education, which she sees as the key to women's independence and social mobility. There's a reason they don't want to fund education.
There's a reason they cut education. So in addition to her deep empathy, intelligence, and strong social reputation, Josephine is also said to be good-looking and charming, which, of course, is an asset in this male-dominated world.
So with equal parts charm and skill, she is eventually able to convince the men who run Cambridge University to expand their courses for women. What? she's in i mean i imagine that that means

it could i could be wrong but that essentially she's in those cocktail parties yeah she's there

with her successful you know professor husband they're in the mix yeah and when she talks people

listen because she's the real deal yeah very cool love it so after spending years befriending and

working with sex workers and becoming increasingly prominent advocate for women's rights

And I think that's the real deal. Very cool.
Love it. So after spending years befriending and working with sex workers and becoming increasingly prominent advocate for women's rights, in 1869, Josephine Butler learns about the Contagious Diseases Acts.
And these are a group of laws that were put in place in 1864, initially billed as temporary measures to curb venereal disease in the british military at face value these laws are geared at protecting public health but in yeah of course truth they're deeply discriminatory totally misogynist and horrifyingly invasive for starters they essentially scapegoat women as the reason venereal diseases spread and completely ignore the role that men play. Where do they get them? Where do you fucking think they get them? I mean, it's just, it's truly just like boys rules.
Yeah, that's so like, yeah. So on top of that, the laws have real consequences on women's lives because one of the most notorious and horrifying examples of this are provisions in the Contagious Diseases Acts that allow women to be able to be able to be able to might suspect of being a sex worker and subject them to a brutal, humiliating medical examination.
So this is the part we were warning about because she's about to describe how these horrific exams work. Josephine says, quote, the attitude they push us into first is so disgusting and so painful.
And I think by attitude, she's talking about like the literal physical position. That's my guess.
So back into the quote. And then these monstrous instruments, they often use several.

They seem to tear the passage open with their hands and examine us.

And then they thrust in instruments.

They pull them out and push them in and turn and twist them about.

And if you cry out, they stifle you with a towel over your face.

End quote.

Jesus Christ.

This is if they suspect that that's what you're doing. Right.
Which means they can do it to anyone they want. Right.
Jesus Christ. lock hospital, which is a medical facility that specifically treats venereal disease.
And that woman is only allowed to leave the lock hospital once she's deemed, quote, clean. After that, as historian Sarah C.
Williams writes, quote, women were simply sent back onto the streets of Liverpool to be used again at the convenience of men. Wow.
Yeah. So Josephine finds the contagious diseases acts unconscionable, and she refuses to stay silent about them.
She eventually joins forces with like-minded women and helps launch the Ladies' National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, which is often shorthanded as Ladies' National Association or the LNA.

This group quickly gains momentum, and they gather more than 100 signatures, including one from Florence Nightingale, on a public statement condemning these laws. So now Josephine and the LNA take this campaign across Britain, and in 1870 alone, she goes to nearly 100 meetings.
And while she does find support, there is a ton of opposition. Josephine doesn't mince her words.
She condemns these forced exams as, quote, steel rape, which is incredibly shocking language for Victorian England. Absolutely.
Yeah. For a woman to use.
Totally. But the truth is that many people just don't like how, frankly, Josephine Butler talks about sex and sex work.
Right. The Guardian reports that one MP will deem her, quote, worse than a common prostitute, end quote, and some of her own friends abandon her because of this campaigning.
Josephine's opponents stoop to new lows. At one meeting, men hurl cow shit at her.
Holy shit. But but by 1871 it seems like all this hard work is paying off parliament launches an official inquiry into the contagious diseases acts and while the committee offers suggestions like raising the age of consent from 12 to 14 and making the so-called medical exams voluntary members of parliament ultimately refused to do anything with these recommendations wow even worse some of the conservative mps defend the current age of consent and according to writer kimmy harris quote asked their fellow lawmakers to consider their past actions and the possible future actions of their sons before criminalizing having sex with young girls.
Damn. End quote.
Damn. Uh-huh.
Other MPs, quote, openly defended sexual access to working class girls as a time-honored prerogative of gentlemen. Oh, come on.
That's according to historian Judith Walkowitz. But in the face of all this,

Josephine does not give up.

The same year, she gives a speech saying, quote,

it seems to be that we women

shall soon have to fight

for the last inch of ground left us.

The crudeness of intellect

of some of our young male legislators

needs to be corrected by the wisdom

of the thoughtful matrons of England.

End quote.

About a decade later in 1880, a new prime minister takes office. His name is William Gladstone.
End quote. And little by little, provisions in the Contagious Diseases Acts are debated and ended before the whole law is formally repealed within a few years.
By this point, the age of consent is also raised to 13 years old. Josephine has won her biggest battle yet, but she does not slow down.
Instead, she continues campaigning for women's access to education as well as their right to vote. She also starts campaigning to end coverture, which is the law that gives husbands complete control over their wives' wages and property, as well as any children they share.
She's so ahead of her time. I mean.
Like, we need her now. We need her now.
So, in the mid-1880s, Josephine is in her late 50s, and she joins several activists.

She just doesn't slow down.

Working to expose the issue of sexual exploitation of children, which is something that's disturbed her since the Oxford days. So Josephine and her allies, including members of the LNA, and notably a famous Victorian-era investigative reporter named William Stead, and they launch an investigation that takes them into actual brothels undercover in search of irrefutable proof of child abuse.
Josephine's own son, Georgie, is one of the men who goes in in disguise to investigate one of the brothels. And their findings are incendiary.
Josephine and the community of activists around her publish articles and make speeches outlining the sale or abduction of virgins from destitute families to brothel owners and the subsequent rape and torture of these girls at the hands of members of the aristocracy. Josephine will call this the hardest work she ever does and the horrors she learns about deeply affect her

she'll even write to a friend about the rooms in the brothels describing them like this quote padded all over walls and floor so that a girl might be flung violently about the room or dashed to the floor without any serious bodily injury for she is valuable property to the brothel keeper so as long as she continues to have any personal attraction and then it just says oh exclamation point what horrors i have seen oh my god so these articles come out the nation is outraged and parliament is pushed to act before long the criminal law amendment act is passed which raises the age of consent from 13 to 16 years old. It also explicitly makes it illegal to, quote, procure anyone under the age of 18 for sex work via kidnapping, drugging, fraud or intimidation.
Jesus. Yeah.
So for the Victorian era, this is a huge victory for women's rights.

But the public anger around this issue has an unintended consequence.

It's a huge boon to what they called back then the purity movement. These groups are geared at shutting down any activity that they find immoral, which is basically anything sex related from brothels to birth control.
Josephine is skeptical of these groups, and in 1885, she writes, quote,

Right. End quote.
So this is something that sets Josephine apart from her feminist contemporaries who often kind of blend their feminism with their own Victorian attitudes around moral purity. So it's hard for most of the women at that time, even though it's just like the intersectionality of it's like, oh, well, I want feminism for me and white women.
Right. A lot of that kind of stuff.
Right. So when you bring in that, it's like such a huge part of society was that kind of morality yeah you're bringing your own biases even though you think it sounds like you're you think you're like i'm for equal rights but you're like i want my kind exactly but that's why josephine butler is just so different is that that is not the way she was so after decades of spent lobbying and campaigning for women's empowerment, Josephine becomes a famous advocate in England.
She's approached by publishers who want her to write her autobiography. She's already written several books by this point, mostly on feminist topics.
But these publishers know that her personal memoir would sell particularly well. Josephine doesn't care.
She turns down these opportunities and says, I would like to make some money, but not by speaking about my own self. Oh, well.
Who is she? I mean, not me. You met me.
She's a legend. Yeah.
But as her public celebrity hits its peak, things at home are very difficult. Josephine's beloved husband, George, has been struggling with his health.
And in 1889, during the flu pandemic, he passes away. Until the end, the butlers share a wonderful relationship.
And this loss, of course, hits Josephine very hard. But even through this grief, Josephine continues to write and speak out on issues that are important to her, including those affecting women and girls.
But also she starts talking about racism within the British Empire, which she explicitly condemns. Now, it is just like when we were just talking about, she is a bit contradictory because she also supports Britain's expanding imperial footprint.
Right. But I do think that's that thing of like, that's how it's always been right so like we need you know our way is the best way nevertheless she will write quote race prejudice is a poison which will have to be cast out if the world is ever to be christianized and if great britain is to maintain the high and responsible place among the nations which has been given to her.

End quote. So for a woman of that time, she's got a B plus for sure.
I mean, you can't see what you can't see. Right, right.
If it's a thing that no one's talking about. Yeah.
So Josephine keeps writing. It's not her memoir per se, but she does spend several years putting together what's called Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade.
And that book is published in 1896 when she's almost 70 years old. It's Josephine's most well-known book, and it tells the story of the LNA's fight to take down the Contagious Diseases Act.
At the turn of the century, she begins to wind down, giving fewer speeches and serving on fewer committees.

She's winding down in her mids. the Contagious Diseases Act.
At the turn of the century, she begins to wind down, giving fewer

speeches and serving on fewer committees. She's winding down in her mid to late 70s.
Then in 1906, Josephine's health begins to decline. She spends her last days with family, reading the Bible with her grandchildren, singing hymns, and getting her affairs in order before dying peacefully in her sleep on December 30th, 1906 at the age of 78.
Just kind of perfectly at the end of a year. Come on.
Just like, got it. I did what I could do.
Yeah. While I was here, I did what I could do.
Yeah. So even though Josephine Butler was very, very famous and influential in her time, she has since faded into obscurity, and historian Sarah J.
Williams thinks her deep faith might be part of the reason. Josephine saw Christianity as the foundation of her feminism, which, despite all of the barriers she broke, may put her a little out of step with later waves of feminism, which often push back against organized religion.
But others, like historian Elizabeth Longford, think Josephine might have been largely lost to history because, quote, she did not champion the, quote, right women. Writer Kimmy Harris adds, quote, the discomfort many of her contemporaries felt over her work to help sex workers continues on in our history books.
Josephine accepted this fate because she never sought fame for herself. Right.

End quote.

I gave a little French turn on that. I don't know if you like that.
Camaraderie. Camaraderie that she shared with her fellow activists.
She writes, quote,

As I look back through our long warfare,

their rise before my mind,

not only our united band in untiring conflict with injustice,

but many pleasant adventures,

social gatherings and sweet friendships,

taking their rise in a common aim, cemented by fellowship and trial and in hope and ripening year by year. She adds this quote, our long years of labor and conflict on behalf of this just cause ought not to be forgotten.
And we agree. That's why I just told you the story of the patron saint of sex workers, Mrs.
Josephine Butler. Wow.
Boom. That was excellent.
Doing the work. Yeah.
Doing the hard work. Gotta keep doing the hard work.
Do it. Good job.
Thank you. All right.
Well, we did it again. We did do it.
We did something. We did it again.
And we'll do it again. We hope so.
And we hope you'll be here for it. Thank you guys for listening.
Listen. Look.
Stay sexy. And don't get murdered.
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producer is hannah kyle creighton our editor is aristotle asavedo this episode was mixed by

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