After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Dark Truth About Madam Tussauds

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

Behind the current display of celebrity waxworks lies the dark and bloody history of Madam Tussauds.Join Anthony and Maddy as they go back to the 18th century, when Marie Tussaud escapes the guillotines of Revolutionary France to carve (and mould) her fortune and legacy in wax.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.think t Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Good fortune, directed by Aziz Ansari. What do you see when you walk into Madam Two Souls today? Celebrities frozen in time, glossy and smiling, a strange theatre of fame. But behind the red carpets and selfies lies a story far darker. Because Madam Tussaud's empire was born not in glamour, but in blood. In revolutionary Paris, wax works were more than curiosities. They were weapons. A likeness in wax could rally a mob, in flame loyalty, or stoke rage.

The boundary between art and reality blurred, and faces cast in wax became politically dangerous. At that time, standing in the shadows was a young woman shaping her waxen creations while all around her France burned. But who was she? How did she survive the terror by moulding the features of the freshly guillotined? And how did those grisly relics become the foundation of one of the world's most famous attractions? From the bloodied guillotines of the French Revolution, this is After Dark. The 12th of July 1789, and Paris is trembling on the brink of revolution. Through the narrow streets, an angry crowd surges their cries echoing against the stone.

At the heart of the mob, two heads are carried aloft on pikes. The faces look sickeningly real, pallid skin stretched tight over bone, glass eyes catching the last of the evening light. In the frenzy, it's easy to believe that they are the severed heads of living men. But these are not butchered remains of villains. They are wax. The likenesses of Shakniker, the King's Finance Minister, and the Duke de Leon, cousin to the Crown. crown. To the people, they are symbols, heroes of the new age, born through the streets like saints. Their maker is Philippe Courteous, Paris's master of wax and anatomy. Yet his

is not the story we follow. Instead, it belongs to the girl in his shadow, his apprentice Marie Groschaltz. One day the world will know her name as Madame Tussaud. Hello, I'm Anthony. And I'm Maddie. And we have been talking about this episode for probably about two years. actually, because we were both introduced to the topic, or the topic in this much detail, I suppose, by Edward Carey's Little. So it's a fiction book about the origin story of Madam Tussow. And it is probably one of my favourite books, and I know Maddie you love it as well. Oh, it's so good.

So it's amazing that we're finally coming to it, because we've been holding onto this for quite a long time. But I want to start with the idea of waxworks, because I know you are really fascinated by this as an art form, as a way of rendering people. This is something that you have expressed to me, at least, that is really, really fascinating for you. But I want to know why were they so important, particularly in the 18th century? Okay, so wax has a really long history.

And I will say, on a personal level, that until I was about, I don't know, late into my teens, I had a genuinely horrendous phobia of wax figures. Oh, really? Really. If we went to a museum and there was a wax work And growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, museums were full of wax figures dressed up in sort of semi-historic clothes, you know, doing like the things of the local area. You know, it was like mining or in the fish and chip shop, whatever it was.

And if I encountered one of those, I would turn around and climb up one of my parents to be carried out. Oh my God. Okay. I didn't know this. I mean, I hate them. I don't think they're very good. I hate seeing figures in any kind of heritage site. I don't like it.

It just does a personal preference. But the wax ones are often really bad. done. So they're even worse. There's something really, really, really sinister about them when they are badly done. I think that's more unsettling to me. So, I mean, I'm not that bad now. I will not climb up a parent at this age at the grand old age of 25. 25. Yeah. I like we both know what age to go to. Perfect. My fictional age. Yeah, sure. Brilliant. Well trained. But I still, if I go into a museum and there is one, I will have to walk past it very quickly and not look at it. It really, really bothers me. So that's my personal history, but wax more generally has a really, really long

history. So the Romans were using wax to make death masks of their ancestors back in the ancient world. And in early modern Europe, so before the time period we're talking about in the 18th century, in the centuries just before, wax was used for all kinds of things. So votive offerings in churches, often, also anatomical models and portraiture. So this is something that's kind of spanning the religious and the secular worlds, the scientific and the artistic. It's this incredibly malleable, diverse, interesting material that can literally shape shift. It can take on the form of different people, different ideas. It's incredibly useful to people. Also, as we will see, it's often used by women who weren't given access to other artistic forms,

for example, sculpture in marble or whatever it was. So it's of fascination to me, even though I'm sort of repulsed by it. We get some, oh God, right, I'm obsessed with these. Have you ever bin to Westminster Abbey and seen the royal funerary wax it works. I'm so glad that you brought these up because this is probably my only area of this that makes me go, whoa. Oh, and there's a wax woman in some cathedral or some little church somewhere. I can't remember her name. And she's starting to rot as well so you can physically see the rot.

But the royal wax effigies and her, they're my kind of favourite wax renderings, I think. They're incredible. They can stay. Yeah, Charles I second in Westminster Abbey in particular is amazing. I had to do some research on him recently for a TV thing where I was just a talking, head chatting about it, and it just brought back how interesting this topic is for me. Also, Jeremy Bentham, have you seen him? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's got curtains, and it's like he's in a sedan chair almost. He's an 18th century, what is he, a philosopher, a writer, one of the sort of, you know, great 18th century polymaths, and he left his body to, is it KCL or UCL? It's one of the London universities now. I think maybe it's UCL. Anyway, writing and tell me. No, it's going to be KCL now, isn't it? Someone will know.

And I think he's still in his actual clothes, which again, like, blows my mind. But he does have a wax face because he originally, he wanted to be sort of embalmed and his body completely preserved, but his face did roll away, unfortunately. You know, as faces will do. As they tend to do. But that's so funny, actually, because you're, well, it's very much not living. But, like, there is this idea that wax, because of the malleability, the change. that it has a living quality. And that's what's kind of fascinating and kind of uncanny as well

for people when they're faced with these wax renderings, right? Yeah, and it can give us a sense of proximity to people who we will never otherwise come into contact with. And you think about the modern Madam Two Swords today. That's hard to say the modern Madam Two Swords. You know, you stand next to Beyonce or whoever it is and you're never going to meet her in real life, babe. So that's the closest you're going to get. Well, you might. I don't know. I feel like that's a very Anthony thing, that you would absolutely just randomly meet Beyonce, but sure. I've never met Beyonce, no, there are some people who it's a bit random that I might have, but no, Beyonce is not one of those people. So yeah, that's the uncanniness, the lifelikeness, that's a technical

term, is something that I think draws people, it repulses them, it's a point of fascination, certainly as for me. And as we're going to see, that is why it becomes such a powerful tool in pre and as we're going to see post-revolutionary France in this moment of the 18th century. Now, when we talk about the 18th century, we've already spoken this name already, but when we talk about the 18th century and wax, one name comes to mind very, very quickly, which of course is Madame Tussaud. But she's not really Madame Tussaud. It's a different history. And this is what Little totally informed me about because I didn't know this side of it at all. We're actually dealing with a girl called Marie Grouchholz. Tell us about her. We are. And, you know, she has that name for most of her career. Well, certainly until the French Revolution has happened. So all of her training and all of her early artistry is done under this name. She is born in 1761 in Strasbourg, France. Have you ever been to Strasbourg?

It's a very, very, very pretty city. I haven't been to Strasbourg, no. Thoroughly recommend. Everyone must go there. On the list. Her father dies relatively early on in her life. In fact, I think just before she is actually born, he dies in the seven years war. And she has some brothers that sort of go off and do their own thing.

And her and her mother have very little prospects because the father of the family. is disappeared. He's dead. And so her mother takes a job as a housekeeper in a house in Bern in Switzerland. And this just happens to be the house of Dr. Philippe Curtis, who is, at that time, he's already working with wax. He's a wax modeler and anatomist. So he's not making necessarily waxworks of celebrities. He's doing waxworks of body parts. And this is what Edward Carey's novel little does so well that he covers this early portion of her life. And as well as being a novelist, he's an incredible illustrator. And whenever I come to this history, I now think of his illustrations of all these little bits and bobs of people in wax and in flesh and the uncanny

similarities between them and the crossover and sometimes in the illustrations in that novel and sometimes the characters as well, I can't tell the difference between them. And I just find that so, again, fascinating and repulsive as well. So we have little Marie growing up in this household. Her mother is the housekeeper. She's just sort of a hanger on who's allowed to live in this house and she gets to observe some of the work that is being done by Curtius. And relatively early on, they moved to Paris as a sort of household unit in the mid-1760s, and she is allowed to start assisting him, which seems to me remarkable. I can understand maybe if she was a boy, that she might be apprenticed more formally, or that she would be otherwise set to work

somewhere else in the house, like the kitchen, but to be set to work in Curtis's studio, dealing with fleshy parts of dead people, and being allowed to, at least maybe not to begin with make her own waxworks, but to assist with his. As a young girl, I just think that's the most remarkable thing. And I think it speaks so much to who Curtis was, actually. I mean, he probably just needed the help and he was just drowning in wax. But I do think there's a sort of an interesting open-mindedness there. Yeah, I think at the very least, it's an apprentice of convenience or proximity, right? But even within that, he could have found another apprentice easily if he really wanted to. So the opportunity for Marie to kind of go into this world is

so interesting, literally life-changing, and goes on to shape culture and society for, you know, a few hundred years afterwards. So it really is what probably started as an apprenticeship of convenience almost really does go on to shape so much in the 200 years that follow. I just want to check in here before we go on, because I kind of know what's coming in terms of what Marie ends up producing during the terror. But during this part of their making, what is courteous making? What is Marie helping him to make? Is it politicians? What are the wax figures that are being made? Sure. So to begin with, like I say, it's basically anatomy. So it's just parts of people or sometimes death masks. So he's dealing with people who've died. He's dealing with a medical

profession, this is his role. However, when they do move to France, he creates a waxwork exhibition. Now, I'm not sure if this is the very first of its kind, but certainly it absolutely explodes in terms of popularity in the city. And in that instance, yes, he has his anatomical models, some of the more grislier items, but he is also now making waxworks of famous people, so aristocrats, the royal family, famous politicians, as you say, people in the public eye in this moment, but also, and this is very after dark coded, he's also making waxworks of infamous criminals. So we have that sort of delicious, complex juxtaposition between the very, very high and the very, very low in society who are put next to each other in these spaces of exhibition and brought

to life through this medium of wax. And that's something that we see today, right? Even at Madam Two Sorts, we see Beyonce, and she'll be, you know, I don't know if she's still there. I went to Adam, she saw it was about 15 years ago. But, you know, she might be like next to the entrance to the Hall of Horrors, which is incidentally something that Curtis is already kind of cultivating, right? He calls one of the part of his exhibition, the Cavern de Grande Vallure, so the Chamber of Horrors, essentially. You are welcome for my pronunciation there's good. But, yeah, so there's a kind of, that sort of elevation and also tastelessness is really coming into play here and people lap it up. With Instacart, you get groceries that over-deliver, like when you get groceries that are the same price as in-store.

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I love the idea, almost immediately once it's open to the public in the this type of way, in the Paris type of way. There's celebrity right beside criminality straight away. And, you know, we always talk about this. Oh, why do people love that darker side of true crime or dark history? And to a certain extent, you know, it's an interesting question to ask, of course it is. But also, I think the answer will forever be nebulous and escape us to a certain extent, because it is as old as people this interest in that dark side of things. I think it's so deeply ingrained in us. And this is one of those examples that as soon as there is an exploration of humanity to be made, as soon as you want to get up close and personal

to the nice, bright, shiny things, the celebrities, you also want to get up close to the grimy dirty, dingy things. And that's, I think, interesting. But talking about kind of the shiny parts of things, we talked about how it was so unlikely that Marie would end up being an apprenticeship for, you know, wax works. But further unlikely still is that she ends up at Versailles, but that is exactly what happens. It is, yes. So this little girl from Strasbourg, you know, lose her father and therefore her standing in the world they live in so early on in life, before she's even drawn breath, essentially, does find her way to the most glittery centre of an empire on the planet at this moment, which is the Palace of Versailles. It's an extraordinary journey, and it's one that is

going to elevate her station and her art form and that is potentially slightly further down the line going to be her downfall. So it's a really important turning point in her story. Her root in Versailles is this. So Curtius is becoming increasingly popular in Paris. Obviously he's creating these shows, people are flocking to them, ordinary people. But he's also gaining the attention of the court at Versailles, the wealthiest in the land, who of course, vanity of vanities want to be recreated in wax because why wouldn't you want that? Why wouldn't you want to be met with a version of yourself that is nothing but flattery and you can dress it up in your own jewels and have that kind of replication, that doubling of yourself? It's sort of so

delicious, I think, to these people, at this kind of bejeweled, ridiculous place. And because of Curtis's introduction into this world, of course, Marie follows him in. And we know that she becomes pretty embedded, actually, in this society. And I will say that a lot of what we know does come from her memoirs later on. And a lot of her claims are now improvable. So, you know, this is someone who lived through this golden age of the site and its downfall and then makes these claims. So potentially just bear that in mind in terms of the story.

But the details that we have are this, that from 1780, she was serving as an art tutor to the youngest sister of King Louis, the 16. which is pretty intimate and remarkable. That would be utterly unbelievable. But this is Versailles and things can happen. I just... I don't not buy it. And, you know, she's clearly she is highly trained, she is highly talented,

which is the other extraordinary thing about this, right? The Curtius invites in this housekeeper and her little daughter. He's basically buying in the services of a servant. and he happens to include then in his household someone who has a natural talent for this. Yes, he trains her, but I think if we were all given a block of wax and asked to make our own faces out of it,

we wouldn't be able to. Nobody wants to see that. I can see a world in which her talent, her extraordinaryness, is recognised in this court. And she starts to be invited more regularly to make wax portraits of people at the court. court, people who are admired by the court, people who are sort of celebrated in French history and culture. So she's making waxworks of people like Voltaire, the king himself.

She also, I think just before this period, has already made a waxwork of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. So, you know, she's absolutely running the gamut of 18th century society here. And this pays off as well, not only in terms of Marie's standing, but also in terms of her family's standing, right? So considering that her mother is, you know, a lowly housekeeper, or at least she has been, now Marie's brothers are part of King Louis Swiss guard, and they are serving in his palaces. So there is a sense that it is her talent, it's her opportunities in life that are advancing, not just her, but the people around her. And Curtis must be thrilled, right? He's taken in this poor child, who happens to be quite good at this, and now, yes,

he's got himself into this position, but it also helps that he has this young, attractive, talented sidekick who is able to do his profession with him. I think that's, she must have been a very valuable asset, both to the court and to him in particular. But again, it's this thing, isn't it, of it being almost unbelievable. And that's, again, like you said, that's not me saying, I don't believe it. It's just so unlikely that this series of events unfolds, but like also think of the context of Versailles and collecting people and how a curiosity, like a young, and she was quite small and diminutive physically, so she was quite a striking figure, even in her smallness. And so for this small, still young woman to be able to command that attention is

it's not impossible in Versailles. As a matter of fact, Versailles would be the place, the exact place where something like that could unfold. And I think it's interesting what you're saying as well about this kind of the replication of the rich and the powerful in wax. Of course they want that. It's reminding me of the ways in which we have, you know, AI renderings now or, you know, you see people making images of themselves and just having that kind of, it's almost like a stamp of I was hereness, right? There's something about that going on. And I think it's interesting. So I think the waxwork operates differently at Versailles than it does elsewhere, right? So in the parish shows where anyone can go,

there's, I think, the appeal of both the criminality element, the sort of gruesome, grisly exhibitions of murderers, whatever. And then the celebrity element, I think the uniting thing there is the thrill of proximity that you can stand next to the king or someone who's murdered four people in the street and both are equally thrilling to be near. And you're never going, hopefully, I mean, you're more likely to meet the murderer than you are the king if you're an ordinary person in Paris at this moment. But, you know, hopefully you're never going to come into contact with either. And so there's a kind of an excitement about just momentarily with a little bit of thrill, a little bit of danger, but not really, coming into contact

with them. But I think of a sigh what's happening is this, yeah, this idea of replication, that it's the, you know, these works being commissioned not for entertainment of the masses, but by the people who are being replicated themselves. And there's a different function going on there. You know, there's a sort of, it becomes, I suppose, the fashionable thing to do. I think it's sort of akin to having your portrait painted later or something like that. It's, you know, it's a kind of, you mean, you haven't been made in wax by Marie Grouchholz? embarrassing for you. She's done four of me. You know, it's that kind of thing of it becomes a status symbol. It becomes this in a world, obviously, you know, we know that the court of

Versailles is built on these economies of gift giving, favour doing the exchange of things like jewels of money, of clothing. Everyone's trying to one up each other, but all of these things have a value. There's a currency to them. And I think we can see the waxworks within that context, actually, that they become, maybe not swappable, but they're certainly an object. that expresses your power, expresses your position, if you can afford to have one of these done and you can afford to engage Marie Groschaltz's services or Curtis's services

and the time that it would take to do that, they are willing to work on you as a waxwork, then you've made it. And you say this about the culture and society at Versailles and it's absolutely true. But then the other thing we know about Versailles is that just around the corner, the revolution is pressing.

up against that door. All that wax is going to melt. All that wax is going to melt. And the world as we know it is going to be turned on its head. And this feels like a moment of crisis for the nation, yes, but for Marie specifically, because here is the way in which she changed her life has been taken away from her. And I think what she does next and what she does during this says something about the industriousness of this artist and how.

she chooses to survive in a climate that people were very much falling through the cracks in. Oh, absolutely. I mean, her survival is, yes, down to her talent and her industriousness, as you say, but also chance. We have the revolution sparking in 1789. And then we have the period known as the terror in which aristocrats and people associated with aristocrats in the Royal Court are being guillotined or just brutally murdered in their houses or in the street. This is a really, really dangerous time. And what's so interesting I think here is that wax once again shapeshifts to mean something else. So as the revolution kicks off, we see figures of people like Jacques Necker, who's the finance minister to the king at the time, and the Duke of Orleans,

both of whom have been made in wax, and they are both paraded through the street. These are items. These are figures that are made in Curtius' workshop. And now they are being used by the revolutionaries. They're both chosen, by the way, because they're reformist. They want to change things in France in that moment. And so they're kind of taken up as heroes and paraded through the streets, shown off in this way. And so waxwork starts to stand in for the real people themselves in those scenarios, but also starts to take on this kind of politically powerful thing in and of its own right. But because waxwork has this incredible power, it therefore is dangerous. And the people who can wield it are dangerous. And

And Marie is arrested. She's arrested as a suspected royal sympathiser, of course, because of her connections with the court and the fact that she spent so much time with these aristocrats and so much time celebrating them and kind of elevating them in art. And she is imprisoned in La Force Prison, which is a notorious prison in this moment. Now, interestingly, this is such a cool side note. And again, it just seems unbelievable. Did this really happen?

She's reported to share a cell with Josephine de Beauhonne. Now, you may have heard of her. She was married. Now, what was the name of the man she goes on to marry? That's right, Napoleon. How unlikely? Do we buy this? I don't know.

Look, I do know for a fact that a lot of 18th into 19th century memoirs are very fictitious. Yeah. And they like to write themselves into history, right? Yeah, it's almost part of the genre to elevate oneself and to aggrandize oneself as a way of entertainment, not necessarily to mislead or misdirect, but, just as a, I don't know, just as a flourish. And there's just so many things that is coming in here. And bear in mind, she's writing this so much later that it's going to be impossible to check all of these things anyway. And I think you alluded to that earlier. It's clever, too, because, you know,

when she said she was an art tutor to Louis XVI's sister, she went for the youngest sister, which is probably the person at Versailles, you know, Versailles records are pretty decent, but it's probably the person at Versailles amongst the Royal Family who's going to be least documented. So it's a very good person to pick. Was she in a cell with Josephine? I don't know. There's too many hits going on here, Maddie. I could almost believe one or two of these things.

I would kill to be in that cell and talk to those two women together. Like, oh, my God. But I have a feeling so would Marie have killed to be in that cell. I'm not sure that. But look, I mean, if she's a creator, she literally creates replicas of reality. And I think we might be seeing some of that happening in her memoir. That's such a good way of putting it. And, you know, not only replicas of reality, but she is used to conjuring up out of nothing

famous people. And so why are we surprised that these kind of manifest in her memoirs? What we do know, though, is that she has spared the guillotine because of, well, it's hard to tell. Some accounts say because of her connections to Curtius, so Curtis in this moment seems to get away with not being punished as a royal sympathizer, even though his apprentice is. Some people say it's her own talents. I would like to think that's true.

I think what it actually comes down to is the people of the revolution realize that wax is important. It is a useful tool in terms of propaganda. It's worked for the other side for many decades. Now it can work for them. And so she is taken out of jail. And the arrangement is that she is now to make wax models. And we're talking here death masks, but also full-on figures, as you know, you'd see today in Madam Two-Sword, of the dead aristocracy. and the Royal Family.

So she's making waxworks of Louis XVIth himself, Mary Antoinette. And then Rob Spier, which I think is such an interesting one, because when you look at paintings of him, he has such an interesting face. But also, Marat, the guy who is assassinated in the bath, I think by a female assassin, which is a nice little detail. And, you know, there's a very famous painting of that scene that I can picture. And Mary herself is taken to, and we're going to look at it. look at, there's a photograph of this waxwork that she makes because it survived at least a century

after this happened and was photographed, I think, in the Victorian period. But she's taken to the scene of his death. She is there and he is still in the bath when she is asked to do the waxwork. So this is, you know, this is survival at this point. It might be thrilling to us to sort of hear this history and see, you know, the way that she is right at the front line of this revolution. She's been taken to the steps of the guillotine. She's being asked as these bodies are being dragged away from the crowd. She's taking those wax impressions. She is making these models. I think this is a remarkable moment in her life. It's a really violent one. It's a dark one. I think it must have felt so strange for someone who potentially spent a lot

of time at Fasai being part of that world and that the prettiness of it, the order of it, the choreography of it, to suddenly be plunged into chaos and being forced to do her art under these circumstances and to come into contact not only with the people who were the highest, most important people in the land. But now their gnarly damaged remains is extraordinary. I can't really imagine what that would have been like. Yeah. And I think that the stakes that you're painting there are really crucial to know that you go from the relative comfortability of Versailles to literally being dragged around murder scenes by people who at one point wanted to kill you too. And then having to be in such

close proximity to not just death, but ghastly death, where, you know, heads are literally cut from bodies and the impact that that has then on the remains. And you're having to replicate that. I mean, that's going to shape somebody. That's going to have an impact beyond the art that she's producing. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't put her off working in wax. She continues the rest of her life and it's a long life. So it's the thing that makes her. It's the thing that saves her. It's the thing that keeps her afloat through all of this turmoil, all of these changes. We do know by 1794 that Curtis dies and he does leave his entire collection, all of his equipment, everything to Marie. And she continues his work exhibiting in Paris because of course

if there was a appetite pre-revolution to see criminals and grisly things, there certainly is now with everything that's going out on the street. I mean, I sort of find that fascinating, actually. This is something that I find quite abhorrent, actually, and shocking about human nature, is that often the appetite, the hunger for grisly details, and its replication, whether that's through wax or whether it's through print media in the 19th century,

whether it's through TV and podcast now, whatever it is, that that often comes alongside the crimes themselves. I'm thinking about when Jack the Ripper in 1880s, 80s London is doing his killings. And there's a wax exhibit that's set up in a shop window that shows one of the crime scenes and the bodies of one of the women. And that's happening whilst the killings are still going on. No crime has been solved. And I think we see this here in Revolutionary Paris, right? That there's literally blood flowing in the streets. And people see that and they want more of it. They want to see it replicated. Maybe it's to make sense of it. Maybe it's

to augment that experience. Maybe it's a way of distancing yourself from it. I don't know. I find that really hard to understand that if you were in the thick of that, why would you want more of it? But people do. Yeah, time and time again.

This is also very much a period. You mentioned Curtis's death. That's obviously life-changing from Marie because everything she has become has been so closely tied to him. But speaking of things tying and making a person, this is when... Yes, this is when she becomes,

Madame Tussaud, too. It is. So a year later in 1795, she marries Francois Toussouard. He is an engineer, which is sort of love, right? They're kind of creative makers together. They're interested in the sort of processes of making and the structuralness of that. They have two sons in the years that follow, Joseph and Francois. And they also have a daughter, but she dies in infancy, unfortunately. So there's this new family unit that Marie is now part of. She has survived the initial years of the revolution. She has started something new for herself. Her business is still going strong. She's going to teach that business to her sons. This is, you know, her craft

is well protected now and has a place in the marketplace of Paris. But she's not content with staying there. And of course, war is still going on. She finds herself by 1802 in London. Now, I'm fascinated by this. I don't know whether she goes there as part of an exhibit or whether she is fleeing what's happening in France. But either way, she ends up there, and she cannot get back to France. So she's now a Londoner. She's an immigrant to the city. She's brought her sons with her and her craft, and she is now going to play her trade in London itself. And this is the beginning of the Madame Tussaud that we know in love. With Instacart, you get groceries that over-deliver.

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Go to Building Better Schools.ca.a. A message from the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario. I know she's exhibiting at the Lyceum Theatre. So she's right in the heart of the West End, as we would now understand it. But what's the nature of the shows that she's supposed? putting on in London, because we've come from Paris. We've come from a lot of violence on the streets, literally, as you're saying, you know, blood in the streets. She's having to replicate that. She has moved from the grandeur of Versailles. So which version of her making does she take

with her to London? Oh, she's leaning into the dark side. She'd be the perfect guest. Co-host on After Dark. She absolutely would. She, yeah, she fully leans into it. Because, you know, especially in London at this time, people are fascinated and scared by what's happened in France. You know, there's enormous panic about a revolution in Britain. The king and queen at this time are pretty jumpy, seeing what's happened to the French rule family. And there is this appetite. There's this kind of macab fascination with what's gone on. Interestingly, and I am obsessed with what I'm about to say, and we need to do a separate episode on this.

She teams up with another showman. So she's not doing this alone. She's come to a new city. She needs to make connections. she teams up with a man called Paul Philidor. He's the pioneer who comes up with the Fantasmogoria shows. Now, when I say I'm obsessed with these, I'm so desperate to replicate one. If anyone is listening who is like a theatre director who wants to make one of these,

like please let me do this. I need this in my life. So basically this was like a darkened room. Sometimes it was at a theatre, sometimes it was in other spaces, private spaces. And it was essentially a show of spectacles using light and smoke and projection. And there would be sort of puppetry shadow puppets created, but also like actual objects. Things like ghosts would kind of fly across people's heads. There were skeletons.

There were all kinds of like apparitions. The devil might appear and there'd be like some smoke machine going on. And this is so early for this kind of technology. And I just... That's what I'm thinking. Yes, I'm listening to it. It's very early. The effect on the audiences was really intense because people hadn't seen anything like this before.

And, you know, you'll promise a show in which you're going to see a ghost appear or the devil himself. people were crying on the floor like cowering in corners running out of the room this was wild now it sounds quite sort of provincial and quaint to us like it would be charming to do

but people are literally shitting themselves at this kind of thing and Madame Tussaud she is now is working alongside Philidor in doing this but she ain't keen to share what's going on it's not very financially successful for her and so

she finally gets to the stage where she's setting up own show, and she takes it on the road. She does a tour of Britain with the waxworks, and people flock to it, people love it, people are completely obsessed. And it's this business acumen that we can never overlook when we talk about Madame Tussaud, that is really the thing that wins it for her. Yes, her skill, of course, like without a shadow of a doubt. Well, this business acumen is a skill, too. But it's not just her artistic prowess. It's this idea that I'm not afraid to fail, actually, because essentially she does kind of fail in the West End. She takes it on the road.

She makes an opportunity out of a problem, and she really, really makes it work. I mean, you know, you're talking about setting up this phantasmagoria idea and what that would be like. But what's this show like? If you're going to see one of her touring shows, where are you going? What are you experiencing? And again, I'm really fascinated to know who she's bringing with her. I know I've asked that question a couple of times throughout this, but it is interesting to know who she keeps with her,

i.e. which wax figures she brings. I feel like I'm plugging her tour at the end of a podcast episode. And where can we find your work? Where can people book their tickets? Okay, so she takes this exhibition, as it's known. And this is closer to the kind of show that Curtius was doing back in Paris back in the day, right? So it's almost entirely wax works,

sort of set up some in like sort of little vignettes and scenes. others are just like, here's the king. She's setting them up in assembly rooms around the country, town halls, in theatres. So people are flocking to quite diverse spaces. So again, she's kind of adapting as she goes, right? Because setting up your wax show in a town hall is a little bit different from maybe a small provincial theatre

or, you know, a large assembly room where people are used to kind of partying in that space. So there's a lot of adapting and creativity going on here, which I really like. She has different elements of the show, so different spaces. First of all, she has the Grand Salon, which has royals, as you might expect, politicians and celebrities. So we've got kings and queens, not just the French king and queen, but she's replicating people from history. I do know that she does make a waxwork of Georgia Third,

which is in the royal collection, and probably was never on public display. But she's kind of still in that world. She has access to these people, because don't forget, you need to create a lot of these waxworks from life. It's not simply a case of sketching someone from a distance or from a print or a cartoon at the time, and they're making them. I'm sure she did that in some circumstances, especially with figures who were dead. But often she is taking moulds of people's faces, both alive and dead, and then pouring wax into them.

So, you know, this requires proximity to these people. Interestingly, in the Grand Salon, you could also see Napoleon and various military leaders. Don't forget Britain is all with France in this moment. It's an all-encompassing, overshadowing horror that is going on across the empire, and that hundreds of thousands of people are involved in, both overseas and in Britain in terms of the effect that they're feeling of this. So the war is very, very present. And you can kind of imagine, you know, like when people take selfies with celebrity waxworks today, you can kind of

imagine what it would be like as an ordinary British person to come face to face with Napoleon. I sort of imagine people kind of, you know, shaking their fist at him or kind of blowing a raspberry or maybe kicking his shin or something. And I kind of wonder, like, that waxwork in particular, how much damage was done to it over the course of that. How often was she having to repair him? Because I imagine that was quite often. Yeah, it starts to become almost like an effigy that people are using at this time in marches or in demonstrations where they burn them.

Even obviously, that's not happening in this case. But, you know, the same vitriol can be then centered on that particular wax fair. I mean, one of the main probably most famous centrepieces at this point was harking back to that French revolution. and you spoke about Marat, but this is who we're seeing at the centre of this exhibition. Yeah, so there's a room called the separate room, which later becomes the chamber of horrors that is still in place at Madame Tussaud today. And she had all kinds of things.

She had death masks and figures of, as I say, the Royal Family and Robespierre. But yes, she had this centrepiece, which was a life-size-full scene of Jean-Paul Marat lying in the bathtub with the knife, the blades still sticking in him. there was bloodied water. You can see the wound on his chest. And I have, from her memoirs, an account that she gives of the moment when she had

to actually go to his body, to that murder scene all those years before, and take her wax moulds. And there's a photograph of this work, which I'm going to make you describe in a minute, but these are her words. This is what she says about the moment

that she comes into contact with his freshly dead body. He was still warm, and his bleeding body and the cadaverous aspects of his almost diabolical features presented a picture replete with horror and I performed my task under the most painful sensations I mean I love her

she's a true show woman like the humming up of like he's diabolical and like he's all twisted in agony and she's a spooky bitch and she's like oh it was so terrible to see but I did just complete my art

while I was there the still warm thing you know it's you do have to question again Like by the time that this has happened, they go and get her, they find her, they bring her back. I mean, you know, unless she's outside in the corridor, this is, again, probably not necessarily the truth. Yeah.

But she's saying he is, it's a showmanship. That's what it is. It's creating a world in which you are disturbed and you're getting really close to famous death, basically. And also she has an eye for a vignette for a little scene, doesn't she? She has the Murat Bath scene. It's incredibly famous. say there are so many kind of famous paintings of it. You know, there's the one where his arms

kind of hanging out of the bathtub and, well, I'll get you to describe this one. But it's, it's such a recognizable scene, but I think she has a particular instinct for recreating these and therefore allowing people to step into that moment of, an intimate moment of death or horror or trauma or whatever it is. She's allowing people, ordinary members of the public, to occupy, make sense of, be within those moments that belong to. those private moments that belong to very, very famous people. Well, I'm looking at this image. It is black and white.

And at the center of it is what we know to be, a waxwork of Marat. And he is, it's interesting because he's, you know, you described that red blood in the bath. We're not faced with that. I kind of wish we were just to get a full sense of the thing. But this looks like it's almost in storage in a museum. I mean, this is kind of what I'm saying.

It's surrounded. I think this photo looks like it's, photographed with like Hollywood lighting from the sort of early 20th century, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. I think it is probably early 20th century, yeah. And it does. It looks like a still from a movie, a black and white movie actually. And we have Marat, who is either deceased or deceased eyes are definitely open. There is a knife in his upper right chest towards his shoulder, I suppose. And there's some blood stains around the knife, as you might kind of expect. It is ghoulish. I will say that. It is ghoulish.

I will also say, and this is the 1793 model that Madam Tussaud herself made, I will also say, but you have to bear in mind the context of when this is made, I would know that to be a wax work, I would know that to not be a real thing, but in 1793, this is revolutionary. This is a totally different experience for people viewing it. I think that's what we have to remember, right? A little bit like the phantasmagoria, the wax specimens for most people, especially when she's touring in Britain, this is the first time they've ever seen a wax effigy of any kind. And, you know, even today we're sort of haunted by the life-like quality of the wax. And that can be just, you know, a really bad kind of 1970s wax work in a local

museum. These are made by the most skilled wax artist who was alive and working at this time, possibly ever, of people who really existed, who are famous, who are known about in this moment. and when I'm looking at this photograph of this wax work, okay, we know it's a wax figure, but that is a real person, like his face, you know, she's taken the moulds, that was a real person dying or dead in that moment. I can see that in there.

I really can, even though, you know, I think to us we're bringing this kind of other visual language, these layers of visual language to it because it looks like an early film because it's shot in a certain way because it's a photograph. So there are these other meanings. It looks very Hollywood. looks almost, I mean, the way he's kind of leaning back in his head is tilted back and his

jaw is up, he looks a little bit like a Hollywood heroine, but, you know, like just the moment before a kiss when a woman sort of collapses in a man's arms and a head goes right back, which always really disturbs me. It's like, has your neck broken? What's happening? This isn't sexy or romantic, but he sort of looks like that. So I think, you know, if we are able, and it's very hard to kind of strip away those visual cues that we understand from the centuries that are in between us and Madame Tussaud, I just think this would have been the most a resting, terrifying, shocking thing to be confronted with. No, absolutely.

I think you're, without a doubt, you're right. And it was because it was successful. She's touring Britain and Ireland for three decades with this. You know, that's a long time to be taking this round if it wasn't going down an absolute storm, which it is. And it's now very, very famous. Her legacy is hugely famous. But at the time, this is a sensation as well.

Like, she is famous in her own lifetime. Yeah, and the fact that she, you know, she tours, like you say, for three decades, which I always find fascinating because would you go when she's been through your town like three or four times, you know, would you keep going back? And how often does she have to update the waxworks? The stock. The stock. Yeah.

I guess as well, like, if you're moving around waxworks so much in that moment, you're going to turn up and, like, Louis XVI's nose is wandering off or, you know, Marianne's left breast is melted or something. Like, I'm sure there's just so much stuff like that. So lots of repairs going on, lots of, you know, and also I just always fascinating. by this idea of like the wax getting melted down and then reused for someone else. Like, oh, that used to be Rob Spierre and now it's Queen Victoria later on. You know, I just think that's so tantalizing. It's just something in the sort of recycling and reworking of these things all the time that is interesting. But yeah, absolutely she continues to be a cultural phenomenon.

So the Chamber of Horrors, as we call it today, is actually named in the 1840s in 1846 by Punch Magazine. You know, and this is the part of the show where she shows the kind of relics of the revolution alongside as we go further into the 19th century, you know, these, again, the kind of criminal element starts to slip in the infamy of various crimes, murderers, all of that stuff, starts to be replicated in wax as well. So she really doesn't let up and she teaches the trade to her sons, they help run the business side of things. And from 1835, she is established in London, a place called the Baker Street Bazaar, which I just love. And I, again, I think it's sort of, she's so canny. She's always always moving with the times.

She's always looking for the next thing, the next way to entertain, the next thing that's going to draw people in. Is it that she's been through so much trauma herself that she's immune to it now? And so that kind of tastelessness that we associate with a chamber of horrors waxwork exhibit, does that just not register with her? Or is she someone who absolutely wallows in it and loves it? I don't know. I think probably the former rather than the latter. I don't necessarily know that she loves the grisliness, but I think she has an appreciation for what it can bring her.

I think, personally, I think, above all, she's tenacious and a survivor, if to use awful Destiny's Child lyrics or something. But she is determined to succeed. And succeeding doesn't mean, you know, taking the throne of Versailles for her. It means, don't quash me. I will survive. Well, look, she's the one still standing, not the people from who are sat on the throne of the side. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I like this idea of 1835, she makes away to Baker Street where essentially she still remains, you know,

mean in legacy. But it's interesting, you know, as you set out at the top of the episode, this is an immigrant to Britain. She's touring for 33 years. Again, she's a woman who is single-handedly running this business and traveling with it and making sure that people are coming to it. So what I suppose I want to know in sum up, as I'm thinking about my answer, I'll let you talk about yours. But like, how do you think we should view Madam Tussaud? What is history to Madam Tussau and what is Madam Tussau to history? It's a very difficult relationship, isn't it? Because on the one hand, you could argue that especially her earlier work,

that she is a witness to history, you know, she lives through all these moments, and she is a chronicler of them. She creates wax records of them. Are those records accurate? They are in the sense that they are replicas of those living people. They are the closest, you know, and a lot of her original waxworks, including a self-portrait figure that she made of herself, do survive. And so we are able to get close to some of those figures that she was with in their dying moments

or in the moments after they'd passed away. So in that sense, she is a remarkable witness to what happened in France, to the revolution, and to that sort of golden age of the side just before it. But all of that is already in that moment also has a fuller, in the entertainment industry, and the idea of spectacle. And that essentially takes over later on. It takes over her work. It shapes the decision she makes in terms of where she is, where she goes, who she's with,

what kind of work she does, what kind of audience she's seeking out. I think, like you say, she's a very cany businesswoman. She's very calculating. She's a survivor. I think one of the most telling things is the fact that she publishes her memoirs, which we gestured to earlier on in this episode. She publishes them in London in 1838, which is, you know, the height of her.

She's just kind of settling into Baker Street, the height of her popularity in that industry, in that entertainment space. And I think she's a self-fashioner. She's someone who, as you said Anthony earlier, she creates people out of wax. She's no stranger to conjuring famous moments, famous people, famous anecdotes,

and inserting them into her own show, into her own life, into her own story. And I think that's what she does in her memoirs. And so can we trust her? No. But she is someone who lived through and responded to an incredible moment in history. So I love her for that. I'm so interested. And I think she's the star of the show, but the wax itself as a medium is just endlessly horrifying, interesting.

So much potential and so much kind of limitation as well, right, in terms of of what it can do to tell history, to document things. Sort of sat on the fence with her, really. She's amazing and hideous, talented and tasteless, all at the same time. Oh, that's good. I will say now that we've been through this, I love this history. I have enjoyed it for quite a while, as I say, since I was introduced to you through fiction, but it's been fascinating ever since then.

That said, I have absolutely zero interest in wax, wax works, wax figures. the only interest that I Okay, so not zero, I have 10% interest because I do enjoy the funeral effigies. Of course I do. I, you know, co-present after dark, so of course I enjoy the funeral effigies. I've never been to Madame Tussaud's. I would have no interest of going.

I don't care to see Beyonce, that doesn't look like Beyonce. I'm so sorry, Madam Tussaud's institution that you are. However, to see whatever pieces of original actually Marie Grouchal's Madame Tussaud wax that still exists, somewhere in a collection that's probably not necessarily on show because I'm imagining

they'd be too fragile. If you're in charge of those pieces, invite us in because I would see those in a heartbeat. I'd be so interested to get up close and personal with those pieces, but I'm not going to be going to modern day, Madam Tussaud would interest me very, very little. I really agree with that. I don't have an interest in them one day. I went as a child or a teenager, I think, like I say, about 15, probably more than 15 years ago now. And that didn't really engage me. It was just a lot of people shuffling around looking at very uncanny, weird, slightly horrifying and very sort of realistic but not realistic waxworks. I think there's a lot of, you know, when you encounter a wax look at Beyonce in modern lighting and in our

age of sort of visual culture and media when we're consuming things all the time, I think they do lose some of their power. I think what I would like to do would be to travel back in time and go to one of Madam Two Sword shows maybe in the 1820s and the 1830s in London when she's touring or when she's in Baker Street. And to see what that would feel like without all these cues in this digital world and this kind of visual literacy that we have now and to believe that you are stood in the presence of the King of France or whoever it is, I think that would be so powerful. Yeah, magic. Right. Let's leave it with a little bit of magic then. Thank you for joining us on this exploration of Marie Grouchholz, Madame Toussau, today. It has been, I think,

equally unsettling and fascinating, and that's what keeps her alive for us, I think, that we keep coming back to her. If you've enjoyed today's episode, you can leave us a five-star review wherever you get your podcasts. It helps other people to discover us. And if you want to go back through a back catalogue, you'll find other French histories there. I'm sure I can't remember any of them specifically now, but I'm sure we've done French episodes before. And until next time, Happy listening. With Instacart, you get groceries that over-deliver. Like when you get groceries that are the same price as in-store.

With no markups at select retailers, you get in-store products for in-store prices, and the only thing that isn't in-store is you. That means you could order in-store products at in-store prices while you're in sweatpants, in spin class, in stuffy work meeting, in anywhere but in store. So download the app today and get zero-dollar delivery fees on your first three orders. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Think you know your history? Which 16th century peasant uprising shook Europe to its core?

Who declared himself the king of Haiti and fought both French and American revolutionaries? And what does shopping, voting and finding your romantic partner have in common? Find out the answers and more about the three books chosen as finalists for the 2025 Cundell History Prize. Stay tuned to discover which book will win the $75,000 prize announced on Thursday, October the 30th. Find out more at condylprise.com.