Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Life Lessons From Historical Women

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

When women's stories aren't being flat-out ignored from the history books, they can often be sidelined.Well not here! Joining Kate today is the comedian and author of Life Lessons from Historical Women, Eleanor Morton, to share some of her favourite stories of inspirational women through history and the lessons they have taught her.What would it have taken to make a daring escape from colonial Australia? And how did working class women in Victorian London create collective power?This episode was edited by Tom Delargy. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Voting is open for the Listener's Choice Award at the British Podcast Awards, so if you enjoy what we're doing, we'd love it if you took a quick follow this link and click on Betwixt the Sheets: https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/votingEnjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code BETWIXT.You can take part in our listener survey here.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I am back once more to amuse, entertain, horrify, shock, and a whole load of other adjectives. But before we can do any of that, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults

about adult things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. And if you're not, you can't listen. You just can't. But what you could do is vote for us for the listeners' choice awards at this year's British Podcast Awards. Just think of it this way. If you do it, I'll stop nagging about it.

And I think that that is a reward enough in itself, no. But you can go to www. British Podcast Awards.com forward slash voting and clicking on betwixt the sheets. And maybe, maybe we could win it this year. Right. On with the award nominated show. We start this episode on the high seas of the 1780s.

Although this isn't quite the buccaneering adventure, you might imagine. We are on board a ship of the first fleet, the convicts who were sent to Australia for hard labour. One of the few women on board is Mary Bryant. The woman whose initial sentence was death for highway robbery was shortened to seven years hard labour in the new British colony. I'm not sure that was the better option to be entirely honest. To make a difficult situation even harder than it already was, she gives birth to her first daughter Charlotte on board that. ship. What lays ahead of her is a story of determination, love and courage that sees her commandeerships and fight for her freedom. But what became of her and her family? What lessons can we

learn from her and other remarkable stories like hers? Well, I am ready to get the answers if you are betwixtors. What do you look for a man? Oh, money of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Jerry. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister.

They might not get shouted about as much as they should, but there is no shortage of inspirational women throughout history. Although their stories are often harder to find, or perhaps just flat out ignored, when we celebrate and spotlight them, there is a lot of lessons to be learned. Joining me today is the comedian Eleanor Morton, author of Life Lessons from Historical Women, who's going to take us back to some of her favourite women and their stories.

What did the matchstick women strike tell us about underestimating the working class? And what does Mary Bryant escape from colonial Australia tell us about those seeking a better life for themselves today? Well, I am ready to find out if you are. Hello, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Eleanor Martin. How are you doing? I'm okay. Thank you. How are you? I can't believe that you're here. I'm so used to seeing you on TikTok and doing your videos and social and I absolutely adore them. And when I got wind of the fact that you have actually written a history book, I was like, we need this woman on. Honestly, I'm so excited. Your skit you did about the presenters of Jack the Ripper documentaries was incredible. That was a lot of fun. We had time to kill before Pizza Express, me and my sister.

And we were in Whitechapel and I said, why not? You absolutely nailed it. I'm a big fan of the show, so I'm excited to actually be on it. It's a big deal, yeah. So what is your job, Eleanor? You are a comedian. Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah. Not as in like a shitty, what is your day job? But I had no idea you were this interested in history.

Yeah. So I am a comedian. I am a writer and comedian. I have no academic. claim to history. I'm just a big history nerd and that'll do. Yeah. And I think I'm a bit like you. I love social history. I love, you know, the sort of everyday stuff, how you can kind of relate to it now as well. That's my area of interest. Amazing. So what made you want to write this book? I don't know how you found time to do it with your stand-up and comedy group, but here it is to give it its full title, Life Lessons from Historical Women. What made you want to write that? Basically, I think there's a big friend for, you know, you see listicles, especially as a woman, you see a lot of... Listicals.

Yes, sort of internet kind of 10 coolest women who did X or Y or whatever it is. You know, I really love them, but they were leaving me wanting a bit more, like, I want to know more about these women who I think, you know, there's not enough research, I think, into a lot of these women. And it was basically I wanted to write a book that I wanted to read, which is a book about, it's roughly 18 women. I say roughly because there's a couple of groups of women in there. There's no unifying factor except I think they're all quite cool. And they all did something that I think is worth talking about and needs to be heard more of. I love that.

And why life lessons? Because you could have just called it 18-ish women that I think are really cool from mystery. Yeah, I think the publishers, they did want something snappier than that. Ah, yes. Been there, done that. Yeah, you know what it's like. But I think as well, the idea is sort of framing it, you know, tongue and cheek in a way as a sort of kind of a self-help guide.

But just a way of reminding the reader that, you know, everything you're going through is something women in history went through too and that all your adversaries are not as scary as they could be. And it's a good way of reminding women how history kind of repeats itself. It does help that, doesn't it? When you've got a good working knowledge of history of what other people have been through and you do kind of find yourself once in a while going, yeah, but maybe you could get up and go to the shops

because, you know, you've not... You've not had to try and run the marathon on your own or anything like that. Throw yourself under a horse for suffrage. Yes. Exactly. Yeah, so maybe the stuff you're dealing with isn't that bad. Yeah, yeah. And also just that, you know,

I think we put a lot of these women on pedestals as well, and I think they should be, but also to remind us that, you know, women in history, how they were normal people, they had normal lives, and that being a woman in history, I think a lot of the time you have to do something extraordinary to get noticed. And I think it's nice to hear more stories, more aspects of their life that is just their everyday

staff and what they were into. And so there's a couple of small details in there that I cover that I just think really humanises them and makes them seem a lot more like, you know, hopefully the women who read the book. And the men. Men are allowed to read it too, I should say. Oh yeah, they're allowed to this party as well. All genders are allowed to read the book, yeah. I often think that with history because when someone's done something exceptional, they've been involved. involved in something exceptional. It's really easy to think of them as, well, they must be

a hugely brave and impressive, like somebody who isn't like the rest of us. I don't think that's the case very often. They kind of, the people that found themselves in a situation and had to do something. I think that's exactly. I think a lot of the women in the book are forced into the situations they were in and they had to make these choices and they made snap decisions or they were faced with, you know, life or death situations. And I think, we all do it at some point in our life and it's I think it was just really fascinating for me to explore what choices these women made and where they were going to go with those decisions. So let's talk about one of the groups of the women that you got in here who are incredible

and they're the matchstick women. Tell me about them. So the match girls are sort of known throughout British history as the thing they're known for is that they had a strike and they showed their bosses who was the real boss and they you know they were very spunky and inspirational. But But the real story, I think, is that these women in the east end of London in the 19th century, women and girls, like, you know, some of them basically children, had this terrible working situation and sweatshop, labour, pay being docked. Phosphorus. Yeah, to say nothing of the actual working conditions, which were incredibly dangerous.

Yeah, they were getting phosphorus poisoning, essentially, because they were working with this material that the matches needed in order to light. And that's vile. Isn't it? I haven't realized how bad that is and what that does to the body. Yeah, it's very bad. There's photos, I think, if you really want to Google it, you can see exactly how essentially the jaw was affected and, you know, it would rot and it would have necrosis, essentially, yeah, the bits of your body would. And obviously, once that happened, they would be fired because the bosses didn't want anyone to know that.

I didn't know that. Fucking hell. Yeah, because they could, you know, they could get rid of you. So their jaw literally fell off and then they'd be fired? Yeah. I think they got fired before the jaw fell off. I think the first sign that your jaw might be falling off or that you were ill, you're out the door

because they didn't want, you know, to freak out the other girls or for it to get out. So, yeah. And it would also cause brain damage, all sorts of other things, like long-lasting effects that were very nasty and obviously there was no NHS, so that was sort of it, you know, if you couldn't work. I must have been unbelievably painful as well as just figuring.

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I tried not to think about that too hard. because it's so horrible. But yeah, and these girls would have been, and we say girls, but one of the historians I relied on heavily, Louise Raw, sort of talks about in her book,

the fact that they were women, and the girls, calling them girls is, some of them were literally girls, but a lot of them were women. And we sort of infantilised this whole movement in a way by treating them like rebellious teenagers as opposed to women

who had real things to complain about. But yeah, they would have been supporting their families. And so, you know, once that job's lost. You know, if you've got necrosis, obviously you can't work anyway. So it's a terrible situation. So what happens then?

You've got these women working in hideous conditions. Nothing like the lovely story of the little match girl, although she does die in the end, so maybe it is kind of... It's sad, but yes, it's not as romantic as that. Nobody's sort of sitting in the snow and dreaming of Christmas. This is the 1880s, and they're kind of coming into this idea that there's been some strikes before, but this is when it all really starts to kick off the late. Labour movement. And it's still quite unclear exactly what set the strike off. Some people think it

was someone got fired unfairly. Some people think it was because they had already spoken to Annie Besant, who was the socialist who was doing a newspaper report on them. And she did this very provocatively titled white slavery in London for the middle classes to be shocked by these conditions. But the point is, no one's quite sure exactly how it started. But in July 1888, all these women, they down tools and they walk out and they start to organise and they strike, they do speeches, they do marches, they write to the papers. And the common misconception is that Annie Bessent was a really driving force and she was involved, but it was much more, you know, I think again, we take away the agency of these working class women a lot by saying they couldn't

have done it without this middle class do good, you know, and actually they were very organized. And the really interesting thing about the match girls, the match women when I was researching them is how hard it is to research. And apart from Louise Raw, not a lot of, lot of people have written. And yeah, I'm sure you'll know this. Like the history of women generally and it's, it comes up a lot in the book. It's just so hard to find information because apparently it's not worth writing down, you know. And if you compare it to the 1889, I think the dock worker strike the next year, huge coverage, loads of photos, very easy to find out stuff about. And yet this big strike that came before it and kind of set it off is much harder to research because why bother

asking women? Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. They're just, doing silly girly stuff. Exactly. Yeah. So true that. Honestly, it's the bane of any, anyone doing historical work. Yes.

The women just vanish into the background. It's so difficult. Like recently, my dad has decided he wants to try and solve a murder mystery that happened in the 19th century. Oh, wow. So I've given him access to like newspaper databases that I'm helping.

And he was really struggling with this. He's like, I can't find anything. I can't find this woman. And I was just like, right, dad, here's what I always do. Don't put in her name. put in Mrs. and then what her last name was, search for a husband and he found loads.

It's like, yeah, that's shit, isn't it? But yeah, women just vanish from the record. So these incredible women, they go on strike, and it's scary enough to go on strike now. I was striking when I worked at the union. We're very much protecting. I have strong unions. And it's still kind of a bit like,

fucking over one striker. Yeah. In the 19th century, when you were extremely vulnerable, that must have been terrifying. I think it was, but I think what they had behind them was a real sense of community that, and again, I sort of draw parallels because this is taking place in 1888. Jack Rupper is in the East End at the same time. And people often remember him and not this. And people forget, you know, Hallie Rubenhold talks about this as well, the way women in that story are painted as these sort of helpless victims. And people forget that the women of the East End, you know, they had a lot of issues, they had a lot of poverty, but they were very community-minded. They supported each other. their husbands and their cultural communities, the immigration, sort of everyone who'd come from Ireland or the east of Europe, they were banned together and they would support each other

and you would look out for each other. And I think it would have been scary, but I also think the great thing about the match women is just how confident they were in their own abilities and how much they really looked out for each other and made sure that, you know, everyone was okay, which I just, I think we picture these working class Victorian women as sort of tragic figures almost, but they had tenacity and they got the job done. So what happened with the strike then? So they down tools and they head out. They down tools. So they raise publicity. They get Annie Bessent back to help them form a strike committee and they organise and they meet again with the bosses at Brian and May.

I actually have some matches from them in my draw right now. But they meet the bosses and they hash out some new regulations and they get a big chunk of. of their demands met and it wasn't perfect but they did it they got no more fines for bad work they got much fairer deals and obviously there was still no legal protections there but they were able to achieve their aims and as I said it's just crazy that nobody we do remember it but just not in the detail that we should do and what do you think is the life lesson from the match women I think the importance of community with other women supporting each other solidarity solidarity yes exactly and, you know, just to remember that anything's possible with numbers,

anything's possible with a group of people banding together. And also, you know, never underestimate working class women, I think, as well. Never. Do you know if they got rid of the toxic phosphorus? I'm going to guess that it's not still toxic phosphorus that's being used. Yes, no one needs to worry unless you're sucking matches, which I still wouldn't do anyway. Don't do that. Yes, they did.

It wasn't until the 1910s. They finally banned it. But I know, I know. Which, you know, and when you're reading, you're like, oh, okay, quite recently afterwards, but actually about 20 years, you know. So, yes, eventually it did. It was very slow process. I don't know, maybe, maybe I'm just imagining this, but wasn't it that they did have an alternative to the toxic phosphorus? Yes. But they liked using the phosphorus.

They did, yes, because there's two types of phosphorus, there's the red and the white, and the red is the one we use now. And the reason white was more popular with the, with the manufacturers, is because you could strike a white phosphorus match anywhere. So you wouldn't need a matchbox. You wouldn't need a little strip. So obviously they wanted something, you know, so they sold more. So they wanted to make more of them at the expense of people's jaws. Massive surprise, yeah. Capitalism is the enemy here.

So let's talk about another one of your amazing historical women, Mary Bryant. Now this is a name I'm not hugely familiar with. So tell me all about this person. So Mary Bryant was, and I think you did an episode on, the first fleet or on sex work in the colony. Yes. Yes, we did. So she wasn't a sex worker, but she was one of the first fleet women who was transported to Australia in the late 1780s. And she got transported for, you know, stealing a hat, a very, obviously very small crime. Although, to be fair, she did assault the woman she stole it from. So I'm not saying, I'm not saying she was

completely innocent. I'm just saying, I don't know if a one-way trip to Australia is the appropriate punishment. It's not, it's a bit extreme that, isn't it? Yeah, it's a bit. And she gets there and she has a family, she has two children, which she actually becomes pregnant on the prison Hulk, and we don't know who the father was, so we don't know if that was consensual. And then she marries one of the other prisoners, and they have a child. So she's in the colonies. And basically what happens is she and her husband, and a few other men decide, we've had enough of this, you know, we're getting out of here. So in March 1791, she and her husband and these other men, they get in a fishing boat. So just to small boat that's only meant to be in shallow water with the two children, two very young children,

and they managed to get all the way to Indonesia, 5,000 miles. No, they didn't. They did, yeah. 5,000 miles all the way to Kupang on Timor. But yeah, they got all the way around Australia. They went all the way up. They lived on fish and none of them were really sailors. That's an insane story.

Massive amounts of luck, I think, as well. How did they do that? If they can't sail and there aren't Google Maps is not available. And they just literally got in a tiny fishing boat dingy thing. You're asking the wrong person. I don't know anything about sailing. But I think they followed the coast all the way around the east side of Australia and then sort of across to Indonesia.

Was she the only woman? She was the only woman. And she had two small children. And I do think it's fair to say that I don't know about you, but I don't know how I could do that long in a boat with 11 men. That would be tricky. There's no shelter, there's no toilets, obviously. They've only got a certain amount of food.

They're not going to be strong anyway because they live on prison rations. There's no sun cream. That's something I thought about a lot. No mosquito repellent. No, nothing like that. Few rations. That's basically it, though. Because obviously, you know, they're stealing all these supplies from the colony

so they can't be too noticed as well. I'll be back with Elner after the short break doing this. I know that like it's a prison colony so it's not a spa. But like, I'm trying to think what would possess you to go, does anyone know how to sail? No. Does anyone have a proper boat? No, not really, but we've got this thing. Do we have any food?

No. Let's just have a go. That is one of the questions that I ask in the book because I don't know about you, Kate. I think I would take my luck with the colony. I think I would. Maybe I'm a wimp, but I think I would. Yeah, I mean, the thing is, the colony was, yeah, as you said, it's no picnic. But I think for them, and I don't think the records really show, you know,

They never asked them why they do it. I think they just wanted, they wanted to make their own choices. And I think maybe Mary as well was aware that her children growing up, you know, obviously after a certain time, if you did your time, you would be transported back. But sometimes you'd die before then or, you know, it would just be easier to stay. You know, I think it was sort of a death or nothing kind of attitude of, we're going to make our own choices here. And they did it.

So you can't say. They did do it. They got to Timor, and I think that was a Dutch colony at the time. It was, yes, and so it was sort of neutral, and they pretended that they'd been shipwrecked. Clever. Yes, they were like, oh, we're British, we're being shipwrecked. And I think this is just after the mutine on the bounty, where I think some of the survivors from that also came to the Dutch colonies. So the Dutch are just used to British people washing up.

I think they're like, I guess this is what they do. They just all end up here. And you're shipwrecked too, are you? Okay, then. But eventually, and they, you know, they live quite cushy lives because they sort of pretend they're these middle-class merchants or whatever. And then one of the guys gets drunk and boasts about it. Because, you know, it's very hard not to boast if you've done that journey. I would.

Yeah, I would. Yeah, I would. I wouldn't shut up about it. So they get in trouble. They get the British authorities alerted and they get transported back. And unfortunately, on the way Mary's husband and children both die. Oh, fuck. Oh, dear.

She's left by herself with, I think, three other men survive. And she gets back to Britain. And it's sort of weird. she leaves Britain alone and she comes back alone. She has this whole family that kind of disappear in the interim and becomes a sort of celebrity because obviously everyone wants to hear about, you know, the Georgians, they love this kind of story as well. They want to hear about this woman who did this escape.

Boswell, who is Johnson's friend. He becomes her kind of patron and helps defend her in court. And I think because of her popularity, she gets off. Why was she in court? Was she not supposed to be back in Britain? Yeah, no, well, the escape. So they were transported back to Britain Yeah, okay, I'm with you

Yeah, you really can't be doing that But it was such a big story And everyone was so impressed I'm trying to think of a modern day equivalent I don't know if there is one But yeah, she got let off And Boswell gives her a pension of 10 quid a year Which is more than it sounds

And that is when she disappears again She goes back to Cornwall where she's from I mean, if you look her up on Wikipedia The dates for her just say She died after 1794 Which was when she came back to Britain She just banishes in the record. With no idea, yeah.

And the only reason we have a record of her is because she was a prisoner. Yeah. Wow. So what do you think the lesson is from here? Don't steal hats. Don't steal hats. I think just that if you think anything is hard, nothing is impossible. I mean, that sounds a bit flippant maybe.

But I think if she could do that, you can do anything. Maybe it's a lesson. I think so. And also, there's a very fine line, isn't there, between bravery and stupidity. But that, she seems to have walked there because she made it. She did it. She did something completely reckless and crazy, but she, it actually came good. Yeah, and, you know, her children survived until they were transported back and that was disease that killed them, which would have been, again, one of the reasons they left.

You know, there's a lot of foreign diseases in Australia they wouldn't have known about it, and it was scary. So, yeah, we might judge her now, especially people who have kids, you know, would they do that? I can't speak obviously, but. People do, though, don't they? Well, this is the thing. This is the parallel kind of draws, is that women still make those. journeys and people still judge them for putting themselves in the children in danger, but I think until you've gone through that, which hopefully none of us ever will,

you can't quite understand that desperation. Absolutely. All right, so let's finish up by talking about a historical figure who, again, I don't think we've done a deep dive into it on this podcast yet, but someone who's much mythologized and romanticized and Disneyified, Pocahontas. I'm so excited to talk about this because I haven't talked much about her to anyone So Pocahontas is I don't know if you saw the film in the 90s

I was a huge fan The Disney one The Disney one It was a big part of my childhood I used to watch it all the time I just thought she was like I mean she looks like a supermodel Apparently she was based on it

basically a smushing together of many of the supermoles at the time None of whom were Native American But I always just thought she had this You know she was so cool She's talked to animals She's going around barefoot She does what she likes

all these hot men want her. And, you know, that kind of sparked an interest in her. And it was learning about her real story. First of all, I'm absolutely baffled that Disney chose to do a historical princess film about that period because they had to whitewash a lot of stuff to make that. They had to be pretty free and loose with the truth there, didn't they? Yeah, they did.

But Pocahontas, I think, what people don't know or, you know, that that version is very romanticised, as you said. She's kind of represents this almost mythical time where white people and indigenous people were getting on great and it was happy, it was good, and, you know, she's beautiful, she's a princess, that's a big deal, that's a big part of it, she's a princess. And really what happened was she was more a diplomat than anything else, and she had great language skills,

and she was able to use those skills to negotiate her way through the colonialisation of her land and as we've said she's very romanticised I think we overlook the ways in which she had agency because she was in a lot of ways I talk about this in the book a victim of the colonisation

but I also think it's unfair to say we don't really have any written accounts from her but we I think it's unfair to say that she was purely a victim I think she had a lot of intelligence and she made a lot of good choices and she had a real passion I think for her community and for looking out for them

and giving them a voice in history. Because the romantic Disney story of Pocahontas is this was when the white people first turned up in America and decided, oh, this is nice, I think we'll live here. Yes. And the romantic story is that Procahontas was a Native American princess who fell in love with John Smith, who was, was he American? Was he British?

He was British. He was British, wasn't he? And he was like a sort of soul. soldiery type and that their love was a sort of Romeo Juliet, like across cultures. Yes, exactly. There's a bit with a raccoon, but that was Disney. That didn't really. We don't know if raccoons could talk about it then.

We have no evidence either way. We don't. We can't say definitively. We can't say. We just can't say that. But didn't, the story goes that she risked her life to save his or she threw herself over him or some shit like that, wasn't it? Yes.

The story is that John Smith has been captured by her father and the tribe. and she has fallen in love with him and he's about to be brained to death. They're going to cave his head in and she throws herself in front of him and says, no, no, please don't. He's so hot. And even before the Disney film, there's lots of Victorian era

pictures depicting this and she's very soft and gentle and romantic. And first of all, so the claims that this happened come from John Smith himself. Red flag number one. Second of all, unfortunately, John Smith was not a Hollywood hunk. He was a sort of beardy,

I mean, there's some pictures of him, so you can look him up, a beardy sea bloke. He was not all that. Quite a lot older as well. Quite a lot old. She was actually 11, so she wasn't the teenager. Red flag number two. And she also coincidentally fits into a narrative

that John Smith had kind of established in his writings, where wherever he went, native women would fall in love with him and risk everything to be with him. And it just feels a bit like maybe John Smith might have made some of this up. Possibly. Especially because actually they wouldn't have,

her tribe traditionally would not have executed prisoners. They would have assimilated them in. And she was 11? And she was 11. 11. Like my niece is 12. Yeah. And like 11.

11. And I think this also sort of draws as well on, you know, this idea, this sort of exoticisation. of Indigenous women and the way that children and women in those communities were sort of seen as objects essentially and that almost animals

and of course he had this lust for John Smith, this hot European man. Yeah, of course. What 11-year-old isn't doing fucking out. He's probably got bits of food in his beard, his teeth are all coming out. Oh, he's great. I mean, he was also historically recorded

as being basically a bit of a dick. And nobody liked him. Wow. He tried to kind of mutiny on the... the way over and he ended up being locked below deck because they couldn't excuse him because he was too important to the trip but nobody liked him no one liked this guy he was always arguing with people he was not a good diplomat for his people you know he would go into communities like pocahontas and just shoot off a gun and be like i'm in charge now so yeah so this this guy again we've

we only know really about pocahontas because of his narrative and we remember her through how he remembered her or wanted her to be remembered. And if it was me, found out some guy had made up a story about me being really hot for him when I was a kid. I'd be so mad. And didn't, in the sort of the Disney-Fide version, they both like dance off to live amongst nature forever and ever,

and it's lovely. But that's not what happened to Pocahontas, is it? Unfortunately not. So she did, one of the things the John Smith did do that I did appreciate was that he did actually make an effort to learn the language and he recorded in his journal conversations with him and Pocahontas in her language, which is really cool, because obviously they didn't use the written word, so that's the only thing we have. And that tribe is no longer here.

So she learned English quite young, and the British, they also brought young boys over to the colonies with the distinct idea of having them, you know, they would live with the tribes for a bit, learn their language, come back. So both groups were sort of doing this thing where the children were learning the languages and then becoming ambassadors, essentially or, you know, helping to translate for the adults. And she was one of those children. But eventually, there's various breakdowns of communication between the settlers and the indigenous people and the English settlers make a pact with another tribe to sort of essentially trick Pocahunter's.

She ends up in Jamestown as a prisoner, you know, so that her dad can bargain for her. I should also say she's not a princess. She was, it's a sort of easy shorthand word, but her tribe, and it's kind of a different system. But essentially her dad was the chief, but she was not his sort of most important child. She was his favourite child. So she wouldn't have been considered a princess because it was matrimonial lineage. So her mum was not the chief's most important wife. Didn't she end up back in Britain and was like converted to Christianity? So she's in this camp in Jamestown and the English are like, we really think you should convert. We think that'd be great. And she's like,

she's like, fine. And you know, obviously we don't. have her word on it. I'd like to think that she used it as a survival tactic and said, okay, sure, I'll do that. And then she kind of adds our god to her pantheon of gods and that's sort of part of her attempting to kind of pacify these people because she's often held up as this, again, this idea of quote unquote good Indian who converts and becomes Christiode and therefore a real woman. But she marries John Rolfe and again, we don't know how the marriage went. And maybe I'm being overly fair here, but I think it seems fine. I think they liked each other. I could be wrong, but they seem's fine. They have a son, Thomas, and they go to England,

they go to Britain, to London, and she's basically this huge celebrity, of course, you know, in the capital. Everyone's very excited to see her. But at the same time, because she is seen as other and lesser, she's more gawked at than treated with reverence. So she does meet the king, she meets James 6th, sorry, first and 6th. First and 6th, not formally, she's not formally introduced, which is something that most visiting roles would have gotten. Yeah, so she's kind of more like a novelty. A novelty, yes, a novelty princess. And she meets John Smith again. They bump into each other. And she basically, it's recorded in his diary. So again, we don't know if this is true. But it sounds like it would be because it doesn't paint him in a good light. She basically goes,

oh, it's you. I didn't know what happened to you. I thought you died. You know, you said the stuff to my dad. And now you went back on it. It's kind of a dick move. And he's like, oh, yeah, sorry. And then she's about to leave. They're about to get the ship back over to Virginia, as it was known. She contracts one of the many, many diseases that, you know, her immune system just wasn't ready for. And she dies and is buried in Gravesend in Kent. And she was 21 at most. At most. She might have been 20, yeah.

Boo. So, I know. Some of the women in this book, I should say, have nicer endings. Yes. But not Pocahontas. Not Pocahontas. You know, she's buried far away from her family, which I think would have been upsetting for her to know. Yeah.

There are some conjecture, and I don't necessarily. disagree in especially indigenous historians and oral history that she was deliberately murdered. I think it's probably more likely personally, I think, that honestly there was so many gross diseases that her body just wouldn't have been ready for and a lot of people would have died of. And her son and her husband returned to the colonies and Thomas grew up and he lived there and that is why today you will hear many Americans say that they are a direct descendant of Pocahontas. So what's the life lesson from Pocahontas? I think the life lesson from Pocahontas. Don't trust me.

Men. Don't, well, yeah, that's a given. Yeah, always make sure you're represented correctly. Yes. I think as well, I think her diplomacy was very admirable the way she did, you know, I don't really go into it here, but in the book, she does go into a lot of negotiations and go-betweens and things with the colonizers. And I think her language skills were very admirable.

So I think the lesson is just that try and be a good representative of your community because you never know what people are going to remember about your community. And they might remember a load of rubbish. Ellen, you have been fascinated to talk to. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? I'm on all the socials.

If you just Google Eleanor Morton and I pop up. I am doing a show at the Edinburgh Fringe as well, which is nothing to do with history. It's about ghosts. So that's called Haunted House, and it's on every day apart from Mondays and Tuesdays in the Fringe, 12 o'clock p.m., monkey barrel, too. And then the book is Life Lessons from Historical Women,

and it's out on the 15th August, and it is available in all good bookshops, and I assume some bad ones as well. Thank you so much. You have been a treat. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for listening, and thank you so much to Eleanor for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review, and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. I know everybody says that, but it does actually help us a lot.

If you'd like us to explore a subject, or maybe you just wanted to say hi, then you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. We have got episodes on everything from the real Princess Diana to ancient Greek bodies all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delagie and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society,

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