Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - Liar Bigamist Brute How Isaac Singer Liberated Women

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

The sewing machine was once thought to be an impossible invention. It was such a complicated contraption that it would take more than one inventor, with more than one good idea, to make it work. Each of these inventors, including the notorious Isaac Singer, wanted the credit (and the fortune that came with it) for themselves. And so began the sewing machine war: a mire of backstabbing, stealing and misogyny. See the show notes at timharford.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-I-Hart. Pushkin. Fifth Avenue, New York, 1860. Mrs. Isaac Singer is driving in her horse-drawn carriage When she sees on the other side of the road, in another carriage, Mr. Isaac Singer. Mr. Singer is not alone. Mrs. Singer has heard rumours about the woman he's with.

Those rumours, it seems, are true. Mrs. Singer begins to scream. She doesn't scream abuse, or even Singer's name. She just screams. I used no language upon this occasion. she later recalls. Mr Singer looks to see where the screaming is coming from. It's Mrs. Singer. Oh dear. Their carriages approach one another. She continues to scream wordlessly in his direction. Everyone on Fifth Avenue, it seems, has stopped to stare at Mr and Mrs Singer as their carriages pass.

You can understand why Mrs. Singer has snapped. She's caught her husband with his mistress. But no, it's much more complicated than that. You see, Mrs Singer isn't actually Mrs Singer. Oh, that's how everyone knows her. She can go into any fashionable New York store and buy whatever she likes, and the bill will be sent to Mr Singer and he'll pay it. But for most of the 24 years of their apparent marriage, Mr Singer has actually been married to someone else.

When the supposed Mrs Singer first agreed to marry him, she didn't know he was married already. By the time she found out, she had little choice but to make the best of it. And in some ways, it's turned out better than she could have hoped. The singer she agreed to marry was a penniless aspiring actor. Now, thanks to his sewing machine business, he's rich. They live in a luxurious house in a fashionable location.

just off Washington Square Park. The curious thing is that Mr Singer has recently, finally, got divorced from that secret first wife. Why now, after so many years? Mrs Singer assumed that it must be because he wanted, finally, to formalize her status as Mrs. Singer. But when she broached the subject, he said, why would I marry you?

Then you would have me in your power. So, yes, you can understand why Mrs Singer lost it on Fifth Avenue. But wait, it's even more complicated than the screaming Mrs Singer has suspected. You see, the woman Mr Singer was with in the carriage isn't just a casual affair partner. No, they've been together for years. They've got five children. They have a home in another part of New York where all their neighbours, know them as Mr and Mrs Matthews.

But wait, that's still not all. Singer has yet another mistress and child in yet another part of New York, where he's known as Mr. Merritt, his middle name. As Singer's biographer, Ruth Brandon puts it, this was a truly amazing situation. He's somehow been living as man and wife with three women in the same system,

all while technically still married to someone else entirely. Only one thing in Singer's convoluted private life is simple. All three women are called Mary, so at least he doesn't have to worry about getting a name wrong. Mary Singer turns her carriage into the next side street, turns again and heads for home. By the time she gets back, Isaac Singer is there. already. As she feared, he's furious. She knows from bitter experience what to expect.

Singer hits her. He hits her again and again and again. Covered in blood, Mary Singer blacks out. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. In 1839 in a report, pair shop in Boston. A young man called Elias Howe is listening in to a conversation between his boss and an inventor's patron. The patron has funded the inventor's attempt to make a knitting machine, but it doesn't work very well. He wants to know if young Elias's boss can see a way to improve it. I don't know why you're even bothering, says the boss. There'll be no money in a knitting machine. You want to make a sewing machine. You'll make a fortune. Oh, I know, says the patron, I wish I could, but it can't be done.

A fortune? Elias Howe's ears prick up. Elias doesn't enjoy his work, or any work for that matter. He's short and slight and gets tired quickly. He grew up on a farm, but couldn't cope with the labour. He moved to the city and got a job in this workshop, but at the end of each day, he's completely. spent. Sometimes he can't even muster the energy for dinner. Elias later recalled,

I just wanted to lie in bed forever and ever. But he can't. He's got a wife and they keep having children, so Elias has to drag himself into work every day. The idea of a fortune sounds very appealing. Elias knows nothing about sewing. That's women's work. He starts to observe his wife as she sews. Like most married women, Elias' wife spends an inordinate amount of time making and mending clothes for her family. In the words of one contemporary writer, sewing makes life for mothers

nothing but a dull round of everlasting toil. Then there are the women who sew for a living. A famous poem from the time called The Song of the Shirt describes the life of a seamstress. With fingers weary and worn, with eyelids heavy and red, a woman sat in unwomanly rags, plying her needle and thread. Stitch, stitch, stitch. It really is time-consuming work, Elias sees. He starts to understand why his boss had said you'd make a fortune if you could make.

mechanise it, but he also understands why the inventor's patron had replied that it couldn't be done. Try as he might. Elias can't imagine how a machine might be made to perform the same motions as his wife's fingers, passing the needle through the fabric, passing it back from the other side. But what if there was another way to make a stitch? One that didn't involve pushing the needle all the way through. A machine could certainly be made to poke a needle in and out of fabric. So then you would need, hmm, maybe a second thread? And some mechanism to join them together? That starts to sound possible.

Elias constructed the machine in his head. But to construct it in reality, he'd need money. And all his wages were going on supporting his family. He did, however, have a friend. who'd just come into an inheritance. Would the friend lend him enough to make a prototype? He would. I was the only one who had any confidence in the success of the invention.

The friend later recalled, Elias was generally looked upon as very visionary, and I was thought very foolish in assisting him. Visionary, in those days, was not a compliment. Elias patented his machine and issued a challenge to the tailors of Boston. Gather the five fastest seamstresses in town and I will compete against them. A curious crowd gathered to watch. Each girl was given a seam to sew while Elias, seated at his machine, had a pile of five seams.

The umpire started his stopwatch. The five seamstresses set at their time. task, sewing as quickly as they could. Pride was at stake. But by the time each had finished their one seam, Elias had already finished his fine. The umpire inspected the work. Was the machine up to the standard of the seamstresses? Actually, no, it was better. Elias was triumphant. His machine had won. Now, where was his fortune? He waited for the orders to come. He waited for the orders to come in, and nothing. Nobody was interested. Why? Well, Elias's machine was expensive. In today's terms, well into five or even six figures, depending on what measure you use. The machine would have to be

good to justify that sort of investment, but it had some obvious drawbacks. It used curved needles, which were brittle and often broke. It required the cloth to be held in place using a vertical plate. You couldn't move it around as you sewed. That meant you couldn't sew long, continuous seams, or curves, or corners. The machine had beaten five seamstresses in test conditions

devised by Elias Howe, but it wasn't reliable or versatile enough for the real world. Elias decided to try his luck in England. He found a manufacturer of corsets and umbrellas who thought the machine had promise and offered Elias a wage to adapt it for those specific jobs. Elias worked on it for months and then fell out with the manufacturer.

He stayed on in England, living with his wife and three children in a small rented room, trying to interest someone else in his invention. until he'd run out of money, and his wife had fallen ill with consumption. He pawned the last of his possessions and bought passage back home to America. Elias had been away for two years.

He was broke. His wife was dying. And then he saw a poster. A great curiosity. The Yankee sewing machine is now exhibiting at this place. And another poster, for another sewing machine. And another.

Sewing machines were everywhere. Elias took a close look at these machines that various other inventors were now demonstrating to the public. They weren't quite the same as his, but they were using an idea that he had patented. Elias went to see the maker of one of those machines, one Isaac Singer. Mr Singer turned out to be a big,

big, imposing man with a quick temper. Your machine is infringing my patent, said Elias Howe. Get the hell out of my workshop, said Singer. Or I'll kick you down the stairs. Cautionary tales will be back after the break. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined.

So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. Isaac Singer was born in upstate New York in 1811.

He learned to earn money by making and repairing machines, but that wasn't what he wanted to do. Singer was tall, blonde, handsome, charismatic. He loved to be the centre of attention. He went off with a travelling troupe of Shakespearean actors. His favourite role was Richard III. Now is the winter of our discontent. A horse, a horse.

Horse, my kingdom for a horse. He was, later claimed, one of the best Richards of his day. Not everyone agreed. Crude and bombastic, said one critic. In a village near Rochester, 19-year-old singer, met a 15-year-old girl, married her, moved her to New York City, got her pregnant, and left her with the baby while he went on the road again. In Baltimore, he met an 18-year-old girl, Mary,

and asked her to come to New York to marry him. He'd go ahead alone, he explained, to make preparations. Back in New York, Singer got his wife pregnant again, then told her their marriage was over. She'd have to go back to the village and her parents. When Mary arrived in New York to marry Singer, he explained that there was a small difficulty. He was already married.

But he was going to get divorced, he said. So he'd marry her as soon as the divorce came through. In the meantime, they could live together as man and wife. Nobody need he'd ever know. Was ever woman in this humour wooed? Mary must have wondered. Singer taught Mary how to be a Shakespearean actress. And they went on the road together

while raising an ever-growing brood. One hotelier recalled the impression the singer's made on him. Isaac was rough and unkind in manner. Mary was quite the opposite, refined, amiable and courteous. Their children were bright and well-mannered. Singer was also, the hotelier noted, poor in pocket. Shakespeare didn't pay well. After years on the road, the Singer family found themselves stranded in a town in Ohio.

No demand for their plays, no money to move on elsewhere. Singer got a job in a print shop. His dreams of fame and fortune as an actor were in tatters, but perhaps he could make it as an inventor instead. He spent years perfecting a machine for carving. wooden type and took it to Boston, the centre of the book printing trade. He rented space in a workshop to demonstrate his machine and waited for buyers who never came. Singer's machine was ingenious, but wooden type was falling out of fashion. In the next room, some workers were

tinkering with some other machine. Singer went over to take a look at what it did. It was sewing. What a devilish machine, said Singer. You want to do away with the only thing that keeps women quiet. But, hmm, as Singer watched the machine work, he realised that it didn't work very well, and he saw ways he could improve it. A better design for the shuttle, the mechanism that held the second thread

and joined it to the first thread as the needle poked it through. and what if you added a foot pedal to work the mechanism? Then you'd free up the hands to move the cloth around. Singer came up with a plan for an improved sewing machine. He was too broke to make it. He took on three partners, Mr. Zeber, Mr. Ransom and Mr. Phelps, who together provided the money and the workers for Singer to construct a prototype, patent the ideas that were original, and start to produce machines.

to sell. The machines worked brilliantly. For years, inventor after inventor had tried to mechanise sewing, but nobody had really cracked it, until Singer. Now that the business looked promising, Singer wanted it all to himself. First, he targeted Mr. Phelps. He took every opportunity to quarrel with Phelps, Zeeba later recalled, and beheld. behaved to him in the most brutal and insulting manner. Phelps agreed to sell Singer his interest in the business. Then Singer targeted Mr. Ransom. He is perfectly insufferable, Ransom complained.

That singer will be the death of me. Ziba recalled that Ransom often used to sob like a child. Ransom agreed to sell up too. Now Singer had only Ziba to sideline. That was more awkward. Singer and Ziba were supposed to be friends. It was Ziba who'd funded Singer to develop his wooden type machine. One day, Ziba fell ill.

Singer went to visit. I've talked to your doctor, said Singer. Sadly, you're not going to recover. Wouldn't you like to see you? Sell me your share of the business now, so at least you can settle all your debts before you die? Ziba later recalled, I was very much startled at what he told me and not in a fit state of mind. I did not then suspect that it was a trick.

Ziba sat up in his sickbed to sign a document, selling singer his share of the business for a knockdown price. When Ziba recovered, he asked his doctor, Why did you think my illness was terminal? What on earth are you talking about? asked the doctor. I never said any such thing to anyone. Singer tried his usual bullying tactics when Elias Howe knocked on Singer's door and said, you're infringing my patent.

And Singer threatened to kick him down the stairs. But he wasn't going to get rid of Elias that easily. Elias owned a patent on the idea of using an eye-pointed needle and a shuttle with a second thread to create a lock stitch. Singer's machine was using that idea along with several other ideas. Elias had no money to enforce his patent, but he found an investor who was willing to bankroll his lawsuits. Thus began the sewing machine war.

It wasn't a war only between Elias. Howe and Isaac Singer. No, it was much more complicated than that. Singer wasn't the only person selling sewing machines, as Elias Howe had discovered when he returned from England to see posters everywhere. There was Grover and Baker, Wheeler and Wilson, Lero and Blodgett, among others. All these people had been busily trying to invent a better sewing machine when Elias was away. It was one of Lee Rowan Blodgett's machines that Singer had seen in the Boston Workshop while trying to sell his wooden type invention.

Nor was Elias Howe the only person with a patent. Isaac Singer, of course, had patented the new ideas he'd added to Lee Rowan Blodgett's machine. Lee Rowan Blodgett had patents of their own. So did Grover and Baker, and Wheeler and Wilson. Until now, none of these patents had really mattered much. because none of the machines had been commercially viable. But Isaac Singer's improvements were the final piece of the puzzle.

Now it was possible to make a machine that was versatile and reliable enough to be worth investing in. The fortune once envisaged by Elias Howe's old boss finally loomed on the horizon. There was only one problem. To make a sewing machine that worked, you had to use ideas that had been patented by multiple different people. This problem is now known as a patent thicket.

Back then, the situation had never arisen before. Elias Howe, Isaac Singer, and the various other sewing machine manufacturers and patent holders set about suing and counter-suing each other. That didn't leave anyone much time to make sewing machines. And when they did, it was hard to sell them. because potential customers were also afraid of being sued. Elias Howe took out threatening adverts in the newspapers. You that want sewing machines, be cautious how you purchase them,

else the law will compel you to pay twice over. Singer took out adverts of his own. Elias Howe has been threatening suits and injunctions against all the world. The public do not acknowledge Mr Howe. pretensions, and for the best of reasons, machines made according to House patent are of no practical use. It was a mess. Dozens of lawsuits were filed in courts across the land, filing cabinets filled up with thousands upon thousands of pages of testimony. Isaac Singer had ruthlessly disposed of all his old business partners, but now,

he was compelled to take on a new one. He couldn't afford to fight all these legal battles. He found a lawyer who'd fight them for him, in return for half the business. Edward Cabot Clark was from an old, respectable family. His father-in-law was the state attorney general. He was prim and proper. He taught Sunday school.

He saw the opportunity in Singer's business, but singer himself? Singer was brash, uncouth, obnoxious. Clark couldn't stand him. Cautionary tales will return. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined.

So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-844-I-Hart. The tragedy of the commons is a well-known problem.

When people can't work together to limit the use of a resource, the resource gets over-exploited. But there's also a tragedy of the anti-common. a phrase coined by the law professor Michael Heller. A resource can be under-exploited when too many people have the power to stop something happening. One example is trying to develop attractive land with many owners. The patent thicket is another tragedy of the anti-commons.

The sewing machine was a potentially valuable resource that was being under-exploited, because anyone who wanted to make and sell sewing machines had to wrangle with multiple patent holders. The story of the sewing machine tells us something about how good ideas come about. It shows that the patent system can work well. Elias Howe took an interest in sewing only because he wanted a fortune.

But it lays bare the drawbacks of that system too. Howe had a good idea, but he failed to make a useful machine. and when others succeeded, he sued them. You can see why there was a debate about how much of their profits he deserved. The sewing machine war dragged on for years. But it doesn't always take the promise of a patent to incentivise a good idea. In 1856, a lawyer had a brainwave. The president of one of the companies, Grover and Baker,

called a meeting of all the patent holders who are suing and counter-sewing each other. In this room, he pointed out, are the owners of all the patents needed to produce a well-functioning sewing machine? Why don't we join forces and pool our patents? Together we can issue licenses to each other and other manufacturers. Everyone pays a fee for each machine they make and will split the fee between us. It's a simple idea, obvious in hindsight. The patent pool is now widely used in the development of complex technologies.

The sewing machine patent holders haggled over how to split the fee, but soon reached agreement. All could see how much they stood to gain from Grover and Baker's brainwave. Once they'd cut through the patent thicket, everyone was free to compete using anyone's best idea. production took off. But when you think of sewing machines today, it's not the names of Grover and Baker that come to mind,

or Ler & Blodgett or Wheeler and Wilson, or Elias Howe. When you think of sewing machines, you think of Singer. The sewing machine war was over. How did Singer win the piece? In the 1850s, misogyny was rife. The kind of attitude Isaac Singer had personified with his quip on first seeing a sewing machine. You want to do away with the only thing that keeps women quiet. The magazines of the time show how women were generally viewed.

One ran a cartoon in which a man decides to get himself a sewing machine. The cartoon shows him getting married. hilarious. Another cartoon featured a sewing machine salesman, saying the machine would free up time for women to improve their intellects. Women, intellects, how very amusing. These attitudes posed a problem, because they led to widespread skepticism about whether women even had the brain power to operate a sewing machine. Singer's business depended on proving that they did. He toured the country, taking a sewing machine and a young woman to fairs and carnivals. As the woman showed the crowds that, yes, a woman can use a machine, Singer charmed and flirted and theatrically recited the song of the shirt,

with fingers weary and worn, with eyelids heavy and red. Singer loved to be the centre of attention. He'd found his new stage. But that's not the main reason Singer's machines out-competed the others. No, that was down to Singer's business partner, the respectable, straight-laced Sunday school teacher, Edward Cabot Clark. Singer had given Clark an equal share in the company because he needed a lawyer.

But Clark turned out to be brilliant at business. Clark saw that families were afraid to stump up the money for a sewing machine. The price had come down since Elias Howe's first effort, but they still cost several months' worth of household income. And all those early models, which hadn't really worked, had left the invention with a bad name. Clark said, rent a machine from us. If you don't like it, give it back.

and if you keep it long enough that your rental payments add up to the sale price, you'll own it. Clark pioneered the idea of higher purchase or rent to own. Like the patent pool, the idea was good enough to last. Clark's new payment model changed discussions in households. Instead of a big upfront purchase that her husband would have to approve, A wife might afford a sewing machine from her allowance. She and her daughters might even use it to do sewing for others and earn money of their own. The singer company's adverts put more and more emphasis on women's liberation and economic independence.

Sold directly to the women of the family. A good female operator could earn a thousand dollars a year. Women used the same. sewing machine to empower themselves politically too. Suffragettes made their case for votes for women with home-sown flags, banners and sashes. Not many inventions have done more good in the world. I said earlier that the story of the sewing machine tells us something about how good ideas come about, and one thing it tells us is surprising.

We might expect socially useful inventions to come from socially well-intentioned people. But we'd be wrong. Isaac Singer did more than most men to liberate 19th century women, and Isaac Singer was a bullying, womanizing, wife-beating misogynist. As Singer machines out-competed their rivals,

both Isaac Singer and Edward Clark got richer and richer. Singer, his wealth to show off. He commissioned a huge, garish, canary yellow carriage and rode around New York with his supposed wife, Mary, and their eight children. He bought a lavish new home and sent an invite to his supposed old friend, Mr. Ziba, the former partner he'd cheated on his sickbed. I was treated with great kindness by Mrs. Singer and the family. Zeeba, Reberrook. called. But the sight of his rich furniture, whilst I was now very poor, did not afford me much pleasure under the circumstances. Clark, meanwhile, became more and more afraid that his crass

philandering partner would do something to cause a public scandal. Clark's wife wanted nothing to do with the nasty brute. Perhaps it was Clark who talked singer into finally divorcing his wife in the hope that he'd then regularise his affairs by actually marrying the woman everyone knew was Mrs Singer. If so, as we've heard, it didn't go to plan. When Mary Singer regained consciousness, covered in blood, she called the police. She had never done that before when Singer beat her, but she must now have felt that she had nothing left to lose. The police arrested Singer, and put him under bonds to keep the peace for six months. Then Mary decided to sue Singer for divorce, even though they weren't technically married.

All of Singer's dirty laundry was publicly aired, the secret wife, the other Mary, the other other Mary, the many more affairs, the history of domestic abuse. Singer escaped the scandal by travelling to Europe with the first other Mary's 19-year-old sister. Edward Clark was mortified. All this, he wrote to Singer, is exceedingly annoying to me as well as disastrous to our business.

Singer agreed to step back from the business and become a passive shareholder. He acquired a new. wife, not called Mary, a French-American model 30 years his junior. She wanted to enjoy a social life, but in New York she found Singer was ostracized. They moved to Paris, then London. And finally, Paynton, a seaside resort in the southwest of England. In Paynton, Singer built a mansion with its own private theatre. No doubt he liked to relive the glories of his youth,

delivering all those iconic lines from Richard III, like in the opening monologue when Richard clues the audience in about his character. I am determined to prove a villain. Singer always said he was one of the best Richards of his day. This script relied on Ruth Brandon's book, Singer and The Sewing Machine, and Adam Mossop's paper, The Rise and Fall of the First American Patent Thicket. For a full list of our sources, see the show notes at Tim Harford.com.

Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pass. Scal Wise. Additional sound design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio. Ben Nadaf Haffrey edited the scripts. The show features the voice talents of Melanie Guthridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hempra, Sarah Hempra, Sarah Jop, Marcia Monroe, Jamal Westman and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohn,

Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Keiraposey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardour Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. It really makes a difference to us. And if you want to hear the show ad-free, sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus. This is an iHeart podcast.

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