Dan Snow's History Hit - The Magic Circle & Hoaxes in History

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

Hoaxes and magic were widespread in 18th century Britain. From a woman who claimed to birth rabbits, to a man who said he’d climb into a bottle in front of a live audience, many of the claims sound laughably unbelievable to us today. But at the time, these sorts of hoaxes were widely influential, even drawing in celebrities of the day such as Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Swift. This episode, Dan is joined by joined by historian and magician, Ian Keable, who details some of the most bamboozling hoaxes of the 18th century and why the public fell for them. Ian's book,The Century of Deception: The Birth of the Hoax in Eighteenth-Century England, is out now.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Today I'm talking about magic and hoaxes. And because of my oft-lamented obsession with the 18th century, I'm going to be focusing on that joyful period in our history. Hoaxes and magic in the 18th century, and there was plenty of both, as you will hear. The very brilliant magician himself, but also historian, Ian Keeble, is going to take us through some of the more bamboozling hoaxes of the 18th century. A woman who gave birth to rabbits, someone who climbed into a bottle in front of a live audience or said they were going to, and curious astrological predictions. They believed anything back then, not like us super sophisticated truth seekers today. Thank you very much everyone for your feedback from yesterday's podcast. A very

brilliant Margaret McKenzie, the wonderful old lady who became a world-leading expert on the fauvent camps of the World War I training areas on Salisbury Plain. As you'll have heard in that podcast yesterday, she passed away. She died just after recording that episode. So it's very, very special. And I know her neighbours and family are thrilled that she's had a chance to broadcast to so many people, sharing some of their expertise. And you'll be glad to know that her neighbours are keeping her research, keeping her work going, and that huge wealth of knowledge is not dying with her. If you want to listen to other podcasts, and you can do so without the ads, because a lot of ads over Christmas, a lot of brands want to get on the old pod. So if you don't listen to the ads, just go to HistoryHitTV.

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So you can subscribe to the world's best history channel, which is now powering into its fifth year on planet Earth, all for less than the price of a pint of IPA. In the meantime, though, folks, here is the brilliant Ian Keeble talking about hoaxes and magic. Enjoy. Ian, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. No problems. Looking forward to it. I'm extremely happy to have you on the podcast. I'll tell you why. Because I'm married. I have to spend my life with someone who loves a hoax, a horoscope, a mysterious coincidence, magic. She loves all that stuff. And now you're going to come on and

debunk it all. We're going to get some rigour here. Yes, you've been a bit optimistic there, I think. Of course, magic is where it's all at. Okay, well, tell me, why did people think us Brits, people like my wife, are easy to deceive, are gullible? What's going on there? You mean back in the 18th century, are you talking about particularly? Yeah, sorry, I should say, I always talk about the 18th century. My head's always in the 18th century. Ian, assume, unless I state otherwise, that the question is referring to the 18th century. So, yes, I've just written this book on the century of deception, which is the birth of hoaxes in 18th century England. So the sort of assumption there is that that's when

sort of hoaxes began, which isn't entirely true. But it's certainly true that that's the time when information about individual hoaxes are really out there in the sense that there's lots of newspapers and pamphlets and even recreations on the stage and court trials relating to individual hoaxes. So we've got an awful lot of information which is available in the 18th century, which wasn't really available before then. So that's why I'm sort of saying they began in inverted commas in the 18th century. When it comes to the credulity, though, part of the argument I make is that I think we are just as gullible in today's times as they were back in the 18th century. Even though some of the hoaxes appear to be ridiculous and absurd from our perspective, and there's no way that we would fall for, say, a woman giving birth to rabbits. There's very good reasons why they did fall from the back of the 18th century. And those reasons are the reason we fall for hoaxes today.

What are those reasons, Ian? Well, I think there are quite a number of them. I think one of them is actually quite nice. I think we do tend to believe in what people tell us. I don't think we can really function as a society if we thought that everybody was lying. You know, what if you had a conversation with your next door neighbour and you just didn't believe what they were saying? You know, you couldn't really function. So I think there is this tendency to believe people, which obviously other people can take advantage of. But another thing we go for often, if there's a sort of authoritative voice or an authoritative voice or an authoritative person who is behind an individual claim, we again tend to go along with that. I think we sort of act on our emotions. We're seduced by

things or happenings that we want to believe in. So when a man in the 18th century claims that he was going to climb inside a bottle on the stage of the theatre in London, people were thinking, well, yeah, I'd love to see a man climb inside a bottle and sing and dance inside it. So why not go along? And that particular hoax was quite cunning because it was a very sort of short notice. It looked like it was just going to be a one-off appearance. And therefore, you didn't really have much time, perhaps, to put your sceptical hat on. You'd have to say, well, if I want to see this, I'm going to have to go along and pay my money at the door and see it. Of course, when the man doesn't appear on stage, even though the audience

is packed out, you realise, of course, that you've been hoaxed, but you don't really have enough time perhaps to analyse that fact. So there's lots of these type of reasons that people fall for individual hoaxes, I think. It's interesting to hear you talking about the 18th century like this and authority, these silver-tongued sort of slick hoaxers. Is there something about being a deferential country, about hierarchy? Were people more willing to believe things if it was said with the right accent, by someone wearing the right... I I'm not talking about Brexit here. Let's go back to the 18th century. Was class an element here? Yeah. I mean, actually, I don't think when it comes necessarily to hoaxes that they're necessarily that silver tongue. Maybe that's

more the sort of politicians, conspiracy theories, which is a slightly different area as far as I'm concerned I like to think of as hoaxes being relatively benign at least in in principle anyway although that often doesn't work out in in fact and they're not trying to con people out of money necessarily either so I admire most of the people who perpetrated the hoaxes, unless it was very revengeful, which a couple certainly were. I mean, a couple of them almost resulted in people being hanged as a result of the hoax. So obviously, we can't condone that in any way. But Mary Toth, this wonderful woman who claimed that she was giving birth to rabbits, you know, she was a poor peasant woman. And I think the reason she perpetrated the hoax was probably actually one of the very few ones which was financially motivated. Fair and Southwark Fair, which were very big in the 18th century and sort of basically expose herself along with sort of giant Siamese twins, etc, as a bit of a sort of a freak or monstrosity.

Clearly, as it was uncovered, it didn't work out that way. But there was no way that she was a slippery tongued woman. She was not a particularly intelligent peasant woman, but cunning, if you like, in terms of the scheme that she concocted along with the help of other people. But she did turn up on stage with rabbits and say, these are mine. Well, I think she wasn't going to appear on stage, I don't think. It's more that in the 18th century, people sort of paid money to see, as I say, people like Jance and Sami's twins and a woman with a sort of horn stuck out at the top of her head. And there was also what was called the Hedgehog Boy.

And they would literally just be in a little sort of back room and people would pay their one penny, two pennies, up to perhaps six pennies if they were very popular, and just come in and observe them. Quite how she was going to carry this off, I'm not sure. Perhaps whoever was organising it might have had rabbits sort of scattered around her to give it a bit more authenticity. But of course, when she actually gave birth to the rabbits,

the rabbits didn't come out whole and alive. They actually came out in bits. So you'd have the paw, the body, the rolled up skin, and then they would be sort of pieced together almost like a jigsaw puzzle in order to come up with a whole rabbit. I don't think she'd sort of fought it all the way through, or she'd know that once she'd sort of started and taken in some eminent people, she really didn't think that she could draw back on it. Poor woman. So eventually she was taken up to London and examined by

the leading male midwife of that period, who eventually exposed her. Ian, talk to me about ghosts. Well, when it comes to ghosts, there are a couple of ghosts that appeared certainly in the 18th century alongside hoaxes. One of them was called the Stockwell ghost and the other one was called the Cock Lane ghost. None of them appeared in the sense of what we think of a traditional ghost, if you like, with a white sheet or whatever around them. The Cock Lane ghost actually communicated by rappings or knockings.

So we never actually saw the ghost itself. All we heard was the rappings or knockings. So we never actually saw the ghost itself. All we heard was the rappings or knockings. And essentially, it was one rap for yes and two raps for no. And by that means you could have a conversation with the ghost. This particular ghost, she was known as Fanny, sometimes known as Scratching Fanny. And it all took place in Cock Lane. So I'll leave you to make your own innuendo jokes about that. But she appeared in the presence of a young woman called Betty Parsons. So it was only when Betty Parsons was in the room that people could communicate with rapping Fanny. And similarly, the Stockwell ghost, which actually took place in 1772, also only appeared around the presence of a young woman, in this case a woman called

Anne Robinson. But this was more of a sort of poltergeist phenomena as we would think of it today. The word poltergeist doesn't actually appear in the 18th century, it's only in the 19th century that poltergeist actually emerges as a term. But this particular incident that happened in Stockwell in South London was in a house of a woman called Mrs. Golding. And all her common objects in the kitchen started sort of falling off shelves, cupboards started falling over, meat that was hanging up on hooks suddenly dropped off, water suddenly started bubbling of its own accord. And this poor woman sort of ran out of the house terrified and moved into another house and exactly the same incidents happened.

So it was your classic sort of poltergeist case. But back in the 18th century, they didn't, as I say, they didn't have the term poltergeist. And there was a supposition that this might be some sort of supernatural cause. And of course, the go-to at that point was more witchcraft. The Methodists at this period very much believed in witchcraft. John Wesley, the main Methodist preacher of the period, was a great believer in witchcraft. His famous statement was, if I give up witchcraft, I have to give up the Bible. So he had a real strong affinity to it. And I think that's what a lot of people would have felt at the time, that this was

some sort of witchcraft that were causing these diabolical leaping cutlery all over this stockwell house. You listen to Dan Snow's history here. We're talking about magic in the 18th century, naturally. More coming up. If you love ancient history, then don't worry. We've got you covered. I'm Tristan Hughes, host of The Ancient's podcast, the podcast for all things ancient history. And these are the only surviving boxing gloves from the Roman Empire and the earliest surviving boxing gloves for over 1,600 years. So through this material,

we're actually looking at this entangled sum of hundreds and thousands, in fact, of stories of life across ancient Eurasia. Baths of Cleopatra. I had never come across any such thing before. Subscribe to The Ancients on History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive,

but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Ian, you're talking about these in terms of kind of fun hoaxes, but surely they're criminal adjacent, aren't they? Crime adjacent. I mean, they're connected with scamming and deceit. Do you think it was easier in the 18th century?

I'm thinking now. Was it easier in the 18th century before consumer protections, before the internet, to scam people, to take money off them? Perhaps to a certain extent, although, as I say, I do make the distinction with my hoax, which is the majority are not financially motivated. So there is a difference between a sort of financial scam and a con, and just doing it for other reasons. And what's fascinating is there are so many other reasons why the motivation behind the hoax, I find absolutely fascinating. And sometimes it's not possible to find out why they did it, but other reasons, you know, that people might have sort of delusions of grandeur. There was one which was a man having sort of parental issues

with his father, which is the reason that he started off his hoax, occasionally it's to exact revenge or even to make a sort of political or social point. So, as I say, I do distinguish between financial scams and cons. Is it easier in the 18th century to scam or con people? I really don't think so. I mean, you hear so much about people being scammed and conned in this day and age, particularly through the internet, if you like, through those emails of the Nigerian prince writing to you and saying, could you send over a few thousand dollars and you're about to get a windfall of a million dollars. easier today to scam or con people because we tend to be more sort of isolated, maybe sitting in front of our computer screen, only looking at sites that reinforce our own prejudices, where at least in the 18th century, you could at least sort of go around to coffee houses and have a chat with a few people, perhaps. Okay, good point, Ian, you're right. I've just said a very stupid thing. The internet is actually a great engine of scammers rather than where we can go to check their veracity.

So apologies. But surely there's something about the 18th century. I'm reminded of Gregor McGregor, who came to Britain to sell government bonds of a country that didn't exist in South Africa. And you mentioned that extraordinary person who claimed to be from Taiwan. There was surely a kind of geographical naivety

in those days. Yes, that's right. For Taiwan now, back in the 18th century, it was called Formosa. Yes, this was the splendid man, George Sarmanazar, although we never actually discovered what his real name is. And he was actually born of a French peasantry family. And he was obviously had a little bit of a sort of complex of great imagining and sort of reinventing himself from a relatively early age. But it's sort of quite a complicated story that he decided that for some reason he wanted to sort of pass himself off as a Formosan. He actually joined the Dutch army, you know, told his fellow soldiers that this is what he was and that he used to sort of worship

at midday to the supposed sun god and he started eating raw meat to convince people. It only really came into a sort of major scam when an Anglican clergyman called the Reverend Alexander Innes spotted George and thought that together they could come up with this scam whereby he would claim that he'd converted George from this Formosan heathen religion to the Anglican faith. Then basically what they did was they contacted the Bishop of London and said, we've made this amazing conversion. Would you like to meet him? And the Bishop of London said yes. And they went over to London and met the Bishop of London, who immediately thought that George was genuinely pre-Formosan,

who had now converted to the Anglican faith. And this is actually some wonderful demonstrations of why people fell for it at the time. And first of all, you've got this Bishop of London, this authoritative figure who believed in it. Of course, if the Bishop of London believed it, then all his sort of fellow clergymen would. But also George was extremely convincing.

He was very silver-tongued. He was a great arguer. Also, he was, by all accounts, a very pleasant young man. You know, he didn't seem to have any vices. He wasn't sort of womanising. He wasn't drinking. He didn't seem to be exploiting his fame, particularly for money. And therefore, people sort of invested in him as a perfect example of somebody who converted

to the Anglican faith. There's a wonderful example of him, him actually in his rather good arguing capacity. Edmund Halley, who would later be the royal astronomer, tried to trap him out. And he said, at what angle does the sun hit the hearth in Formosa? George said, I got no idea, which meant Halley played his trump card. Well, it's over the Tropic of Cancer. Of course, the sun would come directly down the chimney to the hearth. And George's response was, well, the problem in Formosa is we have crooked chimneys. So collapse of Edmund Halley and his argument. And this was typical of George. He had another attribute, actually, which is very useful for anybody who wants to lie, which is to have a phenomenal memory. He remembered everything he

ever said. And he always made a vow early on that however ridiculous he made a statement about Formosa, he would never go back on it. And it's quite hard to argue with somebody who can't be caught out, if you like, and can't be tricked out. And eventually he produced this whole book about Formosa, completely fictional, in which he made absurd statements like 18,000 small boys are sacrificed to the sun god on New Year's Day. And the reason he put that in the book is because he mentioned it to somebody in conversation. And as I said, anything he said about Formosa, he would never retract. So he felt he had to put it in the book as well. You know, as you're talking now, I'm feeling increasingly foolish because while it's tempting for us to laugh at these people in the past, thanks to Facebook today, thanks to the interweb, we have millions of people who

are COVID deniers, who think the earth is flat, who think Donald Trump is president, who thinks QAnon is a thing. So yeah, we have nothing to teach our 18th century forebears. Tell me about Ben Franklin. I like the way he gets an honourable mention in your book. Yes, Benjamin Franklin, I mean, was a sort of serial hoaxer throughout his life. He really enjoyed it. I think he started off when he actually owned the Pennsylvania paper, and they were sort of short of copies, so sort of make up stories in order to flesh out the newspaper a bit, and why not? But his most famous one, yes, was very well intentioned. Basically, he made up a speech by a woman who never existed, a woman called Polly Baker. And basically, in New England at that time, it was an offence to fornicate outside wedlock.

And supposedly, this woman had been prosecuted at least four or five times for having bastard children. And each time she had been either whipped or fined. But on this sort of fifth occasion, she made this very sort of moving speech saying she didn't understand why she was being prosecuted. If the Lord in his infinite wisdom decided that she was committing some biblical crime, then he would punish her. She didn't need to be punished by a man's court. She also said that she wasn't costing anybody anything. She'd bought up her own children. And in any event, the reason she'd had a child in the first place was because a man said that he would marry her,

and then he reneged on that. So she made supposedly this very moving speech which appeared in an English newspaper and at the end of the speech she said basically I think I should have a statue erected to myself and everybody sort of stood up and applauded and apparently one of the judges actually married her. So this all came out in this article which was basically just a repetition of the speech actually married her. So this all came out in this article, which was basically just a repetition of the speech. This happened in 1747, and it went vowel in 18th century mode. At that time, any article was often just repeated by other newspapers. They just sort of nicked the copy. It was also repeated in the monthly journals. But eventually,

a couple of months later, it got over to America, where, of course, the speech was meant to have happened. And it started being repeated in American newspapers. And it was also repeated in books. And in quite an important book on social America in the early 20th century, that speech was reproduced. So it was still thought to be genuine some 150 years after. It later turned out that the speech had been written by Benjamin Franklin. The reason he probably wrote the speech was just to make the point about how poorly women were treated in New England. It would have been too controversial for him to have published in his own magazine, you know, given the sort of Puritan of published in his own magazine, you know, given the sort of Puritan readership at that time. So he sort of slipped it in somehow into this English newspaper, hoping perhaps that it would eventually

spread over to America, which indeed it did. Now, I know I was a bit rude about magic earlier, and you're a magician and magic is a wonderful thing. But magic is on the kind of hoaxing scale, isn't it? It's up there on the sliding scale. In the 18th century, do you start to see the development of magic as we understand it today? I think it's a very good period for magic. I mean, I was sort of partly drawn to hoaxes because I'm also a comedy magician. I like to think of myself as one. Not sure if my audiences necessarily agree all the time. And I do think that a good hoax has all the same attributes as a good comedy magic trick

in the sense that they're both funny and to a certain extent fooling. So I think there is a sort of connection. And I also feel that understanding how certain hoaxes worked was emphasised by me by being a magician as well. I can sort of understand why people are taken in. So the same reason that people are fooled by a magic trick is also the same reason that people are fooled by a hoax, I think, often. But to come back to your original question about is this a good time for magic? I think it's a really, really good time for magic. Magic is very popular, increasingly popular. A lot of new people coming into it.

A lot of women coming into magic now as well. My prediction is that the next sort of magic television star will almost certainly be a woman rather than a man. No names. I can't name any specific person, but I just have that sort of feeling that that will happen. And a lot of youngsters going into it as well. There are a lot of sort of touring shows going around. They don't tend to publicise individuals. I mean, the most famous magician, I guess, who's working at the moment is possibly Derren Brown, who falls more into the sort of mind reading class. But you have these sort of groups of magicians who work in shows where they have sort of generic titles like the illusionists.

And they're very popular and lots of people flood along to watch them. So, yeah, I think it's a very positive time for magic. One more while I've got you. Tell me about William Henry Ireland, because I've got to say, I think I'd probably have fallen for this one. Yes, William Henry Ireland. Well, I would have hoped you probably wouldn't have fallen for it, but there are all sorts of reasons why it works so well. William Henry Ireland was the son of Samuel Ireland, and Samuel Ireland is just as important in this, because Samuel Ireland was obviously William Henry's father. He was obsessed by Shakespeare and was desperate to get hold of a Shakespeare signature. He didn't think his son

was very bright, and I think his son basically wanted to sort of ingratiate himself with his father. So he discovered, in inverted commas, a Shakespearean signature. It was a fairly dull piece of paper. It was just a bill of exchange, but it was a signature. And his father was absolutely ecstatic at that. There were only like, I think, three or four existing Shakespearean signatures at the time. But having sort of started off, he then suddenly started discovering other Shakespearean ephemera. Letters from Shakespeare, again, not particularly exciting ones, just letters to other actors talking about pay. But he slowly began to sort of up the ante. He then discovered a profession of faith that had been written by Shakespeare. And eventually, he discovered a completely new play that had been written by Shakespeare. And eventually, he discovered a completely new play

that had been written by Shakespeare called Vortigern. I don't think it needs saying that all these discoveries were actually all written and forged by William Henry Ireland. And I think the brilliance of this particular hoax is if he just sort of just come along and said, I've discovered a new Shakespeare play, then nobody would have fallen for it. But the fact that he sort of started off slowly, and he sort of sucked Samuel Ireland and Samuel Ireland's friends, including James Boswell, who absolutely believed that these ephemera were genuine, started off very small with inconsequential pieces of paper, pieces of paper, which why on earth would you forge a bill of exchange? It's got no interest of no importance. And people actually use that as an argument. You know, these can't be forgeries because why would anybody bother to forge it, so to speak?

But having sort of suckered him in, brought him in, you start with a small lie and you, as I say, slowly up the ante until eventually you convince his father and convince a lot of other people that he'd actually produced this entirely new play by Shakespeare, which actually was staged for one night at the Drury Lane Theatre on the 2nd of April 1796. So I just think it's such a brilliant hoax the way it was conducted. The motivation is hard completely to fathom. I feel that he was trying to ingratiate himself with his father, but after a little bit, I guess he just sort of enjoyed it, enjoyed fooling other Shakespearean experts at the time as well. I just wish Shakespeare had written a play called Vortigern. It would have been amazing. Ian, thank you very much for coming to the podcast. Tell everyone

what the book's called. Yes, the book is called The Century of Deception, The Birth of Hoaxes in 18th Century England. And it contains 10 different hoaxes of which I've talked a few about here on the podcast. All, I think, entertaining and enjoyable. Yeah. Thank you so much. No problems. I've enjoyed it. Thank you very much.

I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, a bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense.

But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you. you