Futility Closet - 165-A Case of Mistaken Identity

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 9,000 quirky curiosities from biblical misprints to a murdered balloon. This is episode 165. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1896, Adolph Beck found himself caught up in a senseless legal nightmare. Twelve women from around London insisted that he'd deceived them and stolen their cash and jewelry.

Starting point is 00:00:38 In today's show, we'll follow Beck's incredible ordeal, which ignited a scandal and inspired historic reforms in the English justice system. We'll also covet some noble socks and puzzle over a numerical sacking. On December 16, 1895, Adolph Beck was standing at his door on Victoria Street in London when a woman walked up to him and said, Sir, I know you. At first, Beck thought perhaps the woman was looking for the dentist who worked in the same building. He said, What do you want from me? And she called him a thief. He crossed the street trying to get away from her, weaving through traffic, but she pursued him. She said, Sir, I shall follow you wherever you go. He kept trying to put her

Starting point is 00:01:18 off and she kept pursuing him. Eventually both of them saw a policeman and ran toward him at the same time. Beck got there first and complained about her, and she caught up and said that he'd cheated her. Together, the three of them went to the Rochester Row Police Station, and the woman explained herself. Her name was Ottilie Messonnier. She said that three weeks earlier, Beck had stopped her on the very same street and asked whether she was Lady Everton. When she said no, he introduced himself as Lord Willoughby, and they struck up a conversation. They had afternoon tea at her home the next day. He invited her to visit the French Riviera on his yacht.

Starting point is 00:01:50 He gave her a check for 40 pounds so that she could buy a suitable wardrobe, and he said that he'd buy her some jewelry and borrowed a few rings and a watch so he could match the sizes. The check turned out to be worthless, and he never came back with the jewelry, which had been worth 30 pounds. Beck protested that he had never seen her before in his life, which was the truth, but the police realized that the crime she was describing matched another one that had been reported just a few months earlier by a woman named Daisy Grant, and the description that Grant had given of the man who cheated her matched Beck. So they summoned Grant, as well as Messonnier's servant, who had also seen the conman, and both of them unhesitatingly picked Beck out of a lineup that included seven men taken off the

Starting point is 00:02:30 street. Grant said he is the man. Beck protested again, but he was charged and remanded in custody. A story about all this appeared in the newspapers, and now a parade of women presented themselves to the police and declared that they too were victims of the same fraud. Kate Brakefield said she'd been cheated and robbed the previous June. She picked Beck out of a lineup of eight men. She said, I am satisfied he is the same man. Minnie Lewis, who had been robbed in April, picked him out of a lineup of 14 men. She later testified, I have not a shadow of a doubt he is the man. Juliet Cluth had been robbed in March and picked Beck out of a lineup of 18 men. She said, among them, I recognize the prisoner at once. And this went on and on.

Starting point is 00:03:08 Marion Taylor said, quite sure. Fanny Nutt, I should know him in a thousand. Evelyn Emmy Miller identified him at once without difficulty. Alice Sinclair picked out the prisoner from about a dozen men. And Ethel Annie Townsend said, he is the same man. In February, he was committed for trial on 10 counts of obtaining by false pretenses and theft. Altogether, 12 victims and witnesses identified him. Most of them declared that they were absolutely certain that he was the man who cheated them. The con man, whoever he

Starting point is 00:03:35 really was, had a very consistent scheme. He targeted women who aspired to gentility but didn't have much money. They called themselves music teachers or actresses, but many of them relied on seeing men for money. The brief for the prosecution called them the better class of gay women, which is a rather festive way of putting that. He would approach a woman on the street, call her lady someone, and ask whether he'd seen her at some recent social event. Once he'd broached a conversation with her, he'd hint that he was a wealthy aristocrat and get permission to call on her at home the next day. There, he told her that he was the Earl of Wilton, or Lord Wilton or Lord Wilton de Willoughby, and said he had a house in St. John's Wood and needed a housekeeper. This was all a bit Victorian, but it seems that to have

Starting point is 00:04:14 been understood that she'd also be his mistress. No one ever actually says that explicitly, but even if that was the case, it was still a tempting offer to women in these circumstances. He'd tell her that she needed new clothes, and he'd draw up a list of items to buy along with the shops where she should buy them, and he'd give her a check for about 30 pounds or so for spending money. And he offered to buy better rings for her, but he just needed to borrow a few so that he could match the sizes. The criminal told the same story in every case, right down to the list of dresses that she should buy. Then he left her with her jewelry, sometimes even borrowed some cash for a cab. The check inevitably bounced and the jewelry was never seen again. One constable estimated there'd been around 20 complaints of this crime

Starting point is 00:04:54 from around the city. It was wicked, but it was effective, in part because women in these circumstances were unlikely to go to the police. Beck knew nothing about any of this. He was a Norwegian chemist who had come to England 30 years earlier and found work as a shipping clerk He could speak English passably well But he couldn't write more than two sentences Without a dictionary At the trial he had a solicitor to defend him

Starting point is 00:05:14 But he had no alibi for any of the crimes He couldn't explain where he had been when they'd taken place And worse, the women who'd accused him Had samples of the con man's handwriting And the prosecution had an expert witness A handwriting expert Who would testify that this was the disguised version of Beck's own handwriting. Interestingly, several police officers recalled a similar series of crimes in London 20 years earlier, in 1877. They matched these current crimes in almost every

Starting point is 00:05:39 detail, and the documents in both cases showed exactly the same language and handwriting. In the earlier crimes, the criminal gave the name John Smith. They actually caught him, and he served four years in prison. So this seemed to explain what was going on. A criminal named John Smith had committed two identical sets of crimes, one in 1877 and one in 1895, and Beck had simply been mistaken for this man. This also gave Beck a way out.

Starting point is 00:06:02 As it happened, he'd been in Peru in 1877, and he could prove it. So he couldn't possibly have committed the first set of crimes, and hopefully that would convince a jury that he was fairly likely innocent of the second set. But when the trial began at the Old Bailey in March 1896, the judge, Sir Forrest Fulton, forbade all discussion of the earlier crimes. Fulton said that the earlier crimes had nothing to do with the current case. His job was to ensure that the trial examined the crimes with which the defendant was charged and nothing else. He also said that considering the old case was more likely to harm the defense than help it, I think because it might suggest that Beck had a history of crime. And even if Beck could prove that he wasn't John Smith, the evidence of his guilt in the present

Starting point is 00:06:40 case was still overwhelming, yet there were 12 women who had identified him positively, and an expert in handwriting had identified his handwriting on the inc case was still overwhelming. Yet there were 12 women who had identified him positively, and an expert in handwriting had identified his handwriting on the incriminating documents. It just seemed incontrovertible that he was the guilty party. Yeah, that is kind of overwhelming evidence if he can't prove otherwise. Right, exactly. It's very hard to prove a negative or where you were months and months previously. Yeah, so you think, I mean, Fulton sort of has a point.

Starting point is 00:07:01 He's not just going to walk away by insisting he hadn't done it. I should say it didn't help that the men who had stood in these police lineups with Beck had been rounded up. In those days, they would literally just go out of the police station and round up the first 10 men they found and say, could you step in here for 10 minutes? We're just doing a lineup. And as it happened, the ones, the men that they'd taken off the street to stand in the lineup with Beck were all younger than him. And only one had a mustache, although that was a prominent part of the women's descriptions of the suspect, that he had a gray mustache. So that didn't help. So, and for all these reasons, Beck was found guilty and sentenced to seven years penal servitude. Fulton, the judge, wrote, the evidence of identity has been

Starting point is 00:07:37 absolutely overwhelming, evidence found not in one direction, but in every direction of a most base and wicked crime, one which is entirely heartless. Beck, who was dazed at all this, still denied the charge and denied knowing John Smith, but they even gave him Smith's old prison number at the prison. I mean, no one believed him, believed in Adam of what he was saying. So Beck went to prison, where he spent years breaking stones and working in the tailor's shop. In those days, there was no court of appeal in England. A convict who thought his conviction was unjust could only petition the home office and hope that someone would listen to him. Beck did that 15 times,

Starting point is 00:08:12 and they're heartbreaking petitions to read. They're spelled badly, but very heartfelt. For example, on June 9th, 1896, he wrote, My Lord, overwhelmed with indignation and grief, with a sense of the most horrible and inhuman injustice which has overtaken me, I pray your Lordship to favor my petition He wrote, until I saw them at Westminster Police Court. The handwriting on these checks, but not the signature, which I saw at the police court, is somewhat similar to my own, but I have seen a good many other people's writing more so than this. At the same time, his solicitor was complaining again that Beck could prove he'd been in South America from 1873 to 1884,

Starting point is 00:08:58 which covers the whole first set of crimes and the criminal's prison term. Also, it's maybe significant that when John Smith went to prison for those crimes, he didn't protest his innocence. So it seems like he was admitting that he was guilty of that first set of crimes. Another interesting note that arose around this time, although most people didn't know about it, was that two years into Beck's sentence, the governor of Portland Prison reviewed the file relating to John Smith

Starting point is 00:09:22 and found that when Smith was a prisoner in 1879, he'd asked that his listed religion be changed from Protestant to Jewish. He said that he'd always been Jewish and was able to show that he'd been circumcised. The governor had Beck examined and found that he wasn't circumcised, so clearly they were two different men. You couldn't have better evidence. That's kind of hard to fake, yeah. But Fulton, the judge, refused to reopen the case, saying he had not the slightest doubt that Beck was guilty of the 1895 crimes. But he directed that Beck be given a new prison number so that he wouldn't be identified with John Smith. But that's as far as it went, and that information wasn't made public. So Beck was finally released in 1901 after serving five years. Now he was 60 years old. He went back to his old life in central London and tried to pick up the

Starting point is 00:10:02 pieces. During this period, he actually confronted some of the women who accused him, not aggressively, but just wanted to talk to them, which I think is understandable. Some of them recognized him and some of them didn't. Ethel Annie Townsend, who'd picked him out of a lineup and said he is the same man, now said she didn't remember him. Beck said, have a good look at me. I have a particular friend of mine who has been suffering five and a half years in prison on your statement.

Starting point is 00:10:23 She said, who do you mean? He said, a particular friend of mine, his name is Adolph Beck. When she recognized him, she tried to say that the police had pressured her to identify him as the criminal, but she wouldn't sign a statement to that effect. In fact, during the 1896 accusations, about 12 women had said that Beck was not the man who had defrauded them, but the police didn't produce them or give their names to Beck or to his solicitor, which Beck said, I think is very unfair and not just. That's as many women as had positively identified. Right, yeah. Believe it or not, we still haven't got to the worst part of this story. Oh no. Three years later, on April 15th, 1904, Beck saw three people standing on the corner near his house. One of them, a woman, came over and said, I know you. Beck, whose heart was no doubt

Starting point is 00:11:05 sinking, said, I do not know you. She said, yes, you took a sovereign from me. Beck said, who sent you here? The police? Now look here, if you have a heart, you know you were telling a lie. You know perfectly well I never stole from you. But she'd brought two detectives with her. The whole Kafkaesque nightmare started up again with almost entirely the same details. The woman said that a man calling himself Lord Willoughby had introduced himself to her in Oxford Street, visited her at home, and cheated her out of a ring, a watch, and a sovereign. She told Beck, you are the man who took my jewelry and my sovereign. Beck protested as before, but as before, no one believed him, and the publicity brought out other women who reported similar frauds, and they picked Beck

Starting point is 00:11:40 out of lineups just as confidently. You can only imagine Beck's feelings about all this. In June 1904, he was tried at the Old Bailey for defrauding Pauline Scott, Rose Reese, Carolyn Singer, Lily King, and Grace Campbell, none of whom he'd ever seen before, all in pretty much the same way he'd supposedly done this in 1895 and 1877. Unfortunately, once again, his defense was weak. He had no alibi, again, and again, they wouldn't let him tell the story of John Smith, and the home office, as I said, had locked up the circumcision evidence. But all the women's identifications, as before, were practically enough to convict him. He told the jury, before God, my maker, I am absolutely innocent of every charge brought against me. I have not spoken to or seen any of these women before they were set against me by

Starting point is 00:12:22 the detectives. I can bring many witnesses to prove I have acted honestly in my business in the city. I ask the press to help me get all evidence in my support from my solicitor. The jury found him guilty. He was 63 now, and now he faced another four or five years in prison. But fortunately, this time he had a warm-hearted judge, Sir William Grantham, who began to have doubts about his guilt. And Grantham deferred the sentence and sent him to Brixton Prison while he tried to figure out what to do next. Grantham said later, I thought I should not be justified in telling the jury to disbelieve the witnesses who had so positively identified him, and the jury thereupon found him guilty. Still, though I can hardly explain to you why, I was not satisfied in my own mind. I was convinced that the prisoner did not

Starting point is 00:13:01 belong to the criminal classes, but the evidence taken together, both for and against him, seemed to point to the conclusion that he had a mania for duping these foolish women who were so easily gulled by the promise and prospect of fine silks, satins, and jewelry. In the hope, however, of finding out something more about the case favorable to the prisoner, I said I should postpone sentence, a very rare occurrence for me, and directed him to be removed, and I adopted the unusual course of asking the counsel for the prosecution and for the prisoner to come to me and discuss the case with me. And now a wonderful thing happened. At around noon on July 7, 1904, ten days after Beck's second conviction and while he was sitting safely in jail, a well-dressed gentleman with a gray mustache called on the sisters Violet and Beulah Turner at their home near Russell Square and talked them into lending him two rings and a half crown. The women had second thoughts afterward and asked their landlord to follow the man. He went to a jeweler's where he had the rings valued and then to a pawnbroker's. A policeman was summoned and the man was arrested. The arrested man was shown to be the John Smith who'd committed the original

Starting point is 00:13:58 crime in 1877 and presumably all the others. Other women accused him of cheating them and he confessed to several frauds. In September 1904, he pleaded guilty. And with that, the case against Beck fell apart. Gurin, the handwriting expert, found that the newly arrested John Smith's handwriting matched the incriminating documents from the earlier crimes and immediately recanted his testimony against Beck. And finally, the circumcision evidence came to light. There was a huge scandal about all this, as you can imagine, when it became clear to the public. Beck was freed on July 19th and then pardoned eight days later for both the 1895 and 1904 offenses. All 15 convictions against him were quashed. It was first suggested that he should be given 2,000 pounds to recompense him, but the newspapers objected strongly that this

Starting point is 00:14:39 was too little, and it was increased to 5,000 pounds, which is about 300,000 pounds today. They set up a court of inquiry to look into this and find out what had caused this whole miscarriage. It found that all the charges against Beck in both trials were without foundation. In each trial, the deciding factor had been the victim's identification, the women's certainty that Beck was the man who had robbed them. Beck had no criminal history, and when police searched his flat, they found nothing connected with any of the accusations at all. The whole case rested on their certainty of his identity. Beck had been tried twice for crimes that he hadn't committed.

Starting point is 00:15:12 In either trial, he could have saved himself by pointing out that an earlier matching set of crimes had happened while he was out of the country. But he never had the chance to do that. In the first trial, the judge refused to hear it, and in the second trial, he couldn't afford to summon witnesses from South America to come and testify for him. And it would do no good to point out that the criminal had consistently similar handwriting and methods in each case, because that wouldn't show that Beck wasn't the criminal. And Beck's preparation had been so rushed that his defenders didn't know about some exonerating evidence, including the circumcision. The inquiry found that Forrest Fulton, the judge at Beck's first trial, had made a disastrous mistake in ruling that Beck's defense couldn't even mention the 1877 frauds. It left Beck with no way to defend himself, and the home office was roundly criticized for failing to handle the

Starting point is 00:15:53 circumcision evidence properly. That on its own should have exonerated Beck in 1898. This case is still cited today in legal textbooks and criminal trials. The moral is that we can't trust eyewitness identification. At least 16 people had sworn under oath that Beck had defrauded them. Nearly all of them had picked him out of police lineups independently and after having spent at least an hour with him. There was little other evidence against him, so it was these multiple identifications that were convincing the juries. It seems impossible that so many witnesses could be wrong, but they were. In fact, it turned out that Beck and Smith, the innocent and the guilty man, were about the same age and height, but apart from this, they weren't unusually similar. I'll put their photos in the show notes so you can judge for

Starting point is 00:16:32 yourself. The inquiry concluded, evidence as to identity based upon personal impressions, however bona fide, is perhaps of all classes of evidence the least to be relied upon, and therefore unless supported by the facts, an unsafe basis for the verdict of a jury. In other words, eyewitness evidence can be considered in a case, but it shouldn't be relied on to make a conviction. The other big effect of this case was that it led to the creation of a court of criminal appeal in England. Before that, as Beck found, a person who was improperly convicted had no formal way to appeal a bad decision. That finally changed with the Criminal Appeal Act of 1907, which gave prisoners in Beck's position some recourse. That corrected a great flaw in the system, but it was

Starting point is 00:17:09 too late for Beck. He died in hospital of pleurisy and bronchitis on December 7, 1909, just five Have you inherited an old coin collection or an accumulation of coins and currency that you're not sure what to do with? Littleton Coin is here to help. For over 70 years, Littleton Coin has been helping people just like you sell their coins and currency. As an industry leader in collectible coins and currency, Littleton can pay you more. Plus, in 2016, the company's president, David Sundman, received the American Numismatic Association Dealer of the Year Award, and Littleton Coin was honored with the Better Business Bureau Torch Award for Marketplace Ethics. So you know that these are people you can trust and rely on. Whether you're an experienced collector or someone who needs help identifying what you have in your collection. Littleton Coin Company is the place to sell your U.S. coins and currency.

Starting point is 00:18:08 The process is incredibly simple. Visit littletoncoin.com slash closet to learn more, or give them a call toll-free at 1-877-857-7850. That's littletoncoin.com slash closet, or see the show notes for the phone number and link. bitcoin.com slash closet or see the show notes for the phone number and link. Rachel Gallen wrote to us, Hello, Greg, Sharon, and Sasha. I have a point that you might find interesting regarding episode 154, Spared by a Volcano. In that episode, you talked about a sole survivor, a prisoner, in the disaster that destroyed the rest of the town. You mentioned a few people who suspected the man of fraud, and one person in particular who thought it odd that his clothes didn't catch fire,

Starting point is 00:18:49 but his back was burnt. On hearing this, I immediately remembered a documentary on Pompeii that I saw a few years ago. I've been trying to research the details for you, but have failed dramatically. Unfortunately, I came in halfway through the documentary, so I don't know what it was called or even how old it was. In this show, they were doing some tests on pork and clothing. I believe that pork is the closest meat to human flesh and is often used in trials. Better than using people, I guess.

Starting point is 00:19:15 They wrapped a hunk of pork in a fabric that was an approximation of what would have been worn in Roman Pompeii. They then subjected it to intense heat to the level that would have been reached during the disaster. The result was that the meat was completely cooked through, but the clothing was untouched, apart from a few scorch marks where metal had been in contact with it. I love your podcast and look forward to hearing it each week. I recommend it to everyone I come across. Don't worry about it being morbid. You've got the whole of history to talk about and most of those people are dead that's certainly true and I'm not sure if I found the same documentary that Rachel had seen

Starting point is 00:19:52 but the BBC has one from 2013 called Pompeii the mystery of the people frozen in time their website tells me that I live in the wrong region to be allowed to view it but fortunately they have a nice summary of some of its contents and they describe an experiment done at Edinburgh University that matches Rachel's description. Plaster casts made of the victims of Pompeii show that the clothes

Starting point is 00:20:15 worn by some of these victims seem to have been preserved, which puzzled researchers who believed that these people had died from intense heat. So the experimenters at Edinburgh University wrapped pork in woolen cloth and then exposed it to intense infrared radiation for 150 seconds. They found that the wool was a bit charred but did remain intact, even though the outside of the pork was heated to between 200 and 250 degrees Celsius or 392 to 482 degrees Fahrenheit. So you can die of intense heat without... Without the clothes burning.

Starting point is 00:20:50 That's interesting. Yeah. So Rachel is right that this study would support Ludger Sabaris' story that his back could be badly burned from the eruption of Mount Pele, even though his shirt was not. It seems that for most people, the most important implications of the experiment were to help resolve the question of whether many of the inhabitants of Pompeii had died from suffocation or thermal shock,

Starting point is 00:21:12 with the experiment helping to bolster the growing support for the intense heat theory. But for us, we're happy to have the validation for Sabaris. The usual spoiler warning here, because I've got a puzzle update on the puzzle from episode 162 which was about men scheduling vasectomies to coincide with the march madness basketball games ethan jones who was rightly confident that i could figure out how to pronounce his name wrote hello greg and sharon if any listeners are skeptical of episode 162's lateral thinking puzzle, the Wall Street Journal helpfully published a corroborating article just days

Starting point is 00:21:50 after the podcast aired. I'm a big fan of the website and podcast. Keep up the great work. And Ethan notes that you need a subscription to view the Wall Street Journal article, but he very helpfully sent an excerpt. Other clinics advertise on radio and social media that the benefits of vasectomies reach beyond family planning. The pitch? Doctors' orders are a perfect excuse to watch the NCAA basketball tournament in its entirety. Ready for some wife-approved couch time? Have your vasectomy on a Thursday or Friday. Then you can recover over the weekend while watching some great games, said a Urology of Indiana advertisement ahead of this year's March Madness. Ads by The Practice, based in Greenwood, Indiana, seem to work, said Chief Operations Officer

Starting point is 00:22:33 Charles Dotson, who saw a surge in March business. The University of Utah Health in Salt Lake City has run March Madness promotions for the past three years. It offers a vasectomy package that includes a Utah Jazz basketball ticket giveaway, goodie bags, and basketball-shaped ice packs. This year, its surgeons performed more than three times as many vasectomies in March compared with the average number done in the other months through May, according to the health center's internal marketing data. You know, that really is a kind of clever way to encourage men to consider doing that because they can be sort of squeamish about doing it otherwise. It just makes the whole experience seem more positive. I was also wondering if in other countries the vasectomy

Starting point is 00:23:13 rates might spike around different events, like maybe the World Cup or something, right? Oh, right. Yeah, I guess so. And Elizabeth Vance wrote, hello, I'm a relatively new listener and I've enjoyed listening to your podcast to help the monotony of the workday go faster. I just finished listening to podcast episode 84, The Man Who Never Was. It made me smile that someone emailed you about Highland Titles, where you can purchase small plots of land in Scotland and become a lord, laird, or lady, in reference to the Quaker Oats giveaway from episode 79. Lady in reference to the Quaker Oats giveaway from episode 79. Funny enough, this last Christmas, my siblings and I actually purchased a small plot of land through Highland Titles for my father for his Christmas gift, thus giving him the title of Laird, at least among my family. We did so not

Starting point is 00:23:57 so he could own a somewhat futile piece of land thousands of miles away, but because we knew he'd enjoy the idea of being a Laird. He thoroughly enjoyed looking through all the paperwork that came in the mail and even jokingly tells his students at Utah State University that they can call him Laird Johnson while wearing his I'm a Laird socks we purchased from the Highland Titles online store. I've never seen my dad more pleased at Christmas. It was quite silly, but everyone enjoyed the fun. Thanks for filling my days with thoughtful and interesting stories. I didn't know you got socks. Yeah, I didn't know you got socks either.

Starting point is 00:24:30 I mean, I thought it was fun to hear that somebody had actually gotten a title, like we had talked about in reference to these different tiny plots of land schemes. But that was great to hear that you get I'm a Laird socks, because who wouldn't want those, right? Right, sure. So thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. If you have any feedback, comments, or questions for us, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:24:54 And if your name is any harder to pronounce than Ethan Jones, please give me some tips to help me get it right. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange sounding situation and I have to work out what's going on asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener Anis Rao. In 2014, an Indian newsreader was fired for saying the word 11 on the air. Why? Okay. For saying the word 11. Did it matter the context in which it was said? Yes. Ah. If the person had just said the word 11 and nothing else, would the person have been fired? No. Okay. So does it matter what the noun was that was after 11?

Starting point is 00:25:45 I have to say yes to that, I guess, the way it's phrased. Okay, because it was, like, was it in a context of 11 somethings? No. Ah. All right. Let's back up. Let's back up. Was the newscaster fired because they felt that the newscaster had said something that was factually incorrect?

Starting point is 00:26:18 I think I have to say yes, but I don't want to mislead you. All right. Okay. All right. Okay. What would be reasons that newscasters would be fired? Did they feel that the newscaster had said something you would call inappropriate? Yes.

Starting point is 00:26:33 As opposed to something else? Is inappropriate probably the closest word you'd probably use? Actually, yes. Okay. Did they feel that this would have been inappropriate because it would have been something that would be offensive to some people? I'll say yes. Okay. Would it help me to figure out what group of people it would be offensive to? Yes. Okay. Would it be offensive to a particular political group? No. A particular religious group? No. A particular demographic? No. Ah, okay. Well, okay, I'll say yes to that.

Starting point is 00:27:05 To demographic? There's sort of an assumption there, but I'll say yes to it. Oh. Would it be offensive to everybody? Or most people? No. Okay. Would it be offensive to particular gender?

Starting point is 00:27:17 No. A particular age group? No. People living in a particular place? Yes. Okay. And that's germane? Yes.

Starting point is 00:27:24 Is there something more relevant than that? No, I would go after that. Fair. Yes. Okay. And that's germane? Yes. Is there something more relevant than that? No, I would go after that. Fairly relevant. Okay. So this would be offensive to people living in a particular geographical area. Yes. Defined by like a city? No.

Starting point is 00:27:42 A country? Yes. Okay. A country that some people recognize and some people don't? No. Okay. A country that everybody recognizes? Yes. Okay. And this happened in India, you said? The newsreader was in India. Was in India, but they were talking about another country. Basically, yeah. Yeah. And I have to figure out what that other country is yeah is it a country that would normally be associated as being near india or yes like pakistan no i can just tell you turkey because there's no sense in making you guess it's china oh okay so the newscaster was fired because this utterance may have been offensive to people living in China.

Starting point is 00:28:26 Yes. Broadly speaking, all people living in China? I think I'll say yes. Okay. So I don't have to work out a particular group of people living in China. Right. That's right. Would you say that this was sort of a political commentary by saying 11?

Starting point is 00:28:43 No. Okay. So it's not making some kind of political statement. I'll give you, and he sent two hints. Can I give you one? Sure. Sharon would sympathize with the newsreader.

Starting point is 00:28:55 Did the newsreader mispronounce something? Yes. Yes? Was the newsreader mispronouncing someone's name? Yes. A person's name? Yes. Yes? Was the newsreader mispronouncing someone's name? Yes. A person's name? Yes. And pronounced it Eleven, but it's not Eleven?

Starting point is 00:29:11 Yes, that's right. Do I need more than that? Do I need to know whose name it was? Yes. Was the name of a particular important person in China? Yes. Like the president or the head of China? You've basically got it.

Starting point is 00:29:24 This happened on the national news network called Duodarshan, which is a local equivalent of the BBC in Britain. Chinese President Xi Jinping was visiting India that week on a news broadcast that went on the air at 6.15 a.m. On the day the president arrived, the newsreader misread his name, which is spelled XI in our language, as Eleven Jinping. Oh, because XI in Roman numerals is 11. Oh, no. Normally, very few people would be watching the news at such an early hour, but she was noticed by people on Twitter, and within hours, hashtag 11 Jin Ping was trending. Aw.

Starting point is 00:29:56 She lost her job the very same day. Okay, I do sympathize, although I hopefully have never pronounced somebody as a Roman numeral. So thank you, Anise, for sending that. Yes, thank you. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is supported primarily by our wonderful listeners.

Starting point is 00:30:19 We do sometimes have some advertising on the show, but that doesn't cover the big commitment of time that it takes to make the podcast each week. If you'd like to help support the show and get bonus material, such as extra discussions, outtakes, more lateral thinking puzzles, and updates on what's going on behind the scenes, then check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the support us section of the website. At the website, you'll also find more than 9,000 bite-sized curiosities, the Futility Closet store, and the show notes for the podcast, with the links and references for the topics in today's show.

Starting point is 00:30:53 If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by the incomparable Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 165-A Case of Mistaken Identity

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