Futility Closet - 168-The Destruction of the Doves Type

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 Mahler's nose to a luminous hat. This is episode 168. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In March 1913, Thomas James Cobden Sanderson threw the most beautiful typeface in the world off of London's Hammersmith Bridge to keep it out of the hands of his estranged printing partner. In today's show, we'll explore what would lead a man to destroy the culmination of his life's work and what led one modern admirer to try to revive it. We'll also scrutinize a housekeeper and puzzle over a slumped child. of his life's work, and what led one modern admirer to try to revive it.

Starting point is 00:00:49 We'll also scrutinize a housekeeper and puzzle over a slumped child. Thomas James Cobden Sanderson was born in 1840, and he had something of an unsettled start in life. He seemed to have trouble finding a direction. He was apprenticed first to a shipbuilder, but after a year he asked to have his articles canceled. He then went to Cambridge, expecting to be ordained, but then he abandoned his Christian faith and left the university without a degree in 1863. He studied Carlyle and the German philosophers, intending to become a writer, but he had no success there. And after that he considered medicine and acting. Eventually he became a barrister and worked

Starting point is 00:01:26 joylessly at railway law for 10 years. He was having tea with his friend, the textile designer William Morris, one day and explaining how unhappy he was with the law when William's wife Jane suggested bookbinding as an honorable trade that offered a wide field of expression. Cobden-Tenderson talked that over with his new wife, Annie, and she agreed that he should quit law and become a bookbinder. So he apprenticed himself to Roger de Coverley and began to bind some of the books that Morris was producing through Kelmscott Press, which is a publishing firm that he founded in 1891.

Starting point is 00:01:56 It seemed like what he really wanted was something creative. In this work, Cobden-Sanderson seems to have found the purpose he'd been seeking. He and his friends in the printing trade opposed the increasing mechanization of printing and wanted to devote themselves to beauty rather than profit, to make the book itself what they called the book beautiful, an object of beauty in itself. His friend William Morris hoped to revive the integrity of medieval craftsmanship and worked closely with an unofficial partner, an engraver named Emery Walker. and worked closely with an unofficial partner, an engraver named Emery Walker. When Morris died in 1896, Cobden Sanderson invited Walker to go into business with him, hoping to improve on the foundation that Morris had set. Annie, who had inherited some money, offered generously, I think,

Starting point is 00:02:39 to provide the capital for them and to cover any losses. They didn't expect to make any substantial profits in this. It was just a small press, so they didn't draw up a formal deed of partnership, but they agreed that they'd split any profits they did make and that they'd each get a few copies of each of the books they printed. They called their business the Dove's Press, after a cottage that Cobden Sanderson used as his workshop that was in turn named after a local inn. From the start, Walker was the technical expert,

Starting point is 00:03:02 and Cobden Sanderson was the visionary. Walker managed the technical side of the business, and Cobden Sanderson chose the books and had the last word in their design. Cobden-Sanderson wrote, If in this shop I might suggest a practicable reform, it would be the transformation of the workshop from a place in which to earn a wage or to make a profit into a place in which the greatest pleasure and the greatest honor in life are to be aimed at. Pleasure in the intelligent work of the hand and honor in the formation and maintenance of the great and historic tradition. He had very high standards and was really ultimately obsessed with just making as beautiful a book as he could. The heart of the Doves Press was something called the Doves Type, which is an original typeface that they commissioned in 1899. It took two years to

Starting point is 00:03:43 create under Walker's supervision, and it was based on letter forms that had been created in the late 15th century by Venetian printers Nicholas Jensen and Jacobus Rubaius. Type historians have called the Doves type the most beautiful type in the world. You'll probably recognize it even if, like me, you know nothing about type at all. I'll put an image of it in the show notes. It manages to be both beautiful and simple. It looks simple and clear and modern, but it's beautiful in itself, but it's still readable without being ornate. It's just kind of a perfect typeface and very beautiful. All the Dove's books were printed

Starting point is 00:04:16 using a single size of this one typeface, about 16 points, and they weren't decorated except for some initial caps in red that were created by a calligrapher named Edward Johnston. So that gave the Dove's books a distinctive, recognizable appearance. They all had this simple, classical, beautiful design. Cobden Sanderson, on the editorial side, pledged to use that type to print only the most beautiful words, as he put it, and he kept to that promise. They began with Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Volume 1 of the Bible, Faust, and Areopagitica. In all, they printed 50 books, all set by hand, typeset by hand, and printed on a hand press. And this succeeded sublimely well.

Starting point is 00:04:56 The books are regarded today as some of the finest ever produced in England, and their typography and printing had a major influence on book design in Europe and the United States. The American typeface designer Will Ransom wrote, When it is said that they approach dangerously near to absolute perfection in composition, press work, and page placement, everything has been said. By the end of 1902, the firm had seven employees, and thanks to Cobden-Sanderson's idealism, the workers had comparatively high wages, a 48-hour work week, and 14 days paid holiday per year, as well as paid time off at, and 14 days paid holiday per year,

Starting point is 00:05:27 as well as paid time off at Christmas and on bank holidays. They produced, as I say, 50 books, but the real masterpiece was a five-volume Bible that they completed in 1905. They worked on nothing else for three years. The opening of Genesis in the Doves Bible has become one of the most famous pages in the history of printing. All 500 copies of the Bible were sold to subscribers before they were finished, and the firm earned a profit of 500 pounds. Today, a Dove's Bible can sell for $30,000. As the business ran on, though, there was increasing friction between the principals, Cobden Sanderson and Emery Walker. Cobden Sanderson was a perfectionist and really obsessed over every aspect of the books. Walker wanted to use the type in different kinds of literature and other media,

Starting point is 00:06:07 such as newspapers and packaging and other potential printed products. He thought that Cobden-Sanderson was being idealistic and wasn't treating him as a full partner in the firm's decisions. In 1906, after several years of this strain, Cobden-Sanderson proposed severing their partnership. They had agreed that if that happened, if they just agreed to go their separate ways, that Walker could take away with him a copy of this fount of type that they'd designed for his own use. Cobden Sanderson didn't like that idea and wanted to just buy him out rather than give him the type. He couldn't bear the thought of someone using it

Starting point is 00:06:39 for less than this perfectly idealized use, anything remotely commercial. Walker wanted the type. He refused that offer, and they entered a long dispute. Finally, their mutual friend Sidney Cockerell proposed a solution. He suggested that Cobden Sanderson should get sole use of the type for the remainder of his life, and then it would pass to Walker. At the time, Cobden Sanderson was 68 and Walker was 57, so there's 11 years between them. Walker had some misgivings about this, but Cobden-Sanderson had become practically a zealot by this point, and he didn't want to fight, so in 1909 they dissolved the partnership and Cobden-Sanderson began to run the press alone. But even now, unknown to anybody else, there was real trouble brewing. was real trouble brewing. Unbeknownst to Walker, during their dispute, Cobden Sanderson had asked the type founders in Scotland to send him all the remaining pieces of Dove's type, as well as the punches and matrices that would be needed to cast more. Those are sort of the elements that are

Starting point is 00:07:32 needed to create additional sets of this beautiful type. And he began to make plans to put them permanently out of Walker's reach. He wrote, nothing on earth will now induce me to part with the type. I have devoted it to the press and I have full power to do so. I have the will, and I have in my actual possession the punches and matrices, without which it is impossible to have a fount of type. I am what he does not appear to realize, a visionary and a fanatic, and against a visionary and a fanatic he will beat himself in vain. So this is explicitly in violation of their agreement, but he just couldn't bear to see the type used for any other purpose. He kept the punches and matrices

Starting point is 00:08:08 for several years in the bindery while he decided whether to go ahead with this plan he had in mind. And then he acted. On Good Friday, March 21st, 1913, he wrote in his journal,

Starting point is 00:08:19 Yesterday and the day before and Tuesday, I stood on the bridge at Hammersmith and looking towards the press and the sun setting, threw into the Thames below me the matrices from which had been cast the Dove's Press found of type, itself to be cast by me, I hope, into the same great river, from the same place, on the final closure of the press. As I said, without the punches and matrices, no one would ever be able to make another set of the Dove's type again. He still had another set

Starting point is 00:08:44 back at the shop that they were using, but it was now the last one in existence. He went on printing books for three years, using the existing type he had at the shop, and then in 1916, he began to make a series of secret trips to Hammersmith Bridge to destroy the type. Every evening after dusk, he would take a quantity of lead type from the bindery,

Starting point is 00:09:02 wrap it in a bundle, carry it half a mile to the bridge, and throw it into the river to ensure that no one could ever use it again. Neither his wife nor his staff knew what he was doing. He was the only one. This took months. He was 76 years old, and he had to carry 12 to 15 pounds of type on every trip, so he had to make 170 trips in all. Between August 1916 and January 1917, he dropped more than a ton of metal printing type from the west side of Hammersmith Bridge. At first, he tried carrying the type in linen bags and a handbag. Sometimes he just filled his pockets. Finally, he started using a square wooden box with a sliding lid, which he'd use to store his finishing tools. He'd carry it onto the bridge, look to be sure he wasn't observed, slide open the lid, and pour the type into the river.

Starting point is 00:09:45 sure he wasn't observed, slide open the lid and pour the type into the river. He did this because of the feud with Emery Walker. He did it because of passion for his craft and because he loathed mechanical industry. He'd written in February 1909, it is my wish that the Dove's press type shall never be subjected to the use of a machine other than the human hand in composition, or to a press pulled otherwise than by the hand and arm of man or woman. He didn't tell anyone he was doing this, no one knew about it, until in the final press catalog, which he issued on March 13, 1917, he announced what he had done. There's just a paragraph that reads,

Starting point is 00:10:21 To the bed of the River Thames, the river on whose banks I have printed all my printed books, I, the Dove's Press, bequeath the Dove's Press fount of type, the punches, the matrices, and the type in use at the time of my death, and may the river in its tides and flow pass over them to and from the great sea forever and forever, or until its tides and flow forever cease. Then may they share the fate of all the world and pass from change to change forever upon the tides of time, untouched of other use and all else. That announcement was met with outrage and dismay throughout the printing world, because he destroyed this beautiful thing. Sidney Cockerell, their friend who had negotiated this agreement finally between Walker and Cobden Sanderson,

Starting point is 00:10:58 said he was shocked and told him he'd regret it. He wrote, It has always seemed to me that you combined in one person one of the most rational and one of the most irrational of beings. I believe that you will come to see that your sacrifice to the River Thames was neither a worthy nor an honorable one. Douglas Cockerell, Sidney's younger brother, who was Cobden Sanderson's apprentice at the Bindery, said, Cobden Sanderson's egotism was almost pathological. He lacked the power of cooperation almost entirely and was almost insanely jealous of any reputation, even William Morris's, that might rival his own. He lived in a world of his own creation, swayed by emotional storms of great intensity, and I doubt if he was capable of true friendship. As if to make all this even sadder, at just around this time, the Times

Starting point is 00:11:39 Literary Supplement was effusively praising the quality of the final books that Doves put out. They wrote, it seems perhaps a strange thing to say, but if we have quality of the final books that Doves put out. They wrote, it seems perhaps a strange thing to say, but if we have a fault to find with the Doves Press books as a whole, it is that they are almost too immaculately perfect in technical execution. The keenest professional eye cannot detect a flaw in the press work or the slightest deviation from perfection in color or register. Bernard Newdigate wrote in the London Mercury that the Doves Press type, inspired by and in the main copied from the Dove's Press type, inspired by and in the main copied from Nicholas Jensen's Roman letter, surpasses in beauty any other Roman

Starting point is 00:12:09 letter which has ever been cast. Practical idealist as he was, his work as a craftsman was to him something sacred, almost a kind of religion. And these notices were just appearing as it was now permanently impossible for anyone ever to use that type again. Emery Walker, who had expected to inherit this type, was outraged too, understandably. The loss of the type wouldn't ruin him financially, but he felt that Cobden Sanderson had greatly wronged him in destroying it. Cobden Sanderson died unrepentant in 1922, and Walker sued his widow, Annie. Walker argued that the beauty of the type had helped to make the press successful. Annie argued that it was the beauty of the books that

Starting point is 00:12:44 had made the type famous. They argued about this in legal circles for a while and finally settled out of court. The text of the settlement sums up the opinions of typographers and printing historians then and now. It says, the said type was held in considerable estimation by those best qualified to judge a printing type and it cannot be reproduced without the original punches and matrices. The works printed at the Doves Press both during the said partnership and the remainder of the lifetime of the said Thomas James Cobden Sanderson acquired a very great reputation by reason of the use of the type of foresaid and command very high prices in the market by reason thereof. Annie died just four years later in 1926 and her ashes were placed next to her husband's in a wall

Starting point is 00:13:23 at the bottom of the Bindery's garden, which backs on the Thames. In the intervening years, floods have washed them both away. A. W. Pollard of the British Museum summed up the whole case, I think eloquently. He wrote, Mr. Cobden Sanderson has become entirely oblivious of the condition attached to his having the unpartnered control of the type as long as he lived, the condition being that after his death it should become the absolute property of Mr. Emery Walker. On another side, he was well aware that it would cost his estate money, meaning that he knew that he'd be sued or Annie would be sued when he was gone and they'd have to just come up with enough money to make it right, but he still thought it was worth doing. He missed the point that this was not an agreement for a breach of which full

Starting point is 00:14:01 atonement could be made by a money payment. It is necessary to make clear that he did wrong, and did wrong to a man whose name is held in honor for his long and disinterested service to the cause of good printing. But if it is necessary to say this, it is not difficult for anyone acquainted with Mr. Cobden Sanderson's temperament to understand how the wrong came to be done. For sixteen years he had been reading proofs of books selected by himself printed in this one type,

Starting point is 00:14:24 and devoting the flair he had gained in another craft to make them beautiful. And these books which he had selected expressed, through the genius of some of the greatest of poets and thinkers, now in one aspect, now in another, that vision of the world which no man can fully cast, still less put into words. Thus it is not wonderful that Mr. Cobden Sanderson, always a self-absorbed man, when approaching fourscore years, had not the strength to face the thought that the types which had been used for so many years to express his own ideals should be used by others, even by the men who had superintended the making of them, and to whom after his death by his own agreement they belonged. Walker tried to get Edward Prince, who was the original brilliant punch cutter who had helped

Starting point is 00:15:02 to create the font in the first place, to cut a new set of punches in order to recreate the type. But Prince's eyesight and steadiness of hand had failed in the years, and they just had to give it up. Walker finally died in 1933, and that would seem to be the end of the story, but there's an interesting postscript. During the 20th century, several designers had tried to revive the type, but most attempts were incomplete or they weren't made publicly available. The English type designer Robert Green first heard the Dove story as an art student, and he couldn't find a usable version of it, so in 2010 he decided to create his own digital facsimile of the font. Without the original metal type, he had to use Dove's books as a reference, and that's always difficult. When ink hits paper, the shape of the letter is always compromised a bit,

Starting point is 00:15:42 so the artist has to guess at the shape of the actual metal that made the marks. Ideally, what you want is the actual metal type if you want to reproduce it. Green redrew the font at least 120 times. He said, I'm not really sure why I started. In the end, it took over my life. He spent three years researching it in various sources before releasing the first commercially available digital facsimile of the type in October 2013, a hundred years after it was drowned. He updated this as new archival material came to light, but he still wasn't satisfied. In late 2014, he decided that in order to create a definitive font, he'd need to retrieve the original metal sorts, which were now lying on the riverbed. He said, people kept saying nobody's ever found it, but nowhere could I find an account of anybody searching for it. I started looking

Starting point is 00:16:23 into whether lead degrades in water and researching the composition of lead type, as I didn't really know anything about the chemistry of it and wanted to make sure I wasn't going to start looking for something that had rotted away. When I realized there was the possibility that it might not have been carried away by the tide and could still be in a decent state, I thought it had to be worth a look. He contacted the Port of London Authority, and they suggested that he go down and actually scan the riverbank himself before he paid divers to try to recover the type. He thought he could estimate where Cobden-Sanderson had stood to within a radius of about five meters. Cobden-Sanderson's journals have been published, and he sort of writes about how he surreptitiously snuck down there and tried to avoid the police and just dump it in.

Starting point is 00:17:00 Green sort of estimated where he thought this had actually happened. Green sort of estimated where he thought this had actually happened. He said he would have been trying to be surreptitious, as he didn't want anyone to know what he was doing, and would have had his back turned to his house and Emery Walker's in a spot concealed from passing traffic. I went on to the foreshore when the tide was out, looked around the riverbed, and found three pieces within 20 minutes. He just found them lying there.

Starting point is 00:17:19 Yeah, just lying there after 100 years. He says, I think I was just very lucky. 100 yards east or 100 yards west, it would have sunk into the silt and mud. It apparently had landed on a part of the bed that was strong enough to support it, so it didn't just disappear. He said, I'd always read that it had never been found, so I assumed loads of people had gone to look for it, but actually, I don't think anyone had ever bothered. So he went to the authority, which undertook a two-day dive, and eventually they recovered 150 pieces. They had just lain there for a century. It's in remarkably good condition, considering it had been sitting exposed among rocks and masonry. Green said, if it had been buried in stilt and mud, it would have been even

Starting point is 00:17:52 better preserved, but we probably wouldn't have found it. It's not a full alphabet, unfortunately, and the remainder will probably never be found. This section of the Hammersmith Bridge, as it turned out, had been bombed three times by IRA, and the concrete that had been used in the repair is probably entombed the rest of the type. He says what we found was whatever must have escaped both the explosions and the repairs. Green made some adjustments to the type and now regards it as complete. He says, I'm not sure how Cobden Sanderson would feel about the digital revival, but then the digital font isn't the same thing as the metal type. It's only my image of his work and doesn't have all the same quirks and inconsistencies. Green, I think this is noble, kept half the type for himself and donated the other half on a permanent loan to the Emery Walker Trust, which maintains Walker's former home

Starting point is 00:18:35 as a museum. He says he has no plans to sell it. He says it's too precious. I feel very attached to it now. I've retraced Cobden-Sanderson's steps and stood on that very same spot of the bridge. He said, when I started, I didn't think I'd take it this far, but now I feel like we've come to the end of the story. 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.

Starting point is 00:19:17 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. 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. We have some more follow ups on the puzzle from episode 161. Spoiler alert! That was the puzzle

Starting point is 00:20:06 about a law in Pitkin County, Colorado in 2010 that would require external doors to have round doorknobs to make it harder for bears to get into people's homes. Dan Pate, who thankfully told me how to pronounce his last name as I definitely would have guessed something different, wrote, When I heard the puzzle about the doorknob law, I thought it was going to be the other way around, that round doorknobs would be banned. See this article. Who knew that doorknobs would be the subject of so many city ordinances? And Dan sent an article from Slate about how the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, passed a law that starting in 2014, the doors of all new houses and apartment buildings had to use lever handles rather than doorknobs in order to make housing more universally

Starting point is 00:20:51 accessible, as it's easier for people with arthritis or other mobility issues to use the lever type handles. This is in the spirit of a principle known as universal design, which holds that rather than trying to adapt environments to meet the needs of specific groups, things should be designed in the first place to be usable by as many people as possible. And an example of this that's given in an article on the topic in the Vancouver Sun is having cut curbs on corners to make it easier to move between the street and the sidewalk. This benefits not just people who have particular needs, but makes it easier for everyone, like older people or moms pushing strollers.

Starting point is 00:21:30 That makes sense. The Vancouver Sun notes that Vancouver is the only city in Canada that has its own building code, so changes made there often end up in British Columbia's building code and then Canada's national building code. British Columbia's building code and then Canada's national building code. Thus, they say, and as it goes in Vancouver, so will it go in BC, Canada, and perhaps even the world. All quite admirable, but I wonder if they've talked to the officials in Colorado. Universal accessibility sounds great until it starts including bears.

Starting point is 00:22:00 That's true. It's hard to reconcile those, I guess. Yeah, if you want to make the lever doors so people with arthritis can get in, you're going to let the bears in too. Chris Owens wrote in about the stories we covered about bears getting into places they shouldn't be in episode 164. Hi, Sharon, Sasha, and oh yeah, Greg. I have been enjoying your stories and updates about bears opening doors. Here in California at Yosemite, bears breaking into cars and campgrounds looking for food is a huge problem. So the park has steel bear boxes with a complex latch for campers to store their food.

Starting point is 00:22:38 According to a video at one of the ranger stations, if they make the latch too complicated, then campers start to have problems one of the rangers in the video muses the overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest campers is bigger than you think keep up the great work and i wonder if the issue might also be one of dexterity or fine motor skills and i don't know that i'd want to test mine against a bears i was really impressed by the video that we included in episode 164 that showed how easily the bear could open a refrigerator or cabinet, and apparently they can get into vehicles a lot more easily than I would have expected. I'll keep an eye out. Yeah, but Chris is right that bears trying to get into vehicles or camping gear in order to steal food is a real issue in Yosemite National Park.

Starting point is 00:23:25 I found an article from 2014 in Live Science that discussed this, and it said that after there were almost 1,600 bear incidents in 1998, park officials enacted new food storage regulations, and that included setting up many of these food storage lockers or bear boxes. We had discussed in other episodes that bears are often euthanized if they have negative interactions with humans. And according to the Live Science article, once bears become more reliant on human food, they are likely to become aggressive. So these bear boxes are helpful not just for the campers, but also for the bears

Starting point is 00:24:00 themselves in the long run. Interestingly, a study published in 2014 found that by analyzing hair samples of bears, researchers could tell that these new food storage systems were actually working, and the bears' diets changed dramatically after they were implemented. No word on whether the humans' diets were affected by not being able to get into the new food lockers. In episode 167, I described the murder of Joseph Elwell, who was found shot to death alone in his locked Manhattan brownstone on June 11th, 1920. The case has never been solved. Elwell was discovered by his housekeeper, Marie Larson, who arrived at the house at 8.35 a.m., apparently only 10 minutes after he'd been

Starting point is 00:24:41 shot. A couple of listeners asked whether Larson herself could be the killer. She was alone when she claimed to have discovered the body, so we have only her account of the events that morning. I went back through all my own sources about this and found very little. Larson was interviewed extensively by both the police and the media, but they seem to have accepted her answers implicitly. This morning, I did some more research to see what more I could learn. Larson was Elwell's second maidservant. The first had been a woman named Annie Kane, who had served him for four years and then returned to her native Ireland. The steward of the studio club, William Barnes, suggested Marie Larson as a replacement, and she became Elwell's housekeeper on October 5th, 1919. She was in her mid-30s and was originally Swedish and still Lutheran. The routine was that she'd arrive at

Starting point is 00:25:22 8.30 each morning and check to see whether Elwell was at home by calling through a speaking tube they called the blower. If he was home, she made breakfast for him and then cleaned and tidied and went shopping until the early afternoon when she'd go to work in her husband's butcher shop on 3rd Avenue. The couple had no children and lived not far from the shop in an apartment on East 52nd Street. During the eight months that she worked for Elwell, Larson saw a parade of women pass through the house, but she didn't interact with them. Her standing instructions were to serve breakfast or lunch to Elwell personally when he was alone, and if he was with someone else, she had to send it via the dumbwaiter, or if he happened to be near the kitchen, hand it to him on a tray. The fact that there were standing instructions tells you how often he had company.

Starting point is 00:26:00 After discovering the body on June 11th, Larson ran into the street to summon help and then remained at the house answering questions. As I said, she was called back frequently. By June 25th, the police had questioned her nine times. The New York Times wrote, although Mrs. Larson has been examined far more than any of the other witnesses, it was said there was no suspicion against her except that she might be shielding others. Having been the first person to visit the scene after the shooting and the person most intimate with Elwell's habits in his own home, she'd been called on for explanations whenever the district attorney's office or the police had been in doubt about any of the hundreds of circumstances connected with the mystery. For the same reason, the press accepted her answers uncritically. It's funny, in doing some of the research here, they'll start a story saying that she's being questioned in a sort of suspicious way. And in this very same story, they'll just quote her as a source.

Starting point is 00:26:46 It's kind of sloppy journalism there. It's just because she was the only person who knew a lot of these details, so I think they were sort of induced to trust her just so they could get access to some information. There's one incident that I think is worth pointing out. In the story, I mentioned that on the morning of the murder, one woman actually came into the house and went halfway up the stairs hoping to retrieve an incriminating pink negligee from Elwell's bedroom. She retreated when she saw the detectives on the second floor.

Starting point is 00:27:11 When the negligee was found hidden in another room, Larson at first denied knowing anything about that, but under questioning by Assistant District Attorney John T. Dooling, she finally admitted that she'd hidden it. He said, you hid them, didn't you, Mrs. Larson, in order to prevent a woman's name from being dragged into the case? Yes. Now hidden it. He said, name, describing her only as a short, dark, handsome woman about 24. But under Dooling's questioning, she finally admitted that she did know. It was Viola Krausfer, and he was playing along at home. Dooling said it was just a matter of one woman protecting another, and she said yes. The New York Times said Mrs. Larson had—there's a cat climbing under my lap—Mrs. Larson hitherto denied all knowledge of Elwell's affairs and had been looked upon by the authorities as stupid. Make of that what you will.

Starting point is 00:28:07 So you can make up your own mind about this. It does look like Elwell was shot by someone he'd accepted into his personal life since he was reading mail in his pajamas when the killer drew his or her gun. Right. And there would be very few people, as we said in the episode. I mean, especially, you know, he didn't have his, his like his fake hair or his fake teeth in, right? So he was willing to be unattractive in front of whoever it was. So it wasn't likely to be one of his mistresses. And the fact that they didn't find, I mean, they never saw that they never did pin this on anyone. It means that the police did overlook someone who fit that

Starting point is 00:28:39 description. Yeah. But whether it was her, we don't know. There's no reason that I can see why the killer couldn't have been Marie Larson. She certainly had the opportunity, but what we don't know is a motive. Well, I don't know if they were able to do this back at that time, but, you know, like the whole gunpowder residue thing, like if she had just shot him, she should have gunpowder residue on her and her clothing. I don't know if they could test for that back then, though. I get the feeling it was very primitive back then. Certainly if this happened today, they'd have it all wrapped up quickly. But here, I mean, it just is still an open case.

Starting point is 00:29:14 Thanks to everyone who writes in to us. If you have any questions or comments, you can reach us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle i am going to present him with a strange sounding situation and he has to try to figure out what is actually going on asking only yes or no questions this puzzle comes from dean guti hello greg sharon and sasha i absolutely love the show since i discovered it i have been hooked i've been using your lateral thinking puzzles on some of my employees at work, and they've become rather popular.

Starting point is 00:29:48 Although if he's the boss, maybe they have to be popular. Other people have started bringing them in and thinking up their own. And here is Dean's puzzle. A little girl is eating a snack. Minutes later, the tips of her fingers and lips have turned blue, and she is slumped forward in her chair, unresponsive. Her father walks into the kitchen, sees her, and then slowly backs out of the room. Why?

Starting point is 00:30:14 I have to ask, is she dead? Nope. Okay. Non-fatal puzzle. Is this true? I'm just curious. Not that I know of. Little girl's eating a snack.

Starting point is 00:30:22 Yes. You said her lips and her fingertips turned blue? Yes. Is that because of lack of oxygen? No. No. You said her lips and her fingertips turn blue? Yes. Is that because of lack of oxygen? No. No, is it because they're colored with something blue? Yes. And that's related to what she was eating?

Starting point is 00:30:31 Yes. But she still slumped forward? Yes. Okay. Okay, let's work on the slump forward bit. Is she unconscious? I guess. Is she slumped forward because of some reaction to the food she ate any kind of reaction no she's slumped she's just slumped forward yes all right is that

Starting point is 00:30:55 maybe just not important that he's reacting to her no he is reacting to what he sees is she doing something in being slumped forward is she trying to reach the food or something? No, no. Do I need to know her age or anything more specific than that? No, she's just a little girl. Okay. So she's got like,

Starting point is 00:31:10 she was eating something blue and got that on her fingers and lips. Yeah. And do I need to know why he backs out of the room? Is it just his reaction

Starting point is 00:31:19 because he fears that she's in some extremity? No. That's not why he does it. That's the weirdest part of it. Okay, do I need to pursue the slumping forward? That's got me a bit confused.

Starting point is 00:31:34 Yeah. So she's slumping forward. She's not actually in any distress, is that right? That's correct. She's not in some... That's correct. Okay, but he thinks she is. No.

Starting point is 00:31:43 He recognizes that she's got blue on her on her fingers and lips yeah he understands the reason for that yes is he backing out in order to go do something outside the room not particularly would it help me to know what she's eating specifically no okay she's eating something blue yeah do we need to know his identity anything else no are there other people involved no i don't even know where or when this happened. No. He backs out of the room. Oh, cause she's asleep. She's asleep and he doesn't want to wake her up. She ate something blue and fell asleep. Yes. She's a very little girl. So thank you, Dean, for that puzzle. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send

Starting point is 00:32:22 in for us to use, you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com futility closet is a full-time commitment for us and is supported primarily by our incredible listeners if you would like to help support the show and get bonus material such as extra discussions on some of the stories outtakes more lateral thinking puzzles and updates on Sasha, our favorite podcast mascot. 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 over 9,000 bite-sized curiosities, the Futility Closet store for all your penguin-adorned needs,

Starting point is 00:33:03 and the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered. 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 startlingly talented Doug Ross. Thanks for listening and we'll talk to you next week. you

Futility Closet - 168-The Destruction of the Doves Type

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