Futility Closet - 192-The Winchester Diver

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 10,000 quirky curiosities from Trollope's discipline to an ambivalent creak. This is episode 192. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1905, Winchester Cathedral was in danger of collapsing as its eastern end sank into marshy ground. The surprising solution was to hire a diver who worked underwater for five years to build a firmer foundation for the medieval structure. In today's show, we'll tell the story of William Walker and his curious contribution to saving a British landmark.

Starting point is 00:00:46 We'll also contemplate a misplaced fire captain and puzzle over a shackled woman. We are sending out a big thank you this week to P.T. Burns, our newest super patron, who has pledged a generous $10 an episode in our Patreon campaign. It's supporters like P.T. and all our patrons who are the main reason that we are able to keep this show going. If you would like to join them, you can check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the Support Us section of our website. Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire, near the southern coast of England, is the longest medieval cathedral in Europe.

Starting point is 00:01:26 But that almost proved to be its undoing. That's because its east end extends onto some peaty, waterlogged ground, and gradually, over time, this began to sink. By the early 1900s, large cracks had begun to appear in the cathedral's walls and its vaulted ceiling. Some of the cracks were wide enough for owls to roost in. Blocks were falling from the roof, and the south wall was leaning outward by as much as four feet. When the cathedral authorities brought in architects to diagnose the problem, they recommended that the foundations that held up the walls needed to be strengthened. In fact, they found that the original builders of that part of the church in the 13th century had laid the foundations on a bed of beech logs to try to prop

Starting point is 00:02:03 it up in this marshy ground. Those logs had sunk over time, causing more and more defects in the structure. Something had to be done. It turned out that there was a bed of natural hard gravel about 24 feet down from ground level. That could serve as a firm support. If they could build a new foundation up from that gravel, the cathedral would finally stop sinking. Unfortunately, when the work crew started to dig down to it, their trenches filled with water seeping up from the gravel. They tried pumping out the water, but it was coming in too quickly. The whole job started to seem impossible,

Starting point is 00:02:32 but then the project's engineer, Francis Fox, had an inventive idea. He suggested they give up on pumping and let the trenches fill with water. Then a diver could go down into the trench and do all the necessary work underwater. First, he could dig out all the peat down to the firm gravel layer. Then, still working underwater, he could lay bags of concrete over the gravel. Once the concrete had set, it would seal the floor of the trench, and then they could pump out the water and the trench would stay dry. Then brick layers could go in and build a nice strong support up from the bottom of the trench

Starting point is 00:03:01 to the underside of the cathedral walls, and that would finally provide a firm foundation for the building. They need to repeat that operation in hundreds of trenches along the south and east walls of the cathedral, but in theory at least it ought to work, and in fact it seemed to be the only way forward. The diver they hired was a man named William Walker, who was the most experienced diver at his diving firm and probably the most accomplished diver in Britain at that time. Walker had started his training at Portsmouth Dockyard in 1887 and advanced to become a deepwater diver in 1892. He'd gained a lot of experience working in flooded coal and lead mines, and he was working on a new jetty in London when they called him to Winchester. He started his work on the cathedral in May 1906.

Starting point is 00:03:39 Workers dug 235 pits along the sides of the building. Each pit was five feet wide and about 20 feet deep. They dug each pit down below the level of the original foundation and then underneath it, making a tunnel that extended 16 to 24 feet under the foundations of the cathedral. The workers would dig down to the pit and clear away as much as they could with the pumps going. Then they stopped the pumps and allowed water to flood in and fill the pit. Now Walker, in his diving suit, went down into the flooded pit. His first job was to clear away whatever peat remained down to the gravel bed. The peat was so compressed that he had to use a pick and even a hammer to do this.

Starting point is 00:04:14 The workers above him hauled up the peat in buckets using a block and tackle. Then they lowered sacks of concrete down to him, and he placed those like large bricks in a floor about three feet thick, slitting them open as he went to allow the water to penetrate it more effectively. In 24 hours, the concrete had set hard, and then the pit could be pumped dry, and other workers could set concrete bricks to fill the remaining distance up to the base of the foundation. Amazingly, William Walker did this strange, lonely job for over five years, six hours a day, five days a week, from May 1906 to August 1911.

Starting point is 00:04:44 It took an hour to put on his diving suit in the morning, and then he spent two three-hour shifts underwater, pausing only at midday to smoke his pipe and eat a light snack. Afterward, it took him another hour to get out of the suit. He spent the work sessions alone underwater in the flooded pits under the cathedral, digging peat and laying concrete by hand in pitch darkness. The water was dirty to begin with, and his work soon stirred up so much sediment that he could see nothing and had to continue by feel. His only connection with the outside world was his airline, which was fed by an assistant up above who operated an air pump by hand,

Starting point is 00:05:16 and he had a rope attached to his chest that he could tug on to send signals. One writer says, Now if you, the reader, wish to appreciate the problem of working in the dark, you should try going to bed at night, getting undressed, cleaning your teeth, and getting into bed, all with your eyes closed. But that doesn't really convey what Walker was facing. For one thing, his work was almost unbelievably tiring. Walker's diving suit weighed 200 pounds.

Starting point is 00:05:36 The helmet alone weighed 40 pounds, and each boot weighed 18. And he had to work in the suit for six hours a day for five years, often lying down while digging away at the peat or cutting logs. For another thing, the ground here had once been a graveyard, so the water was filthy. He joked that smoking his pipe might reduce the risk of infection. Because he had to feel what he was doing, he couldn't wear gloves, even though the water was cold. He trusted that the body heat he generated in the diving suit would keep the circulation in his hands warm, and if he encountered problems, he had to solve them himself. There was no easy way to communicate with the team

Starting point is 00:06:08 above or to consult with his supervisors. In September 1906, a reporter ventured out onto a plank over one of the flooded pits in which Walker was working. He wrote, At the bottom, diver William Walker was shoveling a slimy mixture of rotten wood, peat, and chalk into buckets to clear one of the nine-foot square spaces from which the water will be pumped, and in which a solid support will be built. By the aid of a match, one could see the foundations of the cathedral shored above his head with beams, like the passage of a coal mine. Underneath the plank, the black water bubbled and gurgled as the diver moved from place to place. Every now and then, a succession of heavy blows beneath the water shook the plank. The diver was beating out chunks of peat with his pick

Starting point is 00:06:45 or dislodging an obstinate trunk of beech with a sledgehammer. It was a weird accompaniment to the strains of the great organ in the cathedral, which alternately wailed and thundered Chopin's superb Marche Frunebre. For at the very moment our representative was beneath the overhanging walls of the retrochoir, a funeral service was being held over Archdeacon Hay, a cathedral dignitary, who was yesterday carried to his last resting place. To pass from the works into the nave of the cathedral is to enter another world. The rolling glory of the Te Deum echoes through the vaulted space as it did in the days of William of Wickham. The last amen is sung, and the choir and the clergy pass slowly

Starting point is 00:07:18 and silently into the vestry. Outside, the foreman blows his whistle. The great helmet, with its staring goggle eyes, appears above the brink of the shaft, and the diver is helped out of his slimy, dripping shell. And soon the choristers and workmen mingle beneath the shadow of the cathedral. Walker was only one of a team of 150 workmen working on the project. Altogether, they packed 25,000 bags of concrete, 115,000 concrete blocks, and 900,000 bricks into the pits they dug under the cathedral. But it was Walker who attracted crowds of sightseers, including at one point even the

Starting point is 00:07:49 king of Spain. They were attracted by the strange juxtaposition of a modern diver working on a medieval cathedral. At the time, Walker's diving apparatus was high-tech. It would be like watching an astronaut crawling under a medieval castle. Fortunately, Walker was apparently in excellent health. He lost scarcely a single day's work during the whole five-year effort. At one point, after a whole week's work, he bicycled home to his family in South Norwood, a distance of 70 miles. And he had an active private life during all of this. He got married in 1907 and had several children while he was working on the cathedral. On the job, he was modest, quiet, dependable, and hardworking. When the supervising engineer, Francis Fox, visited Winchester, he would put on a diving suit himself and inspect Walker's work,

Starting point is 00:08:29 and he always said he was entirely satisfied with it. I would like to give you a colorful quote from Walker about this strange job he was doing, but there are none. He said little in what he said was humble and self-effacing. He told one reporter that he hadn't much of a story to tell. At one point, the Hampshire Observer asked him whether he'd had any curious experiences under the cathedral. He said, nothing to speak of unless the stoppage of my air pump can be regarded as curious. It certainly came about in a curious way. Somebody each time called out, stop the pump, and my man thought it meant my air pump and obeyed orders. What did I do? I came to the surface as soon as I could and suffered no ill effects. A man can live in a diver's dress for 10 minutes after his air pump has stopped. He didn't consider that particularly remarkable. No. When Walker and his companions

Starting point is 00:09:10 finally finished supporting the foundation, they added a line of buttresses to the south side of the cathedral, and the building was finally safe from sinking. The engineer, Francis Fox, wrote, the work was so well done that I anticipated that the settlement would probably not exceed a quarter of an inch, and from a careful examination, I do not think it amounts to as much. On September 8, 1911, Walker finished concreting the foundations of the easternmost buttress and quietly departed. Altogether, the project had occupied a small army of laborers for nearly seven years, during which time Winchester Cathedral had been surrounded by scaffolding.

Starting point is 00:09:40 The bill for the whole job was 113,000 pounds, or nearly three million dollars today. The church officials had to raise that sum through constant energetic fundraising. There was no state help for the project and no professional fundraisers, though the King, George V, did offer some help to them. To celebrate the completion of the work, the Archbishop of Canterbury led a Thanksgiving service on July 15, 1912, attended by the King, Queen Mary, and many other dignitaries. The Archbishop, Randall Davidson, took as his text the words of the King, Queen Mary, and many other dignitaries. The Archbishop, Randall Davidson, took as his text the words of Psalm 90, verse 17, Prosper thou the work of our hands upon us, O prosper thou our handiwork. Walker dressed up for the occasion, though he was very self-conscious

Starting point is 00:10:16 at being part of such grand proceedings. Nonetheless, the newspapers made much of him. The Times called him the diver who for some six years has been at work deep down in the liquid peat, building, in the Archbishop of Canterterbury's phrase a man-made rock on which the priceless work of faith and beauty might stand firm. And the Daily Express wrote, If one could have cheered in the dim religious place, the people would have carried their homage to the diver. He was standing there unobtrusively, a burly, broad-shouldered figure in a frock coat with a silk hat in his hand, blushing like a great schoolboy when the archbishop praised him to the king and queen. Walker said afterward, it made me feel rather uncomfortable to be spoken of in the pulpit and before all that host of people, but I dare say they didn't know I was the man his grace was talking about.

Starting point is 00:10:56 Outside the south door of the cathedral, he was presented to the king, who shook his hand and asked, how long have you been at work here? Walker said, nearly six years, your majesty. And how many hours a day were you actually in the water? Six hours a day, sir. The king said, Really? I congratulate you upon your feat in saving the cathedral. Afterward, the dean presented him with a silver rose bowl with this inscription, presented to Mr. W. R. Walker, diver, by the king and chapter of Winchester in grateful recognition of his valuable service in the work of underpinning the walls of the cathedral, 1906 to 1911. At the end of 1912, he was summoned for a further honor, and he received it just as modestly. He wrote to his employer at the diving firm, I have received a letter commanding me to be at

Starting point is 00:11:33 Buckingham Palace on the 19th to receive the Royal Victorian Order at the request of His Majesty. I would be grateful if you would inform me how to go on and anything I could do for the firm, and I must thank you with all my heart for all you have done for me in the past. For all his humility, the architects and engineers who had served as experts in restoring the cathedral said they regarded him as the central character in the story and had nothing but praise for him. The architect Thomas Jackson told him that he'd done what no other man had done, that he'd laid the foundation of a whole cathedral. Walker said only, I am proud of the honor. Asked if he'd do it again, he said it wasn't easy, but he was a proud man to have been able to help in so grand a work. He said it was not difficult, it was straightforward work, but had to be carefully done.

Starting point is 00:12:12 As all the publicity subsided, he retired to his family in South Norwood. He died just six years later at age 49 in the great Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. He's buried in London. There's one odd footnote that I have to mention. Because World War I soon captured the world's attention, Walker's story was largely forgotten until 1956, when the BBC aired a radio program celebrating the 50th anniversary of his achievement. That led to calls for a memorial in the cathedral, and a statue was commissioned from Sir Charles Wheeler, the president of the Royal Academy. Unfortunately, when the statue was unveiled

Starting point is 00:12:42 before Walker's relatives, they found that it was the wrong man. Walker had weighed 14 stone, and this statue was of a much slighter man. It turned out to be Sir Francis Fox, the project's engineer. It's not clear what had gone wrong. Apparently, Sir Charles had been given a group photograph and misunderstood which man was Walker. Nonetheless, that statue stood for 37 years, bearing the inscription, In Honor of William Walker, the Diver Who Saved the Cathedral with His Two Hands. years bearing the inscription, In Honor of William Walker, the diver who saved the cathedral with his two hands. Finally, in 2001, a new statue by sculptor Glyn Williams was unveiled before eight of Walker's descendants. The dean of Winchester, Michael Till, said, There has been embarrassed recognition that the attempt to honor Walker turned into a bit of a disaster, but the story

Starting point is 00:13:18 is too good to leave like that, and now it has come right. We don't tend to draw attention to the error in the statue, but there is a lot of attention drawn to Walker. Without him, we would be looking at a rather shorter cathedral. We would still have the longest nave in Europe, but the sanctuary would be the shortest. Several of our listeners wrote to let us know that there has been a very recent case of what appears to be someone who suffered from a fugue state, the psychological disorder characterized by sudden unexpected travel coupled with amnesia that we had discussed in episodes 182 and 187. A 49-year-old Toronto fire captain, Constantinos Filipides, went missing in New York last month and appeared in California six days later, with little memory of what had happened to him in between. Filipides had been on an annual skiing trip with friends and colleagues in the Adirondacks

Starting point is 00:14:15 in New York State when he disappeared in the afternoon of February 7th, triggering a massive multi-agency search for him, which included members of the U.S. Department of Environmental Conservation, New York State Police, Homeland Security, U.S. border officials, and Toronto firefighters. The searcher spent six days combing the mountain Filipides had last been seen on, at times digging through the snow with their hands, in conditions that were described as frigid, rugged mountain territory. Filipides apparently doesn't remember much of his missing six days. He found himself in Sacramento, California, and bought a phone to call his wife, who then directed him to call the police. The police found him in the same skiing clothes he'd been wearing when he was last seen,

Starting point is 00:14:58 which included snow pants, a ski jacket and winter boots, and carrying a ski helmet, which must have all looked a little odd in Sacramento, as it's typically a little warm there for that kind of outfit. I actually looked up what the temperature had been in Sacramento on February the 13th, and they had a high of 64 degrees Fahrenheit or 18 degrees Celsius that day, so definitely a little warm for a skiing outfit. That is fascinating. Yeah, and when he was found, Filipides was reported to be confused and unable to give any direct answers, so they don't know for sure what happened to him. He said that he thought maybe he'd suffered a head injury

Starting point is 00:15:33 and that he thought he remembered riding in a big rig style truck and that he'd slept a lot. Apparently, the last thing he clearly remembered was that he'd been skiing. The police distributed a picture of Filipides in California and asked if anyone saw him or knows anything about the time he was missing to contact authorities because everyone, including Filipides, is rather anxious to know what happened to him during those six days. So the idea, I guess, then, is that he injured himself somehow. They're not even sure about that. I mean, he said he thought maybe he had a head injury,

Starting point is 00:16:04 but he didn't seem very reliable about what had actually happened to him. So they're not even sure about that. He was last seen skiing. They found his car with the keys, but not him. Nobody heard from him for six days, and then he just phoned his wife. So his wife thought for six days that he was missing on the mountain. Yes, which would have been terrifying. And then just got a phone call from him.

Starting point is 00:16:29 From Sacramento. Right, exactly. I can't imagine what that's like. I can't imagine what that would have been like for either him or his wife. Like that would have been just horrifying for either of them. In episode 188, I discussed some of the cultural facets of mental illness, including the influences of environmental factors on the presentation of anorexia, and Alex Baumans wrote to suggest that I look into the topic of holy anorexia.

Starting point is 00:16:55 In doing so, I learned that there is quite a body of literature on the history of anorexia which I mistakenly had thought of as a more modern phenomenon. Holy anorexia, also called anorexia mirabilis, or miraculous lack of appetite, was a religious form of anorexia that was seen in the Middle Ages, particularly in Catholic women. Women would engage in extreme fasting, with some of them even dying of starvation, as part of the cultural idea of spiritual asceticism, or a denial of the needs of the flesh in pursuit of the spiritual. In men, this asceticism more commonly took the form of bodily punishments, such as self-flagellation,

Starting point is 00:17:31 burning oneself, or sleeping on nails or thorns. While women also sometimes engaged in these types of self-punishments, they more commonly practiced extreme fasting. In writing about the history of anorexia, some authors refer to the fasting saints of the Middle Ages, who are known for, among other things, their extreme or prolonged fasting, such as St. Catherine of Siena, who refused all food except for the Holy Host and water, and who died in 1380 at age 33 from what appears to have been complications of starvation. Around the 16th century, anorexics went from being seen as saintly to sometimes being perceived as witches,

Starting point is 00:18:09 and accordingly they were sometimes burned at the stake. This is a marked shift in perspective, though the focus is still on a supernatural explanation or motivation for the refusal of food. During the 17th and 18th centuries, prolonged fasting was increasingly viewed as being a medical issue rather than having a supernatural origin, though this transition was less than smooth and it was still sometimes rather unclear whether a person who refused to eat should consult with a doctor or a priest. A rise in cases of anorexia was seen during the Victorian era.

Starting point is 00:18:41 There was an emergence of a middle class that viewed females as delicate creatures and put pressure on them to deny an appetite for food, as that tended to be equated with an appetite for sex. There was a phenomenon at this time in the US and the UK of the fasting girl, which was a usually pre-adolescent girl who appeared to survive without eating over rather long periods of time. These fasting girls often claimed to have special powers, and while the public frequently believed these girls to be miraculous, doctors more often deemed them to be either frauds or hysterics. One of the most famous of these cases was that of Sarah Jacob, who was known as the Welsh fasting girl,

Starting point is 00:19:21 who, it was claimed, had not eaten any food since the age of 10. A local vicar championed her case, and she was widely popular for some time. Skeptical doctors arranged for her to be monitored closely in 1869, when she was 12. After a few days, she was showing symptoms of starvation, but her parents refused to accept that assessment and insisted that their daughter had done this before and did not require food. Jacob unfortunately died a few days later and her parents were convicted of manslaughter. That's a sad story. It was a sad story. What we tend to think of today as the disorder of anorexia started being identified by physicians in England, France, and the U.S. in the

Starting point is 00:20:01 1870s. The term anorexia nervosa, or emotionally caused lack of appetite, was first coined in 1873 by Sir William Gull, the royal physician to Queen Victoria, and that term, plus others such as hysterical anorexia or anorexia hysterica, for the first time firmly grounded the disorder in the field of psychiatry and fixed it as the province of medical practitioners. In general, it seems that anorexia is only commonly seen in affluent societies and at times when the economy is doing well. So, for example, the incidence of the disorder was very low during the Great Depression and World War II. But after the war, the incidence began to rise, given the combined factors of growing affluence and the increased social expectations for female achievement. Increasing attention to the disorder in the 1970s

Starting point is 00:20:50 led both to a greater likelihood that someone who was showing symptoms would receive this diagnosis, and, as we discussed in episode 188, the rise in awareness of the disorder appears to have led to an increase in girls learning about anorexia and then quote-unquote choosing it to express their emotional turmoil, leading to a further increase in the incidence of the illness. As for the holy anorexia and its relationship to the modern disorder of anorexia nervosa, there are many who feel that the two conditions are analogous reflections of prevailing cultural influences. For example, in an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Dr. Fernando Forsen said,

Starting point is 00:21:30 parallels between the medieval behavior and anorexia nervosa now are apparent. In both, a person fastens on to a valuable culturally dependent goal, beauty or slimness in present day society values and austerity or deprivation in medieval society values. It's remarkable that such a basic behavior can have such different explanations down through the years. Yeah, definitely different explanations, and was influenced strongly by cultural considerations for how it's expressed or how the public views it. And lastly, we have a little update about the lateral thinking puzzle in episode 189.

Starting point is 00:22:09 Spoiler alert. This was the puzzle about the Fisher-Price alphabet magnet set and the apparent effect that it had on children with synesthesia. Dennis Janes wrote, Dear Greg, Sharon, and Sasha, Thank you for a very interesting puzzle in this week's episode. I have letter color and number color synesthesia, and it wasn't until I heard your podcast that I realized that my color associations correspond almost perfectly with a fridge magnet set we had as kids.

Starting point is 00:22:35 I don't know whether it is a Fisher-Price set. I grew up in Norway, but clearly the magnets influenced me in some way. Thanks for making every Monday a little easier and more fun. There's proof. At least for one person. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We really appreciate getting your updates and feedback. So if you have any questions or comments for us,

Starting point is 00:22:57 please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an odd-sounding situation, and I have to work out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener Stephen Jones, and after some thinking, I've rejiggered it a little bit. As part of an escape act, a woman is shackled and submerged in a tank of water. Realizing her chains have become entangled, she bangs on the glass to alert her assistants. They recognize the signs of distress, but don't rescue her. Why?

Starting point is 00:23:37 Okay. Did this really happen? Yes. Okay. Is the time period important? Not really. Is there anything about the woman that i need to know that i need to figure out yes is it a female human being yes you don't have to figure out that

Starting point is 00:23:55 it's not a she's that kind of woman yes yes okay um but there is something in particular about her. Okay. Yes. Would you say it's something about her physically that I need to figure out? No. Something about her identity, specific identity? Not her name, but yes, her identity.

Starting point is 00:24:20 Something about her identity. Something about talents or skills or abilities that she has or doesn't have? Not in the way you're thinking about it. Not in the way I'm thinking about it. Okay. But possibly. Okay. Let me make sure I understand the situation.

Starting point is 00:24:35 She's in a, would you say she's in a tank full of water? Yes. Would you say she's submerged under the, fully submerged under the water? Yes. Yes. She's submerged under the, fully submerged under the water? Yes. Yes.

Starting point is 00:24:51 And the point is, is that she's supposed to escape her chains and unsubmerge herself? Is that like the point? Yes. And her chains have become tangled? Yeah. Yes. Okay. And the assistants don't do anything. Is that because they believe that she's going to actually be okay?

Starting point is 00:25:07 Yes. But the woman believes she's not going to be okay? Yes. Okay. Is this because the assistants can see something that the woman can't see? No. Is this because the assistants have some piece of knowledge that the woman doesn't see? No. Is this because the assistants have some piece of knowledge that the woman doesn't have? No. Okay. Is there anything about the tank or the water that I need to worry about?

Starting point is 00:25:34 No. Or the chains? No. Does it matter where the chains are on her? No. Or the shackles or anything else? No. Okay. So is the thing that I need to work out is what's special or different about this woman? Is that part of what I really should be focusing on? No. I'm gonna say no. Is there just one woman involved? Yes. Okay. So there's something special about the woman, but that's not really the crux of the thing. Right. There's a different crux. Yeah. And I'm missing it.

Starting point is 00:26:08 Okay, let me think. Okay, does it matter anything about the assistants that I need to know about? It would be useful to work on why they think she's okay. Yeah. Why do they think she's okay? And it's not something they can see, and it's not a special piece of knowledge that they have. Something that they... So it's not something they know, not something they see, something they hear?

Starting point is 00:26:28 No. The assistants are mistaken. She really is in trouble. Oh, oh, oh. Okay. So why do the assistants think she's not? They think it's part of the act that she's pretending to be in distress? Yes.

Starting point is 00:26:45 And there's a reason. I mean, has she done that before? Has she pretended to be in distress before just to add drama to the whole act? I did think about that. Okay. Let's back. Yes. No, the answer to that question is yes.

Starting point is 00:26:59 Okay. I was going to say, should I ask it a little differently? So the woman, as part of the act in the past, has banged on the glass, acting like she's in distress? She hasn't... Banged on the glass, but is that part of the act? Okay. She hasn't performed the act before, at least not that much.

Starting point is 00:27:19 So it's like there's a long history. Okay. Did she tell them in advance that she might pretend like she was in distress? They expected her to do that to pretend like she was in distress yeah based on something she had done in the past no based on a pre-arranged agreement among all of them about what she was going to do yes pursue that okay so she had talked to her assistants sometime before performing this act? No, let's say no to that. No, she had not talked to them. Have they ever worked with her before?

Starting point is 00:27:55 Just for simplicity, let's say no. Okay. Have they worked for somebody else that's germane and their experience is working for somebody else plays into this somehow? In the past? Yeah. Let's say no.

Starting point is 00:28:09 Okay. They're working for someone else now just to help this along. They're working for someone else now and that's part of his or her act is to act distressed and like something's going badly? No. But the assistants for some reason think, okay, she's going to act like she can't get out of this. Right.

Starting point is 00:28:25 And we just have to ignore that. And is that based on something the woman herself has done in the past? Is what? Is that an expectation? Yeah. No. No. That's important.

Starting point is 00:28:38 No. Based on something somebody else has done or does. No. But it has something to do with somebody else that they're working for. They've, and again, I'm simplifying this just to help it along. They've read something that led them to expect this. Oh, my goodness. They read something, something about the woman?

Starting point is 00:29:03 No. Something about her, the other people who do this type of acts no or any the woman is not is is not primarily an escape artist that's not her okay profession that's not her profession does it matter what her profession is yeah that would help is she somebody who as part of their profession is usually underwater no or is often underwater she's not like a diver or something um okay would you say that she's normally in the performing arts yes okay but she's not an escape artist that's right is she like houdini's wife or something like um okay does it matter does it matter like her relationship to

Starting point is 00:29:44 some other person like she is somebody's wife or daughter and that's important she's into performing arts but she's well away from anything like this normally she's normally like an actress yes she's normally an actress and they think that she's just acting distressed

Starting point is 00:30:03 yes that's basically it. This happened during the making of the film Now You See Me, which is about a group of magicians who use their skills to rob banks. Isla Fisher's character, an escape artist, gets into difficulty while trying to escape, shackled from a tank of water. Fisher actually had trouble freeing herself during the stunt and was banging on the side of the tank for the crew to let her out. But this is exactly what the script required of her, so the cast and crew had no idea anything was wrong. Oh my. She said, luckily I managed to get free and stayed level headed and got out before it went even more horribly wrong. Well, that seems like some an oversight that somebody didn't think that we need to set up, you know, what you're going to do

Starting point is 00:30:37 if you really are in trouble. Yeah, but you wouldn't, it's a natural, and it must have been terrifying at the time. Wow. So thanks, Stephen, for sending that. 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 incredible listeners. We just wouldn't be able to commit to the amount of time that the show takes to make if it weren't for the donations and pledges we get. If you'd like to contribute to our celebration of the quirky and the curious,

Starting point is 00:31:08 you can find a donate button in the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com, or you can join our Patreon campaign where you'll get extra discussions on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, and updates on Sasha, our hard-working and sometimes surprisingly noisy mascot. You can find our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the website for the link. 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 my very special brother-in-law, Doug Ross.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 192-The Winchester Diver

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