Futility Closet - 342-A Slave Sues for Freedom

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 11,000 quirky curiosities from a contemptible computer to an atheist's epitaph. This is episode 342. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1844, New Orleans was riveted by a dramatic trial. A slave claimed that she was really a free immigrant who had been pressed into bondage as a young girl. In today's show, we'll describe Sally Miller's fight for freedom, which challenged notions of race and social hierarchy in antebellum Louisiana.

Starting point is 00:00:46 We'll also try to pronounce some drug names and puzzle over some cheated tram drivers. One spring day in 1843, a German immigrant named Mrs. Carl Roof entered a cafe on Levee Street in New Orleans. The slave who served her looked familiar, and at length Madame Carl thought she recognized her. They had arrived in the city together more than 20 years earlier, among several hundred other Germans. At the time, the slave had been a small child named Salome Muller. The journey had been tragic for the little girl. Her mother and infant brother had died during the voyage, and her father and older brother died shortly after arriving in Louisiana. That had left Salome and her sister Dorothea, both under the age of six, alone in a new world. The two had disappeared

Starting point is 00:01:35 and had not been seen again. Madame Carl spoke to the slave, who said she didn't recognize her and didn't remember arriving in the United States in 1818. She said she was called Sally Miller and was the property of Louis Belmonte, the cafe's owner. Madame Carl took her to the home of Eve and Francis Schuber in the nearby suburb of Lafayette. The Schubers were German immigrants who had traveled on the same ship with Madame Carl and the Mullers. In fact, Eve Schuber was Salome's cousin and godmother. She recognized Sally immediately. She said that the family resemblance was strong and that she remembered Salome well enough to pick her out of 100,000 people.

Starting point is 00:02:12 That was important. Eve had been constantly in the company of the Muller family during the journey from Germany. When Salome's mother had died on the ship, 15-year-old Eve had taken care of the girl, and when they landed in New Orleans, she'd asked to be allowed to keep the child and raise her. But the two had been separated, and Eve had gone to work in the city. There she often saw other Germans who'd arrived on the same ship, but though she asked often about the Mullers, she had never learned what had happened to the missing girls. And now, 25 years later, Madame Carl had arrived at her house with the slave Sally. five years later, Madame Carl had arrived at her house with the slave Sally. On the strength of this conviction, Sally's new friends decided to help her win her freedom, and she launched an

Starting point is 00:02:49 extraordinary lawsuit in New Orleans District Court against her owner. In it, she declared that she was a free white woman who'd been held illegally in slavery for more than 20 years. She said that her previous owner, John Miller, had converted her into a slave knowing she was free and that Belmonte had also known that she'd been enslaved illegally. She asked to be protected from Belmonte during the dispute and was placed in Francis Schuber's custody on bond of $1,000. Belmonte, in his response, said that Sally Miller was a slave pretending to be free. He said she'd always lived as a slave and that he'd purchased her legally from John Miller. He offered the bill of sale, notarized on July 9, 1838, showing that he'd bought her for $700. That drew John Miller into the suit as the main defendant because he had warranted at the sale that Sally was not free.

Starting point is 00:03:39 Miller was a wealthy mill owner who was well prepared to defend himself. He produced bills of sale showing that Sally had come into his possession in 1822 when another man had asked him to sell her for him, that in 1823 he had sold her to his mother, and that in 1835 he'd bought her back, along with her three children, for $350. He denied that she was a white woman and said he'd always believed her to be a mulatto of African descent. The trial started on May 23, 1844. The historian Carol Wilson says it held all the elements of a great courtroom drama, a case of mistaken identity, illegal enslavement, the epic journey of an impoverished immigrant family,

Starting point is 00:04:17 and the inscrutable past of a young woman whose appearance made her racial categorization difficult. Essentially, a slave was defying her owner publicly and accusing him of knowingly holding a white woman in bondage. The public were divided. The German community stood by Sally, convinced that she was the lost child they remembered, but other New Orleans whites sided with Miller, insisting that Sally was a lifelong slave.

Starting point is 00:04:41 As the case unfolded, the evidence drove public opinion first in one direction and then in another. The question was, were these two different women? And that question threatened both the legal system of Louisiana and notions of race among white Southerners. The whole institution of slavery in the South was predicated on race. Blacks were slaves and whites were free. But that system required that race be distinguished easily, and it foundered when considering people of a mixed racial background. The idea that a slave could claim to be white and have that claim considered in court terrified many Southern whites.

Starting point is 00:05:13 The plaintiff's witnesses testified first. There were 11 altogether, seven of them German immigrants who'd come over with the Mullers in 1818. All of them remembered Salome Muller and either noted Sally's resemblance to that family or specifically recognized her as the missing girl. In her petition, Sally claimed that until Madame Carl and Eve Schuber had entered her life, she hadn't known her true past as a German immigrant. She'd been too young to remember her enslavement and had simply grown up accepting her status as a slave. Daniel Miller, a nephew of Salome's father, said that he and his family had traveled

Starting point is 00:05:45 to New Orleans from Mississippi about once a year to look for the missing cousins, but had heard nothing until May 1843 when the Schubers had contacted him. The court record says he has no hesitancy in saying he has no doubt but that she is the same person. Eve Schuber, who had cared for the girl on the ship, said that Salome had two moles on the insides of her thighs, and two physicians who examined Sally confirmed the marks. John Miller's supporters described Sally as an African-American slave girl who'd grown up in New Orleans and who Miller had acquired at age 11. By his own statement, he'd owned many hundreds of slaves over a period of 30 years. Sally had worked in his home as a domestic, attending his widowed mother and doing household duties such as waiting table, cleaning silverware, caring for visitors' children, and accompanying

Starting point is 00:06:30 his mother on shopping trips to town. Miller's supporters painted him as a generous, even lenient master and an upstanding citizen. Sally's supporters gave an affecting account of a German immigrant's journey to this country, but they didn't offer any evidence to show how she had become Sally Miller. John Miller argued that if Sally really was Salome Muller, the German witnesses ought to have encountered her in the city during these past 20 years and recognized her then. But most of the German witnesses had gone to work outside the city soon after their arrival. John Miller demonstrated strongly that he had purchased Sally legally.

Starting point is 00:07:03 He knew nothing of her origins, but he didn't need to under the law. He had a deed of sale dated August 13, 1822, showing that he'd bought her from a Mobile slave owner named Anthony Williams, and he denied even having been in the area when Salome Muller had allegedly been enslaved. Part of the trouble here is that people of mixed race had an uncertain position in the social hierarchy. Most witnesses referred to Sally as a quadroon, meaning a person of one-quarter black and three-quarters white ancestry. More generally, it meant a light-skinned person of color. People who had a mixed racial background might be slaves, but might not.

Starting point is 00:07:35 The latter were designated free people of color and often had special status under the laws of southern states. As a result, freedom lawsuits based on racial identity were not uncommon in the antebellum South. Legislatures kept trying to reduce race to a binary system, and court cases kept showing that it wasn't. Nowhere was this more clear than in Louisiana, the most mixed state in the Union. Asked to describe the population of New Orleans, visitor Benjamin Latrobe said that one might as well ask, what is the shape of a cloud? Under these arguments, race was revealed to be not some objective quality, but a social construct that placed a person's identity in the hands of other people. One witness said that he saw the

Starting point is 00:08:14 resemblance between Sally and one of Salome's relations, but admitted that his belief that she was colored, quote, may have been induced by the fact he had always seen her associating with persons of color. Another told the court that, quote, he took her to be very light, but her situation made him believe she was colored. In the end, there was no agreement among the witnesses as to Sally's appearance, her age, whether she'd ever spoken German, or whether her origins could be shown to be different from Salome Muller's. On June 25, 1844, the judge issued a verdict in favor of the defendants, Louis Belmonte and John Miller. He conceded that a little German girl had arrived in New Orleans in 1818,

Starting point is 00:08:50 but he didn't think the prosecution had shown that she and the plaintiff were the same person. Within days, Sally's lawyers lodged an appeal with the state Supreme Court. New witnesses said that John Miller had known of Sally's European ancestry before the trial, and Miller's brother-in-law testified that Miller had purchased a slave named Bridget around 1822, implying that she had been the subject of the sale contract. Sally's attorney, the Harvard-educated Wheelock Upton, also pointed out that the real Salome Miller, if she were indeed a separate person, ought to have appeared by now to set the record straight. He said, has not this petition been the subject of conversation and

Starting point is 00:09:24 newspaper comment in every parish in the state? He added that John Miller had the resources to find the real Salome, if that were possible. The fact that he hadn't implied that the missing girl really was the plaintiff. In deciding the case, the Supreme Court noted an 1810 precedent that people of mixed race were presumed to be free, so the burden of proof fell on the person who claimed someone as a slave, and there was no evidence that Sally had African parentage, which was crucial to proving slave status. The court concluded that, quote, if there be in truth two persons about the same age bearing a strong resemblance to the Mullers and the plaintiff is not the real lost child, it is certainly one of the most extraordinary things in history. It declared Sally Miller a free white woman and ordered her released from slavery.

Starting point is 00:10:08 Sally's supporters held a party in Lafayette to celebrate her victory. One newspaper account says there was music and dancing, a sumptuous feast, and an abundance of rich wines, and they enjoyed themselves until a late hour. Upton, the attorney, said, When we consider her sex, her station, and her means, and contrast them with the wealth and the power and the influence of those who contended against her, it is indeed a matter of gratulation and joy that her success was triumphant. After her victory, Sally Miller sought the freedom of two children, Madison and Adeline, both adolescents who remained in Miller's possession. She claimed that her children should be free because the status of a child followed

Starting point is 00:10:44 the mother's condition of servitude. If she was a free woman, then her children were free. And she wanted compensation for more than 20 years of illegal bondage. $20,000 for her labor, $50,000 for pain and suffering, $5,000 for the pain and suffering of her children, and whatever more a jury might be willing to award her. In return, John Miller sued Sally for fraud. He denied her claim that she was John Miller sued Sally for fraud. He denied her claim that she was a white woman born in Germany. He questioned to the memories of many of her

Starting point is 00:11:09 German supporters. He asked why he would have enslaved a white girl knowingly when he had enough money to buy as many slaves as he needed, and he dropped a bombshell. He had discovered the fate of the real Salome Muller and her sister Dorothea. He presented depositions from 13 witnesses in Morehouse Parish in northeastern Louisiana who remembered two orphaned German girls who had arrived there in 1818. Their description matched the Mullers. Their names were Sally and Dorothy, they spoke German, their mother had died on the passage from Europe, and their father, a shoemaker, had died suddenly during the journey from New Orleans. The older of these sisters, Dorothy Muller, even testified. She recalled a journey from Europe that she said was like a dream, with her mother

Starting point is 00:11:48 dying on the ship, seasick and starving. After they arrived, her father had died on the Black River. He'd eaten a meal, lain down, and made a strange noise, and when she went to him, he was dead. And her older brother had died in New Orleans, leaving the two sisters alone. The real Salome Muller, she said, had died three years ago at her house on the Ouachita River. These witnesses established that Salome Muller had been living in northeastern Louisiana while John Miller's slave Sally had been known to be living in New Orleans, and four further witnesses established the details of Sally's life and the circumstances by which she'd come into Miller's possession. With this news, it appears that Sally Miller dropped her bid for compensation. The record ends there. John Miller's case for fraud went forward, but the judge decided against him, saying that he hadn't successfully made his case. Miller

Starting point is 00:12:34 appealed to the state Supreme Court and presented an entire life history for both Salome and Sally, but the court dismissed the case. Once a slave had been declared free, the court tended to follow the dictum that that freedom could not be revoked. And since Miller had not refunded Belmonte's money, he could not be said to have an interest in contesting the earlier decision. So, after all of that, was Sally Miller Salome Muller? Officially, I think we have to say yes. She won her case and kept her freedom.

Starting point is 00:13:01 But the modern consensus is less clear. Sally Miller's case had been compelling enough to win her freedom under Louisiana law, but John Miller's discoveries in Morehouse Parish leave at least the shadow of a doubt as to the true fate of Salome Muller. What Sally herself felt about all this is unknown. She never testified in her own defense, and no word of hers survives in the written record. Accounts differ as to what became of her. She may have married a Mississippi River pilot, or possibly she moved to Sacramento with a white husband. Wherever she went, she took her thoughts with her. We've talked about prescription drugs in episodes 193, 196, and 201 on the topics of drug development and drug repurposing and the lack of clear understanding of how some drugs work.

Starting point is 00:13:58 A listener sent a follow-up on this topic and gave me two possible last names to use, depending on whether I read her email within a month or not. I'm still running kind of behind on our listener emails, so I will say that if all went to plan, then the newly named Sarah Luck wrote, Hey gang, I started listening pretty recently and have been working through the back catalog. Somewhere in the late 100s, y'all mentioned that many prescriptions aren't really fully understood, so I thought I'd mention another aspect of prescriptions that many people don't understand, and I think it's right up Sharon's alley, how to pronounce them. More specifically, how those long, clunky, generic names are generated. I work selling Medicare insurance

Starting point is 00:14:37 plans, so part of my job includes asking folks what prescriptions they generally take to help best recommend a plan that fits their needs. As you can imagine, I mostly speak with older folks who have a long list of meds that they rarely need to pronounce out loud. I get in the habit of joking, who on earth is naming these, am I right? I finally googled and the answer really surprised me. In the U.S., most generic drugs are named by just two ladies from Chicago. Here's a link to a story that explains better than I might. And Sarah added, the intersection of tricky names, prescription drugs, and unsung individuals with more influence than you'd think seem to be exactly the futility closet wheelhouse. Sarah sent a link to a 2019 article in the Los Angeles Times by David Lazarus that resulted from

Starting point is 00:15:23 a reader asking how prescription drugs get their generic names, not the brand name, but the part that, as the reader put it, you can't pronounce. For example, the drug whose brand name is the reasonably pronounceable and the drug company hopes rememberable Humira has a generic name of adalimumab. Probably that is. I checked some different sites and found pronunciations of adalimumab. Probably that is. I checked some different sites and found pronunciations of Adalimumab, Adalimumab, and Adalimumab. So maybe no one's completely sure how to pronounce it. I'm always struck at how odd those names are. Lazarus said that none of the several drug makers that he contacted would comment on the naming process for either the brand or generic names. So he tracked down the director of the

Starting point is 00:16:05 United States Adopted Names, or USAN, which Lazarus called a quasi-public department within the American Medical Association that's responsible for coming up with the generic names for all new drugs, and learned that Stephanie Schubat and her colleague Gail Carrott are the ones who are responsible for basically all the new generic drug names. The women handle about 200 drug applications a year, either coming up with a generic name themselves or ruling on one suggested by a drug maker. There are several guidelines that govern generic drug names. Drugs with similar chemical structures or therapeutic purposes will often share parts of their name, so that, for example, a particular class of anti-anxiety medications will contain the stem azepam with different prefixes. The names ideally won't be offensive in any language or contain the letters W, K, H, J, or Y because those letters can cause

Starting point is 00:16:57 confusion for non-English speakers and have rather different pronunciations in different languages. And they veto generic names that are too similar to brand names, as that could confuse patients. And I should mention that Chubot and Carrot don't actually have complete authority in this area, but rather their recommendations go to a five-person USAN council. About 11,000 generic drug names have been assigned by the USAN and other international bodies in the last 50 years or so, so coming up with new ones that meet the guidelines can be challenging. Shabbat told Lazarus, sometimes I look at license plates for new prefix ideas. Sometimes I borrow from the names of cats

Starting point is 00:17:35 or dogs. So that's where some of those indecipherable names come from. So they're not contrived deliberately to be awkward. Hopefully not. Sarah also said, also related, y'all have talked quite a bit about some names being rejected by computer programs. I'll never forget a person I spoke with who had a name I'd never think of being rejected, Sam. She introduced herself, but as we got into enrolling, I had to get her legal name. So I asked, now, Sam, is that your legal name or is it short for Samantha or something else? Nope, just Sam. Beautiful. Thank you, Sam. And what's your last

Starting point is 00:18:10 name? No, it's just Sam. That's my entire name. First and last, S-A-M. I admit I was pretty dumbfounded by this. I asked, well, what does it say on your Medicare card? We just need to match what that says. To my surprise, she insisted her Medicare card, driver's license, and passport all said Sam and nothing else. I guess the government computer systems are a bit more sophisticated than most companies. Luckily, this was not her first rodeo. She said she usually puts in Miss Sam on systems that require a first and last name, and that seemed to make my computer happy. I never asked how her name came to be just Sam, if it was her name from birth or if she changed it later. I should note that I changed the name here so I don't lose my Medicare license just to be safe, but you get the idea.

Starting point is 00:18:54 And we've mentioned before how some people end up with NFN or NMN for no first name or no middle name on some official documents in the U.S. if they don't have the right number of names to fill all the boxes. So I wonder if Sam ends up with NLN for no last name sometimes. Yeah, now I really want to know what the story is there. Yeah, it's a shame that Sarah didn't ask. In response to Sarah's email, Greg had questioned what exactly constitutes a name legally, mentioning that he knew that Sweden has actual rules about this and wondering if the U.S. did too. And it turns out that many countries do have various codified rules

Starting point is 00:19:32 of some sort regarding names and that Wikipedia has several pages about naming laws. Greg had heard of the Swedish laws in regard to some legal cases that had been brought by Swedish parents who wanted to give their children unusual names, such as a string of 38 consonants, including four C's in a row, followed by five digits. Swedish parents have to submit a proposed name for a child to the Swedish tax agency for approval within three months of the child's birth. Names will not be approved if they can cause offense or can be

Starting point is 00:20:02 supposed to cause discomfort for the one using it, or names which for some obvious reason are not suitable as a first name. Not too surprisingly, the name I mentioned was not approved, despite the parents' claims of artistic expression. There have been a few other publicized cases over the years of Swedish parents' fights over their children's proposed names, such as Ikea, Metallica, and Elvis, which all did eventually prevail. And I found some articles from 2018 about a couple's ongoing battle to name their son Ford,

Starting point is 00:20:31 which is a family name in the Canadian father's family. In the most recent article that I found on the subject from 2018, the child was then 13 months old and recognized his name as Ford, but was referred to as X or Boy in official documents. And because he still had no legal name, his parents couldn't get a passport for him, so they couldn't travel to visit their Canadian family. The parents said they planned to continue to call their son Ford, regardless of what his official name ended up being. I guess ultimately, anyone can call anyone anything. Yeah, I was thinking about that. Like, your name is officially Gregory, right? But we could call you Tim if we suddenly decided to. I guess you just can't use it on legal documents.

Starting point is 00:21:08 Yeah, that's true. But there's, I mean, just as a sort of a names for parents to choose from, though usually there is a process to request an exception. Other countries, such as the UK, have no specific laws regarding permissible names, although usually there will be some restrictions, such as in the UK, according to Wikipedia, names that contain obscenities, numerals, misleading titles, or are impossible to pronounce are likely to be rejected by the registering officer. fleeting titles or are impossible to pronounce are likely to be rejected by the registering officer. The U.S. and Canada have no national naming laws, but leave it up to the individual states or provinces to determine their own. In the U.S., that leads to some states having no naming laws at all and to other states having somewhat restrictive ones. Apparently, a number of states restrict what characters can be used in names for simplicity and record-keeping with software that

Starting point is 00:22:04 might not allow for different characters. For example, in California, it was required that names only contain the 26 characters of the English alphabet plus hyphens and apostrophes. This meant that diacritical marks were banned, such as the little accent mark over the E in Jose. The Guardian had an article about this in 2015, where they noted that more than a third of California's population is Hispanic, but that the common Hispanic diacritical marks were prohibited in names, even though the state did use such marks in some of its place names, such as state parks. The Guardian reported that in 2013 alone, 1,340 babies were named Jose in California,

Starting point is 00:22:40 and that several names, usually written with with accents were among the top 100 baby names in that state. The law was finally amended in 2017 to allow for the use of diacritical marks, paving the way for the correct rendering of names such as Jose and Ramon, although I think that people with other types of non-English characters in their names are still mostly out of luck. And this hodgepodge of laws from state to state can cause considerable problems for people who move from one state to another where characters in their name might now be banned and not allowed on official documents.

Starting point is 00:23:12 Yeah, I would guess in the worst cases that could lead to identity problems where you register as different people. Yeah, you have different forms or official documents that have different renderings of your name and that could lead to issues, yeah. A couple of other naming laws that happened to catch my attention were Norway's, where a citizen is allowed to change their family name to another common family name, defined as any name shared by

Starting point is 00:23:34 more than 200 Norwegian citizens. However, if they want to choose a new family name that is more uncommon, then they have to get permission from every citizen who has that name, with exceptions allowed for the name of a parent, grandparent, great-grandparent, or great-great-grandparent. And Malaysia's, where according to Wikipedia, the National Registration Department may decline to register objectionable or undesirable names, including names based on titles, numbers, colors, vegetables, fruits, vulgarities, and equipment. And I have to admit that I was a bit curious about what was seen as objectionable or undesirable about fruits or colors. Or equipment.

Starting point is 00:24:12 Well, I don't know. Maybe equipment. Also on the topic of names, we got a fun follow-up to the discussion in episode 334 about the confusion that can be caused by multiple places having the same name. Hello from Slane McHugh, age 12. Me and my family were listening to your most recent episode 334, where you talked about people trying to get to one place and ending up in quite another. I live in Grinnell, Iowa, and it turns out there's also a Grinnell, Kansas. I found this out the hard way when I tried to log into a math game for my middle school and selected a middle school in Kansas. Love your podcast. It's very entertaining each week. So thank you, Slane, and also for the very helpful pronunciation tips for your name, which I always appreciate. I didn't know there was even one Grinnell, and now I've learned that

Starting point is 00:24:58 there are at least two of them. I guess that sort of thing probably happens quite a lot these days. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We really appreciate hearing from our listeners. So if you have anything that you'd like to say, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an interesting sounding situation, and he's going to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an interesting sounding situation, and he's going to try to work out what's going on by asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Charlotte Greener, an Australian in Geneva,

Starting point is 00:25:34 who asked if we could tell her brother Chris that she says thanks for recommending the podcast to her. And Charlotte's puzzle is, as a result of a government policy, tram drivers start complaining that passengers were getting away with paying an incorrect fare. What was the policy? Passengers were getting away with paying an incorrect fare. Yeah. As a result of a government policy.

Starting point is 00:25:56 Yes. And I'm sorry, what was the question at the end? What was the policy? Okay. So would you call this abuse that the policy was intended for some other reason and the passengers had found that they could use it to their advantage in order to pay a lower fare? Yes. Does it matter whether this was in Geneva or Australia or somewhere else? She said this said, oh, she doesn't say where it is, but no, it does matter where it is.

Starting point is 00:26:16 Oh, it does. And I guess I'll tell you this was in England. Okay. In London specifically. But apart from that just being a true fact, is it important that that's where it takes place? Would that help me solve the puzzle? Yes. Oh, really?

Starting point is 00:26:29 Yes. Wow. Okay. I suppose if we had unlimited time, I would have made you guess where it takes place, but that takes a really long time to guess. That's interesting, though. Okay, so the government enacted some policy

Starting point is 00:26:42 that presumably said that if you fell into a certain class of passenger, you could pay a lower fare? No. Hmm. You said this enabled— Passengers to get away with paying an incorrect fare. An incorrect fare. It was a lower fare than they would normally have paid.

Starting point is 00:27:02 Yes. Yeah, why else would they do it? Okay. And it wasn't that all passengers were doing it, it just enabled some passengers to get away with it. And it matters that it was in London. And it's that they're paying a lower fare, it's not that they're riding less often or taking some other... Right. Okay. So let's say I'm one of those passengers, shall we? Okay. Before this policy was enacted, I would, let's say I commute or something, that I regularly take the tram, and I'm accustomed to paying a certain fare. Yes. The policy goes through, and I see an opportunity. Yeah. That's all fair to say? Yeah. And I start paying a lower fare with each ride? Presumably, possibly.

Starting point is 00:27:47 I mean, you could do it that way. Okay. Maybe I just asked you this. Does that same, and there's a group of people who were all able to take advantage of this, whatever it is. Everybody could have taken advantage of this if they chose to. So it's not some subset correct does that have to do with the literally the wording of the regulation whatever it is no like they're misconstruing it deliberately no and it's important that it's in london

Starting point is 00:28:16 do i need to know is this a particular route or something like do i need no through some part of london no but it's in l, and that's important. And that's important. Do I need to note, does it have to do with the geography of London in some way? Not at all? Not at all. I don't think so. I mean, maybe in some extremely vague way. Okay, so.

Starting point is 00:28:45 Timing is also important, besides place. All right, thank you. So is the regulation intended to shift the passenger ship so that some people... No. No. Timing. So are some people changing when they ride? Not that I'm aware of. Does it change the schedules of the trams?

Starting point is 00:29:05 No, no. There's a couple of different ways that timing was important. The when of this, not just the where. You mean when the policy was imposed? Yes. Historically? Yes. Ah, okay.

Starting point is 00:29:22 Does this concern another event, I guess? guess yes something that took place in london and other places but yes does this have to do with covid something recent no no no i'll tell you this was during world war ii oh world war ii so people were riding the tram in London in World War II. Yes. Does that have to do with the bombings? Indirectly, but yes, it's related to that. Was the policy intended to keep people safe? Yes.

Starting point is 00:29:52 During the war? Yes. So were they offering different fares? No. To encourage people to ride at safer times? No. No. This was a policy that was enacted for a larger purpose.

Starting point is 00:30:05 It impacted, in a small way, public transportation like trams and buses. And one of the unintended consequences was that people could get away with paying a different fare. Does that have to do with blackouts? Yes. Oh, really? So was this to encourage—so it was—all right, let me back up. So how would the blackouts let people get away with paying a wrong amount? Well, the first thing I think is that the government wouldn't want, I guess, the trams to be running at night.

Starting point is 00:30:33 They were running at night, but under blackout conditions. Okay. And the policy then was to encourage. That was the policy, was the blackout. Oh, it was just that they were running at night. The trams were generally running at night. Without lights. During the war.

Starting point is 00:30:51 So the conductors couldn't see the amount of money that they were being given. Charlotte says the setting is London during the Blitz, and the government policy is the requirement of blackout to prevent bombers finding targets. As a result, the trams have no lights, and unscrupulous passengers are using the opportunity to underpay the drivers And Charlotte said she didn't know if this had actually happened or not. She'd just seen it on Reddit. But I found a UK government research guide titled London Buses in World War II that basically said that, yes, they had to take down all their lights or cover them all with cowls. And they said, conductors found it difficult to punch tickets correctly in the

Starting point is 00:31:29 blackout and to distinguish between copper and silver coins when collecting fares. It sounds like something that would happen. So thanks to Charlotte for the puzzle and to Chris for recommending our show to people. If you have a puzzle for us to try, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com and feel free to recommend our show to anyone you like. Futility Closet is supported entirely by our incredible listeners. If you'd like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, 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 not only help support the show but also get more information

Starting point is 00:32:10 on some of the stories extra lateral thinking puzzles outtakes and peeks behind the scenes you can find our patreon page at patreon.com slash futility closet or see our website for the link at our website you can graze through 11 000 posts in g Greg's Menagerie of Miscellany. Thanks to William Little for that description. Browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see 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 Greg's redoubtable brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 342-A Slave Sues for Freedom

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