Futility Closet - 363-The Lambeth Poisoner

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 12,000 quirky curiosities from guilty divestiture to petrified lightning. This is episode 363. I'm Greg Ross.. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1891, a mysterious figure appeared on the streets of London, dispensing pills to poor young women who then died in agony. Suspicion came to center on a Scottish-Canadian doctor with a dark past in North America. In today's show, we'll describe the career of the Lambeth Poisoner,

Starting point is 00:00:45 whose victims remain uncounted. We'll also consider a Hungarian Jules Verne and puzzle over an ambiguous sentence. And we have some important news that we need to share about the show. After almost eight years, Greg and I will be ending the podcast later this month. There'll be another regular episode on November 22nd, and then we'll be ending with a puzzle episode on November 29th. As Greg and I get older, we're finding it harder to keep up with the workload required by the show. And it's been even more of a challenge for me, as I have some long-term health problems that have been worsening somewhat lately. This has been a difficult decision for us, but after taking some time to think it through,

Starting point is 00:01:34 we've decided that it's time for us to bring the podcast to an end. More than with most other podcasts, the listeners of Futility Closet have really helped make the show what it is. We'd like to thank all of you for your contributions and friendship over the years. It's really meant more to us than we can say. On October 13, 1891, 19-year-old Ellen Donworth collapsed in agony in Waterloo Road in Lambeth, a London neighborhood marked at the time by poverty, petty crime, and prostitution. A bystander led Donworth back to her room, and in a moment between convulsions, she managed to tell a fellow lodger,

Starting point is 00:02:17 a tall gentleman with cross eyes, a silk hat, and bushy whiskers gave me a drink, twice, out of a bottle with white stuff in it. A medical assistant who was summoned from a nearby clinic said that Donworth had all the symptoms of strychnine poisoning. They bundled her into a cab, but by the time it reached St. Thomas' Hospital, she was dead. The coroner in the case received a letter claiming that Donworth had been murdered and offering to help bring the case to justice. The letter was signed A. O'Brien, Detective, but the writer wanted 300,000 pounds, tens of millions of dollars in today's money, so the coroner dismissed it as a prank. At the inquest, the jurors decided that Donworth had been poisoned, but that there was no evidence to show how it had been done. Scotland Yard was inclined to believe that she'd ended her own life, depressed over the death of a child.

Starting point is 00:03:10 But that left a puzzle. If the tall, cross-eyed man didn't exist, how had Donworth got her hands on strychnine, a poison that was sold only to physicians? That puzzle was still unanswered a week later, when a maid heard screams coming from the room above her at 27 Lambeth Road. She summoned the landlady, and the two of them found 27-year-old Matilda Clover convulsing in her room. She told them, That man Fred has poisoned me. He gave me some pills. She said the man had told her to take four pills before going to bed, apparently to prevent venereal disease. They summoned medical help, but Clover died that morning.

Starting point is 00:03:48 The doctors confusedly attributed her death to alcohol withdrawal. That was a lost opportunity. Clover had brought the man, Fred, to the house only hours before her attack began. The maid described him as about 40 years old, tall and broad, with a bushy mustache, a top hat, and an overcoat with a cape. Two women who lived nearby remembered encountering the same man recently. At one point, they'd seen him accompanying Clover to her room. One of them said, I noticed a peculiar look in his eyes. He had a squint.

Starting point is 00:04:20 A second parallel shortly arose between the two cases. Prominent London residents began to receive blackmail letters accusing them of committing the murders. On November 6th, Frederick Smith, owner of bookseller and news distributor WH Smith, received a message from one H. Bain claiming that letters incriminating him had been found among Ellen Donworth's effects. him had been found among Ellen Donworth's effects. Bain suggested that if these letters became public, they would convict Smith and disgrace his family. But if Smith retained Bain as his legal advisor, Bain would shield him, quote, from all exposure and shame in the matter. Bain enclosed a letter that he said had been sent to Donworth before her death, warning her that Smith was planning to poison her with medicine that contained enough strychnine to kill a horse. Smith took the letter to the police, who asked him to follow the instructions and post a notice in his office window saying that he wished to see

Starting point is 00:05:15 Bain at once. He did so, but Bain never appeared. Instead, the blackmailer seems to have decided to make the threatened accusation at once. In mid-November, a magistrate received a letter saying that Frederick Smith was guilty of Donworth's murder. The writer added, I have evidence enough to hang Smith, and I will make it hot for the police if they do not do their duty in this matter. The Metropolitan Police retained the letter but chose not to act. Two other people received blackmail letters around the same time. The first was London cardiologist William Broadbent, who received a letter saying that evidence had been found among Matilda Clover's effects, showing that he had poisoned her. The writer, who signed himself

Starting point is 00:05:55 M. Malone, said that this evidence would be handed over to police unless Broadbent paid him 2,500 pounds. He added, I am not humbugging you. You know well enough that an accusation of that sort will ruin you forever. Here again, Broadbent went to the authorities, who advised him to play along. But no one showed up at the appointed time to collect the money. The third blackmail victim was actress and singer Mabel Russell, who at the time was acrimoniously divorcing Earl Russell, the grandson of a former prime minister. Mabel received a letter claiming to have evidence that Earl had poisoned Matilda Clover.

Starting point is 00:06:30 She sent a man to investigate, but he found that no one had heard of Clover at the address that the letter mentioned, and Scotland Yard showed little interest, as apparently they didn't make the connection with the other cases. So the three blackmail threats came to nothing. The killings continued. At 2 a.m. April 12th, a police constable saw a well-dressed man in a top hat and black overcoat exit a building on Stamford Street in Lampeth. Half an hour later, police were summoned when two women, Alice Marsh and Emma Shrevelle, began shrieking and moaning in their upstairs rooms. Marsh died before she reached the hospital, where Shrevelle, began shrieking and moaning in their upstairs rooms. Marsh died before she reached the hospital, where Shrevelle's stomach was pumped. A physician told police that both

Starting point is 00:07:09 had taken some powerful poison. Shrevelle said she and Marsh had spent the evening with a man who'd given each of them three long, thin pills. They'd taken the pills before retiring for the night and soon were so sick that they couldn't stand. Shrivell confirmed that the man, who they called Fred, was the one the constable had seen leaving the building. She died within three hours. Police decided at first that this was a case of accidental poisoning, as Marsh and Shrivell had eaten tinned salmon with the pills, but traces of strychnine were found in the women's stomachs and there was no strychnine in the fish. With Ellen Donworth, it now appeared that three prostitutes had been poisoned in Lambeth in the space of six months,

Starting point is 00:07:50 and officers going door to door eventually learned of Matilda Clover's sudden death the previous fall. In light of the case's similarity, Clover's body was exhumed and also revealed traces of strychnine. It now appeared that four women had been murdered by the same man. By May, suspicion had begun to center on Thomas Neal, a well-dressed, cross-eyed man who frequented Lambeth prostitutes. He claimed to be an agent for an American drug company, and he carried a leather case full of vials. Sergeant Patrick McIntyre of Scotland Yard befriended Neal and learned not only that he was conversant with the details of the poisoning cases, but that his handwriting matched that on some of the blackmail

Starting point is 00:08:30 letters. Neal was charged with extortion and kept in custody to await trial. Documents found in his room established his real name, Thomas Neal Cream, and a background in North America, so Inspector Frederick Smith Jarvis headed west to investigate. He learned that Cream's life had begun promisingly. The family had moved from Glasgow to Quebec when Cream was four. There, his father had established a successful lumber business, and Cream had helped him there until age 22. Then he'd entered McGill University in Montreal, where he'd studied medicine and earned a reputation for a wild and extravagant nature. After graduation, he'd met Flora Brooks, the daughter of a hotel proprietor.

Starting point is 00:09:12 When she became pregnant, Cream had performed an abortion. This came to light when Flora fell ill and her father forced the two to marry. The day after the wedding, Cream announced that he was going to England to finish his medical education. Flora died less than a year afterward after taking some pills that Cream had sent her from abroad. Whether that was murder is not clear, but Cream certainly had a motive. Under the marriage contract, he had no claim to his wife's property, and if the couple had children and Cream sought a divorce, he must pay a penalty of $10,000, almost $200,000 today. Cream got a medical license in Edinburgh and returned to Canada in May 1878, and the cloud

Starting point is 00:09:53 of disrepute followed him and grew. In 1879, the body of a young woman named Kate Gardner was discovered in a privy in London, Ontario, behind the building in which Cream had been practicing. An inquest returned a verdict of murder. Apparently, she'd been poisoned with chloroform and her body placed in the outhouse to suggest suicide. At the inquest, it was revealed that she had visited Cream's office for an abortion. The jurors found that she'd been chloroformed by persons unknown. Cream was not charged, but he was ostracized. He left the city on July 5th and headed for Chicago,

Starting point is 00:10:25 where he set up a practice on the city's west side, promoting himself as an expert in diseases of the womb. In August, the body of Mary Ann Faulkner was discovered in a room on West Madison Street. A coroner's jury decided that Cream had performed an illegal abortion. In this case, this was a capital offense since the patient had died, but Cream hired a talented lawyer and was acquitted. The following March, he wrote two prescriptions for 25-year-old Ellen Stack. When she died, Cream suggested she'd been poisoned and tried to blackmail the druggist who'd made up the prescription, claiming to have an incriminating bottle and capsules. The pharmacist complained to the police, but no charge was made. Another woman, Sarah Alice

Starting point is 00:11:06 Montgomery, died writhing in pain at the Sheldon House on West Madison Street. Two doctors recognized the symptoms of strychnine poisoning and asked whether she'd swallowed something. She had the strength to say yes, but died minutes later. An autopsy showed that Montgomery had been three months pregnant, and she had a bottle of ergot, which was known to induce abortions. The ergot mixture contained strychnine. No one was ever prosecuted, but it's notable that Cream's office was two blocks from the Sheldon house. If Montgomery had stopped there on her way from the druggist to the hotel, he could have tampered with the medicine. The final Chicago death linked to Cream was that of 61-year-old Daniel Stott, whom Cream was treating for epilepsy.

Starting point is 00:11:46 Cream started an affair with Stott's wife and sent her home with some medicine for her husband, who died shortly after taking it. The connection might have gone unnoticed, but Cream chose to send a message to the county coroner suggesting that the man had been poisoned, once again trying to implicate the druggist involved. When the coroner dismissed that accusation, Cream insisted on an autopsy. The body was exhumed, and an examination revealed that Stott had been poisoned. Here, though, Cream's plan backfired.

Starting point is 00:12:15 The druggist was exonerated, and an inquest identified Cream as the only one who could have tampered with the medicine. He fled, but police tracked him down. He was tried for murder and condemned to life in prison, but a new governor commuted the sentence, and he left the Illinois State Penitentiary in July 1891. He moved to England, and two months later, the London poisonings began. During Jarvis' investigation in North America, the inquest in London had assembled a damning case against the doctor. Cream had bought strychnine at a Parliament Street chemist's shop two days before Ellen Donworth's death, in a quantity large enough to kill several people. The blackmail letter that

Starting point is 00:12:54 had been sent to William Broadbent bore Cream's handwriting, and its author knew that Matilda Clover had been killed with strychnine, a fact that at the time had been known only to the killer. The most striking piece of evidence came from a woman named Louisa Harvey, who was reading about the case in a newspaper when she learned that Scotland Yard thought she was dead. In trying to cast suspicion elsewhere for his killings, Cream had blamed a local medical student named Walter Harper for poisoning Ellen Donworth, Matilda Clover, and Harvey, but Harvey was very much alive. She returned to London to explain what had happened. In October 1891, she had spent a night with a man at the Paris Hotel and made a date to meet him the following evening to see a show.

Starting point is 00:13:37 He'd told her he was a doctor and, claiming to notice some spots on her forehead, gave her two pills. He told her not to bite them but to swallow them as they were. She didn't trust him, so she only feigned taking the pills and instead threw them behind her. Oddly, he asked to see each of her hands as if to be sure she had swallowed them. When she did, he abruptly canceled their plans, saying that he had an appointment at the hospital and that he would meet her later outside the music hall. When she appeared at the appointed time, the man wasn't there. Harvey had later left her life as a prostitute, moved to Brighton, and adopted a new surname to escape her past. Enlisting her name among the dead, Cream was admitting that he thought he'd killed her. Harvey testified that the capsules he'd given her were elongated, like the gelatin capsules that Cream was known to have bought in Parliament Street. Scotland Yard now had evidence that Cream had been

Starting point is 00:14:29 administering pills to London prostitutes. In the end, the inquest jury agreed unanimously that Matilda Clover had died of strychnine poisoning and that it had been administered by Thomas Neal with an intent to kill her. Cream was tried for murder of four Lambeth prostitutes, quickly found guilty, and sentenced to hang. A record crowd gathered outside Newgate Prison on the day of his death. The Toronto Globe wrote, Probably no criminal was ever executed in London who had a less pitying mob awaiting his execution. It's sometimes said that Cream's last words, uttered just as the trap was sprung, were, I am Jack.

Starting point is 00:15:07 The suggestion is that Cream was Jack the Ripper, who had killed five prostitutes in Whitechapel just four years earlier. But this is impossible. Cream was in prison in Illinois at the time of Jack's murders, and the claim that he'd made this utterance did not appear until January 1902, more than nine years after the execution. did not appear until January 1902, more than nine years after the execution. Thomas Cream was a new kind of killer, one who chose his victims indiscriminately. The Chicago Daily Tribune said he murdered simply for the sake of murder. The number of his victims will

Starting point is 00:15:36 never be known for certain, but a convincing case can be made for ten. By the time he reached London in 1891, he'd perfected his technique, targeting poor, downtrodden women, trading on his status as a doctor, and offering strychnine in gelatin capsules to mask its bitter taste and give him time to flee. There's no telling how long he might have got away with this if he'd stayed quiet and kept to himself, but, driven by either hubris or malice, he'd begun to blackmail innocent people, hoping to profit by his crimes. It was this practice that brought about his downfall. In his letters, he said he knew who had poisoned Matilda Clover when her death was still thought to be innocent,

Starting point is 00:16:16 and he said he knew who had killed Louisa Harvey when she was, in fact, still alive. He must have regretted his pride when he sat in Newgate Prison, awaiting his hanging. In episode 360, we continued our discussion of pronunciation of names, including various ways that people pronounce Norfolk, Virginia. Paul Rippey wrote, Hi, Sharon and Greg. I enjoyed your discussion of how to pronounce Norfolk and was happy to hear you guys nail the correct local pronunciation. I grew up partly in the neighborhood of P-O-R-T-S-M-O-U-T-H, which locals pronounce Portsmouth. We would occasionally

Starting point is 00:17:03 hear the pronunciation Portsmouth, which immediately branded the speaker as an outsider. Portsmithians were generally too polite to correct the mispronunciation, and the alert visitor would quickly hear the local way of saying the city's name and correct themselves. Decades after I had lived there, I find myself in Portland, Oregon, a stone's throw from the Portland neighborhood of P-O-R-T-S-M-O-U-T-H. But here, the name is pronounced Portsmouth. When I first saw it written, I assumed it was Portsmouth, like my hometown, and said it a few times to local friends. While no one ever corrected me, I quickly learned to say it the local way. So the word P-O-R-T-S-M-O-U-T-H has two different

Starting point is 00:17:44 pronunciations. I have not yet had the chance to tell someone from Portsmouth that I grew up in Portsmouth, but I hope to do that someday. That makes me think it must be confusing for him to go home, because you probably get used to saying it the alternate way, and then you have to go back. Yeah, yeah. I mean, then that is just kind of screwy to think that there's places with the exact same spelling, but two completely different pronunciations.

Starting point is 00:18:08 And Mark Johnson from Silver Spring, Maryland wrote, In episode 360 of your podcast, there was an extended discussion of the pronunciation of Norfolk, Virginia. You may be surprised to hear that the pronunciation of N-O-R-F-O-L-K, Nebraska, is Norfork. of N-O-R-F-O-L-K Nebraska is Norfolk. The original name was registered as Norfolk, very likely a reference to the North Fork of the Platte River, but in the process of registering it with the post office, it was transmuted to Norfolk. If you run across someone who pronounces Norfolk as Norfolk, it's very likely you're talking to a born and bred Cornhusker. And from what I was able to find on Norfolk, Nebraska, it does seem that the settlers there wanted their village to be named after the North Fork of the Platte

Starting point is 00:18:50 River. And accounts vary as to what exact name was submitted to the federal postal authorities, whether it was North Fork, Norfork, or Nord Fork. But it does seem that the postal authorities changed it to Norfolk, possibly because they thought that the settlers had misspelled the name. In any case, the residents continued to call it what they had wanted it to be. I hadn't thought about it before, but there must have been a period in this nation's history when there were just tons of new place names constantly being registered. And lots of opportunities for that sort of mistake. And you wonder whose job it was to go through them all and okay them or not get them wrong. You hear the same thing about Ellis Island that they say, you know, you're John Smith now.

Starting point is 00:19:31 That's right. You're Norfolk now instead of Norfork. In more examples of local residents pronouncing names the way they want to, Jay G. from Minnesota wrote, Hello, Greg and Sharon. In episode 360 and a few other times, you've talked about how names of places are pronounced and whether to pronounce them as locals do or as you do in different areas.

Starting point is 00:19:51 And I have an interesting experience with that. I lived in central Iowa a while back and when I moved there, the locals quickly corrected my pronunciation of the names of two small towns there. Imagine my consternation when I was informed that it was not pronounced Nevada, Iowa, like you would pronounce the state of the names of two small towns there. Imagine my consternation when I was informed that it was not pronounced Nevada, Iowa, like you would pronounce the state of the same name,

Starting point is 00:20:09 but Nevada, Iowa. And apparently there is no Madrid, Iowa, like the city of Madrid in Spain, but only Madrid, Iowa. I have absolutely no idea why Central Iowa decided this, but no one argues with it or seems to think it's even that weird. Additionally, if you ask Central Iowans about the state or the city in Spain,

Starting point is 00:20:28 they will pronounce the words correctly, and the irony of that seems totally lost on them. And apparently there are a number of places in Iowa that the locals pronounce in their own Iowan way. I found an article from September in the Des Moines Register with a list of 17 names and a cute video of them testing their own staff members, most of whom were from other states, to see how many of them knew the correct Iowan pronunciations. The article says, Iowans seem to have their own language. Newcomers and visitors to the state can tell you that. This parlance extends to the names of small towns with pronunciations that, for non-Iowans, seem to defy logic. That list did include Mudred and Nevada, and some other examples are what non-Iowans would call Buena Vista is apparently Buena Vista for Iowans, or pronouncing what many English speakers would call Tripoli as Tripola.

Starting point is 00:21:22 I'm sure the residents of these towns must be very used to having the names pronounced supposedly incorrectly. That really makes you wonder how that comes about in the first place then. If they themselves would remark on how unusual these pronunciations are, you know what I mean? Yeah. It's not like if you live there, it just seems natural. Apparently, that's not the case. I guess, I mean, maybe it does seem natural to you if you live there, but I guess some people at least have noticed that it's not how maybe the rest of the world would pronounce the words. Right, that whoever established that in the first place was somewhat off the beaten path. I was thinking they should have just come up with their own names for everything, right?

Starting point is 00:22:00 Just made up their own names and then nobody could say they're pronounced wrong, right? right? Just made up their own names and then nobody could say they're pronounced wrong, right? But if you're going to take a name like Tripoli that people are familiar with and just give it a weird pronunciation, people are going to remark on it. Also on the topic of places whose names aren't pronounced like they look, in episode 360, we had discussed the pronunciation of Dubois, Wyoming. Alex Baumans wrote, The mention of Dubois, Wyoming brought back memoriesans wrote, the mention of Dubois, Wyoming brought back memories. I visited the town way back in the late 90s. I can't remember seeing any jackalopes, but I do remember they made a point of explaining the proper pronunciation. What the proper pronunciation is

Starting point is 00:22:36 can be tricky, especially if names travel across languages. I work in HVAC, and there is a German brand of heating equipment called Vaillant, spelled V-A-I-L-L-A-N-T. The name is French, as the company was founded by the descendants of a French immigrant in the Rhineland. Now, here in Belgium, we use, of course, the French pronunciation, which stress on the last syllable, a Y sound in the middle, and a nasal at the end. It is a French word, after all. The Germans at Vaillant themselves, however, pronounce it as if it were a normal German word, which stress on the first syllable, an L in the middle, and a clearly defined NT at the end. This causes an unbridgeable gap. If you use the French pronunciation in Germany, people will stare at you,

Starting point is 00:23:21 wondering what French brand you are on about. On the other hand, if you use the German pronunciation over here, the one the Germans use themselves, you come across as some idiot who has never heard of French, and people stare at you even harder. I suppose the company itself could declare some preference, but people don't tend to follow that kind of thing, you know? Yeah, and maybe not people in other countries. It sounds like the Germans have an established way of saying it, but that doesn't mean people in other countries are necessarily going to follow that. Also in episode 360, we discussed the order in which names are said, whether you start with a person's given name or their family name.

Starting point is 00:23:57 We heard from Max Urey, who has a Hungarian father but lives in the Netherlands, and who had taken a class on Japanese cinema, where the professor referred to directors with their family names before their given names. Max wondered, if you use a language that reverses that custom, as in Dutch or English, but are referring to Japanese people, which order should you use? Max used the example of a Japanese director that I pronounced, Kurosawa Akira. And this turned out to be a good example of both the question of which order should be used for the name and of which pronunciation I should have used. I actually debated that for a bit before recording the episode, and in the end, I went with my attempt at a more Japanese pronunciation of the name rather than a more typically American pronunciation. And that seemed off to at least some listeners who are used to a

Starting point is 00:24:43 different pronunciation, which I guess just goes to show that there really doesn't seem to be any fully correct answers to this kind of question. Many Americans know him as Akira Kurosawa. Yeah. That's what I think you hear most often here. Yeah. And you know, I just couldn't quite decide because the person sending the email was sending it from Europe. And I couldn't assume that they use an American pronunciation in Europe. And it was also in reference to a class on Japanese cinema where I was assuming they would probably use more correct Japanese pronunciations. Or be more likely to, yeah.

Starting point is 00:25:15 Yeah, and so I don't think we've ever come up with a really good rule for... No, after all this. What pronunciation to go with. The only thing we've learned is that there's just no safe rule. Similarly, Christiane wrote, Dear Sharon and Greg, A comment on the name order

Starting point is 00:25:32 in episode 360 from another Hungarian, which is one of the few languages that uses family name first. If speaking English and a foreign name comes up, the order usual in English, e.g. John Smith,

Starting point is 00:25:45 is expected, and Smith John sounds very weird. When mentioning Hungarian names, the English order sounds correct in the context. Laszlo Kovács is okay, but Kovács Laszlo is a bit weird, but less so than Smith John. So for speaking with Japanese about Kurosawa, I'd stick with Akira Kurosawa. To make life a bit more complicated, Hungarians used to have the weird habit of translating foreign given names. Actually, this was considered the grammatically correct thing to do some decades earlier, so newspapers would write about Hitler Adolf and Clark Adam instead of Adolf Hitler and Adam Clark, who served as resident engineer on the Chain Bridge, connecting Buda and Pest across the Danube.

Starting point is 00:26:33 This strange habit likely peaked with Jules Verne, or Verne Yulia, who was probably mistaken for a Hungarian writer by most of the kids pre-Wikipedia, including myself. So a student heard Verne Yulia and assumed from that name that he was Hungarian. Yeah, I mean, how would you know that person was French if you give him a Hungarian name? Yeah, that practice is understandable, but it must have confused a lot of students. Thanks so much to everyone who has written to us. We have always appreciated reading your comments, follow-ups, and feedback. If you have any of those for us, you can always still get in touch with us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an

Starting point is 00:27:18 interesting sounding situation, and he's going to see if he can work out what's going on by asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Peter Quinn. A father and daughter read the same opening line from a novel. The father thinks the setting is a cloudy overcast day and the daughter thinks it's sunshine. Why? Wow. Is this a famous line? Among certain circles, yes. Would I have heard it? I don't know. It's possible. And it's the first line, did you say, of a novel? It is. Wow, that's very specific. And I'm not going to obviously make you guess what the whole first line is, but what could

Starting point is 00:27:53 it be about that would make two different people think two different things? Okay, so he, does it matter which thought which? Yes. Oh, okay. Really? Yes. So does that have to do with their ages? Yes. Okay, so he's the one who thought it was that? Yes. Oh, okay. Really? Yes. So does that have to do with their ages? Yes.

Starting point is 00:28:05 Okay. So he's the one who thought it was cloudy. Yes. And she thought it was sunny. It was a sunny day. Yeah. Wow. Really?

Starting point is 00:28:14 That's interesting. So that has to do, obviously, with their interpretation of the same language. Yes. So it sort of comes down to the familiar definition of a particular word? Does it come down to one word, would you say? No, it's a phrase, and it's not so much the definition, but what maybe different generations would think when they think of something. Yeah. Okay. Would it help me to know her age specifically? No. No, just that she's obviously significantly younger than her father.

Starting point is 00:28:44 Would he have, at her age, would he have thought it meant that it was funny? No, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry. He would have still thought the same thing when he was younger. Oh, really? Yes. As he does today? Yes. Okay, so it comes down to what era he grew up in, I guess, or she was familiar with...

Starting point is 00:29:01 Yeah. up in, I guess, or she was familiar with... Was she associating this phrase with some other, I don't know, some other cultural artifact or something else she'd read? No. Okay. It's more an issue of something changed. So older people would be more familiar with one thing and younger people with something else. Okay. I think I see the idea. Is there anything more I with one thing and younger people with something else.

Starting point is 00:29:25 Okay. I think I see the idea. Is there anything more I need? Are there other people involved? Is his occupation important? Anything like that? Nope, nope, nope. Just their respective relative ages.

Starting point is 00:29:34 Yeah. They interpret this phrase differently. Yeah. Okay. So I presume the phrase pertains to weather. Yes, but there was an analogy describing the weather, right? Yeah. Comparing it to something else that made the older person think that it's a cloudy, overcast day, and a younger person thinks...

Starting point is 00:30:00 It was sunny. There's sunny blue skies. Okay. I'll tell you, the book came out in 1984. And I think everybody reading it in 1984 would have interpreted it as a cloudy overcast day. But not anymore. But not anymore. Especially not younger people with a different frame of reference.

Starting point is 00:30:19 All right. So we're really coming down to what actually is the language or this expression. Yeah. Or it's more like what's changed since 1984 that it would have been seen one way and now is seen a different way? Well. It's something with technology has changed. That seems like a good clue. That seems like a good clue.

Starting point is 00:30:47 Something about technology has changed so that in 1984, a description of something would make you think of cloudy and overcast, and the description now would make you think of a blue sky. I see what you're saying. Yeah. But I still come back to it's some expression. Is it a metaphor, would you say? Yeah. It's going to come down to that, to guessing what the expression is.

Starting point is 00:31:13 I see what you're saying. Yeah, like if you could just think what piece of technology has changed so that it actually physically looks different now than it did in 1984. So that if you used it as a reference point, people are now going to... But so is it comparing the weather to this piece of technology or... Yeah, I mean, a very specific thing, but yeah. But that's used in like an umbrella or something that's associated with the weather itself. No, I mean, the beginning part of the line is, the sky above the port was the color of.

Starting point is 00:31:49 Oh, that's Gibson, isn't it? It is. Television. Yes, exactly. Tune to a, I almost know this. Right, tune to a dead channel. Yes. And Peter said that the book is Neuromancer by William Gibson.

Starting point is 00:32:04 And he said that when the book was published in 1984, all TVs were analog and showed gray slash white snow. Digital TVs in the last 20 years show a clear blue screen when not hooked up to a valid source. He says this is a famous first line among science fiction nerds as Neuromancer is the seminal cyberpunk novel and was hugely influential. Dads like myself would recall the old TVs or read the book when it first came out and would consider it gray.

Starting point is 00:32:30 Younger readers would assume he meant blue. I checked this by asking my young adult daughter. The color of television. That makes sense. Television turned to a dead channel. Yeah. Sue, thanks to Peter for that interesting puzzle we'll be back next week with another regular show and then an episode full of lateral thinking puzzles on november 29th in the meantime you

Starting point is 00:32:54 can visit our website at futilitycloset.com to graze through greg's oleo of more than 12 000 obloctating oddities browse the futility store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the episode with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you'd like to reach us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by the regardable Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 363-The Lambeth Poisoner

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.