Lore - Episode 116: Something Blue

Episode Date: June 10, 2019

No one likes to be sick, and yet it is one of the most dependable things in life. We will all, at some point, become ill, and when we do, the most important thing in our world will be recovery and wellness. Many simply wait for nature to take its course, but history is full of takes of those who have taken it a bit too far. ———————— The Lore book series: www.theworldoflore.com/books The Lore TV show: www.Amazon.com/Lore Latest Lore news: www.theworldoflore.com/now Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I bet you're very good at listening. Just a hunch, but you seem like someone who likes to sit back and listen to people yammer on about interesting topics for hours at a time. Well, you're in luck because I'm here to yammer on about an interesting topic for you right now. Introducing Canada's first 5G subscription phone plans from the new Public Mobile. That's right, now you can subscribe to your phone plan. Public Mobile, different as calling. Music They mummified themselves.

Over an 800-year period, 24 Buddhist monks in Japan managed to achieve the pinnacle of self-denial and mastery over their own bodies. When they were finished, they had successfully preserved their own physical remains for burial, all while they were still alive. They are known as Soku Shinbutsu, monks who have taken the idea of asceticism so far that they were able to mummify their own bodies. It was an act of devotion and discipline, but something that was rarely achieved. Those 24 bodies that have been discovered are thought to be the few who succeeded out of hundreds who attempted it. The practice was outlawed in Japan in the late 19th century, so we've lost a lot of the details as to how the process actually unfolded. The core of the experience was a retreat into the mountains, where the monks would subsist only on what they could forage there, mainly pine needles, seeds, and small buds. Over time, though, even that food would be given up.

These Buddhist monks had found an extreme use for the tradition known as fasting. By denying themselves the food they needed and only ingesting items that were rich in resin, they were able to slowly alter their body's makeup. And for many people today, that goal would sound familiar to a lesser degree, of course. For thousands of years, cultures around the globe have used fasting as a tool of religious devotion, mental focus, political protest, and as a folk remedy for illness and disease. Some view it as the reset button for the human body, while others see it as a chance to elevate their consciousness. Whatever the goal, though, the means are always the same, the absence or reduction of food for a period of time. But history is filled with proof that desperate people will go to extraordinary lengths in order to find peace and relief. And in the process, some people have even died for it.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. The Peace Linda Burfield was born in Minnesota in 1867, one of eight children who filled their parents' house with noise and laughter. But like a lot of homes, trouble eventually arrived to upset the peace. For the Burfields, that trouble came in the form of a traveling doctor and a gullible father. According to Linda's own account, she and her siblings were perfectly healthy when the doctor arrived for the first time. There was nothing wrong with them, and yet this itinerant medicine man convinced their father that all good things could come to an end. As a precaution, he recommended giving the children a special bluish pill that would help eliminate the invisible sickness waiting inside them.

The pills consisted mainly of licorice, honey, and glycerol, which all sound safe enough, except for the biggest ingredient, that is, mercury. Within hours of taking these pills, the children would experience the symptoms of poisoning, including diarrhea and vomiting, which the doctor told them was the drug removing their disease. Year after year, this doctor returned, and each year he gave the children the same blue pill. By her early teens, Linda's digestive system had become so damaged that she was extremely thin, constantly tired, and plagued by a never-ending stomach ache. But looking back, two things probably saved Linda from death. The first was her wedding. In February of 1896, she married a young man named Edwin Perry, and the two moved away to set up their new life together elsewhere.

A month later, the second lifesaver arrived when her father suddenly passed away in a mill accident. No longer would she be forced to take those awful pills, and maybe that meant she could begin to heal. Six years later, though, her marriage ended in divorce after Edwin skipped town and never returned. But while one chapter of her life was closing, another was just beginning to open. It all started with her discovery of a book called The Gospel of Health, written by a man named Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey. The book was a testimonial of sorts about the medical breakthroughs Dewey had made through the use of therapeutic fasting, and Linda fell in love with Dewey's message. So much so that she wrote him and convinced him that she would make a great student of his teachings. A short while later, she set up shop there in Minnesota, where she offered her services to people in need.

Around the same time, she met Sam, a former military officer who had been kicked out for defrauding the army. He was a drunk and a cheat and possibly still married to at least one other woman before he met Linda, but she didn't see that as a deterrent, more of a challenge, really, and by 1905 she had won, and the two were married. Word spread about Linda's fasting treatments, and people began to travel long distances to receive her special brand of care. Looking back though, I'm not sure the word care is even remotely appropriate, but that's certainly how she sold it. Whatever it really was, it was barbaric. Patients would arrive and be put into a strict system of treatment that included therapeutic massages and a diet of broth from boiled asparagus and tomatoes. Oh, and those therapeutic massages weren't relaxing.

They consisted of Linda slapping the patient on the stomach while shouting the word, Eliminate, over and over again. Like you, I find that sort of medical treatment with large air quotes difficult to trust, but apparently some patients found relief. One woman, 65-year-old J.B. Barnett, left after 46 days of treatment and claimed that she was fully healed, both physically and mentally. Another woman spent 43 days there before declaring herself well enough to return home. But not all was as it seemed. While Linda was spreading her message of therapeutic fasting and attracting a constant stream of new patients, trouble was brewing for her and Sam. It seemed that far too many of her patients weren't leaving at all due to the fact that they were simply wasting away and dying before they could get better. After the number of treatment-related deaths reached the point that Linda's reputation began to take on a darker tone,

she and Sam packed up everything and headed west, hoping to start fresh and build the clinic of her dreams. In 1907, the couple arrived in Seattle and decided that it was the perfect place to continue her work. But the deaths also continued, and the people of Seattle weren't too happy about that. The newspapers were filled with articles about her during 1909 and 1910, and as you read through them, you can see the city struggling to put a stop to her deadly treatments. Linda had somehow obtained a medical license, and that prevented Seattle from closing her down. And because patients checked in voluntarily, she wasn't guilty of a crime. And yet, Common Sense says she was.

She was offering a medical treatment that left far too many of her patients dead. Of course, she was responsible, but the way the laws existed at the time left the authorities with no other option but to watch and wait. While they did, Linda kept moving forward with her deadly practice. She moved her clinic across Puget Sound to the west to a small community called Ulala. But it was really nothing more than a house surrounded by a few poorly built cabins, cabins that contained slowly dying patients. Apparently, some managed to escape.

There are accounts of locals finding emaciated patients wandering the woods outside of town, looking for help. Most people avoided these escapees, though, because they were afraid of the powerful and now very wealthy Linda and Sam Hazard. But Linda was about to make a fateful decision. One that had the potential to either enlarge her fortune exponentially or cost her everything she had worked to build. Linda Hazard was about to cross the line.

Claire and Dora Williamson were inseparable sisters and friends. They were the daughters of a wealthy English military officer, and the sole survivors of their family after a wave of illness washed them out of their lives. By 1910, they were young, rich, and left to battle through a series of medical challenges all on their own. While they were suffering, they weren't lacking for any material wants. Gorgeous gowns from Paris and Hong Kong. Trips around the still massive British Empire.

Even a few stops in some of the more elite health clinics. But to date, nothing had helped them heal and move on. Heal from what, you might ask? Well, Dora complained of rheumatic pain in her legs and knees. As far as I can tell, both women had pains in their abdomen. One London physician had told Dora that it was her uterus putting pressure on her spine, or perhaps her ovaries were inflamed. But without a solution, the women were left to suffer through their days.

In the fall of 1910, the sisters found themselves staying at the Empress Hotel on the southeastern tip of Vancouver Island, just north of Seattle, when Claire found an advertisement in the local paper for the Hazard Institute for Natural Therapeutics. It was near enough, and they still hadn't found a cure for their maladies, so they wrote to the address and asked for more information. Within a week, they had a reply from Dr. Linda Hazard herself. She claimed that she could help them with their respective illnesses and asked them to come to her clinic as soon as they were able.

After discussing it for months, they set off in mid-February of 1911 and arrived in Seattle on the 26th, ready to find healing and feel better. Less than an hour later, they were inside Dr. Hazard's Seattle office. She was charismatic and powerful, with the sort of charming arrogance that you might expect from a turn-of-the-century itinerant revival preacher, and she insisted that they begin treatment that very day. Soon enough, they were moved into a Seattle apartment and told that once accommodations had been settled across the sound in Ullala,

they would be transported there. That treatment was exactly what you might expect from Linda Hazard. The sisters were put on a strict diet of broth, and then would be given their daily enema, sometimes lasting nearly two hours, before settling in to wait for their next serving of broth. I'm sure they talked a lot as they sat alone in that apartment, dreaming of the day they would be completely healed

and discussing whether they could feel any improvement yet. And they waited. Through it all, Claire was the bigger fan of the treatment methods used by Dr. Hazard. She was the one who had found the advertisement and reached out to the clinic. She was the one who had asked for help. Dora, on the other hand, simply followed her sister's lead. Yes, she was an adult and could make her own decisions. But she had always been, even back into childhood,

more of a follower than a leader. March of 1911 came and went. The women continued their treatment on a daily basis, and as they did, they lost more and more weight. As they became weaker from the lack of food, Dr. Hazard had them placed in separate bedrooms in the apartment and forbid them to disturb each other. It would slow their progress, she told them,

and no one wanted that now, did they? That was about the time that Hazard also insisted that the sisters keep their valuables someplace more secure than their apartment. She offered the use of her private safe back in her office, and eventually, after being asked a few times, the women gave in and handed everything over to her. On April 22nd, the clinic in Olala was ready to receive them. An ambulance arrived at the apartment and carried both women out on stretchers

because they were too weak to walk on their own. Hazard had covered their bodies in cotton wrappings, evoking the image of Egyptian mummies. But before the back door to the ambulance could close, someone else stepped inside. It was Linda Hazard's attorney. His name was John Arthur, and he was there to take care of the less medical portions of their treatment.

He handed a piece of paper and a pen to Claire and instructed her to write a letter to her childhood caretaker, a woman named Margaret Conway. She had cared for the sisters since their youth, and after the deaths of their parents, Conway had become a sort of surrogate mother to them. In the letter, Claire, under John Arthur's instruction, of course, told Conway that the Hazard Institute had full control over her care and assets.

It was, for all intents and purposes, a last will and testament, and by signing it, Linda Hazard acquired her first foothold on the young lady's fortune. Upon arriving in Olala, at the clinic built on land once known as Wilderness Heights because of its remote and rustic location, the sisters were put in separate lodgings, and their treatment was accelerated.

Along with the frequent enemas and infrequent meals, they were given that same Linda Hazard beating, as well as being placed into scalding hot bathwater. More paperwork was signed by both women, and their possessions began to slowly disappear. Soon after, Margaret Conway received the telegram at her home in Australia, and immediately felt as if something wasn't right. She boarded a ship soon after and began the three-week journey to Seattle,

hoping to find the sisters and make sure they were well. But there was no way she could have known just how bad things had become. When she arrived on June 1, she was greeted by Linda's husband, Sam, who brought news that rocked her to the core. Claire Williamson, he told her, was dead. When Margaret Conway sat down in Linda Hazard's office,

she was a storm of emotions. The doctor's hand rested on a blue leather notebook, as she told Conway about just how sick Claire had been. Hazard described the autopsy in detail, right down to the texture of the young woman's liver, and then asked, matter of factly, if Conway wanted to see the body. Too numb to fight the current,

Conway found herself swept out of the office and out into the busy Seattle streets. Soon, she was entering through the front door of the mortuary service run by local businessman Edgar Ray Butterworth. Inside, Conway was given a chance to look over Claire's body. But something wasn't right. Yes, the body of a young woman laid out before her was clothed in a gown she recognized,

but nothing else was familiar about her appearance. The face, the hair, even the hands, all of it felt like looking at a stranger. In fact, that's exactly what Conway believed she was doing. But before she could ask, they were leaving again, to visit Dora across the sound in Olala. When they arrived on the grounds of the sanatorium, Conway was overwhelmed by just how remote the facilities were.

Newer patients wandered through the spaces between the small cabins, but others could only be heard crying out in agony. And after she was led to Dora's hut, she understood why. The young woman she had known for two decades looked like a skeleton. According to historian Greg Olson

in his book Starvation Heights, Dora probably only weighed about 50 pounds. Her bones could be seen beneath almost every inch of her skin, and that skin had an unnatural blue tint to it. Worse, Margaret reported later that the scent of death filled the small one-room cabin, hinting at what was just around the corner for poor Dora. But Margaret wasn't about to let that happen.

She immediately set to work fighting against the hazards to get Dora released into her own custody. At the same time, she began sneaking richer foods into her cabin, hoping to restore some of the young woman's strength. But the battle with the hazards soon proved to be too challenging for her, so she called for help. That help came in the form of Dora's uncle, a well-connected attorney back in England,

who in turn reached out to a government official in nearby Tacoma. And after a drawn-out negotiation process, they finally found success. Dora was set free from the Hazard Institute and placed into the care of Margaret Conway. But it came at a hefty price, close to $25,000 in modern American dollars. Hazard called it a fee for services rendered, but everyone else knew what it really was.

It was a ransom payment, and they played along. But while that chapter of the story was finally over, another was about to begin, because Dora's uncle and his friend in Tacoma weren't about to let Linda Hazard get away with what she had done. Yes, the state of Washington permitted Hazard to receive patients and provide treatment. And yes, if those patients died, she was not legally responsible. But they believed there was more going on than broth diets and marathon enemas.

On August 15th of 1911, Linda Hazard was arrested on the charges of murder. But the bigger story were the revelations that would come to light later. It turns out that she had a history of shady business practices, including an unusual focus on wealthy patients. In fact, the land her entire Institute for Natural Therapeutics was situated on had been signed over to her by a local politician named Louis Radar, who died after seeking treatment from the good doctor.

Others suffered the same fate, and the Williamson sisters were just the newest names on a long list of what looked like a con game. Lure in the wealthy fish, hook them with the hope of renewed health, and then keep them isolated until they starve themselves to death. Something Hazard was responsible for the deaths of at least a dozen patients like that. But because the bodies had a way of vanishing without a trace, there was no way to know for sure. The trial began in January of 1912,

and the testimony that was given by witnesses only added to the darkness of the true story. Linda and her husband Sam had taken everything of value from their patients, right down to their gold fillings, and used it for their own gain. Linda would eventually add clothing from female patients to her own wardrobe, including a kimono that she took from Claire Williamson. The hazards fought back, of course. Their attorney managed to prevent Linda from actually taking the stand to answer questions. And for every witness who had a horror story to tell about life at the sanatorium,

there seemed to be another who was only too happy to declare Linda's innocence. And all of this went on for an entire month, drawing in massive crowds and filling the headlines of the local paper. When it was over, the jury reached a verdict. Linda Hazard was guilty of manslaughter. It wasn't first-degree murder, but it was enough to get her sentenced to 20 years behind bars. At least for a while, the people of Seattle would no longer have to fight for ways

to legally prevent her from practicing her special form of medicine. One last thing, though. Toward the end of the trial, one prosecutor did manage to get Hazard on the stand, and he inquired about the cure she offered to her patients. Did you make money at it? He asked her. She paused, looked at the crowd in the courtroom, and then, with a calm, cold tone, she replied, I didn't starve.

On the surface, there was nothing wrong with Linda Hazard's personal obsession with fasting. As I mentioned at the beginning of the story, fasting is nearly as old as humanity itself. We have records of it serving religious and medical purposes for thousands of years, from ancient Near Eastern cultures to modern times. The ancient Greeks saw fasting as a preventative step because they believed that demons could only enter a person's body through the mouth.

By abstaining from food, they were essentially locking the body down against evil. For the Puritans of early New England, fasting was a common response to troubled times. Cotton Mather, one of the prominent religious leaders during the Salem witch trials, actually recommended it as a solution to Salem's ongoing witchcraft panic. And it's still around today, in many forms. Some of them sitting just as close to the fringe as the beliefs of some of them just as close to the fringe as the beliefs of Linda Hazard. One woman in 2013, in Seattle of all places,

claimed that she was going to undertake a 100-day fast, with her only source of nourishment being sunlight. I was not shocked in the least to discover that her plans failed. Unusual beliefs aside, there's another undercurrent flowing through the story of Linda Hazard, and that's the twisting of her role as a healthcare provider. People came to her from across the country to have their ailments cured, and she promised them that she could do it,

with a single one-stop-shop approach, too. To her, every tool was a hammer, and the hammer was fasting. But what's most frightening about Linda Hazard is how she began from a place of compassion, wanting to help and heal people, and yet allowed her convictions and beliefs to evolve into a different, more aggressive attitude. One that said, well, if you can't survive this treatment, then you just weren't strong enough to begin with. There's something cold and heartless about that,

amplified by her utter lack of actual medical training and understanding of human physiology, and it's that mixture of pride and arrogance that led to the deaths of so many people under her care. It was frightening to the people of Seattle a century ago, and it's frightening to us today because, deep down, we know it could happen again. Linda Hazard arrived alone at the Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington, shortly after her sentencing.

She had one suitcase with her, had lost her medical license, and expected to be there for the next two decades. But two years later, Governor Ernest Lister made her an offer she couldn't refuse, promised to leave the country, and I'll let you out now. Hazard agreed. She and Sam packed up what they had and moved to New Zealand,

where she apparently had a large number of supporters. And wouldn't you know it? She set up shop there as a physician who used fasting to cure patients, patients who, just like those in Seattle, had a bizarre knack for dying under her care. In 1920, she returned to Seattle, breaking her promise to Governor Lister who had died a few months earlier. She arrived with enough cash to build the sanitarium she had always dreamed of,

and when it was complete, there were enough beds for 100 patients. The basement, of course, had an autopsy room. A massive fire burned the structure to the ground 15 years later, and three years after that, in 1938, Linda Hazard became ill. She was 71 years old and had lived a long and controversial life, but she knew how to get better. She was a doctor, after all.

Wasn't she? In June of that year, her husband Sam walked into her bedroom one morning, only to find that she had passed away in her sleep the night before. Her body was gaunt and frail and unnaturally thin. Which makes sense, of course, because Hazard hadn't taken the traditional approach to curing her own illness. No, she did what she had asked countless other patients to do over the years, and had approached it with that same dangerous confidence.

She starved herself. To death. The tale of Linda Hazard is a horrifying example of healthcare gone bad and is full of so many tragic players, from the Williamson sisters to her treatment of her own illness. But there are other characters in the story that deserve a second look. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear one more tale from the Outer Edges of the Hazard Institute.

The dead had always been there. For as long as Edgar could remember, he could see dead people. Not moving and talking, mind you, but real, actual dead things. At the age of just 14 in 1861, he left his home in New England to serve the Union in the Civil War. It was in his blood to be a soldier, after all. His own grandfather, Noah, had fought in the Revolutionary War, and this was his chance to make his own sacrifice.

But he was deemed too young to fight and sent home with nothing but a heart full of disappointment. He supported his family through his teens, but also managed to study law. By 21, he was a member of the Bar Association in Massachusetts, and a year later, he married a woman named Grace Whipple. But two years into their marriage, Grace died while giving birth to their first child, Gilbert,

and Edgar was left to raise his son alone. Maybe it was the grief and disappointment of his time in New England, or maybe it was his restless spirit. But in 1872, he and Gilbert moved west, picking up work along the way. They lived in Missouri in 1873, and then headed to Kansas in 1876. He eventually remarried, and Gilbert soon had four brothers to play with. But a growing family needed growing support,

so Edgar moved from job to job, looking for the right fit. For a while, he worked as a cattle hand, but soon discovered another more lucrative occupation, bone collector. Specifically, the remains of dead bison. It turned out that there were buyers who paid upwards of $10 for every ton of bison bone he could find. Yes, it involved carting wagon fulls of the stuff

over 125 miles to the nearest train station, but those $10 were equal to about $250 today, and he needed the money. Then one day, fate stepped into his life. He was returning from a delivery of bison bones when he encountered a lone settler on the side of the road. The man was in tears, and after Edgar stopped to see if he needed help, he discovered that the settler's wife and child had just died,

and that the man had no coffin to bury them in. What Edgar did next was the stuff of legends. He took the box off the back of his wagon. You know, the long wooden walls that held his cargo in place, and began to construct a coffin for the desperate man. When he was done, he stepped back and admired his work. He had encountered the dead once more, and managed to meet its needs in a practical way.

By 1881, the family had moved yet again, this time settling in Washington State. Edgar opened a furniture store in the southwestern town of Centerville, and for a long time, things went very well for him and his family, and when an outbreak of diphtheria rocked Centerville to its core, Edgar was called upon to help the dead once more by building coffins. Then in 1891, he moved the family one last time, and they headed north to Seattle.

It was time to take his lifelong interest in serving the dead to its fullest potential, so he purchased a local undertaker business, and began to build it into something bigger and more powerful than it had once been. Within a decade, he was the proud owner of a massive five-story facility that held all manner of services for his funeral business. There was a chapel inside that could seat 200 people, a crematorium, and even the West Coast's first elevator. Oh, and something else that we might take for granted today.

A casket showroom. You see, Edgar was one of, if not the, first undertaker in America to popularize the funeral traditions that we know today. Elaborate caskets, crushed silk interiors, limousine caravans to the graveyard. His goal was to offer all of the services a grieving family might need from the moment they learned of their loved ones passing to the last moments of the burial service. Edgar and his sons managed it all.

They would pick up each body, transport them to their facilities, wash and embalm them, and then dress them for burial. They handled the newspaper announcements, floral arrangements, and even hiring musicians for the service. It was a one-stop shop experience, and from a very clinical perspective, he made disposing of a body simple and easy, which was exactly what Linda Hazard needed. In business circles, you often hear about the concept known as strategic alliances,

services that complement each other rather than compete for the same customers. Bakeries that make wedding cakes will often have brochures on hand for local flower shops and DJs because they know their customers will need those services. And in a weird, twisted way, Linda Hazard and Edgar Butterworth found a way to help each other. She kept him busy with a constant flow of new bodies to dispose of, and he provided a way for all her troubles to disappear without a trace. After all, even killers need to be efficient. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey,

with research by Robin Mineter and music by Chad Lawson. As you know, some stories inspire a lot of you to go read further to soak up as much of the background as you can. To that end, I wanted to recommend one of the primary sources for this episode, a book called Starvation Heights, written by Greg Olson. It's available on Amazon and Audible, and if you want to learn more about Linda Hazard's story, you really need to grab this book. Lore is, of course, much more than just a podcast.

There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more Lore in your life. I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic. You can learn about both of those shows and everything else going on

over in one central place, theworldoflore.com. And you can follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Search for Lore podcast, all one word, and click that follow button. When you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening. you