Stuff You Should Know - The Story of Starvation Heights

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

There are quacks and then there is Linda Hazzard. Not only did she starve her patients to death, but she took their family fortunes as she did it. This is the story of Starvation Heights.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and Chuck's here too. Jerry's here too. And I'm here too. That's me, Josh. And this is stuff you should know. The we're all three feeling weird edition. Yeah.

Yeah, isn't that strange? So, yeah, I said that I was just feeling kind of off today. And you said, me too. And Jerry said, me three. Yeah, what does that mean? I don't know. But, I mean, that is very, that's a very, remarkable to me that all three of us. I mean, we all have three different personalities.

Yeah. We don't like, you know, we don't live together despite what most people think. Yeah, not anymore. No. So I don't know what it is. Maybe some things in retrograde and something's house or something like that. I don't know. That whole thing. Yeah. Stuff you should know is in retrograde, whatever that means. So, yeah, we'll do our best with this. I'll do my best not to break out in tears. No, I think it would be okay. And big thanks to Julia for helping us put together this episode on one of the quacks of all quacks. I feel like we have covered quite a few quacks over the years. Yeah, this one isn't as bad as that one guy that we did, though, but she's up there for sure. I mean, I think she still has her supporters. Like, you can still buy her books online. Yeah. But most people who are familiar with their case are like, she was a serial killer. Right. She just had a strange, a strange method of murder.

Yeah, of bleeding people of their money. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And their life force, as Toby Hooper might put it. That's right. So, yeah, we're talking about a woman named Linda Burfield-Perry Hazard. There's at least two hyphens in there. Yeah.

And she was born in the 19th century, but was doing most of her work in the late 19th, early 20th century. and she was a person who was vehemently opposed, like from what I could tell, like very seriously, like this was her personal philosophy, against what would be called modern medicine today, but at the time was, you know, just starting out, as we'll see. Yeah, for sure. She was a self-described fasting specialist.

She had no medical degree. She did have wealthy patients, and I was about say patrons, but I guess they were patients. And she said she was the only fasting specialist in the world. You know, this was sort of the time of the sanitarium, sanatorium world where you could go off and practice some very questionable methods of healing people. Yeah, like the Kellogg brothers in Battle Creek. Yeah, exactly, because, you know, that we had not in the United States yet set up

sort of rules around the medical world at this point. No, but it's coming. It's like right around that time. And in part because of so much quackery that was going on. At the same time, a lot of this stuff is what you would call alternative medicine today or just sensible stuff. Like the Kellogg brothers had a bunch of weird stuff and their whole jam was fairly weird. But if you boiled everything down to what they were saying, a lot of it was like diet.

exercise, which is just great advice today as far as health is concerned. The problem is, like, some people took this to terrible extremes. Other people were peddling just, like, outright, fake and dangerous medicines. Like, there were, there were, the outliers were so bad that they were ruining it for everybody who actually had some legitimate stuff that they were doing. And Linda Hazard was an outlier, although, again, I think she was a true believer in herself in her, her, her cure. Yeah, for sure. But, you know, to be clear, she was not serving up bowls of granular. She was killing people. Like, I think 15 patients starved to death under her watch. Yes. And she would eventually go to trial for the murder of one. Yeah, it was a sensation in 1912.

A real sensation. Let's talk about Linda Burfield-Phearrihazard, who we're just going to call Linda hazard from here on out. But she was born Linda Burfield in Minnesota in 1867, as most people in 1867 were born. What, rurally? Rurally and a lot of them in Minnesota. I think something like 98% of births in 1867 took place in Minnesota. That's incredible. She actually had an experience, she said, she wrote, again, a bunch of books, 11 by my count. Oh, wow. And so she said a according to herself, that she had been, she had run into modern medicine as a child, and this doctor had given her some pills, blue mass pills, that are essentially mercury pills. And they were, like, fairly regularly used at the time, but they did not sit very well with her. No, it made it

really sick. Like, this, again, this is the day when they would, you know, a doctor would say, like, here, take this thing because it'll cure basically anything you have. And that's always the red flag, even if it's not pure snake oil, the sort of cure-all thing. And it made her really sick, very memorably so, like digestively for the most part. But after that, she was like, I'm done with doctors, and I'm going to eventually be my own doctor and be a doctor to other people. She married a guy named Edwin Perry in 1886, had a couple of kids, got divorced. And apparently, I don't know if that led to her divorce when.

she just sort of went center of left as far as her care goes. Do you think that was it? It's possible. That was the impression I have, too, but I'm not sure. There's so much just random stuff that people say about her that may or may not be true. There's a lot of surmising. I think it said center of left, too, by the way. Yeah.

The thing is, Chuck, is everyone knew what you meant. So that counts his communication, you know. Don't be such a prescriptionist. That's right. Left of center. But she married Perry, got divorced. and then fell into the care of Dr. Edward Dewey, who was a faster. He preached fasting.

He basically said that, you know, every disease that we have comes from habitual eating in excess, basically. Like, you're out eating what your stomach and your gastric juices can handle. Yeah. That's the sum total of Linda Hazard's whole thing. I mean, she had a three-prong approach, which was intense fasting, enema, enema, enema. I've read that that her enema's lasted for hours sometimes. I think that was also the title of your second LP, right? It was.

It was my cover songs of William Shatner's cover songs. That's right. Yeah, that's actually an appropriate title for that. Or lobotomy, lobotomy, lobotomy. Yeah. And then the other one was powerful massage that I think calling a massage is fairly generous. She would pound on her patient. and apparently shall eliminate, eliminate, because again, she's trying to get undigested food and

poop that's left over out of the body. And by fasting, you're not introducing more food. You're letting the body rest while getting rid of the food that's been undigested. That's the source of all of your diseases. Yeah, like you drank the colon cleanse before your first colonoscopy kind of empty. Yes, yeah. Oh, she would have loved that. stuff. Yeah, probably so. She did take a few nursing classes. You know, we have to mention that. I'm not trying to legitimize her or anything, but she did take a few osteopathic nursing classes. She opened a fasting therapy practice in Minneapolis there. Sure. This is when she went by Dr. Linda Burfield Perry, even though she was divorced from Edwin Perry. And yeah, she said, like, come on in. I'll beat on you.

I will not let you eat anything. Like really not at all, as we'll see, let's hold on to that little factoid, like how little these people are eating. Right. But she would find love again in 1903 or find something in the way of a swindler named Samuel Hazard, who was a, he would go to jail for bigamy because he was already married and I guess did not get divorced and also married Linda Burfield. And so he went to jail for a couple of years.

Yeah. And then got out of jail. And they're like, all right, we're good to go. let's go to Seattle. Yeah, and that's where her practice really started. The two of them together, like, really kind of established this, well, they call it Wilderness Heights, and it was supposed to be like a sanitarium or retreat where you went and got this fasting cure.

And it's like you said, you have to be wary of cures that cure everything. Yeah. And that was very much the case with hers. She apparently was saying, like, once you go through the fasting cure, and you get all this crowd out, you're set. Like everything from, you can go have a kid and have no pain during childbirth. You're not going to get toothaches anymore. If you're an alcoholic, you won't be an alcoholic anymore.

If you're depressed, no more depression. Like, it's a cure-all from her stance. That's how she basically advertised it, I guess. Yeah, so she's the main player here. Samuel, her husband, is a little bit in the background. but he'll pop up here and there when it comes to the financials. And then our other couple of players are Claire and Dora Williamson. They were English.

They were daughters of an English military person. Evelyn, Dorothy, her name was Dora. She went by Dora Williamson. She was born in India in 1873. And then her sister, Enid, Lily, and Claire Williamson was born in London in 1877. And they were basically from teenagers on had no parents. I think their father died after Claire was born, and then their mom died about 16 years later. So they were, you know, they were orphaned teens who were really, really rich and really, really tight, very close with one another.

Yeah. And seemed to be like adventurous, not in a hurry to get married, which is what you would think for the time period, to get married right away. They kind of like to travel the world and go on adventures and not follow the prescribed method. Yeah. They were independent women of the 90s, the 1890s. That's right. So they also, though, they weren't entirely orphaned. I mean, as far as like biological parents maybe are concerned, but they had a governess who took care of them as well.

And I think kind of was part of their life long before their mother died. But I have the impression that she was like an additional mom or an additional grandmother or something to them, right? I think that's how the richies do it. Yeah, for sure. So just keep that in mind that these women are slightly outside of the norm. They have no problem with being slightly outside of the norm. And they are very interesting and interested people. They're very curious.

And one of the things that they are focused on is natural health. Like they're just super into that kind of thing. And by the time they cross paths with Linda Hazard, they've done all sorts of stuff. Like any kind of cure you can think of. They've traveled to some sanitarium or sanatorium. They've traveled to some health clinic. And they've just done this whole thing.

It's like basically what they were interested in. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, they did some kind of brave things at the time for the time period. They were like, I don't want to wear corsets anymore. They're super uncomfortable. And I think they're probably bad for us. Sure. So they didn't wear corsets anymore.

They gave up meat. Eating meat was or being vegetarian, I guess, at the very least, was a pretty weird thing back then. Yeah. So they were definitely following their own path. And then in 1910, they were in their 30s at this point. They were in the beautiful Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia. You sounded like you're an announcer for the press is right. It looks really nice.

I mean, it's still around from what I can tell. At least the pictures look modern. Yeah, it's a Fairmont now. Oh, of course it is. And I didn't mean that snarkily. Like, there are some very nice fair months. Sure. I'm glad you said that because they're a huge sponsor of stuff you should know.

Not they're not, are they? I don't think so. It's like, why am I not getting any free juice then? Right. So at the time, it was like the nicest hotel in North America. And they saw an ad in the local paper from Dr. Hazard. And I guess we can call her a doctor, but I'm mentally using scare quotes. Mm-hmm.

And they wrote her a letter. and said, hey, we're two sisters. We'd like to visit Wilderness Heights and we're coming to Seattle. Nice. I think that's a great place to leave off for an ad break. Coming to Seattle? What could be better?

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So before we get back to Claire and Dora and Linda Hazard, we should probably make like a little side note here that, like, although Linda Hazard's stuff was bizarre, like this, the extreme she took it to. Like alternative medicine was still very much a thing. We did that whole episode on the Flexner Report, which basically said from now on, in the United States and Europe, it's just like medical science. That's it. Anything outside of that is cuckoo quackery and should be persecuted and run out of town on a rail, essentially. And so this was the time when you could still be an alternative medicine practitioner. You could still be an out-and-out quack. Yeah.

And there was no law against that yet. And this was definitely the gray area that Linda Hazard fell in. Yeah. And I think her case, and especially the case with these two sisters in particular, like, it wasn't the leading reason, but it was definitely evidence as they move forward with stuff like the Flexner report of, like, changes is needed. Their fasting had been around for a long. long, long time. Obviously, people fasted in the Bible, people fasted in ancient Greece. I think Hippocrates and Pythagoras both were into fasting. So that was not a new thing. Fasting is still a thing

and detoxes and cleanses and, you know, we've done our fair share of podcasting on that kind of stuff. So none of this is new or old. No, we did one on corsets too, I just remembered. That's right. Yeah, one of the other things that is definitely old about this is that whole idea of undigested food being the source of all disease. That's Ayurvedic in nature too. Ancient Asian Indian medical practice basically says if you have undigested food or build up a poop or whatever in your system, all disease emanates from that. So even Dr. Edward Dewey was not exactly like groundbreaking with that. idea. Yeah, and people are like, it all comes from the poop, and they're like, have you smelled

this stuff? There's no way that's good. It's gross. What if poop, not, you know, I guess we're going there, or I'm going there. Okay. What if poop didn't smell like that at all? And I'm not saying, oh, what if it smelled like, you know, something great? Like, what if it just literally had no odor?

Mm-hmm. And that was it. Like, would the world be a really a better place? Hmm. I say, yeah. Yeah, I guess, sure. I guess I don't smell enough poop in any given day that it really ruins the world for me. Well, I mean, you have your outhouse. Sure, but I steer clear of it. Yeah.

I was just curious at like on the divorce rate, like what all would change? Air airports, airport happiness. Okay, yes, airports. That's a really good point right there. Yeah, that's the worst. Yeah, it really is really bad. Like, that's a good reason not to fly. before like 10 a.m. Like it's one thing to be married to somebody, but you don't want to smell the poop of 12 strangers. No.

No, you don't. That's why no one should poop in public bathrooms. They shouldn't even have toilets in there, all urinals all the time. Yeah, they should have urinals and signs that say, hold it. Right. Just hold it. Have a poop. Go to jail.

All right. So, sorry to get to go off on a tangent there about poop. I've just kind of, you know, I've never done that particular thought experiment. Okay. Well, I liked it. All right. So, she had her big, big book. I mean, she had 11 of them, but I feel like the one as far as this goes, this most relevant is the one from 1908.

It's called fasting for the cure of disease. And that's where she laid out, you know, the program, which is just those three things, really, you know, fast to get beaten on. And get those, as Josh says, enema, enema, enema. Mm-hmm. And the first person to die from this treatment, she wrote the book after, six years after this, which is pretty disturbing. But in 1902, at her Minneapolis practice, there was a woman who was partially paralyzed. And very sadly, she died on day 37 of a 40-day fast. And Linda Hazard, as the doctor, said, cause of death paralysis. Yeah. That would be a recurring theme, as we'll see. Right. Because she also, she was declaring the cause of death for her patients as a physician, even though she wasn't really a physician.

And I guess still, even at this time, under circumstances like this, the local coroner would still take a look at any dead body. Right. Saw the body of this woman, Gertrude Young, and was like, I don't know that this was paralysis that did this because she's pretty emaciated. let's perform an autopsy and see what happens, looked inside of poor Gertrude Young and said, yep, she died of starvation just as I suspected. That's right. And as we'll see later,

Linda Hazard didn't think that was a viable way of dying. She's basically like, you can't starve someone to death. It's not possible. Right. So she's wrong about that. But she did not have a medical license, so she could not be like brought up on charges or anything. She was telling this woman,

to fast and the woman was fasting, she didn't have her, you know, locked up and chained to a bed or anything like that. She was just following the advice of the wrong person. Exactly. And yeah, Linda Hazard could just like shrug and be like, you know, what are you going to do? Yeah. This was like years after when she and her husband Samuel moved to Seattle and started their practice together. So that's not why she moved. This was just the first. The first, first body and her long body count, essentially. Yeah, I mean, bodies, you know, people started dying at her practice in Washington as well. And there in Washington at the time, you could be grandfathered in as far as what kind of

alternative medicine you were practicing. So she was kind of all good there. In 1907 is when she started treating patients in Washington. And, you know, right away, again, this wasn't like the weirdest stuff at the time. So she had some of the elite of Washington, like state legislators coming there. It wasn't like, oh, that weird lady in the woods that's killing people. It was, you know, it was sort of the fashion of the day in some ways. Yeah.

Also, there was a real deference to her from the local population, which were typically Swedish immigrants who were not necessarily formally educated. they didn't have a lot of money. So this was like, she made a lot of money, we should say, multiple times throughout her career. So she was wealthy. She had a lot of land. She was a doctor. So she said, she was much more highly educated than anyone else in the area that they knew. So she, like she was popular and people just kind of respected her in this area, too.

So in addition to these wealthy and kind of elite. you know, alternative medicine file patrons and customers, just the local people who had nothing to do with this still thought fairly highly of her too. Yeah, for sure. Even though people were dying, I think by the time Williamson's sisters arrived in 1911, seven patients had died under her care, six from starvation, or what looked to be starvation. And what was also learned was, like you said, She performed all the autopsies herself, and it was also revealed that the estates of these people were left to the sanatorium. So she was also taking their money, even though it was, you know, from the outside under the guise of like they believed in her so much. They wanted her practice to continue.

Yes, exactly. And this is where it really becomes murdery, you know? Yeah, like super nefarious. Something else that was gross that I found was, so the Wilderness Heights was like a few, like a handful of primitive cabins and then her cottage. And her cottage still stood until like 2014, 2015. Oh, wow. Yeah. And you could go into her cottage and it was still, there was still furnishings in it, including her bathtub.

And the bathtub of her cottage is where she was performing her autopsies. Oh, jeez. So that to me kind of like really gets across like, this is not. like a super polished outfit. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think that's important to keep in mind, too. She basically built some roughhune cabins in the woods in Washington and called this like her sanitarium. Yeah, and this is, by the way, in Alala Woods, Washington. Yes. So close to Walla Walla.

So close. So Claire and Dora get there in February of 1911, and she was like, hey, we're not going to stay here. in Wilderness Heights. I'm not sure why she did this. I have a feeling that she knew that she had some big fish on the line. Yeah, that's what I mean to. So she took them to Seattle instead, and she basically lied to him

and said that the Alala Woods retreat wasn't completed yet, even though I think it clearly was. Right. And so they put them up in some apartments in downtown Seattle, started their fasting treatment, and the vigorous massage,

and they were eating two cups of vegetable broth. Sounds like basically canned tomato juice a day. I also saw, I think Dora later said that they were made from asparagus tips, spinach, and lettuce. A broth made from that. Yeah, veggie broth. Yeah, so not anything that you could possibly even remotely get full off of. Yeah, like you said, I think a cup twice a day.

Yeah. That's just, yeah. So you're going to lose weight very quickly. And this was like 40 plus days of fasting that Hazard was prescribing to her patients, right? And so I think both of the Williamson sisters made it to 50 days before they were transferred to Wilderness Heights. They didn't walk. They were on stretchers. That's how they got to Wilderness Heights from their apartment in downtown Seattle.

Yeah. And, I mean, from what I can tell, they weren't screaming on the way, like, get, me help. Like, it feels like they were either all in still on this or just so out of it at this point they didn't know any better, you know? Yes. Or they were asking for help, but they were asking for it like Stevie from Malcolm in the middle where they were like, get help. It was pretty good Stevie. Thanks. Did you watch the reboot of that? No. Reboot. I can't give me. Give me one reboot that was as good as the original or even close. Yeah, I can't bring any reboots to mine at all, so I don't know, but you're pretty much right.

Like even the great kids in the hall, like it was just okay. Right. I kind of want to watch the Malcolm in the middle one, though. Oh, oh, you haven't seen it either? No, but I heard it was pretty good, actually. All right. Does Frankie Munis, has his voice changed? No, it's exactly the same.

And so it was, what's his face? What was the name, Stevie? Stevie, yeah. Yeah, I couldn't remember. I just remember Cranston was so great. Yeah, and his daughter's great, too. We've said it before, we'll say it again. On the pit, Dr. Mel is Brian Cranston's daughter, and she does a great job.

Yeah, I think we said that live on stage. I don't think the listening public knows that you are now on the pit. Yeah, but apparently it just stopped. Like, they just stopped putting out episodes, but that last episode does a not end in any way that anyone would ever end a season of TV. Oh, you think? Yeah. Like, Noah Wiley didn't leave yet.

I don't even think his buddy fully agreed to getting the treatment he's supposed to get. What's going on with Al Hashimi? Like, the last thing we saw, she just kind of had a meltdown in her car. There's just all the stuff's up in the air. Oh, I think that was the purpose. I think it just was cliffhanger after cliffhanger. Okay, yes, I can get cliffhangers, but it's almost like it just petered out rather than cut it.

Like, they just cut. Hmm, all right. Disagree. All right. Well, I was surprised that that was how they ended it. We just spoiled some stuff, by the way. Oh, yeah. We should probably...

Well, we didn't say anything huge. No, I guess... Noah Wiley didn't leave. Big deal. Okay, all right. Does he ever leave? I don't know. That's what I was expecting him to.

No, I just mean Noah Wiley. Like, he's not. He never leaves. He comes over. He overstays his welcome. Everyone's like, when's this guy going to get on this motorcycle and drive out of here? It's true. All right. I feel like we're really off the rails now. We should take a break and come back, yes? Yeah.

All right. We'll be right back. Experience with Cameron Wickcomb. Live at the Riemann. With flights and two nights in Nashville. To see Cameron Wickcombe at the legendary Riemann Auditorium. Plus a thousand dollar spending gas. Just listen to Pure Country for 10 minutes a day on the free IHart Radio app

and you're in to win. Cameron Wilcom. Stream the new single, Kingdom of Fear. Available now. I'm Nick Tuturo. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, the longest yard, or Spike Lease Black Klansman.

But I'm also from Queens, which means I know pizza. And on my new podcast, delivering happiness with Nick Totoro, I deliver pizza from Prince Street pizza to a new guest. Are you delivering pizza now? Then we sit down for a real conversation.

I've shared a slice with everyone from Seth Rollins. What are you doing? My belt. To Alex Rodriguez. Just to let you people know, we're talking to one of the goats here. To Bill Burr.

I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Tuturo. It's called Happiness, Delivering Happiness. Mariano Rivera. Oh my God. And many, many more.

Open your free High Heart Radio app. Search Delivering Happiness with Nick Tutro. And listen now. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. You know us, or rather you know them. Tony and Candace, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, The Chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years,

but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia, AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it.

And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Chryssel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. I thought he was going to write.

I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. Ayo rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Where we left you, Noah Wiley had not left yet the pit. No, I'm sorry. We left the sisters in pretty bad condition.

It was about 50 days into their treatment. They were obviously in really, really bad shape, having traveled by Stretcher to Olala Woods. And Claire died 17 days. 17 days after they got to the compound there in the forest. And this is like very triggering and super upsetting. So I'm issuing a warning here. But she weighed less than 50 pounds when she passed. And Hazard's own autopsy once again determined she died of a liver disease that came from a childhood medical treatment that caused her organs to shrink.

And when her the governess showed up, Margaret Conway, you know, finally arrived. she told her that and she was like, I basically raised these kids and she didn't have any childhood medical treatment that caused her organs to shrink. Yeah. And we should just say that Margaret Conway, her governess who we talked about earlier, she got a cable from one of them.

I can't remember if it was Dora or Claire, probably Dora. I think it was Dora, yeah. It's just basically saying like, please come, here's the ship you want to take. Here's where we are. Just get here. And Margaret Conway just dropped everything. And within a month, she had traveled from Australia to Seattle.

That's how long it took. Yeah, but I mean, she was welcomed. I mean, Samuel met her in Seattle and said, all right, let's get on the train. We're going to show you this operation. Like, it's pretty sad what's happening. But, like, we have a top-notch practice here. And they brought her to the mortuary to see Claire. And she was like, that's not Claire.

Whoever this body is. And I get the impression that it wasn't like she's so emaciated I didn't recognize her. Like I think they tried to pull a fast one on her. Yeah, there was rumors, I guess, that the local mortuary was in cahoots with the hazards and that they would switch out bodies that weren't emaciated who had nothing to do with Wilderness Heights. Yeah. With the emaciated bodies of their victims so that family wouldn't be like, I think you starved my mom to death. Right.

So Margaret Conway was not in any way, shape, or form put off by Samuel Hazard's charm or Linda Hazard's authority. Like, she realized, like, that they had killed Claire. One of the dead giveaways was that Linda Hazard was wearing one of Claire's robes in her favorite hat when she received Margaret Conway at the Wilderness Heights at their cottage. And that, I think, immediately rubbed Margaret Conway. the wrong way. And she was like, I give me Dora. I'm taking Dora home. And Linda and Samuel said, not so fast. Yeah. Well, Dora was in the same shape. She weighed about 50 pounds, was barely alive at this point. And so, yeah, she asked for her and the hazards are like, actually, we're the executor of her estate. She is under our legal guardianship forever. And my husband, Samuel, has power of attorney over

all of her and the family's financial matters. And not only that is you've got a medical bill you need to pay. You owe us two grand. It's about 70K today. Yeah. Margaret Conway is like, well, I don't have 70 grand. I have no idea how to overturn a legal guardianship. But it just so happened that Claire and Dora's uncle, John Herbert, was just up in Portland,

not very far away, even back in 1911, 1910. Down in Portland. Down in... Oh, yeah. It's got to be, right? No, 100%. It is. Okay.

I have which show we did backwards. Usually we do Seattle first and then Portland, right? Yeah. Okay. So anyway, John Herbert was down in Portland, and Margaret Conway got in touch of them as like, I need your help. Like, Claire's been killed, and Dora was in big trouble. She's about to die.

And these two hucksters have, like, all sorts of legal... mumbo-jumbo-jumbo going on. And John Herbert got involved. He's like, I'm a man, and this is the Edwardian era. So everybody listened to me. And that's when things started moving. Yeah, for sure. Samuel Hazard did produce a document. It was a typewritten statement that he said, Claire, you know, dictated this to us on her deathbed. But she didn't sign it because she was too weak to sign it because of the whole, you know, liver issue. Sure. I said to my relatives and friends, I'm writing the statement to say that Dora and I entered on this course of treatment only after thorough investigation that we have continued it voluntarily and that if death occurs, I believe that it is inevitable that it would have come in any circumstances. Which is like, I mean, it sounds like a child wrote that to get out of being in trouble, you know? Right, exactly. So, I mean, just that last line about if she dies, it was inevitable anyway, just so smack. of Linda Hazard's philosophy that you can't starve to death.

It was just very clearly fake. So John Herbert gets involved, thanks to Margaret Conway. They find, get this, the Vice Council of the British Embassy in Tacoma. Let all that sink in for a second. Yeah. They get them involved, and they get the guardianship overturned. Herbert gets the $2,000 unpaid bill. bill negotiated down to $1,000 and essentially pays a ransom for Dora to be released.

Yeah. And in the meantime, once he has Dora back, he starts looking into some of these other patients and finds like Dora and Claire were far from the only victims who essentially had been exploited financially while they were out of their minds from starvation. Yeah, for sure. So it's, you know, just like the movie scene is starting to sort of add up in his head. and he brings this evidence in to the authorities there in the county, and they investigate, obviously, and Linda Hazard was arrested for murder, for, I think, murder in the first degree of Claire Williamson

and for obvious financial fraud. And it was a, you know, you said earlier it was sensational. It was a big deal. International press, you know, first they had to find out where the O'Lala Woods was. And then they came there and started covering this case. and she was known as the starvation doctor. I think they started calling her place starvation heights instead of, what was it? Wilderness Heights.

Yeah, wilderness heights. Quite a burn. Yeah, it's pretty good one. And they, you know, there's a lot of speculation flying around, like, you know, that she had this holdover people. There was rumors that she may have been hypnotizing them to keep them under her hold. But like you mentioned earlier, there still are, and certainly back then, had people, either form. her patients or wealthy benefactors or other naturopaths that were like, hey, you know, she's a, she's a woman practicing outside the box medicine, and that's why she's being prosecuted.

Yes. We should say that it actually took a lot of leaning on the Kitsip County prosecutor, where Wilderness Heights was located, to actually prosecute this crime because, again, she had a lot of local support, and there were a lot of people who are like, she's being persecuted by these Brits, who are like total out-of-towners, and they're being supported by vocal people from the American Medical Association who want only doctors to practice their way. And basically, this woman's being, yeah, persecuted as a witch, essentially. So she did have a lot of supporters, but she had a lot of detractors too. It seems like on balance, at least as far as the press is concerned, she was generally viewed as a murderer and a grifter, I guess, a grifting murderer, terrible combination.

Yeah. I think the first thing she said was this, the first guy that came at me was a, an ambassador stationed in Tacoma. Tacoma, everyone. Does that sound remotely believable? Right. It does sound kind of made up. So January 15th, 1912, the trial starts. They lay out their evidence, basically, which was all pretty obvious. Like she's trying to fleece these people of money when they have no control over their own senses. And I think I had about 100 people testify for the prosecution. There were lots of doctors, you know, being paraded up there as expert witnesses.

And Dora even took the stand and talked about this scene basically. near the end where she was bedside and Claire is trying to whisper Stevie style something to Dora, like her sister as she's passing essentially. And every time she tried to speak, Ms. Hazard is, or Mrs. Hazard is how she called them, she kept talking and I couldn't hear. Like she would lean in and she'd say, Dory. And she would interrupt and say, how did you spell that name again? and like she would not let her

I mean this is one of the most upsetting parts like she wouldn't even let her sister perhaps even say goodbye who knows what she was trying to say. Yeah. And apparently also I guess Dr. Hazard cut in and was like I'm going to give Claire one of my famous massages and pressed down so hard that Claire lost consciousness

and shortly after that Dora was told that Claire had died. And so yeah those probably would have been her last words to her last words to her. or that Linda Hazard basically interrupted on purpose? Yeah, I think she actually died. Dora found out she died the next morning, so she didn't get that chance later either.

The defense, of course, comes in and said that, you know, it wasn't the treatment. She didn't die of starvation. That's when Linda Hazard very famously says, you know, it's not possible to starve someone to death. And, you know, trots out her book in the middle of court and says, here, read this. And this is the quote from the book,

Death in the Fast never results from deprivation of food, but is the inevitable consequence of vitality sapped to the last degree by organic imperfection. Right. I mean, that's quackery, like 19th century quackery, if I've ever heard it, you know? For sure, but, I mean, it is technically true. Like, you die from your organs failing,

but your organs get their vitality from the food that you're not getting. So it's kind of like potato potato. essentially. It is very, it's a pretty glib workaround, I guess. But she stood by that. She was like, no, you can't die from starvation. That's why she said Claire died from liver disease. That's why her first patient, Gertrude Young, first patient to die, she died from paralysis. It's whatever was wrong with you ahead of time. That's what killed you, not starvation. I don't know if Linda Hazard truly believe that. there's actually some evidence at the very end that we'll see.

But that's just so dumb that, and I have the impression that Lynn Hazard was not a dumb person at all. I just can't believe that she believed that. I feel like, given the financial piece, I feel like she knew what she was doing. Okay. That's just my, you know, take on it. Right. So again, there was some supporters who were like, hey, you know, like, She's being persecuted, and the jury said, you know what, we're going to split the middle here.

We're going to find her guilty on a charge of manslaughter, not murder. So everybody can be unhappy. Yeah, basically. She was sentenced to two to 20 hard labor at Walla Walla Penitentiary. Yeah. And that was in it, though, because she appealed the case and appealed it and appealed it all the way up to the United States or was it the state Supreme Court? No, the U.S. Supreme Court from what I understand. The U.S. Supreme Court took about 18 months to get there. And, you know, she had supporters sending in

letters the whole time saying to release her. The state of Washington did revoke her license to practice medicine. But she did continue to practice. Two more deaths happened after Claire Williamson. And then she finally goes to prison eventually at Walla Walla. Yeah. So while she's appealing and is out and about on bail, two more people die. She kills two more people. That's just crazy. She finally gets to walla walla, like you said. And that two to 20 years is what's known as an indeterminate sentence. Like you have to serve at least a minimum, but you're not going to serve beyond 20, right? So she was in there for, I think, less than two years before she was paroled. She very famously knitted ponchos for the other inmates. and when she did get out, I think within six months, she had been pardoned by the governor of Washington. Yeah, and, you know, it's kind of hard to get super accurate information for this old-time stuff, but I did see in the Washington archives there was a stipulation that she had to leave the country

if they were going to let her out. So regardless of whether or not that's true, she did leave the country. We'll get to that in a second. Dora also left the country. She went back to England and settled down in Gloucester. you know, lived a, sounds like a pretty great full life after that. She got married in 1914 to Reverend Wyndham Allen Chaplin and lived to be 71 years old, died in 1945, so she, she fully recovered from her, quote unquote, treatment. Right. And Linda Hazard went to New Zealand to

hawk her wares. Yeah, and was very well received there. During the trial, one of her vocal supporters was the Sydney Morning Herald, I think, or at least some columnist in there. And she made a ton of money again when she showed up in New Zealand. Like people just flocked to her for her treatment. And I think she long said like, hey, yeah, 15 people died in my care from the fasting. But, you know, I've had hundreds of other patients. So is that really that bad? And people are like, yeah, it is kind of bad. But also, you know, most doctors who lose patients don't also fleece them of their, um, their estate. Like, that's really what took it. Like, murder is bad. Murder for profit is really bad. Yeah. I agree. We're going to rank murder. Sure. Let's, let's, let's just face it. Murder for profit is

really bad. I agree. Uh, I think the piece that you were talking about, the one additional little piece of information that maybe she did believe, fully believe this stuff. Yeah. is that she herself died from her own treatment, June 24th, 1938, self-administering of fasting cure. So, you know, I don't think it was pure Hocum in her mind. I think she probably did believe it to a certain degree, but I think she took it to extremes to fleece people. For sure. Yeah, and that's Linda Hazard. Yeah, there's a book that a lot of this came from from 1997.

It's called Starvation Heights by a local. named Greg Olson. So shout out to Greg Olson in that book. If you can't find it, add a second or a third G, I guess, to the end of Greg Olson's name, and it should come up. Oh, is it G-R-E-G-G? Yeah. Probably won't come up on a search that's just G-R-E-G-Olson in Starvation Heights, 1997. But if you add that extra G, it will definitely come up.

Yeah. And if you just Google Greg Olson, you'll probably come up with the Atlanta Braves Catcher from the 1990. I forgot about him. He was a catcher, huh? Yeah. Okay. You got anything else about Greg Olson, whether you're talking about the author or the catcher? I know he was not a belly scratcher.

Your belly itcher? I think scratcher. Pitcher, not a belly itcher, catcher, not a belly scratcher. Oh, okay. I've never heard that second part. You just blew my mind, buddy. Well, since we started talking about Braves pitcher, and childhood rhymes.

I think it's time for listener mail. That's right. This is from Daniel. Hey, guys. Love the episode on Maple Syrup and all your episodes. Thanks. We want to let you know something similar in Australia. There's a tree called the cider gum or the eucalyptus guinea.

Nice. And it produces a similar sweet sap, guys. I couldn't find any evidence of it being eaten as is. But the local Palawa people of Tasmania would let it naturally ferment to turn it into a cider. like drink called Wyalena. Of course, the tree is now incredibly rare, mostly confined to one valley in Tasmania due to all the usual good things.

I sent sarcasm there. As a white Australian, I would love for you to do an episode on Bush Tucker. So much knowledge was lost due to colonization and genocide, but there's still so much amazing information out there. And that is from Daniel. Nice, Daniel, thank you. Have not heard of cider gum tree?

No, or Bush Tucker. No, so those are really great ideas, and thanks a lot for that. I cannot wait until we get back to Australia so we can try that cider. Bush Tucker is a food, apparently. Oh, I think Bush Tucker is, like, knowledge. That was the impression I have. Well, I just looked it up, and it's called It's a food. So, you know.

Thanks for that. He just gave me the rope, didn't you? Well, I tried to tell you those food. Well, I hadn't realized that you looked anything up. I thought we always discussed before we looked things up. Oh, sorry. Clickety click, type, type. There you go.

Now I know. If you want to be like Daniel and send us a great email, we would love that. You can send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the IHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, Portlandia fans. Brownstein and Fred Armisen here.

The Dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form. We're launching Podlandia, AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters, and pulling back the curtain on how it all got made. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life, guest stars, collaborators and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysall, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here.

You fully improvised, not just words, but a song about it. Well, I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. A.O. Rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nick Tuturo. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, the longest yard, or Spike Lee's Black Klansman. And on my new podcast, delivering happiness with Nick Totoro, I deliver pizza to a new guest.

I've shared a slice with everyone from. Seth Rollins. What are you doing my belt? To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Tuturo. It's called Happiness, Delivering Happiness. And many, many more. Open your free High Heart Radio app. Search Delivering Happiness with Nick Totoro.

And listen now. This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week, the news gets worse. The world gets crazier. And Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible you're the problem. Do you know I just found out who Sidney Sweeney was? If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men.

Do better or do less so I don't have to do so much. I'm Yamanika, and I'm out. Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.