Behind the Scenes Minis: Mansions and Coin Hoards

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class A production of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday, Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So we talked about the Red Path murders for Halloween. Uh. This is an interesting one because it really becomes so much more about like the psychology of a family and what was going on there, and also is a good example of how when information is withheld, people just make up their own versions. Sure, yeah, it really feels like a bunch of wealthy people kind of closed ranks, um, so that we'll never really know. I mean, I presume if they did that, it was out of some embarrassment or desire to, you know, yeah, hide what was really going on. It's interesting because, um, of course, Amy is kind of the lynchpin in the whole thing and how it got presented publicly, and her diaries have a lot of information about her day to day doings, but she really doesn't include personal reflections in them, so we don't have a great sense of like her personal thoughts on any of it. If she did write any such things, they are gone. She does seem to have been very invested in making sure that Cliff's name was in good standing going forward. Like part of what she did with the family money was established a library fund at McGill and her brother's Peter's and Cliff's name that was quite substantial. She did not do the same for her mother. She also had the gates that you would go through when you enter McGill University she had built. Those are dedicated to her husband, um Dr Roddick after he had passed. But there is also this whole thing that some historians have read into Amy story or interpreted Amy story to speculate about the possibility that she may have actually been whether or not in a Roman, in a relationship or not, but romantically fixated on Rose Swallow, who worked in the home. She did make some very unique and special arrangements for Rose in her will. It was one of those things where it was like a woman like Rose, it seemed weird for her to stay in the position she stayed in as long as she did. It wasn't really like growth. There was. The two of them traveled together a lot, so there's been speculation that they may have been a couple, or they may have just been best friends. We don't know, but again it's one of those things that like, because all real information has been shut down. And granted, that's the kind of thing that would have been the case anyway, right right for the early d It's not like she would go and I'm in love with our maid. Um, nobody was going to say that, right, But it's it's yet another piece of this puzzle where people are like, what was going on in that house? They surely didn't want anybody to know. And the other thing that makes this tricky, and it came up in some of the research I was reading, was that because of the families reticence to speak, what we really have are those fast and furious news reports that were coming out and that's it. And so you kind of have to sift through them and do like a pattern recognition practice and be like, Okay, well they all do say this in the immediate aftermath. So she was like, that might be accurate. They don't all agree on this, so we have to discount that across the board. Like there, it becomes very very hard to actually make any sort of coagent picture out of what's going on. I'm forever, forever fascinated. Uh. We said we were going to talk about the house, and here's why there is another house almost always called the Red Path Mansion, and it comes up in articles about this, even in like news stories. That is not the same house as far as I can tell. As we said, the red Paths very wealthy. They established a lot of that area and they continued to live in that area for a while, so many of them had houses built, so there's more than one Red Path mitch Um. The house that they lived in when this happened was designed by an architect named John James Brown in eighteen seventy, the year they bought it. It was a new house. And you mentioned that when you're looking for show art, you saw a lot of pictures of houses that look very much the same, and that's because he designed a lot of houses for the square mile that we're all very similar in appearance. So that's one thing that goes on. But there is a whole other thing that actually got a good bit of media coverage, which is a Red Path mansion that was designed by Sir Andrew Taylor in six and that house was demolished in after a very long struggle over whether or not it should be considered a historic property and restored. Part of it was demolished I think in the eighties, and then the demolition was stopped through like some sort of municipal action, and then it kind of stood there in disrepair. I mean, I understand how they get confused, because one, the neighborhood is obviously changed and layout a great deal over time, and the way one particular picture I kept seeing of it looks it looks almost similar to like if you were looking at the mansion where this murder suicide happened from the back angle, Like I'm like, oh, I could see where that might be the same house. But then the architects are listed as different and they are sixteen years apart in their construction, which just makes it very confusing. But even people who this is part of the problem that we're still feeling from the family's closedness regarding information, even people who were studying that newer house get it confused with the Red Path murders because there is that weird, kind of just quiet black hole of whats going on. And what's really really interesting is that there are a lot of discussions of that house, that historical home that was destroyed in that don't mention the murders at all. So people are just kind of connecting the dots because it's a well known name, and that is a mansion, and these happened in a mansion, and they're often called the Red Path mansion murders. And so I think there's some some things are getting conflated, and it makes it that much more tricky to sort the whole thing out. Hopefully, I sent you a pick or of the right How you did, I looked great that it took me a really long time to find that particular one that does not surprised me even a small amount. I found a lot of other pictures that I'm pretty sure are the same house as I sent you from a slightly different angle, but I also found a bunch of houses that were not. It's a totally different house. So yeah, we already talked about how a lot of the language that was used in the articles um is not great language about chronic illness. Also, just generally seizures can be really scary to witness and experience, but they don't generally make people violent. So the idea that like, he had a seizure and and murdered his mother, like that's just well, there's also this secondary thing right where and I am obviously not a doctor, but I did do some research on epilepsy and thinking about this um and watched a couple of lectures from doctors, like there are instances where epilepsy can present not as a seizure but as like seeming big changes in personality or mood. And so the thing that gets me though, is that if that was what they're trying to push this idea toward the doctors that testified, and I kind of have to use air quotes because they did testify, but I'm not convinced that wasn't all a story they agreed on before they got in front of the corner store. Um, if that was the idea they were trying to push, then the introduction of and he appeared to have been foaming at the mouth, that is more in line with a seizure, which would not really be the like you cannot really make those two things mesh in my opinion. The other thing is that the idea that one of the house staff had held the two revolvers and then had shown them that they had been discharged. The way he showed them they were discharged was by going, look, see this one has five bullets left in it. And this one has four. Well, that's not really conclusive evidence because we don't know if those were tempered or it wasn't like they did ballistics testing. Yeah, we didn't say that specifically in the episode, but that was what I had concluded they had done, was like being like, this is how many bullets are left. Yeah, that was exactly it. And I just there's so many things like that that really feel like they conferred and put together their story and then that's what went forward. The fact that those two people had been through the funeral and burial process in less than forty eight hours after the shooting happened is the reddest flag. Um, it's so strange. It's so strange, and we'll never really know what weird family secret they may have been protecting, or maybe they weren't and they just were weird and they didn't want anybody to know their family had any kind of normal problems. We don't know. We don't know where those weapons came from. The fact that there were two seems really weird to me. Mysteries abound. Yeah, I feel like the whole thing has to be allegedly because we don't we don't know what the real story right. So we may not have given you any sort of goblins or ghosts for Halloween, but we gave you things to think about and speculate on. It's a fascinating one. There are still descendants of the Red Path family um, who I'm sure have their own very strong feelings on the matter. The mystery will live on history mystery. This week we had one of the parts of our two parts of Unearthed for the autumn season of the year, and we don't normally break two parters across the weekend, especially once we started doing Saturday Classics. It's my fault. Makes seem like there was a bunch of stuff in between Part one and Part two, but it just doesn't feel as necessary with Unearthed episode since there's not a continual narrative running across the entire course of the episode, and also we just had some weird scheduling stuff happen. It's my fault, listen, We just went along. That's that's what's happens. We've had a number of surprise two partners, which is also part of why we are recording this episode on October the fourth, that it's not coming out so a way later than that, which is uh, not a buffer. We usually managed to accupulate unless we're specifically trying to get ahead of somebody going on vacation or having other time off that's planned, right, I'm just about to happen. I have a question for you going into this, okay, because one of the things that happened to on Earth in the last couple of years, since you're the person that collects and collates and assembles these, is that for a while we had a little bit of like a drop off because the pandemic was causing a lot of archaeological projects and other research things to be put on pause. Are you noticing that things have ramped back up to almost normal or yeah, I would put things into the almost normal rate of publishing category at this point. I also think there was a period where I was finding a lot of stuff that specifically referenced like a museum inventory ing its entire collection while it was closed because of the pandemic, or restoration work that was going on that was that continued during the pandemic with like three people there like that kind of stuff, And there were some references to the pandemmic and work that was either paused because of the pandemic or was carried out specifically because people had the opportunity during the pandemic. Uh, there was some of that this time, but I feel like less than last time. Yeah. I'm just fascinated by that EBB and flow. Yeah, yeah, and it's I was actually kind of surprised that I don't think we've wind up having a one part of this in a while. Um, which back when we started doing them quarterly instead of twice a year, and that was up from once a year, I was like, surely at some point there will only be one episode's worth of stuff to talk about. But this time, as is always the case, I had two episodes, not always but usually the case lately, I had two episodes of steps to talk about, and then also stuff that I had bookmarked that we did not talk about for various reasons, some of it just because it was more coin hordes that I feel like they added more to the discussion I thought about your coin hordes recently. I'm trying to think of a way I can talk about this without spoiling anything because it's about Uh, it will not be a spoiler when this comes out, but you have not seen this yet, which is an episode of and or where they are in an antiquity shop and someone mentions, We've just gotten in quite an interesting bunch of coins, and I was like, oh my gosh, coin hards who followed me to space, I can't escape there everywhere. That's pretty great. This also got worked on in a particularly chaotic way because there was like I had time off that has happened now, um, and then came back and we had Folks have probably heard that the the I Heart radio podcasters formed a union that is recognized were union bargaining, and so this was pulled together in the midst of having a lot of time devoted to union bargaining because I've been working on that with the union. So that is proceeding a pace, is how I can describe that. Um. So, as I was yesterday going through all of this, I kept finding stuff where it was clear that I had been working on something, and then I had gotten the message that was like we're back to the table. Okay, I gotta go back to the table. Now done, done done. I mean, I feel like I always work in fits and starts, So for me, there's always like a half left sentence where my brain just goes, you know what, you gotta go cut out that dress right this Yeah, like a zombie. Yeah. I think you and I have like different mental temperament in that way, um, because I know you always, for as long as I have known you have had like twenty seven things you're juggling at the same time. And I'm more like, I need eight hours to focus on this thing, whereas I would if I did that ninety minutes in, I would stop be productive. It would literally become a thing where I I typed two words a half an hour. I don't, I don't. My brain just is like, no gear change please, it's another passing anything. Yeah. Yeah, I think probably lots of listeners right now are going it's Holly a d h D. And I'm like, I don't know, maybe maybe, but I'm in my fifties and it works fine. So yeah, I have similar questions about myself, sometimes not about specifically a d h D, but about like some under the like uh non neurotypical umbrella. And I similarly, I'm like, I'm forty seven years old, and I have adapted to the challenges that my brain's thrown at me, and it sure would answer some questions about my child. Yeah, I mean I remember I actually talked to my therapist about it a while back, and she was like, okay, but like, would having an official diagnosis really change your life? Like I just want to make sure yeah, And I was like, oh, I guess it probably wouldn't. I just be like, oh, I understand why that happens now, and then I'd be like, okay, I still want to shuffle things, because that's how I like it at this point. You know what else tickled me in this episode and the Tommins should case the idea that what we have long suspected to be a spy code might just be like a horse bedding horsepedding um. And it made me laugh because I have often wondered, I know, I certainly do this. I think most people do this, right. You scribble down notes to yourself at various times, and sometimes you even go back to your own notes and go, I don't know what this is anymore. And I'm like, how many completely innocuous Like you're on the phone with someone and you think of another thing, so you write it down really fast so you don't forget, and then you go back How many of those have people been like ascribing meaning to that yeah. Um, Patrick runs various D and D games as the you know, the d M of the game, and I don't think I've ever found notes that were related to a game that I have played in with him. But I have for sure stumbled onto like pieces of paper where he jotted something down for one of the other campaigns, just like on the dining table or something, and it looks baffling for a moment, and then it's like, oh, these are these are somede rolls. Yeah. It's actually more exciting to me when my brain refinds the thing that I didn't know what it was, but I kept it in case, and then like two years later, it'll be like, those were the measurements of that garment, and I'm like, R. There was one time. I think I've mentioned this on a show before. Um. I a lot of times will just plunk things into my notes app on my phone if I'm out and about in the world and something strikes my interest is potentially for the show. And occasionally I will go through my notes app to be like, is there anything interesting in here that I haven't really talked about? Uh, And one time I was like, WHOA, this sounds fascinating and I put it into my search bar and it was low Cations from Skyrim that I needed to get to. I love it. I love it so much. So Yeah, anyway, folks will get two behind the scenes installments about this time Unearthed because second parts coming out next week. Uh And until then, I hope everybody has a great weekend whatever is going on. If nothing's going on, I hope you have a great time doing nothing. Sometimes I love to do nothing a little hutter. It's the best, the best. Uh So we'll be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow and the rest of Unearthed on Monday. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.