Alice Mitchell was madly in love with Freda Ward - sadly, she was also Freda's murderer. On today's episode of GWBB, Hannah and Deanna discuss gender, sexuality, domestic violence. and murder in Victorian America!
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Happy Halloween, Witches! Today we're discussing Mary Jane "Bricktop" Jackson, a New Orleans-based Civil War era prostitute and cold-blooded murderer, who loved to brawl and often used her custom-made knife to brutally stab men who crossed her. And because it's double-stuffed for Halloween, we also discussed the spooky historical origins of the Bloody Mary ritual!
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Spiritualism was a religious movement that came into the popularity in the mid 1800's, and remained strong through the 1920's. The movement insisted that spirits could reach through the veil to speak with their loved ones in the living world, and psychics raked in the cash to commune with the spirits of desperate widows and grieving families. Enter: Rose Mackenberg, famed "Ghost Detective" on a team of salaried psychic debunkers organized by Harry Houdini himself. Rose exposed hundreds of frauds and even testified before Congress about psychic fraud in the United States. She dedicated her life to making sure vulnerable people were not taken advantage of by Spiritualist fakers, though it didn't hurt that she got to wear fun disguises and work side-by-side with Harry Houdini!
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Welcome to our Halloween Special Episode! Building on the spooky historical women and the witch trials we covered last Halloween, we're jumping in time to the here and now, where things haven't changed much, and the scares are even scarier! Hannah and Deanna cover a range of wicked topics, from the Satanic Panic, a modern-day witch trials you don't know about, to the evolution of campy goth icon, Elvira! It's the end of the Spookin' Season and we're closing it out with a bang.
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If you had an ailment in the early 1900's. Linda Hazzard had a solution for you. That solution was fasting, a process she helped you complete in her private Washington Sanatorium, where she would oversee your meals (or lack thereof), your "treatments" (which included enemas and extreme body massages), and, in some cases, your wealth. She claimed her method of fasting could detox the body, cure disease, and make a person feel good as new...unless it killed you.
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HAPPY HALLOWEEN, WITCHES!!
In today's episode, Hannah and Deanna dive into the historical origins of the "witch" as we see her today; one of the largest witch trials in history (Hint: it's not the one you think!); and why we associate black pointy hats and broomsticks with witches.
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Alice Kyteler was a businesswoman and, let's be real, possible murderer in the 14th century Ireland. But it was a Catholic bishop obsessed with witches and demons who took the charge of murder and turned it into the charge of 'witchcraft', thus launching the mini witch hunt that occurred in the aftermath of the death of Alice's fourth husband and resulting in the first torture and public burning of a woman for witchcraft in Ireland.
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