Dishing It Out

knack for inventing. Literally. Her father, John was a civil engineer, and her grandfather invented the first patented steamboats in the US. Although little is known about her upbringing, we do know that Josephine eventually married a man named William Cochrane in October of eighteen fifty eight. William had gone off to California to try his luck with the gold rush, a return home empty handed the year before, he and Josephine

tied the knot. He eventually became a successful merchant and a politician within the Democratic Party, and they had two daughters named Hallie and Catherine. William's fortune continued to grow, and in eighteen seventy the family moved into a sizeable home just outside of Chicago. It was perfectly suited for hosting dinner parties with other members of the city's elites. But there were two big problems that Josephine still faced

even with all that money. First, her husband had a nasty drinking problem and it was affecting their family life. And Second, despite her elevated status, she was still in charge of cleaning up after each get together. After one dinner party, Josephine was in the kitchen washing dishes when she noticed something. Some of them were chipped. There was an inescapable problem of hand washing them. Some of them got dropped or were knocked against other cups or plates

and wound up losing pieces. Plus, she hated being relegated to the kitchen to clean up at the end of the night. She was sure other housewives hated it too, so she got the thinking. Sadly, in eighteen eighty three, William passed away after losing his long battle with alcoholism, leaving the widow to Josephine with his hefty debts which she needed to pay off, so she got to work. She converted the shed in her backyard into a workshop

where she started tinkering on her new invention. She also got a local mechanic named George Butters to help her. With George's technical know how, Josephine was able to construct a prototype of her new machine, which she called the Cochrane Dishwasher. She filed the patent for it in December of eighteen eighty five. Others had tried to automate the dishwashing process in the past. A man named Joel Houghton had been among the first with his wooden version that

he cranked by hand. It was a popular idea, and someone else tried again fifteen years later with another model that used a hand crank, but Josephine's was something revolutionary. She had measured every plate, cup, fork, knife, and spoon so they each had a perfectly sized home in her machine. Once filled, the compartments rotated around a copper boiler with help from a motor as the dishes were blasted with

SuDS from below. And unlike other designs that used harsh brushes to get the dishes clean, Josephine's version used hot, pressurized water to do the trick, just like today's modern dishwashers. Unfortunately, Josephine had put her cart before the horse, so to speak. She was so busy trying to get her invention off the ground she didn't consider its cost to produce. Her machine retailed for as much as one hundred dollars, and

that was too rich for most people. Plus few were able to supply it with enough hot water to get those dishes clean, so Josephine and her new company decided to market it to larger entities instead, like restaurants at hotels. She was a single woman running her own business at a time when most women were tending to their homes, but after her debut at the Chicago World's Fair in

eighteen ninety three, none of that mattered. While other companies folded due to the economic depression that had occurred that year, Josephine was able to sell her dishwasher to businesses in need of a way to mass clean their cookwar. She and George opened a factory in eighteen ninety eight, capturing the entire American market north to south and east to west, But she didn't get to see the dishwasher's adoption in

households all over the world. Josephine died in nineteen thirteen, when she was seventy four years old, but her legacy lives on today. Her company was sold to mixer maker Kitchen Aid in nineteen twenty six, which was eventually absorbed into the Whirlpool Corporation. So the next time you load up that stainless steel box in your kitchen, you know, the one with all those buttons and dials on it, you can thank Josephine Cochrane, a b brilliant inventor who

also hated doing the dishes. Let's be honest for a moment. If the last few years have taught us anything, it's that Americans love a good conspiracy theory. Maybe a little too much in some cases. But as bizarre as this might sound, these outlandish theories aren't a new phenomenon. The oldest conspiracy theories in American history revolve around the Freemasons, a name that's familiar to many a national treasure fan.

The Freemasons were founded in the Middle Ages by Stonemasons, but during the Enlightenment they focused more on religious tolerance and the sciences than actual physical building projects. They're not really a secret society, although they do have their own rituals, symbols, and handshakes that would put any summer campers to shame. The Masons might have i had a great deal of influence in the founding of America, from the Bill of

Rights to the building of Washington, d c. Itself. It also helped that Masons had a history of opposing royal claims, possibly helping to move the revolution along. After all, when a bunch of wealthy white men get together to discuss philosophy and decide they don't want to pay taxes anymore, anything is possible right now. While most of this doesn't sound particularly malevolent to us, the Masons had plenty of detractors.

The Catholic Church was no fan of Theirs, forbidding any Catholic from becoming a Mason, which was pretty easy to enforce in a white Anglo Saxon Protestant colonial America. Still, the secrecy of the Masons weighed on many people's minds, including Captain William Morgan of Batavia, New York. Morgan was born in Virginia and allegedly a veteran of the War of eighteen twelve, fighting directly under Andrew Jackson. Although we

have no one's word on this except his. Morgan spent some time in Little York, Canada, where he operated an extremely successful brewery and apparently was inducted into the Freemasons. He made no mention of those connections when a fire burned his brewery down and he was forced to sell off most of his worldly goods to avoid debtors prison. From Little York, he moved to Rochester, New York, then Batavia, where he became a bricklayer and stonecutter and developed an

impressive drinking problem and gambling addiction. Morgan claimed that he was made a Master Mason, the highest level, while he was living in Canada, although again there's nothing in Mason's extensive records to prove this. While he was active at a lodge in Rochester and tried to build lodges and chapters in Batavia, he was unsuccessful, and his constant badgering led to other members taking a dislike to Morgan. There were even questions about his character than maintaining his membership.

When the Masons officially ousted him, Morgan soured on the organization for good. Deciding that he was going to get revenge, He decided the best way to do This was to publish a tell all about the Masons, teaming up with a local printer named David Kate Miller and two other guys to get it done, Which is how, in the summer of eighteen twenty six, for a dollar a copy, you could get yourself a glimpse into the rarefied secret world of the Freemasons. For such a morally superior country.

Americans certainly love a scandal, and reactions to early advertisements seemed to indicate this book could be a bestseller, at least until funny things started happening around the print shop. You see a series of fires broke out in Miller's shop that summer. Morgan blamed the Masons, accusing them of trying to silence him. The Masons blamed Morgan and his drinking problem. Next, Morgan was arrested for a series of thefts.

Now he was in dire financial straits, but even as he was released from prison after lacking of evidence of one theft, he was arrested again. An innkeeper suddenly decided to demand Morgan to pay what he was owed. Bail was posted by a mysterious benefact on September twelfth, and Morgan was promptly picked up outside the jail by an unknown group of men. He was bundled into a carriage

and managed to shout murder before being whisked away. William Morgan was never seen again, well, at least not alive. In October of eighteen twenty seven, his body washed up on the shores of Lake Ontario and was identified by his wife. Although there was always some debate about that, the investigation, which had been going on for some time,

became squarely focused on the Freemasons. In response, they protested that while yes, an independent faction did kidnap Morgan, all they did was give him five hundred dollars and set him loose in Canada, far away from all of them. They did not kill him. Several men, though, were arrested and even convicted of kidnapping, but no one was ever charged with murder. Miller followed through on his friend's vindictive final wishes and published the expose. Thanks to the disappearance,

the book was a hit. In the coming decades, the Freemasonry became a byword for wealthy, corruption and cruelty, more like a cult than a philosophical society. On July fourth of eighteen twenty eight citizens of Le Roy, New York, published the Declaration of Independence from the Masonic Institution, and anti Masonic movements far outstripped anything Morgan could have dreamt of. They even led to a creation of the first third

party in American politics, the Anti Masonic Party. As a result, Masonic membership in the country plummeted, and while no member of the party ever held high office, the political landscape had changed. As for William Morgan, although his murder remains unsolved, he is not forgotten. A stone column with a statue of William on top was raised as a tribute to

the martyr. He faces away from the nearby cemetery, turning his back to the gravestones covered in Masonic symbols, one final jab at the community that had turned their backs on him. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey

in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show and you can learn all about it over at the worldoflore dot com, and until next time, stay curious.