Mary’s Got a Gun

to impart to his newest class project. The forty two year old teacher had been looking for a way to immerse his students in the history of the local area. He'd spent his entire life in the sleepy county of Somerset in England, and had long ago given himself over to its rustic charms. But his student's eyes glazed over whenever he told them that their home was the birthplace of cheddar cheese, or that it laid claim to Great

Britain's oldest road. As much as these facts fascinated him, engaging younger minds required something a bit more personal, and that's when the perfect opportunity fell into his lap. In the spring of nineteen ninety seven, mister Target learned that a documentary film crew was in the area, dredging up a century old mystery for a new television show. It was a story that he knew well ninety four years before. The skeleton of a young man had been discovered in

nearby Cheddar Gorge. Damage to the skull suggested a violent death, but due to the advanced state of decay, it was difficult to discern much more. The man's name was still unknown. Around Summrset, people called him cheddar Man, after the area where he'd been found. The mystery of his death remained unsolved, but the documentary filmmakers hoped to change that. Using new techniques, they manage to extract DNA samples from the skeleton's molar.

Then they posted ads around the local area asking for volunteers to send their own samples in for comparison. It was a long shot, but the filmmakers thought Cheddarman might still have relatives living in the area. Finding those relatives could transform the case and offer new insights into the dead man's history. For mister Target, that was the perfect way to get his class involved in a local legend.

He showed them how to gather DNA samples by scraping flakes of skin from their cheeks, and then mailed the samples to the filmmakers. It didn't take long to get a reply. The results were surprising. Cheddarman was not related to any of mister Target's students, but he was a close genetic match for mister Target himself. The pair shared a common ancestor through their maternal line, and this meant that mister Target was likely a direct descendant of Cheddarman's

mother or grandmother. As you can imagine, for a middle aged teacher, this was a startling discovery. He had known Cheddarman's story all his life, but he never guessed that he had such a close connection to the skeleton, and more discoveries soon followed. Modern analysis of the skeleton showed that Cheddarman had died in his twenties and that the damage to the skull was probably caused by disease, not

blunt trauma. In other words, he wasn't murdered after all, And years later, DNA analysis allowed experts to reconstruct what Cheddarman even looked like. They produced a lifelike three D printed bust, complete with hair and silicone skin in twenty eighteen, mister Target encountered that bust for the first time while visiting a local newspaper agency doing a story on Cheddarman. It was his first time coming face to face with his dead relative, an unnerving experience, to say the least.

Despite their connection, the pair didn't look all that similar. The retired history teacher, now in his sixties, was white with rugged, classically British features. Cheddarman had dark skin, apache beard, and pale blue eyes, the only visible feature that they shared. And yet mister Target couldn't help but feel a powerful connection. He'd been given the extraordinarily rare opportunity to look into

the eyes of a distant ancestor. Because while Cheddarmans skeleton was discovered in nineteen oh three, the remains were much older than that. The man had lived and died around eight thousand BCE. To this day, his remains are the oldest complete modern human skeleton ever found in Britain, which means that mister Target's family had lived in the area for far longer than anyone could have guessed. And when the teacher looked Cheddarman in the eyes, he wasn't just

meeting a relative for the first time. He was staring into the face of history. It was another busy day at Macy's department store in New York City. The depression had put a damper on the usual crowds that flocked to the Herald Square stalwart, but by the mid nineteen thirties, the people had begun to come back, and so had the pickpockets. As the shoppers crowded the perfumed apartment, a

young woman started screaming. A man had snatched her purse, and she was shouting for somebody, anybody, to stop him. The thief tried to disappear into the crowd, but a firm hand grabbed him by the shoulder. He whirled around to find a middle aged woman in a summary dress and large, broad brimmed hat. She looked, for all intents and purposes, like a middle class housewife out on a shopping trip. Or at least she would have if it weren't for the revolver in her hand pointed straight at

his heart. Instead of finding an easy payday, the thief had run a foul of dead shop Mary, the Scourge of the NYPD. Mary's life might read like a hard boiled detective novel, but it hadn't started that way. Born Mary Shanley in eighteen ninety six in Ireland, Mary and her family immigrated to New York City in the early days of the twentieth century. Mary was a loud, opinionated, and fearless woman, meaning that she struggled to fit into

New York society. She finally found her place at the age of thirty five when she became one of the few women to join the New York Police Department. In nineteen thirty one. Mary started out on the pickpocket squad. Each morning, she dressed in playing clothes of a middle class shopper and wandered the streets, monitoring the crowds in department stores, theaters, and train stations. She kept an eye out for suspicious characters looking to steal purses or shoplift.

Other days, Mary might go undercover to doctor's offices or private chapels. She was looking out for criminals taking advantage of women, like crooked doctors or people who issued fake marriage licenses. One of her foremost duties, though, was taking down fortune tellers, whose trade was illegal at the time. Fortune tellers were thought to swindle women out of their money, and while some might have tried at least to appear legitimate.

Others were crooked as a three dollar bill. In one instance, Mary had her fortune read by a mystic named Princess Juniata Flynn. Mid reading, Mary reached over and grabbed the woman's elaborate head wrap. She untied it to reveal a whole telephone handset bound to the woman's ear, through which her assistant was feeding her information about her clients. While Mary was already making a name for herself as a crack woman detective, it wasn't until nineteen thirty four that

she gained her famous moniker. That year, female officers were issued revolvers for the first time, and Mary quickly gained a reputation for using hers. In the late nineteen thirties, Mary was chasing a criminal on foot down fifty third Street. Sensing she was going to lose him, she raised her pistol into the air and fired a warning shot, bringing him to a screeching halt. This in incident marked the first time an NYPD policewoman used a gun during an arrest.

This soon became Mary's mo for particularly dangerous criminals. In multiple cases, Mary would be facing an attacker or chasing down a purse snatcher and fire her pistol into the air. The sound was enough to make them stop, and although she was often much smaller than her male criminal targets, her bulldogged determination made her a force to be reckoned with. For the next twenty years, until nineteen fifty seven, Mary stocked the streets of New York, using her unassuming appearance

to stop crooks. She often brought her young goddaughter along as a decoy, making her appear like a mother out for the afternoon, and in nineteen thirty nine she received the rank of first grade detective, the fourth woman in history to ever achieve it. She was personally congratulated by Mayor LaGuardia himself. Looking back, it really did seem like Mary lived for the chase. She never married, preferring the company of cops and crows to a spouse. She absolutely

loved the way that she lived her life. In one interview, she quipped, it's exciting. I would die if I had to go back to working in an office. It sounds like Mary was living her best life right on target. 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 Worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.