Fellow Ridiculous Historians, thank you for joining us in this week's classic episode. We're gonna be honest. We take a lot of license with the word ridiculous. Sometimes evil things are ridiculous as well, and this episode is about a very ridiculously evil policy in our good state of Kansas.
That's true. Why might you ask, did Kansas decide to imprison women for having sexually transmitted diseases? How long did this last? And why have so few people heard about this in the modern day? Let's roll it.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Thank you for tuning in. We would like to begin today's show with an acknowledgment of something that may have be fuddled some of you, our fellow ridiculous historians.
Hi, I'm Ben, Hey, I'm no What are you talking about, Ben?
I'm talking Noel about the fact that we double Oregoned.
Yeah, that's true.
On our quest to do one episode for every state in the US.
It's almost like we haven't been really thinking this through.
It's almost as if we were winging that one.
It's true. Well, we thought both.
Stories regarding Oregon were interesting and important, so much so that we didn't really decide which one was our official Oregon episode.
So we have two. Should we address right up front our double mispronunciation of the Malleury Wildlife Preservation, Casey, apparently you really peed the bed on that one. My man.
Well, I'm unclear on this because the comment, Okay, so there's the way they say it there, which is the American way of saying it, which is quote unquote wrong if you're going by the French standard. I don't know if people are saying my French pronunciation was also.
Oh no, I don't know what. No, I don't think they're saying that at all. Yeah, and I'm giving you a hard time, Casey.
So but yes bye. By sort of saying that's how French people would say it, then you guys started saying it that way, and of course that's never how it works out when an American city is named for some other.
So what's what's the real way, What's what's the real Oregonian way?
It's like mal here or something. I think the h is silent, right, I don't know, you know, I withdraw from this discussion entirely. Those folks can pronounce it, how are they.
Like okay, Well, just to verify we did find it, Noel, do you want to give it a shot?
Yeah, hang on here, mal here, that's doesn't that isn't that is that? Yeah, mal here.
Well, it's just it's just a different way of approaching it. And as we know, with proper nouns, pronunciation can be you know, very much on a case by case basis, and obey the rules of grammar and phonetics in absolutely no shape fashion reform.
See fourvo says it's mallur ma Oregon see three different ways, three different ways. So I don't know not to get a b in our bonnet right up at the top of the show. Don't let it get to you. I'm not gonna let it get to you. But this, this episode today is about a state that's not Oregon. That's sort of the whole point of this way right right right.
Also, we would be criminally remiss if we didn't do one of my favorite things to do on this show, Friends and Neighbors. Super producer Casey Pegram I just love the sound cute.
I love it too, But I've noticed we've drifted into a thing where we will Casey will be on mic and it's not necessarily Casey on the case, so it doesn't have to be. It's a brave new world. It's a brave new world.
It's just like English is a living language that continually evolves. This show and the country in which we record it are continually evolving.
Well, hey, I see where you're going.
Yeah, because today our journey takes us to Kansas in the nineteen twenties, and we want to warn everybody this is not a super happy, fun, feel good.
Story now, No, it's really not. Really. Nothing good comes of this other than the fact that it stopped happening eventually, right, That is the happy ending. The it in question, Ben, The.
It in questionable is the imprisonment of thousands of innocent people. Well, they were innocent by what we would consider criminal standards today, but morally they were considered quite guilty.
But not just people, Ben, women specifically and poor women. So what's the scoop?
So the nineteen twenties in the US sees the influx of many international influences because of people returning from World War One, which started in July of nineteen fourteen and went to November of nineteen eighteen, and not to cast aspersion on these returning soldiers. But a lot of them didn't just bring an appreciation for foreign food or new sorts of architecture music back home with them. They also
brought some diseases. That's right, because they couldn't keep their d's in their peace right where.
A family show.
So what ended up happening is they returned home to their significant others, or they met people in the States and they transmitted some of these diseases they had picked up.
Yeah, things like syphilis, gonorrhea, things that genuinely posed not only a national health risk, but also a national security risk. I read this the idea of it potentially preventing soldiers from being effective in battle. Right. Some of these diseases are no joke.
They debilitate you severely, especially as they progress, things like syphilis.
Right.
And then you know, as we mentioned, there were a couple of other diseases in the mixed chlamydia, the clap as well. And when this spike happened, it was noticeable. It was an outbreak. It wasn't just like two people in a town all of a sudden showed symptoms of god rhea when they were tested, and States started to panic and usually, unfortunately, when human communities panic, we often tend to target the people with the least agency or the least power in a community or that.
And when we panic, we tend to screw up and overshoot the mark a little bit, right, So, in an effort to quash these potential outbreaks, in Kansas in particular, it was in nineteen seventeen that there was a law pass called Chapter two five, known as the State of Kansas Quarantine Law. And what this essentially meant was anyone suspected of having a sexually transmitted disease. It basically gave public health officials an insane amount of leeway in terms of, Hey,
you there, Ben, you're looking a little peaked today. I think you probably have gone rhea into the cells with you.
So before we go any further, let's clarify here. STDs transmit across the entirety of the gender spectrum's right, So this means that if Kansas and other states are so very concerned about the threat posed by STDs, they should be locking up everyone who has one.
Right. Yeah, that's right, except we were just desperate for able bodied men to fight in this you know, horrific conflict, So it would be kind of counterproductive to lock up every man suspected of having one of these diseases, especially since the testing at the time right very inaccurate.
The testing was nowhere near sophisticated as testing methods today. Additionally, there was this huge sexual double standard, you know what I mean, talk about victim blaming this. We shall also say a lot of this information is coming from Nicole Perry, a University of Kansas researcher who dug into the story behind chapter two five. So we've established the gist right
the general way in which this occurred. But we should probably also mention that when they were taking women to court for these situations, they would find excuses to intervene in and then find out that they had STDs and then punish them like they would They would use charges like vagrancy.
That's right, no for sure. And the thing about this too is these women didn't go to the state penitentiary because the idea was that they would be abused by the male inmates. So nearby there was actually another facility called the Kansas State Industrial Farm, which was in fact a farm but is officially a working farm, but it
was officially listed as a prison. That's right, exactly. And the notion was that social reformers, as is discussed in this article from caseu R The Faces of Long Gone Women tell a New story of the Kansas State Prison, social reformers believe that women that went there had the
potential to be rehabilitated. But here's the thing. In this article, there's a woman named Jennifer Moyer who got a grant from the state to set up a exhibit at the Lansing Historical Museum, which is a very small place in a former train depot, all in the actual prison grounds. And she got ahold of all these amazing intake photographs of inmates when they you know, when they were admitted,
I guess, and they're incarcerated booked exactly. And she noticed that following the opening of this separate women's prison in the spring of nineteen seventeen, it only had about seventeen inmates total, and that was pretty common in Kansas. But when Chapter two of five kicked in, it rose significantly to almost four hundred women in the facility by the
end of that year. The end of that year, and that continued to grow because you see, after the war ended, this statute stayed on the books, and they kept using it to persecute women. Right.
And in her research, Jennifer Meyer finds short write ups of interviews that the inmates, that the inmates had with the authorities, and this is how she learned that several things were happening as a result of this moral panic, one of those being that women were being rounded up in raids, and then some had been turned in by jilted lovers, right.
And just in general, they were profiled because, like we said earlier, because those tests for these diseases were so inaccurate. Sometimes you might have a public health official who says, oh, you're sexually active, therefore you must have an stdre to the prison farm with you.
And then also this magnifies the tragedy. Some women turned themselves in of their own accord because they had been exposed to an STD and treatment at the time was very expensive, not to mention often not safe.
Yeah, I think the term toxic came up a few times. What are we talking.
Here, Well, we have to remember this is the age before the widespread use of penicillin, right, So there are treatments of things like sulfonylamide on gonorrhea, and these things could work, but they could also be dangerous. You know, you're poisoning your body in some cases.
Yeah, I saw another one too, for pre penicillin treatment of gnohea. That was something called cubebs, which is an Indonesian pepper that was turned into a powder and applied to the affected area. And if you can imagine rubbing a hot pepper on your genitals, that's not a fun sounding experience at all.
I mean to each their own, but yeah, I would say in general, that's not for me at least. So these people, if they were not well off financially, had no place to go to get treatment. Not to mention the shame that could spread around town, right, your reputation being key, especially in small town and the state of Kansas itself did not invest in free public health clinics at this time, So the closest many people could get to a free public health clinic is the farm.
That's right. Yeah, No, I mean, it really is a pretty dire situation when you have someone in genuine need who has done nothing wrong and potentially, you know what, had intercourse with someone who may have even known they had the disease and decided to keep that from the partner. You know, this happens all the time, right, So you're literally victimized people who are already victims.
Exactly exactly, and not only victimizing them in this legal sense, but also in this again this moral sense that you are a woman of ill repute and so on. And as you said, and I think this is important point, they were not held there for the rest of their lives. They were typically in for a matter of several months, right, two or three months. We don't know what happens to a lot of them after they leave, because there's no there's just no paper trail, right, except for in a
few very isolated cases. And these are young kids too, like sixteen to twenty two, I think.
Yeah. And if you want to see some of these women, you know, and you're in the area, I highly recommend that you check out this exhibit at the Lansing Historical Museum because these images are incredibly stark. They're captured using very high quality glass plate negatives, which I believe is still like a fine art photography method that's used today, and they yield these very stark black and white images.
And in the article, the curator of this Museum. This exhibit talks about how surprising it is that these images are so old, and that it's very easy to look at these faces and kind of identify and see yourself in them because they really, you know, other than the dress, these are humans and it's very striking to kind of see them because they I'm looking at this one of a woman and she's in her profile shot, she's kind of like looks a little timid and looking away, but
in her head on shot, she almost has like kind of a grin on her face. Yeah, and you know, and really some of these the clothes aren't even that dated looking other than just the little you know, what do you call it, the prison number and the you know, the little tag that you hold up look very much like a mugshot you might see today, only black and white. So, yeah, the slate.
There's a there's a very emotionally charged human element to this, and it's tough. Two, it's tough to overestimate the importance of these photographs in history, right because I don't know about you, Noel, but I'm pretty sure neither of us knew about this practice before we started examining it for this episode.
No, absolutely not and we met. We mentioned at the top of the show, and I think it goes without saying because of the military situation, but Meyer was asked how many men she found that had been incarcerated because of chapter two of five, and she says she couldn't find any. So I think that kind of goes without saying that that men were kind of able to just get away with murder. There's even a story about, you know, oh, I got a disease from my husband and he reported
me just to like get rid of me. It's just this kind of witch hunt kind of situation.
And the question that many of us are probably wondering at this point is how far did this go? How many people did Chapter two five affect? Well, we can say that number of people the penitentiary rose from seventeen to four hundred and this of the year. Eventually it led to around five thousand women being imprisoned at the farm while the law was on the books between nineteen seventeen.
And nineteen forty two. Insane. Yeah, that's wild, because you know, if it was designed to or at least intended to, you know, help with this war situation, it's interesting that it stayed on the books for so long after as a means of kind of rounding up what might be considered as sinful women in the eyes of like a possibly puritanical rule of law.
And you can read some great articles about this, particularly on the University of Kansas website. There's a great article titled Researcher Documents Gender class bias in Quarantine law Measures. And one thing that was pretty important to us in our research and with our research team looking at this was to note that the US does have a history of quarantining, detaining, or in turning citizens on its own soil.
Right exactly. The Justice Department actually oversaw the internment of more than what was it been, thirty thirty thousand, more than thirty thousand American civilians during World War Two.
Yeah, and this included more than eleven thousand people of German descents, Yeah, just just because of their ancestry, the three thousand due to their Italian ancestry. And then of course there were the US citizens who were in Japanese internment camps as well.
And not to mention the fact that in the eighties and nineties during the HIV AIDS epidemic or when it first kind of came into the public consciousness. There was actually suggestion consideration of rounding up those affected by that into some kind of quarantine situation.
And we know that ultimately that did not occur. But the scary number for that is, in nineteen ninety one, thirty four percent of the US public supported the idea of quarantining people who add HIV.
It's a similar situation to you know, with the STD panic that we're talking about in the twenties, where it is seen as it's something new that they haven't experienced before, and it's seen as a potential public health crisis. So you know, people do stupid stuff when they panic.
But we do have a I guess a little bit of let's say, light at the end of the tunnel of moral panic here, because that nineteen ninety one stat we just mentioned changes over time, and.
These stats are from a report from the Psychology Department of UC Davis. There was another stat from ninety one saying that as many as twenty nine percent of the population believe that names should be named. So I talk about a witch hunt for those suffering from AIDS and they should be made public. But in the Spanish, just a handful of years. By ninety seven, only one in six endorsed these kinds of policies, and fewer than one in five supported doxing these people for lack of a
better expression, putting out these names. So you know, and certainly the stigma surrounding STDs has similarly changed in this country from the way it may have been in World War One.
Yeah, one would hope that we are making progress not just as a society but as a species today. As we said, this law is no longer on the books in Kansas, but it is important to remember that things like this, crazy as they sound, really did occur.
It's true. And if we're doing a few stats, I think we should wrap with with a pretty interesting one today. According to the American Sexual Health Association, one and two sexually active people will contract STD or STI infection by the age of twenty five of some sort of some sort exactly, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that in someone in the neighborhood of twenty million, new in and says of STDs occur every single year.
The good news is, however, that there are multitudes of resources that can help you if you have any concerns. You can go get free tests right in a city near you to steal a line from that men's warehouse guy. I guarantee it, And of course you hear it all the time. Just practice safe sex and just be smart about it. There's all kinds of resources, like Ben said, and there's all kinds.
Of ways to protect yourself from getting one of these things. So you know, there you go.
No, it occurs to me that we have completed our Kansas episode, but there's so many other interesting stories about Kansas. Are we going to end up doing a thing where we have like four episodes about one state and one episode for other states?
Well, I mean, we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but you know, some states are greater than others in terms of the stories, but we're trying to dig for all of them. Man, we're not We're not gonna discriminate right against the states upfront, but the scrimmas state. Yeah, that's good, Ben, that's not that's I like it. I liked it. It was worth it, as you would say, And.
So we need your help. Let us know about the strange, little known historical oddities you have discovered researching a particular state in the US. You can tell us about it on Instagram, you can tell us about it on Twitter. We would love if you tell us, along with your fellow Ridiculous Historians about your research on our community page, Ridiculous Historians. And before we go, you know what, No, we've been on a kick about this lately. I say we double down and do some more listener mail.
Is it because the episodes has been running short?
It's because this episode is shorter, Yes, that's true.
But it's a good one. You know, it's absolutely worthwhile, very important, and it certainly was a darker time in this country. But you know less, history repeat itself always a good idea to kind of keep on top of the trends of the past.
Yeah, and now, without further delay, Casey, could you set us up for listener mail. So this is not our usual listener mail kind of thing, but I thought this was hilarious and if you haven't seen it on Ridiculous Historians, we wanted to share this with you.
First, Welcome to Nicole p. Nicole.
You are a new member on the group, and you recently said, does anyone hate these Starbucks ads as much as I do? I feel like they're on every podcast and they make me want to flip over tables and burn down as Starbucks.
Well, the joke's on you, because the tables at Starbucks are bolted down, my friend.
They thought about it, and just reading the descriptions of this opprobrium is so amazing.
Melissa E.
F responds, not just you, I hate them with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.
Here's the thing, folks, we don't always have control over which ads get in our show, especially when they're ones we don't ourselves read or endorse. But you know what, they keep the lights on, and they keep our mouths talking into these here microphone, Thank yous.
Just the one war though, this is I'm reading these because I you know, as a lover of language, I really respect a good turn of phrase. So Jerry m agrees and says, yes, annoying and somehow semi inappropriate, to which Nicole p says, right, it's like being told to have to pee by someone trying to seduce me.
Oh wow, oh wow, Oh my good gracious, that's that's the closest we can get as a family show. I really hope Starbucks isn't listening today. I hope they make an out about it. Hey, you know what, it's fun. We love Starbucks. Actually, I go, I go, I get my Starbucks. I get my Bucks on on the.
Rag and your point you're pointing by ads is right. We just we want to thank everyone listening for being so supportive of our show and also being so consistently hilarious.
Agreed. Okay, the next one is uh. I don't know. I'm not walking it back, but it's a little mea culp for me. We've got one from Cameron. A. Hi, my name is Cameron. Let me just say I love your show. I wait every episode you guys put out. If I use social media, I would join your groups, but I'm too busy for social media at the moment. However, regarding your latest episode at the time, this was the British soccer game where the Brits gave the Nazi salute. I was a little sad to hear you guys compare
the United States to Nazi Germany. I do respect that you first began with not to get political, but it still made me feel a bit unwelcome as a listener to the podcast. Not a huge Trump fan, a conservative libertarian, but he is still our commander in chief, and I wish him the best I can in his term as president. So I do just want to say that my statement there in our statement, I mean it was I'm the
one who said it and then backed me up. It was mainly just the idea of watching history repeat itself in terms of appeasement. I was not comparing America to Nazi Germany. I was more saying the pieces that were laid that led to something like the Nazis being able to take power are strangely similar to what we're seeing with our administration right now in terms of letting things slide. That there's like sort of an escalating effect that you can kind of get a sense of and maybe compare
the two historical circumstances. I am in no way implying that Donald Trump is one to one with Adolf Hitler at all, and we are not a political show. But it was a parallel that I could not help but notice and felt compelled to comment on.
I see also also this was interesting to me. First, Cameron, thank you for your well worded and pretty respectful email, But this reminded me of Godwin's law.
Do you know what that is? Gladwin's law, no Godwin, no relationship. Okay, god wy In.
It's a weird thing that you may have heard if you're familiar with the internet. Godwin's Law, also called Godwin's rule of Hitler analogies, is this Internet adage that says, as no online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches one, which this guy's argument is, no matter who who you talk about, no matter what you talk about, if it's online, you talk about it long enough. At some point, Nazis are gonna come up.
Have you seen this Teddy rouxspin, this new online Teddy ruxspin. It's just like Nazi Germany.
It's pretty the pieces are there. Yeah.
So okay, if you're cool with it, maybe we end with with a funny email.
Yeah, I think that smart. We go funny, heavy, funny.
Yeah, like m PR, which is true, that's their formula. We are also big m PR fit.
It's true.
So this email, everybody, get your ears ready for this. This email is called.
How could you do It? That should be a segment from from Noel l oh cool namesake in Oe l l e Ah whatever. Forget her. I'm sure you'll be famous. Friends.
So, Noel, you wrote in to say, I want to know how you could do a show on the epic song Louie Louie and speak of its supposed to batchry impact on America's youth and not even mentioned one of the greatest covers of it, John Belushi and Animal House. That one scene defines everything that the mothers and fathers were worried. The song was encouraging. Guys, it was a great show, But I kept waiting for you to at least mention this piece of American film history in connection
with the song. You blew it, guys. Double Secret Probation for you, Noel, Ell, I.
Don't get the reference. I haven't seen Animal House. Animal House is great, Casey, have you seen Animal House?
No?
I haven't, But I do know the double Secret Probation thing, because that was also like on the special edition when it came out, it was the Double Secret Probation Edition.
So so I've got to get you, guys. We've got to have a pizza party and watch Animal House.
I've never seen The Blues Brothers either, so I've got some real holes in my comedy film history, you know.
I watched The Blues Brothers when I was a kid with I guess some relatives.
And I think I just didn't get it, you know what I mean. I think a lot of it went over my head.
But thank you so much for writing in Noel and everyone else.
Let us know.
If I've got to take Casey and Noll to a movie night sometime soon, should we go for Animal House or should we go for Blues Brothers.
Or what about Blues Brothers two thousand?
I saw that one in the theater. Yeah, I heard it was quite bad, And yeah, you guys don't need to catch up on those.
Cool There's actually an episode of How Did This Get Made? About it if you want to check that show out with Paul Sheer and June, Diane Raphael and Jason man Zucaus. Paul Sheer, who has actually been a guest on our Sister Brother Peer Peer podcast movie crush.
YEP, and uh, Blues Brothers two thousand is ridiculously cameo heavy. So uh so, I guess it depends on how you feel about cameos.
But or what about the band cameo ward app Yeah, the band cameo themselves.
They don't get enough mentions and that's why you tuned into Ridiculous History so you can hear Cameo get the passing they deserve.
Okay, I know we're in Tangent City right now when need to have this up. But I have to say this because I was standing around at the airport. I'm listening a comedy Bang Bang, which I love, and there
is a character, you know the show. They have different improv actors playing characters coming on the show talking to Scott Ackerman, and one of them was his character was it's the guy from Cameo and every he just speaks like Hello Scott, Hello, Bam wired app and it's like that's how he speaks, and I'm like, I recognize that voice. And it was Carl Tart, who used to be one of the co hosts of our other cohort podcasts, Culture Kings. Oh, he's the.
Guy that Got Away Comedy's.
He also plays the chief on Comedy Bang Bank, the Carmen san Diego character. I had no idea.
Yeah, pretty awesome, congratulations Carl. Maybe we could have him come on our show at some point.
Who knows.
I mean, we are pretty friendly with each other and.
We do seem to be check out the recent episode with Robert Evans. I actually listened to it myself in the wild. That was a fun little discussion about the racist origins of Oregon.
Yeah, Robert Van's the mastermind behind the new podcast Behind.
The Bastard's True. Check it out, Check it out.
And let us know what you think, and tune in for our next episode, when we explore Oscar Wilde, the morals of Victorian England, the incredibly complicated fashion required of the.
Time, and an infamous pair of cross dressers who set the hoity toity world of late Victorian England ablaze.
Thanks to our super producer, Casey Pegram, thanks to Christopher Hasiotis, our research assistant, thanks to.
Alex Williams who composed our theme, and most importantly, thanks to you for putting up with us to knuckleheads and digging the show. We'll see you next time. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.