Fellow ridiculous historians. We are going abroad in this week's classic episode, to northeastern England. I'm Ben your nol And right before we re listened to this episode and recorded this, you and I were looking back at our notes and we immediately said, oh, man, and you said that's a word.
I did say that's a word. Folks from Hartpool in northeastern England are apparently referred to as Heartapudlians, much like people from Liverpool are referred to as Liverpudlians, much like people from Lilliput are referred to as Lilliputians. Ben, have you seen the new sort of horror comedy The Monkey. I have.
Yes, it was fine.
It was a bit final destination coded.
Let's just say yeah, yeah, actually you know what I'm going to go on a Wednesday. It wasn't very good. I was not. You know, it's it's making your plused. Yeah, sure I was, because you know, I'm kind of like a Larry David character. So about fifteen minutes in I give every film at least ten to fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes in I thought, man, I'm not gonna get a refund on it.
I bought it on Amazon's I paid the price. I honestly Ben didn't finish it. But that's neither here nor there, y'all. We're not a movie criticism podcast, though we do critique things from time to time. Today we are talking about monkeys from Heartlepull hertlepull.
Yes, Hartleplian monkeys hangers even. Yeah, if you wanted to have fighting words with some people in this part of northeastern England, all you would have to do is walk into the local or the local pub. I guess we should say and start calling people monkey hangers. And this goes back to the Napoleonic War, classic war. Yes, actually for tacticians and students of you know, war colleges, which I'm sure a huge demographic for us, along with hungover
substitute teachers. Uh, the Napoleonic War. Thank you for the thank you for the shrug there, Maxis. The facts are the facts. Do they have war summer camps? Yeah? They? Oh man, that is actually a great idea for another episode in the future. Noel, we are sharing a story that I think made us both feel kind of bad because you know, I'm a huge fan of pretty much every animal other than the Honda Odyssey, and uh, I
don't rank it as a reputable vehicle. But this is also the tale of one incredibly unlucky little monkey.
Man Ah, the unlucky little monkey, that's right, And how the Napoleonic War, a terrified village and said unlucky Simeon collided in a ridiculous historical explosion for the ages.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. My name is Ben.
You usually do something that you usually do A bit at the beginning of the show. Threw me for a loop there, Ben, do.
You want a bit? We can? I think I need to go back. I need a bit. Okay, guys, journey with us back to the beginning. Wait, should we keep this all on my Yeah, of course do that. Yeah, we need a full time all right. So there's our super producer, Casey Pegram. Everybody give him a hand. You guys, we are flying blind today. We are. Here's instead of a bit, let's do a bit of background.
How about that, Ben, that's smart. That is a smart use of the word bit.
So everyone knows where we're coming from right now.
Well, that's very important. Setting up the scene is very important. So today's scene starts in h well, in France and Europe in general. I guess in the late seventeen hundreds, because you see in seventeen ninety nine Napoleon Bonaparte, remember the guy that got formed by cute little bunnies. He overthrew the French Revolutionary government, right, yes, and this triggered what is known as the Napoleonic Wars. Yeah, because he had designs on conquering like everything.
Yeah, he was like a more successful William Walker, who you'll recall from previous episodes. The Napoleonic Wars occurred between eighteen o three and eighteen fifteen, and this was the French Empire led by Napoleon against just a mixtape of various European powers voltroning together, usually led by the United Kingdom that was the ringleader.
And just just for a little bit of a quick bookkeeping, it was in eighteen o two that there was a thing called the Piece of Our Means that ended a decade of war between Great Britain and France.
Right right, So things were not particularly stable to begin with. When the wars begin in eighteen o three and before we go on this is this is gonna be a punchy episode, folks. I think that's the word you use. No, because when I said a bit of background, I was also talking on a meta level about our situation today. We are Noel Casey and I are in the studio for this episode, and then we're going to be here into the night making an appearance on a favorite show
of ours. Behind the Bastards. Should go ahead and plugged that and assume that we survived this recording session. Yeah, we'll see.
We're gonna be some punchy characters by the time that's all said and done. But yeah, our buddy Robert Evans asked to be on the show, and we thought he was joking when he said, yeah, you know, just be about three or four hours.
We're like, okay, you know, we're game.
But I'll tell you who else was game? Was Napoleon for some conquerings?
Yes, no, why don't you walk us through a few of these conflicts, because this context is very important to today's story.
Well, the US was actually involved a little bit as well. Napoleon got back Louisiana from Spain in eighteen hundred, and then he made a brash attempt to overthrow a revolution in Haiti, but it did not succeed, and so having Louisiana was not a valuable thing without the strategic stronghold of Haiti, so he decided to give it back to the US in the Louisiana Purchase of eighteen oh three, before Great Britain could invade it.
Yes, and in addition to this, the British forces were increasingly creeped out, irritated, angered, upset, and eventually frightened by Napoleon's actions in Europe, right with Switzerland, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. And they were also concerned, as you said, that Napoleon might not stop at Haiti, he might become a threat to Britain's overseas colonies.
That's right, because the British had the Royal Navy and they were doing quite a good job of defending their shores and French invasion attempts had not gone so well. But the tide kind of turned when there were some big successes by the French military and the power of the British navy started to wane a little bit and they really needed to kind of bolster that up. So there was a lot of paranoia there would be a
direct invasion by sea of British territories. And that is where our story truly begins with this paranoia and this concept of the French are coming.
Yes, the French are coming. There was a nationwide fear that some historians describe as interrational anxiety about Napoleon's motives and intentions. They were especially spooked when Napoleon assurded control over Switzerland. They thought the French the British. They just thought the French could be coming at any given moment. And one day, according to the story, or a legend, or at the very least alleged story, a French ship actually did land in England, but it wrecked. It wrecked
by an old fishing village named Hartleypool. Yeah, it was like.
Right there on the beach, and supposedly the heart Pudlians hart Lapulions came running and there were supposedly no survivors to this wreck, no humans. Well, oh, man, come on, come now, no human survivors to this wreck. But there was a little hairy guy who was, you know, in fact or in fiction, a monkey.
Yes, the only survivor of the wreck. There on the northeastern coast of England was a very panicked and traumatized little monkey who washed ashore miraculously survived. Keep in mind, everybody else on the ship drowned, right and the hard Lipudlians had never seen a primate like this before.
That is what they say, And according to a source from historicuk dot com, the monkey was possibly dressed in a tiny military uniform.
See, that's that's interesting. I appreciate these say possibly because again, there are things about this story. I think you can tell by the way we're carefully hedging some of these statements. There are things about this story that can't really be proven, but we do know internally the logic jibes because the monkey's supposed to be a mascot of the ship, right. Yeah.
But this is the thing, though, Ben, I mean, do do all ships have mascots? That's not something I'd ever heard of.
Surely not.
You carry around like a signature animal, like a familiar.
No, some military groups have done that.
Yeah, but I guess so like I can actual living create well, I guess like a football team, like having like the Uga bulldog or whatever.
You know.
I guess when I think of a mascot. I think of somebody wearing a you know, a big custos Yeah, exactly. So yeah, So this is a supposed primate, supposedly dressed in a tiny military uniform, was panicked as one could imagine, and gibbering mindlessly as monkeys do. And according to the tale, the Hartleypudlians interpreted this gibbering as as a foreign language, possibly French.
Let's pause there for a second, casey, could you do us a massive favor and play the sound of a monkey chattering, because we all know a little bit about French enough to know what it sounds like roughly, so clearly not French.
Why if you don't know French, who's to say? Who's to say? And that is the crux of the story, nol, Because the people of this town, the Hartleypudlians, had an awareness of the nation of France and the threat that opposed geopolitically, but not a person in the village had ever seen a French person. And to make matters worse, apparently, a lot of political satire cartoons of the day depicted frenchmen as hairy, monkey like creatures with sales and sub
humans exactly because they were the enemy. I mean it was sort of like the you know, the Red Scare type stuff. I mean, this guy is like gunning for their their lands, right. So yeah, so what do they do. They do like any god fearing, French fearing person would do.
They panic.
They panic, They absolutely freak out.
They bug out, and according to the story, they seize again this poor traumatized monkey who has skirted death once already. So they panic, It's exactly what they do, and they say, we have to do something about this frenchman. Yeah.
But thankfully, you know, they had their their wits were about them. They didn't let justice go unserved.
Ben.
They they decided to put this monkey on trial.
Unfortunately, due to the language barrier, yes, the monkey was not able to defend itself or provide satisfactory answers to the townspeople's question.
That's right, because the thing is, Ben, they didn't just think the monkey was it was a Frenchman. They thought the monkey was a French spy. And I've yet to find a detail that that justifies why exactly that was.
But those are the questions they were asking him, a lot of them. Are you a spy? Right, I said, are you a spy. He just keeps speaking frendship me. I know, I know.
So. Yeah, so they sentenced the monkey to death according to the tale.
Yeah, you can read different accounts of this, but sources that cleave to the story or the anecdote say that the townsfolk literally dragged this monkey into the town square and then they hanged him and he died. But this is where we get a couple of different I don't know interpretations and questions about credibility, because there's a darker side to the tale that we found in HISTORICUK dot com. Yeah, I know the one you're talking about on Ben The
Hanging of the Heartlepool Monkey by Ben Johnson. The dark turn is this, maybe the villagers didn't actually hang a monkey, but instead a small bully pretty a child who was employed on the warship because at this time there were boys who were hired on and worked on these ships to prime the cannons with gunpowder. Yeah, with the very convenient name of powder monkeys. Right. So is this a game of telephone throughout history with the misinterpretation occurring as
people tell the story over and over again. Yeah, it's true.
These are all very important questions that we probably won't have an actual satisfactory answer to spoiler. But it's because no one was there and it was you know, a lot of ships went down around that time, because, like I said, the naval exploits of Napoleon weren't all always that.
Successful, right, And according to Historic England's records of thirty eight thousand shipwrecks around the coast of Britain, fourteen ships sank in the Hartlepool Bay area around that time, so there it was not incredibly uncommon for shipwrecks to occur. So that's I think we can agree that's more or less the gist of the legend.
Correct, correct, But that's not the gist of the episode. I mean, we wouldn't just stop short there. There's got to be more, Ben, There's got to be more. Please give us more.
There has to be more. You're right, because you see, this is where the credibility of the tail comes into question. So you could say maybe something like this happened and it got embellished over time, right. But the problem is this tale is attributed to more than one place. There's a remarkably similar tale from seventeen seventy two that centers on Bodom near Peterhead in Aberdeenshire. I love British town names.
There's an even better one, ben, I believe that's a Welsh town or I'm sorry, a Cornish town, right, yes, yeah, I'll give this one a go. My never legacy, okay, nevigacy, that's good. Yeah, come on, Cornish folk tells us I would have done the same. I'm with you on that.
So in both of these cases, villagers supposedly find a monkey.
Yeah, and in one of them I believe they it was the last survivor of the shipwreck, and so they killed it so that they could have claim on the cargo.
Isn't that the deal with some kind of technicality law? Yeah, it's aberdeen Shire. H it's a brutal The monkey was human enough. I guess what would it have done. Would it have become the new captain of the wreck?
Would it have made a claim? And then the other one, I believe the monkey was an organ grinder monkey. It wasn't the same. It was a slightly different did a kid uh huh?
Yeah? That monkey had a comment that still happens when animals attack people.
Have you ever seen that show when animals attack people.
I've seen when animals attack.
Yes, but my favorite one is the one where it's specifically they attack people.
I you know what, I'm fond of animals attacking cars. H that's the thing. Yeah, have you ever seen those videos? Like, first off, if you have never been around a monkey, some of those monkeys are brutal. They are not playing no, and it will break into tart. Don't they eat their young too? Did I make that up? I don't know.
Never mind, let us know if that's just the primate stereotype that we've we've seen spread or we could just check it now.
Right. So those are two points against the veracity of the story that one thing very similar is attributed to a completely different town, And there are other points that stick with it. A lot of people who say that it definitely happened they're in Heartlepool are supportive of it as a being a part of local culture.
Yeah. No, it's totally like part of their heritage because it's weird. It's like, on the one hand, it seems like a term of abuse, but on the other hand, some people look at it as a term of pride. Heartlepudlians are often described as monkey hangers.
Yeah, And for centuries after the legend spread, references to monkey hanging were used to mock the residents the Heartlepudlians and apparently at football matches today between local rivals they have this chant who hung the monkey? Which I would have loved to hear out of context.
There's also a quote in this BBC article called was a Monkey Really Hanged in Hartleypool from a historian by the name of Keith Gregson, who mentions the fact that there was sort of a divide between the town because of a newly industrialized area.
I believe so.
There was a sense that the folks that lived in this new industrialized part of the town called West Hartleypool were more intelligent than those who would and the old more antiquated, you know, old and clinging on to the old way as part of the town. Who may have been the ones who hanged this monkey? So it was kind of a there is a divide.
There and that's the older part of the town is also where the fishing industry continued, right, so they would have been most likely to be hanging out by the waters. Yeah, And as the years passed, the people of Hartlepool begin to embrace this story as you mentioned, know, as you alluded to earlier, it becomes a point of cultural pride or something that differentiates their town from other nearby towns, and people begin to fall in love with it. It
becomes the subject of books. There's even a graphic novel. I think, there's a play. And there's even a song with a little bit of story behind it. Yeah, let's hear that.
Well, a lord there of auto was walking along the shore. But you se a little Harry Man he's never seen before, sitting in the sun. Was very little man punching a banana, and a little Harry.
Hansing also not proven. No, no, this this song spoiler. This song essentially does the entire story.
It really does, and it takes a good four and a half minutes to do it. So we'll go ahead and give it a nice little fade out right now. But the song is actually a big part of how this legend kind of came to be what it is today, right, Ben, Right, that's how it got popularized, or at least the evolution of a song. I'm not quite sure if it's this song. So they can actually find any attribution for what this song is and there's a set of lyrics that's a
little different. That is a reference to a song that was first performed in eighteen fifty five by a performer from the area by the name of mister E Corvin or Edward ned Corvin, who is a Victorian performer who toured around the area known as the Tyne Side.
You ever heard of this Ben? Yeah, he was a Tyne Side concert hall player, wrote songs and stuff. Tyneside is the banks of the River Tyne in northeast England, so its region that includes a couple of places, a couple of different places that have great names. Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, Tynemouth, Wallsend, south Shields and Jarrow. Probably mispronounced a couple of those, but if you're listening, you're from that part of the world. Hey,
shout out to you. Shout out to you. I thought you were gonna tell him to shut up no more. I want more Tyne Side. You know what's interesting about Ned we can call him Ned because we're fans of his, was that he was known for writing like a satirical song, a little bit of a lighthearted roast for every town that he visited. So he would go visit a town and he would write a song about them while he was there, and he would perform it in the town.
So when Ned goes to heart Lip, he writes a song about Yeah, he writes to talking about the monkey hanging hm. And this song becomes popular in the region. People love it. Eventually, from what I understand, hart Lipudleyan's themselves begin to be fans of the song. Well, here's the thing.
In this BBC article, they talk about how he was making references to a previous song that existed called the Baboon, which has written in eighteen twenty five, or which was first heard around eighteen twenty five, and it was a different story entirely about a baboon that visited the region with some Cossack soldiers. So I don't quite see the connection there, but just they both happened in Tyneside. Yeah too. But how did he know about the He just made
up the Napoleonic? Is that what's being implied here, Ben, that he just made this thing up wholesale.
What it seems they're implying is that this was a remix or a reworked version of the song, and that he took elements from the Baboon and used them in his song about the heartlek Pudlian monkey hankers.
But at that point was this already a legend? That's my question is like is the legend coming from the song? Like where is the uh? Where's the seed of truth here? Because there are people that still we're gonna talk about a second that still hang on to the fact that the idea of this could well have happened. Is it's such a bizarre story, but that logic always eludes me. When you say it's so crazy it must be true.
Well, also those folks, as we'll find, have skin in the game, right, The main people who believe it are themselves Heartlepudlians. It feels like Corvin heard the story, the French monkey story right, and then mixed with it aspects of the story about the baboon, also from Tyne side, and then added a dash of his own stuff. I'll here we go, and then set the whole thing in heartlepool. Okay, that makes sense, and here we go.
We also have something from this BBC article that says the original song had some phrases in it that he reused like hairy French spy Andan's uncle, and I wish I could find the lyrics to the Baboon. But there's another set of lyrics called the Monkey Song that's not the same as only played. There's a lot of these songs floating around, but it goes in former times when Warren strife, the French invasion threatened life, and all was
armed to the knife. The fisherman hung the monkey. Oh, the fisherman with courage high seized on the monkey for a French spy, hang him, says one, he's to die. They did, and they hung the monkey.
Oh.
But it's like it's got that same sing songy folky quality that the song we played has in the original song. That's when we played it because they think he's a spy, so we'll hang him in the square. And this one's just a little bit different. If the fishermen were courage high, seized on the monkey for a French spy, hang him, says one, he's to die, They did, and they hung the monkey.
Oh. So I don't know, man like, is it.
Song that's like making this legend a thing or is it oral history?
It's oral history first, and then the song, which is borrowing from other songs I got it, okay, So it's still and because it's a song, it's oral history. It's true. That's a good point. Then here's where we find disagreements. As as we mentioned earlier, a lot of the people who wholeheartedly believe in this story or claimed to are themselves heart Leapudlians. The successful mayoral candidate in the two thousand and two local elections, it's a guy named Stuart Drummond.
He campaigned dressed in the costume of.
Oh he wasn't just dressed in it, man, He was the official mascot of the Heartleaputulian Football Club.
Right, and he campaigned for mayor dressed in that character. But that was a it was like a sort of a goof. It was sort of a goof. But he maintains that it really did happen. But of course you would maintain that really did happen. He's running for mayor, wants the town to be unique. It's great pr and as as we said, he was the mascot for a time.
Yeah, but he also won. He did win and stayed mayor for like, I think eleven years.
He was mayor. Three election victories.
He succeeded and yeah, and it just goes to and he you know, he maintains that nobody can say whether or not this happened or not because nobody was there. And that's okay, that's one way of looking at it.
I saw a quote where he said that it definitely something happened. The problem is most of the people who disagree with him are professional historians, and even if they don't go so far as to say this never happened, they end up saying, we looked everywhere for proof of this, and we could find absolutely no proof. There was some excitement in two thousand and five when an animal bone was found buried on the beach, despite the fact that in the story the monkeys hanged in the town square.
People thought, well, this might be physical proof of a small primate washing ashore. Unfortunately, it was not a primate bone. It was the bone of a prehistoric deer.
That's right, a deer from somewhere the neighbor had a six thousand years ago when herds of deer would have migrated across that part of the country, and they were followed by tribes of hunters who wanted them for sustenance and for you know, the byproducts like their skin and there in their antlers and stuff. And this is from a great article. Well this is my headline, very very pithy headlined, very good ancient bone not from monkey spy.
Hopes of unraveling the mystery of the legendary Heartlepool monkey, said to have been hanged as a Napoleonic spy, have been scuppered by science. Scuppered scupperd's a great word. We need to bring that back. Like a scuppernog. What's a scuppernog.
It's like a type of grape, I think, Oh, yeah, yeah, sort of like a muscat.
Oh, okay, muscott, I know, but scupper see it again, scuppernog, scupper dog. That sounds so tolkien esque.
Yeah, you can make wine out of it. And in fact, it is compared to a muscadine. It is a large variety of muscadine. Oh, there you go, a species of grape native to the southern United States, so right here in our backyard.
And at this point it becomes somewhat of a matter of opinion, what do you feel better about believing the main argument for proponents of the story is that it's not hurting anyone and there's no proof that it didn't happen, which is not a particularly strong position to take, especially because on the other side of the coin, there's no proof that it did happen. That's right. So what do you believe? What do you choose to believe? Folks?
Oh, we're putting it to the people, well and to you as well, though, Okay, well, I don't know, man. I don't want to poop you on anybody's monkey parade or anything. But it feels to me like with the nature of the multiple monkey stories, some of the kind of you know, mutating facts in the story and the different accounts in song, I feel like this is rife for having been a kind of a good gag, poking fun at the intellect of the people of Hartlepool.
Yeah, personally, I choose to believe it didn't happen because I don't like the idea of a town of people hanging a monkey, you know, man, come on, that's brutal. For me to be able to laugh at it and derive enjoyment from it, I have to think of it as a tall tale. There you go. So this is this is the story? Oh man, I can't wait for the flood of email from people who have strong opinions. We're gonna get a lot of time side people have.
Strong opinions and they send emails.
It's a new thing. It's insane. You can be part of it. We'll give you the information at the end. But speaking of emails, enough about us, what about you? Did you see any good listener mails today?
Nol? As a matter of fact, I do, Ben, I did, and I do still doing this one. Yeah, this one comes from mister venomous and it says Ben and Nole Agents of discord is what he's referring to, toss, which I like. In all of history, my favorite historical figure is Emperor Norton. His story makes him a perfect candidate for ridiculous history. In eighteen forty eight, he was bequeathed
forty thousand dollars from his father's estate. He tried making it as a business man and Sam Cisco, but made a bad investment in buying one hundred tons of pure Peruvian rice. A prolonged core battle over the loss of his investment led him to go bankrupt in eighteen fifty eight. Penniless and discontent with the legal system and politics, he declared himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of
Mexico in eighteen fifty nine. Let's just leave it there, Ben, because I like this one and it almost sounds like it's something stuffy miss in history class our peer podcast may have done, but if not, we're going to snatch it up.
And Agents of Discord is a reference, I believe to one of our other shows. Mister Venomous has written into us before on stuff they don't want you to know what it does. Ring a bell. Yeah, well, it's great to hear from you again, man, I agree with my trustee co host here. That is a fantastic idea for an episode if we're the first ones to get to the plate on it. We have one more emails that's a little bit long from Adam s. He titled it lots of topics. Sorry, I'm just going to read some
of the greatest hits of the excerpts here. So Adam, you say, hey, guys recently picked up the podcast, So catching up, and I'm nearly there. I love the show so far, but I do listen to the new episodes then go back to make my way through that golden backlog. Huh. And I've never heard us our backlog described as golden. He has some suggestions for food fils. Adam says, you talked about food fails. Can I point a drink one
your way? Here in the UK, Coca Cola released a water which I think you may still get in the US Desani. They use the marketing as something like can't live without spunk. Here in the UK, that's a slang word for something you really wouldn't want in your drink. We said that over here plenty. Yeah. I think that what made it across the pond. And Adam says it got better when it was found out that it was treated tapwater from a suburb in London and was no
better than said tapwater. When the press got a hold of it, it was a pr nightmare and pulled. I think it may be one of the funniest and worst pas our disasters here for a while now. This got me thinking, at least we could do an episode on some of the biggest historic food fails. There used to be a museum in the States A long time ago.
There was a Hall of shame for foods that appeared and disappeared from supermarkets, Things like peas that were pressed into a shape of French fries to try to trick kids into eating their vegetables.
Ah. Yeah, as a as a father of a nine year old, I can tell you.
That's not gonna fly. It did not fly.
But I tried making my kid eat cauliflower because you can like make cauliflower into like a rice tiy.
Yeah, she doesn't buy it. She knows it's non rice. I'll make a cauliflower pizza. I bet she did it. Well, that's different.
I feel like that's that's that's a good example, Ben, because that's like you're baking it and it has that crunch. But with rice, it's just they're not they're not rice sized grains. You're not gonna mistake them for RTT. That's why it's rice cauliflower, not cauliflower rice.
Right. So thank you mister venomous, Thank you Adam for writing. And we want to hear some more food fails. So send us your favorite ones from your neck of the global woods.
Yeah, you can write to us at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com. You can hit us up on social media Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and all that. You can join our Facebook group Ridiculous Historians, where we still kick around some fun ideas and have a really nice community that's sprung up there, So come come hang out with us there on Ridiculous Historians.
Of course, we want to thank you for listening. We want to thank our super producer Casey Pegram, thanks to Christopher Hasiotis and Eve's Jeff Cod our research associates, and thanks to Alex Williams who composed our track We'll see you next time, folks, can we go out on the monkey song?
Let's catch you, oh man, Let's do it.
It was a pond old nay pool about the time of France the Emperor Napoleon Leslie Insance, where a pullo on the post. I'm a British man of Wall. The captain's old but monkey washed the bottle the shop and singing oh boo to everyone on each come and see the French eat has landed on the beach. He's got my hams a great one telling his co ad doll in a spy so ill likeabre.
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