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The Campden Wonder
28 Plays3 years ago
In this episode of "What the conspiracy!" M tells Josh about the Campden Wonder of the 1660s.
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Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
You can also contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
You can learn more about M’s academic work at: http://mrxdentith.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Setting the Stage
00:00:00
Speaker
Say, where are we? The void. The space between spaces. This is just an excuse to use one of those filters on the new podcasting deck, isn't it? No! Well, yes, but no. No, it's the perfect setting for our what the conspiracy episode is. We can pretend we are floating between moments.
00:00:19
Speaker
and the person presenting the conspiracy which this week is you can guide the person being told just me to an exciting new state of infotainment I told you never to use that word so you well know words can't hurt you but my punching you in the nether regions can yes sorry anyway the void okay so how do we proceed that I don't know I was able to get us here but I'm not entirely sure how to land this thing
Should We Press the Big Red Button?
00:00:49
Speaker
How about we press this shiny button? The big red button with a warning label on it. The very same. The one that says do not press even in an emergency. Well, that's obviously reverse psychology. The one that... Well, I guess you pushed it anyway. Oh well, time to see where we end up.
Pandemic Reflections and Conspiracies
00:01:22
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. M. Dentith. Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. I am Josh Addison there, Dr. M. Dentith, back co-locating after the last lockdown, now back to level two and probably back to level one. Apparently the government's decided that they're not telling.
00:01:47
Speaker
Yeah, there is something a little bit weird about the fact that they made the decision at Cabinet today, but they're not going to inform us until tomorrow, which is pissing a lot of people off because there are a whole bunch of events which are meant to be happening this weekend, particularly in Auckland, but also around the rest of the country where because crowdsizes are limited under level two, people are going, can we at least get some clarification that the events that we are hoping to run are going to be able to run?
00:02:17
Speaker
I assume whatever happens won't happen until Sunday anyway, though. So surely a weekend event is at least going to have one day under level two? Well, unless the idea is they're going to announce that tomorrow or Saturday morning is going to be when we go a level change down. I don't know. I'm not the government. No, no, not yet.
00:02:38
Speaker
Not yet. It's true. It's true. So we have an episode of What The Conspiracy this week. So it's lucky for me that my tablet has almost run out of battery completely because it didn't get charged when it needed to be. Because I'm not going to have to do much reading. Emma's going to regale me with the tale of some conspiracy that presumably I haven't heard of. And I'm going to make copious use of this sound effect.
00:03:11
Speaker
And you know, I think the first time you're going to use it is after not the chime, but the sting that I made specifically for What The Conspiracy. Shall we hear it? Yes, yes, yes. It's time to play What The Conspiracy.
00:03:37
Speaker
I couldn't possibly play a sound effect over that. It's too mellow and smooth. I wouldn't want to get in the way of it. I'm shocked. Yes. All right, Josh.
The Mysterious Disappearance of William Harrison
00:03:51
Speaker
Let's do the usual thing. I need a time, a place and a type. So when did this conspiracy occur? Where did this conspiracy occur? And also what type of conspiracy are we talking about today?
00:04:05
Speaker
Right, so I need to employ a little bit of psychology here. Last time we did this, I really brought things down with the sad tale of Ukrainian genocide that was just frankly a little bit bleak and depressing for everyone. So the natural thing would be for you to come up with something a bit more frivolous
00:04:27
Speaker
which is exactly what you want me to think. So I'm going to assume it's even bleaker, which means that I'm going to guess it happens everywhere. I'm going to guess the time is the end of time and that what it's about is the head death of the universe. I mean, I was going to do the Book of Revelation, but instead I'm doing the Camden Wonder.
00:04:57
Speaker
I'm surprised at the fact that I have no idea what you're talking about. All right, so the time is the 17th century. We're actually looking about 1660. The place is Chipping Camden in Gloucestershire, England, and the type is murder. Is it murder most foul? It's murder most mysterious.
00:05:19
Speaker
I'm never going to get tired of that. Literally never. I know. I mean, that was the problem I had last time around. It's just very tempting to press that button all the time. OK, I'll hold back till I've got some more details off you then. So where are we? We were in Chippington? Chipping Camden in Washington, England. So that's in the Cotswold. It's a single street town. Sorry. Chipping Camden in the Cotswolds. Is this the most English place name?
00:05:46
Speaker
Basically, yes. And it's a quintessentially English murder. Or is it? I said I'm not going to do this thing until I get more details. Alright, so it's the afternoon of the 16th of August 1660 and 70-year-old William Harrison is leaving home in his home in Chipping Candon to walk to Cheringsworth, which is two miles away.
John Perry's Confession and Trial
00:06:12
Speaker
Now Harrison is a steward to the Vys Countess Camden and he's basically out collecting rents for her from the tenants of the local town. So it turns out that Harrison lives in the remains of the castle the Vys Countess owns
00:06:30
Speaker
The castle is ruined, so basically William Harrison and his family, which is a wife and a son, are living in the one bit of it which is still standing. The Viscountess Camden does not want to live in a ruin, so she lives in a palatial estate elsewhere. And William Harrison's role is to go around and collect rent from all the tenants. But she's still doing it at the age of 70.
00:06:50
Speaker
at the agency and also doing it in August, which is actually an unusual time to be collecting rents, given it's harvest time. And surely you want to be collecting rents once the harvest is sold. But that's a that's a side issue there. Now, he leaves in the afternoon and he's expected home around about eight or nine p.m. So because he doesn't turn up, Harrison's wife, who is nameless in every single account of the story that I can find. Thanks, Patriarchy.
00:07:20
Speaker
Yeah. Send one of her servants, presumably one of their servants, John Perry, to go look for him. And neither men have returned home by the next morning. And that's the story of the Camden Wonder. Wow. But there's more. No, there are good. Good. So, because his father and also his father's servant have not turned up,
00:07:49
Speaker
Harrison's son Edward goes to look for his father and along the way to Cheringsworth he finds John Perry. Now Perry claims that he had gone out looking for Harrison in the night and found no evidence of his father. So both Perry and Edward
00:08:08
Speaker
move on their way to Eberrington, which is halfway between Camden and Charingworth, to talk to the tenants there to see if his father ever turned up. And the one tenant who was in Eberrington says, oh yeah, sure, I saw William the night before, he was collecting the rent, and then he moved on to Charingsworth. So Edward and John then go to Paxford, which is slightly further out from Eberrington towards Charingworth, and they find nothing.
00:08:38
Speaker
And so they decide to head back to Camden, sorry, Chipping, Camden, at which point they hear that a woman has found some of Harrison's belongings on the street between Chipping Camden and Eberrington, including a hat, a shirt, and a neckband, some of which are covered in blood, and some of which, not covered in blood, have obviously been cut by a sharp instrument.
00:09:10
Speaker
But mysteriously, there is no body, and there is no blood on the road. I'm gonna have to stop drip-feeding me these details, or I'm gonna run out of sting. That's right. It's actually infinite. It's a digital file. There's actually no limit to it. I mean, even I can press it.
00:09:31
Speaker
wonders of modern technology, eh? It's true. So you don't actually have a string quartet inside that box playing the... I do, but they just do it infinitely. OK, right. I mean, they've got a lot of food and sugar drinks. Good. OK, continue. So an investigation was launched because obviously Harrison is missing and they found some of his belongings along the way, some of which are covered in blood, some of which are cut up, which indicate some degree of foul play.
00:09:58
Speaker
and suspicion very quickly focuses on John Perry because Perry has acted rather strangely throughout this entire venture. First of all after he set out the night before he met another local and he told that local that he was timid of the dark and so would need to go home and fetch Edward's horse to be able to feel secure wandering the streets at night.
00:10:25
Speaker
but then another local sees Perry lingering around the house and then going into a field to fall asleep where he sleeps there until midnight and then promptly gets lost as he then sets out to try and find Harrison several hours after he was meant to. So we're talking he was meant to go out between 8 and 9. He only starts looking for William Harrison at around about midnight on that night or the next morning. So
00:10:54
Speaker
the investigation starts focusing on, so John, why have you been acting so strangely? And John very quickly admits that he knows Harrison has been murdered.
00:11:10
Speaker
But he tells a bunch of very conflicting stories. So, initially, he claims that maybe a wandering tinker or servant had killed Harrington and hid the body in a bean rick. Now, before you ask, I don't know what a bean rick is. I don't know what a bean rick is either.
00:11:29
Speaker
No, and I did do a search. So all of this information comes from a pamphlet that was released around about 1674. And so whatever had been Rick Wold was something that was well known to the writer of the pamphlet at the time and is not well known to people now. I'm assuming it's not a reference to Rick and Morty, but given the time and nature of Rick and Morty and the way that fandom works, it actually might be
00:11:57
Speaker
a literal bean wreck but anyway the thought is maybe his body was hidden in a bean wreck but they go and look in the bean wrecks around town which indicate they're somewhat common and they find no bodies in bean wrecks presumably because they know what a bean wreck is and what otherwise maybe they go we don't know what bean wreck is either so we can't find anything inside of one but we don't know what it is
00:12:21
Speaker
Now on further questioning, Perry changes his story once again, and he reveals that the murderers are in fact his mother Joan and his brother Richard.
00:12:34
Speaker
His mother and brother, but not him. Well, he's involved, but he's not the murderer. Now, he claims they killed William Harrison and dumped his body in the mill pond. I know what one of those are, near Wallington's Mill in Chipping Candom.
00:12:52
Speaker
Now this story is frankly incompatible with the testimony of the people who saw him that night because they see him lingering around the house. Well he claims that actually what really happened was he and his brother had followed Harrison
00:13:07
Speaker
as he came home from collecting the rents that night. Harrison uses a key to access the private gate to the ground, at which point Richard follows him into the ground whilst John lingers outside for no particular reason. And then when he joins his brother soon after, he finds his mother and his brother standing over the dead Harrington, who Richard claims to have strangled.
00:13:35
Speaker
At that point, they take all of the rent money in Harrison's pockets and then plan to dump the body in the pond by Wellington's Mill. And John takes some of the items of clothing away to throw into the highway to distract people from the location and the veracity of the crime itself.
00:13:57
Speaker
Right, but the clothing had signs of being stabbed and blood on it, which you would not get if a person had been strangled. I think you're a really, really bad strangler. It's a very fine strangler, yes. So even now, his story is sounding a little suspect. Now, needless to say, his brother and his mother deny being responsible for the murder of one William Harington. And also,
00:14:23
Speaker
They dredge the pond, because this place has now been identified, it's the Mill Pond beside Wellington Mill, and no body is found. So the three of them are now arraigned, and they plead not guilty to the charges of murder, and they plead not guilty to be engaged in a plot to steal Harrington's money.
00:14:46
Speaker
Now, Perry claimed his entire role in the Sophia was the plot to steal the money. It wasn't ever a plot to kill William Harington. He simply suggests that they should steal the money when he came back from collecting the rent.
00:15:02
Speaker
Now, he also claims that he knows his mother and his brother had stolen from Haringston the year prior in what was a staged robbery when Harrison and his family were at church. They broke into the house and then tried to make it look as if robbers had been operating from afar. And Perry himself had also lied about being attacked by robbers a few weeks before Haringston's murder, presumably as a cover for the robbery that he, his sibling and his mother were
00:15:32
Speaker
to lay the groundwork that there's robbers out there robbing. Yes, so basically the place is awash with robbers and Harrenson is likely to be robbed, especially when he's carrying large sums of rental money. So I don't know I'm doing that, actually.
00:15:47
Speaker
Now upon hearing John's testimony, both Joan and Richard change their pleas around the charge of robbery to being guilty, because 1660 is just after the end of the interregnum and the beginning of the Regency period with Charles II taking the throne.
00:16:08
Speaker
and a law has been passed by parliament basically excusing people of these kind of minor crimes of robbery and the like to ensure that people can't be prosecuted for the things they may have done during the interregnum because otherwise you have to have all sorts of pesky trials as to whether they were working for the commonwealth or the crown and basically parliament is going this is too difficult so if you commit these minor crimes we're giving you a grace period and a free pardon at this time.
00:16:38
Speaker
Now, most modern historians think they made a mistake in pleading guilty, because at this point in time, even though there's a pardon, it does mean they're on the books for having committed a crime around the mysterious plot around William Harington.
00:16:55
Speaker
But the judge in this case decides not to prosecute them for the murder of William Harrison because there's literally no body. There's no actual proof Harrison was dead. And also there's that pesky issue of some of the story you've told appears to be inconsistent with other things we know about that night. So we have some doubts.
00:17:17
Speaker
that you're actually telling the truth. But nonetheless, John, Joan and Richard all go, yeah, we committed a robbery and that's all we're willing to face up to. Now a year later, they get charged again. And because they've pleaded guilty to the robbery charge, they're considered criminals. And this is taken as indication of their guilt in the murder of William Harrison, who has of course failed to turn up.
00:17:46
Speaker
So all three plead not guilty. Perry changes his story, claiming that he testified falsely about his mother and his brother killing William Harrison because he was literally insane at that point in time.
00:18:01
Speaker
But the jury is not convinced by this charge or this change in testimony. They claim that Perry had no reason to lie in that first trial. So basically those guilty pleas are now coming back to haunt them, which everyone had pled guilty in. So they're sentenced to death by hanging. Right, so let me see if I've got this straight. We have, a man disappears.
00:18:31
Speaker
The guy who was supposed to be looking for him claims that he was going to rob this man along with his mother and brother, that things got out of hand and his mother and brother then killed the man. And due to the fact that double jeopardy laws, I assume, didn't exist back then, which means actually Judd would have been shit out of luck.
00:18:56
Speaker
that counts against them. So what caused them to do this? Was it just the fact that it's been a year and he hasn't turned up, so he's obviously murdered, let's go after the people who he thought did it last time, or had something happened? Well, it's because the judge had decided not to prosecute them at the time, a year prior, for the charge of murder. And obviously some magistrates had a change of heart a year later, going, you never tried for this charge.
00:19:24
Speaker
But you were still suspecting that you committed a murder here, so we're going to... So it's not a double jeopardy thing, so they were literally not tried for that charge in the first place. But the fact that they committed another crime is counting against them. And they're using the evidence from that trial to go, well, you admitted to these things.
00:19:47
Speaker
And we accepted the testimony of John Perry at the time who said murder occurred, so that indicates a murder occurred.
Harrison's Return and Doubts on Justice
00:19:53
Speaker
So, you know, off to the hanging noose for you. OK, so we have a judgment, I guess, but still no body and still nothing conclusive. I assume there's more to the story to come. Yes. So the next stage, the hanging. So Joan gets hanged first. Why do you think Joan gets hanged first? Because she's a woman.
00:20:16
Speaker
And what are women typically in the 17th century? Pregnant. And also...
00:20:27
Speaker
I'm really not sure what you're getting at. Witches. Oh, witches. Right. Oh, of course. Yeah, all of them. So they take it that Joan is a witch. And the only reason why John and Richard have not admitted to the murder of William Harrison is that Joan has hexed them and is thus preventing them from being able to confess. So they kill her first in the hope that this will cure them of the curse.
00:20:53
Speaker
and they will be able to admit to their crime and thus receive some kind of absolution before going to hell. Right. This does not work. No. The sons continue to maintain... Strangely enough, having their mother killed in front of them does not... Yeah, it does not in any way make them go, oh, I'm going to cop to this thing I'm about to be hanged for. So they get hanged and they die. Right.
00:21:19
Speaker
Are you about to tell me the guy's gonna show up alive again? I am. Okay. So fast forward. What a far say. What a turn up for the books. Fast forward two years later and William Harrison returns from Lisbon. Not returns from the dead. Would have been more dramatic. I still think returns from Lisbon. From Lisbon.
00:21:47
Speaker
in Portugal. Yes. Yes, right. I do know a little bit of geography, it turns out. So he claims he was not murdered that night. He claimed he was kidnapped. Well, you'd think he'd know, I suppose. Although, strangely enough, he claims he was kidnapped the morning and not the afternoon of that day.
00:22:08
Speaker
Right, so stuff is seriously not adding up here. No, so he claims that he left Chipping Camden on the morning of the 16th of August to go and collect rents from the nearby parts of Paxford, Eberington and Charingworth.
00:22:28
Speaker
and because he went out in the morning he arrived whilst the tenants were out harvesting so there really wasn't anyone to collect rents from and once again this is why it's a really unusual time to be collecting rents because at this time the peasants are out there actually doing the harvesting of the crops and not going to be at home and they've not yet got any money to be able to pay for their rents anyway.
00:22:55
Speaker
So he basically spends an entire day wandering around trying to find people to pay him, and doesn't find many people at all. I think he ends up collecting around about 27 guineas or so. So, you know, a moderate amount of money, but not the riches that he was expecting, which I believe was about 127 guineas.
00:23:14
Speaker
So he returns home and on the way home he is accosted by a stranger on a horse and the stranger says, is that you there? And Harrington, not really knowing what's going on, cries out and strikes the horse on the nose with his cane, at which point two other men on horseback come up to him.
00:23:37
Speaker
attack him which is why they you find elements of his clothing some of which is cut some of which is blooded on the roadside and then they pick him up and they ride away on horseback and then several days later they stick him in a stone pit they question him for several hours pull him out of the stone pit stuff his pockets with money
00:24:03
Speaker
and then take him to a lonely house across the other side of the country where they nurse him back to health from the wounds they have inflicted upon him so they can put him onto a ship leaving Dover which sails for six weeks where he's sold into slavery in the Ottoman Empire. Right obviously if I had to count the number if I had a penny for every time I've been sold into slavery in the Ottoman Empire
00:24:33
Speaker
Now what's odd about this is he's a 70 year old man, and in the 17th century a 70 year old man is actually a really really odd, he's not really the kind of person, you're a kid, I suppose actually, he's a really easy person to kidnap, but not a particularly desirable slave, even more mysterious about this.
00:24:54
Speaker
Harrison's story is that when he's in the hold being shipped to the Ottoman Empire, the hold is filled with people just like him, which presumably means it's a hold filled of geriatrics who are going to be sold into slavery in the Ottoman Empire. Right.
00:25:16
Speaker
You kind of buried the lead on this one here. I mean, criminal hijinks is one thing, but mass kidnapping of septuagenarians. That's another, I think that's the... That's what I like to do. I like to lure you in and then give you the twist. Yep. The peppermint twist. Yeah, that's worth a...
00:25:38
Speaker
I kind of wish that was a peppermint twist staying there. Anyway, so after nearly two years of servitude, his master, who happens to be a physician, dies. And so he stows away on a Portuguese ship in order to return to England. Now we don't know much about his master. Haringson's story simply has it that his Turkish slave master,
00:26:06
Speaker
has spent time in Lincolnshire, knows slang from Lincolnshire, and is able to pronounce names of peoples and places in Lincolnshire, and basically was training a 70-year-old man to be a nurse in his apocrity. Right. I'm yet to hear anything from anyone that sounds like a believable story so far.
00:26:35
Speaker
But let me add this to the story. He's not able to name the ship he travelled back to England on. Right. Well, if he stowed away in the dead of night, maybe, might not have seen the name on the... Well, I mean, he stowed away. I mean, they say stowaway. It turns out he actually bribes the sailors with elements from his master's apocryphary. Right. OK. So...
00:27:00
Speaker
That seems to be that at the stage. So three people are hanged for the murder of someone who turns up two years later claiming that he wasn't killed but was kidnapped and sold into slavery. And there's a whole bunch of questions. So one, why did three men carry a wounded man across the country without being challenged by anyone?
00:27:25
Speaker
And why did they nurse a 70-year-old back to health in order to sell him into slavery? Well, I guess you're not going to get much money for a grievously wounded 70-year-old man. I don't think you can get much money for a 70-year-old man full stop. Well, probably not. Did he say, the whole being put in a stone pit and questioned, did he say what he was questioned about? His name, his income, his profession, basically.
00:27:55
Speaker
Now there's another question which is, why doesn't Edward go out to search for his father on the night his father disappears? Especially since apparently it turns out it was a bright full moon that night. Because he thought the other guy was going to do it for him.
00:28:14
Speaker
Well, I mean, but there's this whole question of why send John Perry out to do it when you're a young man. And apparently, Edward is quite a young man. So William's been getting his end away. He's got a young son and a nameless wife who is probably also a witch, given the logic of the story. Seems that way, yeah.
00:28:35
Speaker
So there's a whole bunch of questions. Now people are going, how can we explain what happened here? So one argument is that maybe William Harrison actually suffered from both synambulism and nightmares. So the kidnapping actually doesn't occur. He simply has a nightmare and sleep walks and ends up being well away from town, which might explain his disappearance.
00:28:58
Speaker
but then doesn't explain the fact that he's away for two years. And this really weird story about being a slave in the Ottoman Empire, which I should add, no one at the time thinks is a true story. Right, okay. So even back then, people are going, this is ludicrous. This makes absolutely no sense. Why would you enslave a 70 year old man who doesn't speak Turkish? Hmm.
00:29:27
Speaker
But he stuck to his guns. He insisted that's what happened. Yeah. Yeah, that's the now the other so it's also an interesting little factoid here, which is The person he worked for so he works for the Viscountess camp Hamden now we've got this is at the this is at the very end of the interregnum and the beginning of the Regency so people are going
00:29:56
Speaker
Maybe what really happened here is that William
Exploring Conspiracy Theories
00:30:00
Speaker
Harrenson knew something about what his mistress had done during the interregnum, and maybe Harrenson was made to disappear during the heady days of the re-establishment of the Regency to ensure that he wouldn't say anything.
00:30:19
Speaker
which might indicate that his mistress had either done work for the Commonwealth and aided Cromwell, or maybe because there are still sympathisers to the Protectorate and the Protector, maybe...
00:30:34
Speaker
to make sure that there was no evidence that she'd been secretly working to restore the crown in case maybe the round heads came back into power and went no no no your regency your regency 2.0 is going to be a very short level of fear and oh we heard some stories about the work you did for the crown so off with your head what's good for charles the first is good for vicamp discamden
00:30:59
Speaker
Okay, so what, she arranges for him to get sent away and either tells him to say the story or tells him make up a story to explain your absence? That seems to be a viable hypothesis that makes sense to a certain extent of the weird story of his disappearance.
00:31:19
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't make much sense still of the Peres, though, did she? Would that be the Viscountess went to the Peres and said, hey, make up the story about you guys accidentally killing him and you don't worry, you'll probably get away with it because of the wacky laws at the moment or something.
00:31:36
Speaker
I mean, you can imagine a situation where they go, look, there's an amnesty, so it's going to be OK. Just admit to doing this one particular thing and the amnesty means that you're going to be fine. And maybe the problem was because the judge decided not to prosecute in that first year, a year later, the legal situation has changed and suddenly that promise of amnesty has just completely disappeared.
00:32:03
Speaker
Well, I mean, I don't really see what would be in it for them unless they should say, oh, and you get to keep the money that he had been, you get to actually rob him and keep the money he was carrying or the Viscountious Camden would owe you a favour after this or something like that, I suppose.
00:32:18
Speaker
I mean, one option is that Perry is being truthful in the second trial and go, look, I actually testified falsely. I was insane at the time. My story is inconsistent with the known facts and is testified by other eyewitnesses.
00:32:34
Speaker
My mother and my brother only plead guilty because it's quite obvious that people believe my false testimony and because of the promise of amnesty ago it doesn't really matter if we admit to this crime because we're not going to be punished for it anyway. So maybe it all is a fever dream on Perry's part
00:32:55
Speaker
Or yes, maybe the conspiracy is even larger, and the Viscountess Camden has got at least one of the periods involved to provide a cover story for the disappearance of William Harrison. But then you might go, I mean, given he's not dead, why make the cover story one about murder? Why not simply say we robbed him along the side of the road and now he's disappeared?
00:33:20
Speaker
The murder part seems completely unnecessary for any story where someone who's responsible for Harrison's disappearance gets the periods involved.
00:33:32
Speaker
And are we assuming that she intended for him to be gone for good and him, whether or not he's telling the truth about how exactly it happened, him sneaking back home and bribing his way onto a ship, was his doing? Well, I mean, we're also assuming he left the country. Well, yes, there's no reason to think he actually ever left the country at all.
00:33:54
Speaker
Maybe he was living with the Viscountess in her palatial estate and got ever so slightly bored or needed to sneak home to have some nookie with his wife and produce an Edward Mark toe. Could be. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I suppose back then there's something we've talked about before as well. I think pretty much all you had in the way of evidence was people's testimony.
00:34:18
Speaker
So, yeah, I guess all we have to say that the sky went on this wacky journey overseas and got up to all sorts of Turkish hijinks, all we have for it is his words. So, yeah, who the hell knows?
00:34:32
Speaker
And the other interesting thing is, so all this information comes from a pamphlet that was published in 1676. So 16 years after the event in question or 14 years after the return of William Harrison from his Turkish slavery. There's no record of the trial of the Paris from the 1660s.
00:34:58
Speaker
Is that just bad record keeping? It might be bad record keeping. So it might be the case that the in the inderegnum meant that there's a whole bunch of things that just weren't happening or people were getting up to speed of. But there's also no mention of there being a trial of this particular type in any nearby town or jurisdiction either.
00:35:20
Speaker
which does make the entire incident even more mysterious because as I say this pamphlet is published only 16 years after the apparent murder or 14 years after the disappearance or sorry return of William Harrison but there's precious little other than this pamphlet to attest to the Camden wonder
00:35:44
Speaker
Yes, I mean, 16 years later, at the very least, we could expect his son to still be around. Yes, precisely. And you'd expect the story of old William Harrison thought to be murdered, but turned up again to remain a story which is well known in a single street town in the Cotswolds.
00:36:02
Speaker
And that's it then. There's no follow-up. He told the story. No one believed him. There's no account of what William Harrison thought of the fact that three people had been hanged for his apparent murder.
00:36:19
Speaker
there's no further investigation into what happened to them, although I suppose in those days it would be quite difficult to. Let's just go to the Ottoman Empire and see what we can find out about this mysterious thing. I mean, I think we might be at war with the Ottomans. It's so far away, I don't know. But I'm sure we can send some investigators from Scotland now, which hasn't even been invented yet. Yes, they'll probably be back in a year or three. Yes, they certainly won't disappear on road or be taken into slavery. Ooh, ooh.
00:36:49
Speaker
Yeah, no, not much recourse for that, I suppose. No. So like the gallery one, did this become the inspiration for a Shakespeare play? It has been the inspiration for several songs and poems, but no, there doesn't appear to be any Shakespearean influence in this particular story. Right.
00:37:08
Speaker
So, yeah, well, it certainly sounds like there's a conspiracy at play, but exactly the nature of it and the nature of the conspirators, it doesn't really seem clear. Yeah, so it's a clear case of the only way to explain a lot of this plot is by saying, well, there has to be some kind of collusion by people operating behind the scenes.
00:37:34
Speaker
Because that's the only way to explain A, the claim of murder and B, the really weird story of William Harrison's two years abroad. But at the same time, we don't really know
00:37:47
Speaker
who was responsible, we don't even really know why, we just know that the story as it's told makes no sense. So there has to be some amount of lying and deceit going on in the background, and presumably with Harrison being away for two years,
00:38:06
Speaker
He has to have been supported in that time. So he's going to be wandering around the countryside.
Concluding Thoughts and Banter
00:38:12
Speaker
So there's obviously some level of support by someone with enough money means to keep a man silent. And then there's the question of, but why does he eventually return? Was whatever was being covered up was no longer needed to be covered up?
00:38:30
Speaker
Or had he just simply grown bored of the deceit, but then told the most outrageous lie upon his return? The thing is, we will never know. No. Well, it was the 1600s. Maybe everyone was just out of their skulls on ergot poisoning or something. It's true. There was a lot of bad stuff in the wheat those days.
00:38:50
Speaker
Well, sorry, before I start summarising, is that it? Have we come to the end? We have. That is the end of the Camden Wonder. Can you just give a run-through of those place names again? So you've got Paxworth, Cheringsworth, I'm sorry, Paxford, Cheringsworth, Chipping Camden and Good Old Eberington.
00:39:10
Speaker
I can feel crumpets condensing out of the atmosphere as you say that. That's just the humidity. I've been sweating crumpets all day. That's not evenism.
00:39:26
Speaker
OK, well then, yes, that is quite a tale. Well, do you know what is a euphemism? What is a euphemism? So I was going through the wonders of Takapuna on my daily walk, and I saw an ad for the new Sailor's Double Beef. The Sailor's Double Beef is that Burger King? It is. Burger King... Now, there's no way a Sailor's Double Beef is not a euphemism for something.
00:39:50
Speaker
What? I can't see anything wrong. I would love to get my hands on a sailor's double beef. Really sink my teeth into that sailor's double beef. Let the juices drip down my chin. Well, you know. I can think of nothing grander. You drew you. I have no idea.
00:40:09
Speaker
But anyway, that is the end of our delightful episode of What's the Conspiracy? Mm-hmm. I think you'll find that there was a much... Well, actually, I mean, it's not really a light-hearted story. It contains three executions. Yeah. And a mysterious disappearance. Yeah, a peer to have been for crimes they didn't commit as well, and possibly the trafficking of an elderly gentleman, but... Into slavery. But it's actually still much more light-hearted than the... Than the groups of members of people, yep. That you engaged in two weeks.
00:40:37
Speaker
Yeah, fair play. Three weeks ago. Well, there we go, I think. Yes, another worthy inclusion in the what the conspiracy genre
00:40:51
Speaker
Which is a great classification, which we've created, yep. The canon, I suppose. Yes. Which brings us to the end of this episode, I suppose. It does indeed. Now, for those of you who are patrons, there's more to come because we have a bonus episode, which is actually a goddamn news episode. Kind of. Now, there's no trouble here, which is actually quite nice, but we're going to talk about the royal family drinking blood. We're going to talk about a question about Moriah Carey's age.
00:41:20
Speaker
We're going to talk about a rather disturbing story about the fact that someone wanted to engage in threats towards the two mosques that were the location of the Christchurch shootings two years ago, which we're almost approaching the anniversary of, and an interesting story about who really killed JFK. It's not who you think, probably.
00:41:43
Speaker
No, it's not who I thought. No. No, I still like the whole... It was a jumpy Secret Service agent, plus Lee Harvey Oswald. But just because it's a good story. Yeah, the idea that Oswald shoots Mrs and a Secret Service agent in sending off retaliatory fire accidentally shoots the President is kind of the thing you can actually see there being a cover-up of.
00:42:11
Speaker
Yes, this is a thing we've talked about before, I should say, but I like the idea that it says we were looking at the wrong bullet the whole time. This is the theory that says the supposed magic bullet was fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. There's nothing magic about it at all. The only reason people think it did weird things in Madeira is because they're making incorrect assumptions about where
00:42:34
Speaker
JFK and Governor Connolly were sitting, but if you see how they were actually sitting, you can see that the bullet goes in a straight line right through Kennedy and in and out of Connolly, which is what the sort of bullets that Lee Harvey Oddworld's rifle shot should have done. There were big heavy bullets that were meant to go in straight lines, whereas the bullet that ultimately killed Kennedy... The one that goes through the head.
00:42:58
Speaker
basically blew most of his head off, which is what the sort of ammunition that secret service agents guns would have that effect. And so there's being decided. I don't know if there's any actual proof for it. The only thing I've really heard about it is that supposedly JFK's brain, nobody knows where that went. And people think, oh, maybe they hid it because it would have shown bullet fragments of a secret service agents gun.
00:43:19
Speaker
And now I'm thinking of Bubba Hotel. But it's a nice story. Yeah, I mean, we're not saying it's true. We're not even saying it's even plausible. It's simply one of those things that we like to entertain. So anyway, that's not what we're going to be talking about on the Patreon bonus episode. We're going to be talking about a different JFK theory. And if you'd like to know what that is, then you can become one of our patrons and listen to that episode. And if you are one of our patrons, well, good luck. You're already there. Precisely. I mean,
00:43:46
Speaker
Yeah.
Patreon Teasers and Wrap-Up
00:43:47
Speaker
Yeah. I thought I had a musical reference there and then I realized, actually, I don't think it works. Don't you want me, baby? We're halfway there.
00:43:57
Speaker
living on a prayer. Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. Whatever it was, nothing was going to work. I suppose I should actually say, if you're not currently a patron and you want to be one, go to Betrayon.com and look for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. Because if you think that we, we pervericate and engage in unnecessary sides in the main episode. Wait till you get to the bonus one. Precisely. We haven't outlined. Well, mostly aside. Could go anywhere. I've said precisely too many times now. Exactly.
00:44:30
Speaker
And so with the final dun-dun-dun sound played, I think it's time to say it's good night from me. And it is also good night from me. You've been listening to Podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, hosted by Josh Ederson and Imdentive. If you'd like to help support us, please find details at our pledge drive at either Patreon or Podbean. If you'd like to get in contact with us, email us at podcastconspiracy at gmail.com.