Humorous Patron Alert
00:00:00
Speaker
New patron alert! Sound the alarms! Close the hatches! Put on the jewel-encrusted battleshaws! Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on... But I'm about to crank the siren! Yeah, be that as it may, isn't this new patron just an old patron who upped her pledge? Yes...
00:00:15
Speaker
Furthermore, is this old patron in fact your partner? Point of order! Denied. Answer the question. Yes. So really, what you're saying is that we've been completely infiltrated and you're sleeping with the enemy. It's a fair cop, Your Honour. Well then, what are you going to do?
00:00:32
Speaker
I guess. In order to expose the conspiracy, I need to go deeper. That's right. You need to date more patrons. So, for only $50 a month, you too can date him. Thrilled to the sound of their snoring. Marvel it the fact that they don't like salad, even though they are a vegan.
00:00:48
Speaker
Vibrate with joy, as you realise that every morning when you go to work, they get to stay in bed. And
Polyamorous Podcast Proposal
00:00:53
Speaker
for $100 a month, you also get to date Josh. Wait, what? Join us on Double Dates as we discuss the finer point of Rottkehauer's classic film, Split Second, and wonder whether any feature will ever be as delicious as detention. And when it comes to bedtime... Then there we will stop, I think.
00:01:12
Speaker
In fact, I'm beginning to think this patronage system needs rethinking. Nonsense. We can be the first official polyamorous podcast on conspiracy theories. It would be a unique selling point. No, you're right. I'm in. Now, if it weren't a rights issue, we'd play Love Roller Coaster right about... now. Instead, here's our thing.
Introductions and Personal Updates
00:01:43
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. Imdentive.
00:01:53
Speaker
Oh, and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. I am Josh Addison. They are Dr. M. Dentoth. We are both in Auckland, New Zealand at the moment, but in different places due to a variety of personal circumstances, namely my son graduating from primary school, because it turns out people graduate from primary schools these days. Anyway, I'm going to pretend I hadn't been told about this before the podcast started, and I will do my spit take of graduating from primary school.
00:02:21
Speaker
At any rate, we're both sweltering in what I see is apparently only 81% humidity. It was 95% last night. Auckland's doing its summer thing. I got back from Ototahi yesterday night, and I have to say the slimy feel of being back in the mugginess of Auckland. I've missed the fact that moisture, it just doesn't go anywhere.
00:02:45
Speaker
It just stays with you. It does. It stays with you all the time. It's your permanent friend. You know what did go somewhere though?
YouTube Video Removal Incident
00:02:52
Speaker
going to take it as a no and carry on with my segue. What went somewhere was one of the videos off of my YouTube channel, the channel where we put videos that we record of these podcasts as we recorded them. That was an interesting experience. I just popped open YouTube the other day and it pops up this message saying one of your videos is in violation of community guidelines. You've been spreading medical misinformation and we have to take it down. And it turned out it was the one about
00:03:22
Speaker
Bill Gates, which talked a little bit about COVID-19 vaccines. Just be a little bit subtle there. I don't want to set it off again. But yes, I said, I assume basically something had twigged the fact that we were talking about those subjects and while not spreading those conspiracy theories and while we in fact spent most of the time debunking them and saying why they weren't true,
00:03:48
Speaker
YouTube lacked the, um, lacked the nuance to get that. As I said in my videos, which was, like, I get that. It's, you know, there's, there's, there's way more content than any human beings could ever monitor, and they have to do it with algorithms, and algorithms are inherently stupid. What did annoy me?
00:04:04
Speaker
was that it says, of course you have the chance to appeal this. So I clicked the appeal button and it gives you a little text box where you can write in. And I basically said what I just said now. It was a thing was about Bill Cates and COVID vaccine conspiracy theories, but we weren't pro them. We weren't promoting them or spreading them. We were just discussing and mostly debunking them. We were in fact trying to stop the spread of medical misinformation. So put that in your pipe and smoke it. Clicked the button there and then literally within minutes got another email saying, no, we've reviewed it. Still banned. Goodbye.
00:04:35
Speaker
So either the algorithm which had already decided it should be pulled was just run over it again and strangely came to the same conclusion, or an actual human being read one half of the sentence of the description and decided to do the same thing. So anyway, that's what happens. So I think I'm assuming
00:04:57
Speaker
It was because in the description of it, I said, I asked the question we ask in the podcast, when did Bill Gates become the next, the new George Soros, which outside of context, I suppose could be taken as meaning why is Bill Gates evil the same way that George Soros is evil and behind all the evil vaccine stuff. But anyway, so that was my adventure.
Social Media and Democracy Conferences
00:05:18
Speaker
How was your weekend?
00:05:20
Speaker
Well, I spent Friday of last week at a conference on social media and democracy, talking with such luminaries as John Stevenson, Luke Malpass, Barbara Drew, either Green MP, Goldry's, was presenting via Zoom. She was a giant looming head over the proceedings. It was really quite fantastic.
00:05:46
Speaker
And in the early part of this week, I was at a philosophy conference. So it's been, it's been conference, conference, conference. And it's quite nice to not be conferencing at this point in time now. Oh, right. Well, as you know, one thing, Joe, if you're listening, we know about you. We didn't have room to talk about you this week, but next week, your time will come, Joe. You know who you are. You know what's coming.
00:06:17
Speaker
We're laying it down. I don't know who they are and I don't know what's coming, so I'm quite excited. Why did you do the email? That's not what we're here to talk to you about today.
Uncovering Unknown Conspiracy Theories
00:06:24
Speaker
So we're trying, we're trying it again. This is the second instalment of our segment that we still don't have a name for. I don't have a name for it. Do you have a name for it? What's the conspiracy? What's the conspiracy? Okay, well that's, I have nothing better, so that's what I'll have to do. Something just got dropped in the background there, but I didn't hear the sound of breaking glass, so I think we're okay.
00:06:44
Speaker
So we're doing the thing where one of us picks a conspiracy theory that hopefully the other one hasn't heard of and tells them about it. And as we said last week, I've possibly got the trickier job because I think Em's ear is more close to the ground in the world of conspiracy theories. Your thumb is more directly on the pulse. So I think the chances of me finding a conspiracy theory that you haven't heard about
00:07:09
Speaker
is less likely, but let's give it a go anyway. Although Josh, I do have an out for you. You need to build a time machine, travel into the far future, and find conspiracies I can't have heard about.
00:07:25
Speaker
Right. Well, we'll have to save that for next time because now I've got one from the past. See, you've fallen for my trick. Now I know it's a past conspiracy theory. Yes, I'm afraid I've given the game away. So shall we play a chime? A classic blunder. And then dive into it? Indeed. Let's play a chime and dive straight on in.
The Story of Ferguson's Gang
00:07:52
Speaker
Right, so now last time we did this, you played a little game, a little guessing game, so shall we start with the same format? When, where, and about what subject do you think this conspiracy is?
00:08:11
Speaker
Now, because you think I know a lot about conspiracy theories, I'm going to assume you're going to avoid the 20th century, given so many of them occurred and so much of the literature deals with them.
00:08:26
Speaker
And I think you're going to ignore the English speaking world because being an English speaker myself and only being an English speaker, it would be good to avoid the English speaking world. So I'm going to say 17th century, so the 1600s onwards, and I'm going to say Asia.
00:08:50
Speaker
And I'm going to say it's a murder conspiracy theory. Right. Well, it's a good thing we're not sitting at a table choosing which glass in front of us has been poisoned with iocane powder because you would be dead. You would be thoroughly dead and not just because I've built up an immunity over the years. This conspiracy theory is from the early part of the 20th century. And it's from Jolly Old England, just like last week's, but just happened to be the one that
00:09:16
Speaker
tickled my fancy it's a fancy tickler you say it's that kind of conspiracy theory so um have you heard and if the answer is yes just pretend it's no anyway so we have a segment to make here have you heard of ferguson's gang no i have not heard of ferguson's gang well this i thought this was quite a nice little one because it's actually an example of a benevolent conspiracy
00:09:44
Speaker
which we don't seem to get too many of. Ferguson's gang was a group of women, or at least a core group of women with other members later on, who raised money in England for the National Trust to save buildings and old stretches of coastline.
00:10:02
Speaker
That doesn't sound overly conspiratorial in itself, in that there are plenty of charities that do things like that. What makes it conspiratorial is that the word eccentric seems to come up a lot, and they made a conspiracy of it, basically. These women operated under pseudonyms. They concealed their identities. They indeed took their identities to the grave, in many cases.
00:10:29
Speaker
And so did their benevolent work in secrecy. I mean, I say in secrecy, if they were doing it today, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been able to be kept secret because they documented what they did. There are lots of photographs of them and stuff, but because this was weird. What are the exact dates that Ferguson's gang is operating?
00:10:53
Speaker
Uh, formed in 1927, uh, operated pretty much up until World War II. I think the last, the last information I have about them is 1946. Oh, so right towards the end of World War II, not just the beginning.
00:11:10
Speaker
So I'm assuming post war they probably had other things on their plate, and that's why their activities. This is all a period of time in the UK of great sexism, and the idea that a woman's place is in the home, etc, etc. So presumably one of the reasons why they may have been acting anonymously and secretly is to kind of hide what they were doing from menfolk? Or was it actually obviously they were doing it, they were just
00:11:38
Speaker
keeping it secret for a lark. It sounds more like it was a lark. I mean, these were well-heeled young ladies. They were university graduates. So it's a bit of background. The National Trust is a charity for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Apparently Scotland has its own National Trust, so they don't work after Scotland.
00:12:06
Speaker
And Ferguson's gang was formed in 1927 by five or six women. I think I've decided there were six eventually, but because they used pseudonyms and so on, it was a little bit hard to tell at the time.
00:12:20
Speaker
And over time, I understand it was sort of a group you could you could sort of join or you could become like a subscribing member given that it was all about raising funds and so on. But these these women were the core of the whole thing. In total, overall, they raised four and a half thousand pounds, which apparently is the equivalent of about half a million pounds in today's money.
00:12:46
Speaker
which went towards these various causes for the National Trust. They were big fans of the environment. They sort of had pilgrimages off to Stonehenge, sort of bucolic English countryside stuff.
00:13:07
Speaker
They liked the outdoors activities and picnics and swimming in English waterways and so on and so forth. And in particular, they were inspired by this book by a British architect called, now his first name is spelled C-L-O-U-G-H and O-U-G-H can be pronounced about six or seven different ways depending on your whim. But I'm just going to go, I'm going to say, I'm going to pick Clow. Clow William Ellis, Clow Williams Ellis rather,
00:13:36
Speaker
who published a book called England and the Octopus, the cover of which is quite a jolly little picture of a purple cartoon octopus wearing a dashing bowler hat, but whose tentacles are nevertheless reaching out, stretching out to encompass all of the buildings of England. That sounds conspiratorial, England and the octopus, the evil octopus putting its tentacles into things. Are you sure this is an evil conspiracy?
00:14:05
Speaker
This wasn't the conspiracy. The octopus in this case was a metaphor for London. He didn't like the spread of urbanisation. He thought there were ugly buildings, poor town planning, and was working to the detriment of England overall. And these women were quite taken by his words and agreed that I think their motto was, England is Stonehenge, not Whitehall. And so they felt very strongly that the more
00:14:35
Speaker
the more rural aspects of England, it was very important to preserve them against the tentacles of the octopus. So where should we go? Who were Ferguson's gang? Well, as I say, they worked under pseudonyms. Pseudonyms of people attached to the gang included bill stickers, inspired by the sign bill stickers not allowed here. There was a sister Agatha,
00:15:04
Speaker
Kate O'Brien the Nark, Red Biddy aka White Biddy, there was also Shot Biddy, there was also the Lord Bear Shop of the Gladstone Islands and Mercator's projection aka the Bloody Bear Shop aka Is B. So they were having a bit of fun. I'm pretty sure that having decided to take a stand against this octopus, they were just a bunch of good, humid
00:15:32
Speaker
ladies who liked a bit of wine, apparently liked a bit of picnicking, liked having a bit of fun. And so they decided to have a bit of fun with this organization that they'd formed. So they would, when they appeared in public to like donate some of the funds that they had gathered, they did so wearing masks, and donated money in all sorts of different ways.
00:16:00
Speaker
So let's have a look at some of the things they did. The first act that they performed, I guess, was the the repair of the Shelford Mill in Surrey.
00:16:16
Speaker
So this was a building that was built around, the building that was there had been built around 1750, although apparently back in the doomsday book records that there was a mill on that site as far back as 1086. So this was sort of a heritage. So it was a place that the mills had been for many, many centuries. But by 1927, this particular mill was not in use. It was in a state of disrepair in danger of being demolished. And they said, no, this is the sort of heritage, this is sort of England's character that we need to preserve.
00:16:47
Speaker
And so they raised money. They persuaded the trust who owned the mill at the time to donate it to the national trust on the proviso that Ferguson's gang would raise the money for its repair and future running costs, and they did.
00:17:04
Speaker
And so this mill was restored and the gang itself operated out of a room there from 1932 until 1966. Oh, there we go. They were active until 1966. So they've got a secret headquarters as well in a mill. This is Fury Jonathan Creek. Are you sure they also weren't solving crimes? They could well have been solving crimes, possibly under a different name.
00:17:27
Speaker
So another project, in 1933 they purchased the Newtown Old Hall on the Isle of Wight. The Newtown Old Hall. I sort of verify that. The Newtown Old Hall. Not the Old Town New Hall. Possibly Newton, I don't know.
00:17:46
Speaker
Yes, it was purchased for £5 and the neighbouring field for £100, but would take over £1,000 to repair, and they finally got it repaired in 1933. In December of 1934, a £500 payment for the Hall was delivered to the National Trust, along with a quote-unquote bottle of poison.
00:18:08
Speaker
Now tell me about this bottle of poison. The poison turned out to be slow gin. And that's not gin which makes you slow like some kind of D&D potion. Drink the slow gin. You mean gin made of slow S-L-O-E. It's S-L-O-E. I actually now want to run a role-playing game where one of the potions they have is slow gin. Gin that makes you slow.
00:18:34
Speaker
Yes, so that's one. They bought the Mayon and Trevaskan, which are probably pronouncing correctly, cliffs and Cornwall, gave them to the National Trust. That was their activities in 1935, 1936. They bought Priory cottages in Ork-Oxfordshire and endowed them to the National Trust in 1939. Now, the story about this one
00:18:59
Speaker
apparently at one point, they hired a messenger to deliver to the National Trust's AGM, and it was annual general meeting, a quote, beneficent bomb. This metal device was handed in, which was passed around to some consternation, caused a bit of a bomb scare apparently. Turns out what it actually was was a metal pineapple.
00:19:26
Speaker
containing £100, which was their second down payment for the Priory cottages. Another point, I'm not sure exactly which project this was an aid of, but they sent in funds as a £100 note stuffed inside a cigar. I can see that going very badly.
00:19:43
Speaker
And also another project that they saw to the the upkeep of Frenchman's Creek and Cornwall in 1946. Apparently they didn't. They didn't like specifically court headlines, but nevertheless generated them as you would when you cause a bomb scare at the AGM of the National Trust. But they worked in their favor anyway.
00:20:07
Speaker
because it raised a bit of profile of when they were, when it came to sort of fundraising efforts and so on, people knew who they were and what they were talking about. So there we go. That's who Ferguson's gang was.
Key Members and Secret Identities
00:20:18
Speaker
Now we do know a bit about them now.
00:20:20
Speaker
in the year 2020, because in 2015 of this year, the book Ferguson's Gang, the Remarkable Story of the National Trust Gangsters, was released, which basically gave the full story of these very interesting women. It was written by a journalist called Sally Peck and a writer called Polly Bagnall, who was the daughter of a man called John Eric Mears McGregor.
00:20:43
Speaker
who was the architect who worked with Ferguson's gang and oversaw the conservation work that they did. He was inducted into the Ferguson's gang and given the nickname The Artichoke, presumably because Artichoke sounds like architect, and his, Polly Bagnell was his granddaughter, so she was actually able to supply a lot of the details and basically, and from what I gather, Ferguson's gang, as I said, they did all their
00:21:09
Speaker
their picnics and conducted weird rituals in venues like Stonehenge and what have you, and took lots of photographs of themselves and what have you. But these of course were kept amongst their family, but then these were brought out post to their death, and so we now actually know quite a lot about them.
00:21:30
Speaker
and they were an interesting bunch of ladies. The leader was Bill Stickers, not quite sure which one of them did machines, who was cool but crude, and which many of them were a party dude, although some of the sounds of things pretty much all of them were. Nevertheless, Bill Stickers definitely led, and turned out to be Margaret Stewart, otherwise known as Peggy Pollard.
00:21:58
Speaker
who was a scholar of Sanskrit. She won a scholarship to Cambridge in 1921, age 17, was the first female student to gain a double first in Oriental languages there. She was a poet and a Cornish bard, a bard in the language of Cornwall, and this was not, no, she revealed, she kept
00:22:15
Speaker
her identity as Bill Stickers of Ferguson's gang. A secret until she died, she revealed her identity in a letter sent on her instructions to the times after her death, aged 92 in 1996. And interestingly enough, at the age of 70, she unintentionally broke a world record by embroidering 1,330 feet of cloth with scenes from the Chronicles of Narnia.
00:22:41
Speaker
I mean, I suppose she was completely unaware she was about to break that record because the Guinness Book of Records probably just invented the case. Oh, you've just seems to more scenes from Narnia than anyone else in the world. We actually don't know that because we've never checked, but you've just had a big number so well done you.
00:23:03
Speaker
The other one, Red Biddy, aka White Biddy, was actually Rachel Pinney, a developmental psychologist and also peace activist. She had a medical degree, practiced as a GP until 1961, pioneered several therapeutic approaches to children's development in the 1960s.
00:23:23
Speaker
She came out as a lesbian in 1989. Apparently several members of Ferguson's gang were queer or bisexual and were known to dress in men's clothing and so on, which possibly was another part of this in the 1920s, 30s and 40s perhaps, which might have been a reason to keep things quiet.
00:23:42
Speaker
The sister Agatha went by the wonderful name of Brynhilde Catherine Jervis Reed. Those are the only names I've seen of the members, but presumably were you to read Ferguson's gang, the remarkable story of the National Trust gangsters, you would find out all of them.
00:23:58
Speaker
And that basically is the story of Ferguson's gang, a bunch of people who acted in secret towards a common goal, which in this case turned out to be preserving heritage sites and British coastline.
00:24:14
Speaker
Okay, so I have two questions, one of which I think is answered by the other. Why did they operate in secret? Does the book reveal the rationale behind the secrecy? Because I'm finding it hard to understand why they wanted to do this stuff privately or secretly.
00:24:33
Speaker
from everything I could see just because it was a bit of a lark, just because they felt like making their secret little club and giving themselves and using names and having a bit of fun at the same time as they did good. See, I'm wondering whether it's because of their relative positions in society and the academic world, because you've got people who are scholars, you've got people who are doing academic work.
00:25:03
Speaker
they might be in the kind of position where they might have rectors or heads of departments who are going, why are you wasting your time on these things? We've, you know, we've only just allowed women into colleges to do graduate work of this particular kind, and you're not spending your time on this topic. You're off saving monuments or buying clif-clif-clifaces. So I wonder whether maybe part of the secrecy was also
00:25:30
Speaker
not allowing the story of what they're doing to get back to their employers or colleagues? Yes, I don't know. I mean, it's not particularly out of character for well-to-do ladies to be doing charitable works and everything, though. Yeah,
Reasons for Secrecy
00:25:46
Speaker
but you have to realise, in the academic world back in those days where there was still a heavy pushback against the idea that women should be doing
00:25:54
Speaker
academic work at all, let alone be allowed into fancy, say, Oxford or Cambridge colleges. The idea was that once they were in there, they were meant to devote their lives to that academic work. They were not meant to be distracted by such things as food, money, sex, or saving the past. Unless you're an archaeologist.
00:26:18
Speaker
None of the stuff I've read talked about that. It was mostly just about how there were a bunch of eccentric, unconventional women for the time who just felt like having a bit of fun. But yeah, there could well have been a bit of a motive there as well.
00:26:33
Speaker
Was that the second question as well? Why call this a conspiracy? Because you had people acting in secret to further a common goal. As I say, if they were acting in this day and age,
00:26:51
Speaker
I think it would have been much harder for it to have been a secret. I expect it would have been a bit more of an open secret exactly who these people with the funny names and who did appear in masks apparently when they went out and did stuff.
00:27:09
Speaker
So I think to anyone who knew them would know who they were. But back then you could just, you know, everything's in writing. There's no social media or anything like that. So that's they decided to keep their identity secret. And that's what they did. Fair enough. A good answer. Wait to my own petard if I disagree with you.
00:27:31
Speaker
Yes, and I think that's pretty much all I have to say. Apart from I did have, there were a few, as we say, Bill Stickers, aka Peggy Pollard, was a Cornish bard and published various bits of poetry, including ones relating to Ferguson's Gout. I should say the one thing
00:27:48
Speaker
The one thing I have not seen in reading up on Ferguson's gang is why they were called Ferguson's gang. I don't quite know who Ferguson was, but I would guess, based on pretty much everything else, that it was some sort of an in-joke. Yes, I mean, given the joking names they've given each other,
00:28:06
Speaker
which are presumably references to things. I mean, when your last name is Penny, you can kind of see why there might be some joking names about Penny-like objects. But presumably, the focus on the gang thing is some kind of inside joke that we might never know the answer to. But I've seen a few of her poems. She put up little ditties such as, we ain't so many, we ain't so few. All of us has the scene in view. National trust to work for you.
00:28:36
Speaker
And I think, save me Barrow, me old Ring Barrow, take it safe to the National Trust. Save me Castle, me old Cliff Castle, save us all from the Octopus. I'm pretty sure in her accent, trust and Octopus would rhyme. Octopus. National Trust. Take it safe to the National Trust. Save me Castle, me old Cliff Castle, save us all from the Octopus. I don't know. I don't quite know what accent I'm doing there. I just thought something that would make those two words rhyme. So.
00:29:06
Speaker
Well I'm glad I was able to find something that you hadn't heard of before. And it's actually given me inspiration for what I want to talk about week after next. So. So. So. So. So I think that is all we have for this particular episode this particular day. But of course there is the bonus episode. What have we got coming up in the bonus episode? Modelists! Modelists! Modelists!
00:29:34
Speaker
There have definitely been more monoliths. Then we've got that classic Havana sound. And of course, we have to talk about the result of that Royal Commission. Yeah. Trump and his folks are at it as well, but we did.
00:29:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's more of an update of a failing campaign to legally take the election away from Joe Biden. All those people are pointing out a lot actually rests upon electors doing their jobs later on this month.
00:30:05
Speaker
And we're all going, there's no way that can go wrong. But of course, the Trump administration may have one final ace up their slaves. The only problem is it's Rudy Giuliani's slaves, and he's in hospital. So if you're a patron, you can tune into that.
Teasing Additional Patron Content
00:30:22
Speaker
you're not a patron and you'd like to become one, you can go to Betrayon.com and search for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. And if you're not a patron and you're happy just listening to the adventures of the Ferguson gang, well, good for you because that's what you've got. Have we any more to say before we sign off for the week? I don't believe so.
00:30:42
Speaker
Right, well then in that case, signing off for the week, it's me, Josh Addison, saying goodbye. And I'm going to say that if I had to graduate from primary school and secondary school, along with my tertiary degrees, I would have really, really hated graduation by the end. Goodbye. Toodles!
00:31:11
Speaker
You've been listening to the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, starring Josh Addison and Dr. M.R. Extended, which is written, researched, recorded and produced by Josh and Em. You can support the podcast by becoming a patron, via its Podbean or Patreon campaigns. And if you need to get in contact with either Josh or Em, you can email them at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com or check their Twitter accounts, Mikey Fluids and Conspiracism.
00:32:12
Speaker
And remember, they're coming to get you, Barbara.