Vintage Villains
For those who like a little old-time with their true crime, join host Allison Dickson of Ding Dong Darkness Time as she explores the villains of decades and centuries past.
Vintage Villains
5: Patty Cannon and the Reverse Underground Railroad
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This week, Allison and her guest Jayson Blair unravel the dark saga of Patty Cannon, a mastermind behind the Reverse Underground Railroad, whereby free Blacks were kidnapped in the north and sold to southern plantations desperate for them in the wake of the ban on imported slaves in 1807. But not only did the Cannon-Johnson gang, as it would come to be known, thrive on making mayhem for an upwards of ten thousand stolen individuals, Cannon was also a noted serial killer, with some accounts stating she had dozens of bodies of men, women, and children of varying ages buried on her property at the time of her 1829 arrest.
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Additional Music: "Moonlight Sonata" by Ludwig van Beethoven
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This week I took my time machine back to the early 1800s and I found a very bad lady. While the United States wrestled with its own soul on the issue of slavery, even going so far as to federally ban the import of slaves in 1807, the demand for free plantation labor continued to soar across the antebellum South, and many were intent on acquiring it by any means necessary, even by kidnapping free Blacks from cities in the North and smuggling them to places like Louisiana and Alabama, where they were often never heard from again. Hop aboard and my guests and I will take you to meet a woman named Patty Cannon, one of the main conductors on the reverse Underground Railroad. Trust me, harriet Tubman, she ain't On today's episode of Vintage Villains. Welcome to the show everybody. I'm Alison Dixon and if you've been following the episodes in any order, you'll be fresh off the coverage my guest and friend Jason Blair and I did on one of the bigger heavy hitters in vintage villain history, john Wilkes Booth, and during that series, which naturally led to discussions of slavery, he brought my attention to someone a little lesser known in mainstream discussions of American history but who is every bit as loathsome, if not more so. And today the two of us are joining forces once again to tell you all about her. Patty Cannon and her gang of human smuggling and murdering outlaws spent more than 20 years roving the Delaware, maryland and Virginia countryside kidnapping an estimated 10,000 free Black citizens and selling them to plantations across the South and murdering the ones they couldn't sell. But before we get there, we need to do that vintage villains opening ritual and take a short trip on the zeitgeist Zeppelin so you can get a snapshot of what things were like at the time Patty and her gang were terrorizing people. But because the events of today's episode span over more than a decade, I wanted to focus on a year that would do the most heavy lifting in terms of creating an underground market for slave trading, and that would be the year 1808, when a law passed by the US Congress the previous year banning the import of slaves, went into effect on January 1st. It was literally called the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, and Thomas Jefferson had called for its enactment during his 1806 State of the Union Address.
Allison Dickson:Since the late 1700s, a trend toward the total abolition of slavery really began to pick up steam. Lest anyone think, slavery was just widely accepted as a given in this time, all of the original 13 colonies had already instituted some kind of ban. By the time the federal law came around, though, a couple of them looking at you, south Carolina had reversed that decision and were still bringing in boatloads of people from Africa. And, I should note, the federal law did not prohibit the trade of domestic slaves. And that's where we start running into trouble that you'll be hearing about today. In March the same year, the United Kingdom had also banned slavery throughout its colonies, and they sent its Royal Navy to the west coast of Africa to enforce an abolitionist blockade there. So the tides were greatly turning against the practice the world over, but that did not mean everything was suddenly hunky-dory for those who'd been stolen, bought and sold. Oh God, no More on that. In a few Elsewhere in the world, though, humanity was oh God, no More on that. In a few Elsewhere in the world, though, humanity was at peak pugnacity, and if you're into colonialism and imperial ways of life, you're in luck. The English were still holding a grudge over their ass kicking in the American Revolution, and they were finding all sorts of ways to undermine our newly won independence. And they were finding all sorts of ways to undermine our newly won independence. We'd be duking it out with them again in just a few years with the War of 1812. And this would become even more of a certainty with the election of James Madison, thomas Jefferson's main constitutional bro, as president that November.
Allison Dickson:This is also the year Portugal set up its colony in Brazil in order to escape the French who'd taken their land. And speaking of France, napoleon Bonaparte was also a very busy man. The phrase Napoleonic Wars is especially applicable to this time period. Forcing King Ferdinand of Spain to abdicate the throne so Napoleon could give it to his brother, joseph Bonaparte, the throne, so Napoleon could give it to his brother, joseph Bonaparte. This would effectively end a war that had been going on between Spain and England, because they would then need to join forces against Napoleon in what would be known as the Peninsula War.
Allison Dickson:Meanwhile, russia is at war with Finland. Denmark is at war with Sweden. Honestly, europe was just this big old tangled cat's cradle of embattled kings at this time. But when you consider just how much money and resources these countries were rolling in when they started colonizing across the globe, the stakes became even higher to grow their empires and hold on to them, and that almost always, of course means war. Course means war.
Allison Dickson:In other highly consequential discoveries, though, chemist Humphrey Davy became the first to isolate several elements we now take for granted, like sodium and potassium, as well as strontium, boron and others, making himself the founding father of electrochemistry. In Wilkes Bar, pennsylvania, anthracite coal was first burned as fuel by businessman and land over, and land owner jesse fell, thus beginning the use of coal as the key source of fuel for america's coming industrial revolution. Rip planet earth, and legendary composer ludwig von beethoven put on a marathon benefit concert in vienna, where he gave the first public performances of what would become the key works by him, including Symphony no 5, that's all the singing I'm doing today Symphony no 6, piano Concerto no 4, and Choral Fantasy and no, I am not singing those either and a symphony is probably the best way to describe this period of time that Jason and I will be discussing today, not because it was pretty in fact, far from it for a lot of people but because there was so much going on, and in fact it's playing a bit like the rehearsal for a much bigger piece, much like you heard in my recent Balgunas episode, where you saw what was happening in the world exactly a century later, in 1908, we're in another similar prelude period here In 1908, it was the brief respite before World War I here. It won't be long before the people of this time witnessed the rocket's red glare and the bombs bursting in air we all sing about at our sporting events, and that war will have a direct impact on the topic we're discussing today. So I hope you are all ready for some thick and fascinating American history.
Allison Dickson:Jason Blair of the Silver Linings Handbook, my friend, is here again, as promised, and he brought with him reams of knowledge on Patty Cannon, her stomping grounds and so much more during this tumultuous period where we would soon discover, as a nation, what we were truly made of. If you're watching this on YouTube, he even put together some visual aids for you to check out later. So pop on to either the Silver Linings Handbook or Vintage Villains YouTube channels and check it out if you like. And if you're a Patreon member, hello, you're watching this live as we record it as we speak. So I cannot thank you all enough for your support and for joining tonight. And that's it. Let's jump into the Patty Cannon cannon and get this show on the road.
Jayson Blair:All right, where shall we start?
Allison Dickson:Jason, I would love to start with you because I mean you co-hosted on my John Wilkes Booth episodes and such a fantastic wealth of knowledge that you have just in the area that you were born and raised and have lived most of your life where so many of these events took place. And you mentioned Patti Cannon to me in that first episode. I'd never heard of her and when you told me what she had done I was blown away. But I'm curious sort of your background and what brought you to the knowledge.
Jayson Blair:I've always been a history buff, grew up in Maryland right, or grew up partially, in Maryland, texas, georgia, virginiaia a bunch of places, but two of them being key, maryland and virginia here and really I have always been a history buff. I've been fascinated by history I've been interested in. My mom used to joke that, um, that, uh, the reason why I got seized in my history classes was I was like 30 years ahead of wherever the history class was. I didn't always get seized, but she did make that comment because I was constantly reading it and reading history books and fascinated, I think, in the idea of, I think, something very early on in life, you know, being able to see how we repeat our mistakes over and over again, really left me very interested in one sort of like what mistakes exist in history that we're poised to repeat, either because we don't know history or we're not able to translate it into the present. So you know, with that, being somebody who grew up in Maryland which a lot of people don't think of as a part of the South but very much is growing up in Maryland, growing up in Texas, growing up in Georgia Civil War, history and education around these things were always a sort of deep topic and we've talked about the idea you growing up in the Midwest probably didn't get as much deep topic and we've talked about the idea you growing up in the Midwest probably didn't get as much Civil War stuff as we did. So it was always a fascination. And now Patty Cannon in particular, when I was younger I had heard nursery rhymes and other stories about her and I was really as a local, as somebody who grew up in Maryland, went to the University of Maryland for college, did a circle around the South and came back.
Jayson Blair:I was really interested in the intersection between, you know, the North and the South. Trip with Heidi Sherman, one of my college classmates, who's Jewish, and we traveled out to the Eastern shore of Maryland. And we traveled out there because we were working on a story about the Chesapeake Bay and one of the islands there. But as you move South on the Delmarva Peninsula, like things like the number of Confederate flags, you start to see like rise and it feels very Southern. And we went into this one grocery store and it not grocery store, excuse me, it was a convenience store for a gas station and it was just filled with Confederate memorabilia Confederate shot glasses, confederate flags, confederate, whatever. It was the most awkward moment, probably for the two of us as a Jew and a black guy, but we got our gas, we got out of there and I bought a Confederate flag shot glass.
Allison Dickson:That's a power move.
Jayson Blair:I just felt like it should be awkward for them. So I so you know the first place in my life that I really in in in the North ever saw sort of like that Confederate presence and you know Maryland. My father grew up in South Carolina in the Deep South pre-Civil Rights Movement. During the Civil Rights Movement, first place he ever saw the Ku Klux Klan was in Maryland. So I think a lot of people with our modern, liberal Maryland have misconceptions about it. And then so in the 90s, when I was in college, there was a show called Homicide Life on the Streets which I've been rewatching recently.
Jayson Blair:And it's about David Simon.
Allison Dickson:Love him.
Jayson Blair:Yeah, the creator of the Wire Well he was a former Baltimore Sun reporter and actually he was the editor of the University of Maryland student newspaper, the Dimeback, a couple years before I was the editor but, david, you know, created Homicide Life on the Street and they had this one episode that I saw while I was in college, which was about it was called a woman named Patty Reinhauer and basically, skipping through it's a great episode, but skipping through the episode, they find this white guy chained and whipped to death in the basement of a Baltimore row house and they're trying to solve the murder and they come across this. They find out that his family descended from this woman named Patty Reinhauer. Patty Reinhauer was a stand in for Patty Cannon, and so that's how I was really exposed to this idea of Patty Cannon, this fugitive slave hunter who was running around Maryland capture, capturing people, and the whole idea in this was one of the descendants of a slave that she she had sold into slavery, came back and you know, right.
Allison Dickson:I'm sure there's a lot of ghost stories sort of surrounding her.
Jayson Blair:Yeah, absolutely. But then when I opened the book on it, like forget it, like hey, this is going to sound crazy, but like illegal slave trading was like some of the polite stuff she did, she was clear. I mean, we'll talk about this, but she was a straight up serial killer, right. Yeah, she not only captured runaway slaves, she also captured free blacks and cities like Philadelphia both blacks who were born into freedom or who had earned their freedom and took them back down to places like Mississippi, alabama, south Carolina, you know, to meet the demand that was created by the fact that you could no longer import slaves. You know. So, if you think about historically kind of where we were at at that moment that you were talking about in the beginning, once the importation of slaves stops at a time where agriculture and the needs of plantations are growing.
Jayson Blair:Yep, we don't have the cotton gin yet. We're not able to sort of like it's still being done by hand. It's going up. So what slave owners have to do is your slaves can no longer be as disposable, right? You can't throw them away or put them into retirement and teach them to cook or do whatever, or laundry. You have to keep them in the field. So that's one aspect of what's happening there, and slavery is becoming more brutal in that sense, in terms of the age piece of it.
Allison Dickson:But you can't afford to lose your lose your slaves, your threats to losing your slaves or death, another slave plantation owner stealing them or someone stealing them, and um, so weird to talk about like stealing people right, that's when, when we talk about this I find you know, because I was a lot of people know, I've been re-watching narcos and I have this obsession with the drug trade or the, the cartels and whatnot, and so talking about people, same thing talk about cocaine or talk about you know some other product that is uh being traded and realizing that these are human beings that were ripped from their own families, right, but they were brought In their own country and brought you know, yeah, but for a good segment.
Jayson Blair:You know they were products, right, they were property. You know, even though it was against law, you were unlikely to be punished for selling a free Black person into slavery. But what you would be punished for is stealing a slave from a white plantation owner. That's where you're taking their property right.
Jayson Blair:Right so anyway, back to that thing. The big thing that's happening during that time essentially, is it puts without the ability to import in slaves. It puts a greater focus on keeping slaves from running away to the North and finding other ways. So the Fugitive Slave Act which was passed I think it's 17, I'm going to get it wrong, it's like 1790. Well, there are two of them but the first Fugitive Slave.
Jayson Blair:Act yeah, it's 1793, I think so the Fugitive Slave Act is passed, then that is designed to implement for all of you who are originalists and want to go by the actual words of the constitution. In Article 4, section 2, clause 3 of the constitution. In article four, section two, clause three of the constitution, it required the return of escaped slaves to their owners. Man, clarence, I got to get a Clarence Thomas. Yeah, yeah, yeah, anytime.
Jayson Blair:So the idea there is the Fusilitive Slave Act enables that element of the Constitution and it allows people to not only hunt slaves but later, in its iterations, demands, puts, a duty on law enforcement and government and others to capture fugitive slaves and return them back to the South. And this was just a supply and demand problem. But what was happening in the black market? Right In the black market, free blacks were being captured. And there's that great movie, stolen, that came out was that a couple years ago? It talks about the free blacks who were captured and sold into slavery. So that increases. And sold into slavery, so that increases. And so Patty is a part of this licit and open hunting of runaway slaves, this illicit capturing of Blacks. But what really makes Patty special is she was also killing slave traders.
Allison Dickson:Yeah, she wanted their money.
Allison Dickson:Right money right well, that was the main motive and it's sort of like when somebody, uh, robs a trap house to get the drugs that they then turn around and sell. She was in that same trade and and you and I were talking about this last night when we were just going over notes, and everything is that this is a whole, this is that specific class of criminal, the kind of criminal that is up for the ultimate danger level. They're going after anybody and everybody to get what they want, and they're. They tend to be much more brutal and cruel and impulsive and a lot of those other things that I think describe patty and a lot of the accounts of her well and and you're right, right like high risk taker, willingness to take risks.
Jayson Blair:She was very charming and charismatic, highly manipulative, like straight out of the psychopath handbook. But what she also was was very explosive because as we walk through the story, we're going to find out she kills a lot of people she didn't need to kill. She didn't need to kill for money. Um, there are some people who believe that she killed one of her own daughters. She killed a number of children for crying. So some element of this her desire or her lust for death goes well beyond financial. For sure financial?
Allison Dickson:uh, for sure, and it's interesting because she, uh she let one of her daughters at least live to adulthood, because it's really when she starts doing, uh, gang work, uh like getting her gang together. The canon johnson gang wasn't the johnson part of the gang? Uh, that that refers to her son-in-law and uh, that she had done a lot of that second son-in-law yeah, it was her second son-in-law and, uh, that she had done a lot of that.
Jayson Blair:Second son, second son-in-law yeah, it was her second son-in-law and I I think you're kind of leaning in a big point patty was not the only one doing this. Yeah, um in the history, do you? I'll go ahead and throw up sort of oh yeah it's visual visual aids everybody right right, so right.
Jayson Blair:So these are the most prominent paths to the Underground Railroad, and the Underground Railroad had actually, in reality, was not an underground railroad, it was just the name of it. But it really started in the 1700s and in that initial route it was from the south to Florida, essentially to Spain, to create avenues for escape. Once Florida becomes no longer friendly to slaves traveling through it, all the routes start to move north for the Underground Railroad and it's most prominent, even though it existed in the 1700s, most prominent between 1810 and 1865. Toward the tail end, famous people like Harriet Tubman are a part of it and other things along that line, but little sort of talked about is this reverse Underground Railroad that existed.
Jayson Blair:Yes yes, and on this map we're just really highlighting the main routes that Patty took. And on this map we're just really highlighting the main routes that Patty took. And what's really instructive about it is she's operating in the border state territory and has some unique advantages based on where she is. So for those of us who are on YouTube, you can see this, and for those of you who aren't, you can go grab a map of Maryland, delaware and Virginia and take a look at it. But on the highlighted counties that you see on there are what's known as the Delmarva Peninsula.
Jayson Blair:So it's a peninsula that's essentially between, on one side, the Atlantic Ocean and the Delaware River up north and the other side, the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River. You could argue tail end, but it's really the Chesapeake Bay. And so the blue counties to the west are the Maryland counties, the green counties are the Delaware counties and the orange counties to the south are two counties in Virginia where Patty operated was essentially on the border of three counties two in Maryland, one in Delaware and one of the things that her particular gang used was being able to hop from county to county to county. And but one thing I want to flag for you, allison. You mentioned her son-in-law, joe Johnson.
Allison Dickson:Yes.
Jayson Blair:And this is generally where they operated right. So the Mason-Dixon line is at the top of Maryland. A lot of people don't know. The Mason-Dixon line turns down and separates Maryland and Delaware, then goes out, yeah, and separates Maryland and Delaware than goes out.
Jayson Blair:Yeah, but you mentioned Joe, but it wasn't really Joe. Where you know, a lot of sort of historians have debated do we overemphasize Patty because of her gender and the fact that that seems strange or different? Was it really Joe Johnson, her son-in-law, who was leading it? But in reality patty was, uh, robbing people and capturing slaves. Before joe johnson ever married her daughter, she was doing it with his previous husband before his untimely death um yeah his untimely death.
Allison Dickson:Wasn't that a possible poisoning? There was some some speculation that she might have killed her first husband.
Jayson Blair:Yeah, well, there's her first husband, then there's her daughter's first oh, her daughter's first husband.
Allison Dickson:That's right. That's right. Okay, there's lots of death in this quite a bit yeah a lot of death, a lot of death in the story.
Jayson Blair:So it's just one of the things you have to keep in mind too about Maryland and Delaware is you know, maryland was a slave state, delaware was a slave state, but it had started to fall out of favor, right? But this border that we're used to or at least that I'm used to between Delaware and Maryland, even though it looks like a straight line, there was enormous debate during the time, going back to Charles Calvert, lord Baltimore and William Penn, who was in charge of the colonial colony. The border of Maryland and Delaware was ambiguous. There's one instance in the late 1790s where a sheriff from Dorset County, maryland, crosses over into what other people said was Delaware to collect some taxes, starts a shootout. He gets killed. So they totally this group of people, these slave traders, including Patty Cannon took advantage of the border lines.
Jayson Blair:That mushy border Like Israel. Keys right Like. You. Kill a person in one state, kidnap them in one state, kill them in the other, bury them in the other right Same. You kill a person in one state, kidnap them in one state, kill them in the other, bury them in the other right Same thing Every time. People would sort of come onto them, they would just hop the border and travel.
Allison Dickson:And this is well before we had any sort of federal law enforcement apparatus. So these things going on in early America, that sort of you know, when the borders aren't fully set and there's still that that whole thing being worked out, I imagine just had to be a bit of a nightmare from a jurisdictional perspective and a law enforcement perspective, because well, was there any real? I mean there were sheriffs and there were local police, but I mean nobody, nobody directly enforcing as well. Oh no, there was law enforcement.
Allison Dickson:But there was Go ahead, the runaway slaves, yeah. And so in order for people to, in case we hear people that say we're going to politicize the police and all that, we're not here to do that. But we can't ignore the early history of what police were designed to do in this country and it's such a complicated thing to even talk about because we already know slavery is abhorrent. They knew it was abhorrent back then. That's why they're trying to abolish this stuff and it's just interesting to see sort of the, the people that that sort of losing. I'm losing track of my thought here. I love being live. This is awesome.
Jayson Blair:Same, thing, we just cut it out.
Allison Dickson:No, I mean well, yeah, we'll cut it out. This is why you guys get to sit and watch the raw, you know and whatever comes out later. This will all be cut out. But I mean it's just uh, we can't, we can't let that stuff go, you know we're getting at the point.
Jayson Blair:This is one thing. You'll get constant debate about this and I caution people when they take the perspective that, oh, it was just their way of life or you know, it was a different time in history and we've progressed so much. Like do your history. If you go back to the 1780s, 1790s, 1800s, there are a ton of people who are super progressive on slavery, more progressive than Lincoln was, more progressive than we are on it.
Allison Dickson:The Quakers.
Jayson Blair:Yes, the Quakers is an example. But even, as we'll see in this story, lots of there's some people in the deep South who are very much against it.
Allison Dickson:And I want to mention real quick too, thomas, in the chat he mentioned before 12 Years a Slave was as another example of this practice in action. I think you said it. I don't think that's specifically based on a specific person, but of that experience. Yes, if you want to get an idea of what that was like, that's another movie. And also, yeah, he mentioned, yeah, the roots of current police harken back to slavery. Absolutely, I didn't want to leave those mentioned. Yeah, the roots of current police harken back to slavery, absolutely.
Allison Dickson:I didn't want to leave those, those things going in the corner of my eye, but but yes, there were a lot of progressive people at work and on the Facebook page, the vintage villain soiree, I posted a screen grab of something published in 1805. It was basically a pamphlet that talked about the horrors that we were doing to the slaves that we were bringing over here. They were very aware of what was going on and the wrong and how wrong it was. So I think it's really important to establish that, because there are way too many people today who are trying to put a smile on slavery and say, oh, we trained them and gave them jobs and no, we didn't fight the Civil War over that. They're really trying to erase those things and we have to be delicate when we talk about some of this stuff. Yes, there is nuance, but let's not lose sight of the fact that we're talking about human beings being shadowed.
Jayson Blair:Shadowed slavery. Much nuance there.
Allison Dickson:Yeah, yeah and yeahincoln, definitely not as progressive as we think he was. I mean in the sense that, uh, you know we talked about this jason in the uh lincoln in the john wilkes booth episode, you know, where he suspends habeas corpus and he's doing all these things during the war that um would reinforce the idea that he was a tyrant to the people that were fighting him. But yeah, but Lincoln was trying to do the right thing, ultimately, I believe.
Jayson Blair:But there were also many people before, so let me let me scene set for you maybe.
Jayson Blair:So, we're talking about the Delmarva Peninsula right. So it's a combination of the vast majority of Delaware, the Eastern Shore of Maryland and then the Eastern Shore of Virginia. So it's about 170 miles long, about 70 miles wide at its center, 12 miles wide at its shortest part. I mentioned it's bordered by the Chesapeake Bay on one side, then the Delaware River Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. So you're essentially you've got big waterways around you, you've got the Potomac River near you, you've got the Chesapeake Bay which leads out into the Atlantic and then straight on the Atlantic, and you have the ability to cross the bay into a slave state of Maryland. You also have easy access to Pennsylvania and Northern cities. So it's a great location to sort of spirit off people and hide them.
Jayson Blair:Because Delmarva is still today and was then very different than the rest of, let's say, maryland, highly rural, very agricultural, highly rural, very agricultural, different culturally, very Catholic by background. You know you can still go there and see churches from the 17th century, catholic churches that are still operating of even before then you had the natives who lived along those islands, who were pushed out very early, eliminated very, very, very, very early. I mean we betrayed the native americans in terms of or the natives I don't even want to call them native americans, that's not really fair um, but we betrayed the natives immensely in those areas. Uh, creating treaties, pushing them out, all for this agricultural operation. Um, and so you're in, and I think it's hard to imagine this a highly rural, highly agricultural, great spot for transportation that's also lawless because of its border.
Allison Dickson:It's like a criminal's heaven, right, it really is, uh, and they would. Uh, they wouldn't have to go too far south like they would be able to kidnap these people. Put them on a, on a boat. Would they float them all the way down, or would they meet people along the way? I mean, what was the chain of custody looking like in terms of grabbing them?
Jayson Blair:It was different, but once Joe Johnson became a part of it, they would actually sell them themselves.
Jayson Blair:He would literally go on trips, sell them along the way himself, not hand them off to other traders, and that was just really a profit margin thing. And the gang was big enough that at different points, 30 to 50 people that a group of people going down to sell slaves wasn't going to stop their ability to operate up north. So you know, Patty, walking into all of this, like there are two different versions of the Patty Cannon background story. One is she was a local Delmarva girl who grew up there. There's another version of it that I think there's probably a little bit more historical evidence for that.
Jayson Blair:Somewhere between 1759, 1769, actually in Canada near Montreal, she's born and her family, the story behind her family getting here is that actually her father, LP Hanley, was actually from a wealthy family in England. He married somebody that they didn't want, or his father didn't want him to marry, disowned him. He goes to Canada, didn't want him to marry, disowned him, he goes to Canada and, as the story goes, their family gets involved in smuggling along what they call the North country, which is Northern Vermont, Northern New Hampshire and then the Montreal area. Long story short. Mr Hamley, untimely execution after he killed somebody who's going to supposedly turn him in for crimes he was committing. Right? It's a family trade here.
Allison Dickson:I was going to say this is a great family tree so far.
Jayson Blair:Yeah, I'm telling you, at least they're on brand, right, they're staying on brand Because also Patty's brother was executed for horse stealing later. So yeah, the family's're on brand, right, they're staying on brand because also patty's brother was executed for horse stealing later. So yeah, the family's really on brand, um, wow. But so imagine this poor miss hanley, right? Um, she's lost her husband, she's got a house full of sons and daughters that she needs to now take care of, and so what she did was she turned a house into a hostel, and what they said was essentially that it was a house for people who were coming up to get away from the warm Southern weather, but also a house of pleasure, I see.
Allison Dickson:So it served both roles, at least according to the, the version of the history, that's probably most solid I I had read that she had done, uh patty had attempted to do, uh some brothel type work uh, but her personality kind of didn't fit. Uh, she was a bit too surly uh. I think I read somewhere that yeah, sour disposition, she didn't like she didn't want to do the sex work.
Jayson Blair:She was. She was witty, she was a smart ass, yeah yeah, all the historical records suggest that she probably would have been really good at running a brothel not right?
Allison Dickson:well, that was the thing. She had, that aspiration, I think, to be a madam, but I think you have to kind of work your way up.
Jayson Blair:Yeah, but but I think her mom was kind of doing that. Yeah, kind of doing that, because what her mom was doing is, as wealthy men came to the house, she would try to convince them to marry her daughters and the, as the story goes, jesse cannon, a delaware wheel right and those are the people who make or repair wooden wheels comes up, uh, to visit the area, gets sick and is bedridden. So he she, mrs hanleyley has Patty take care of him every day. And supposedly what they said about Mrs Hanley I love this quote that she exercised over the minds of men convinced him to marry.
Jayson Blair:I love that quote marry Patty and take her down to Delaware. So you know, if you're sort of thinking of like the origin of this, it's sort of like a little bit of a shotgun forced marriage and but willingly goes, wants to go with him. Patty moves down to Delaware Maryland border to essentially Delaware Her husband, jesse, starts what was known as the Cannon Ferry, which still runs today. It's called the Woodland Ferry. They've changed the name because they thought it was bad branding to have it named after a serial killer.
Allison Dickson:I mean I guess here or there.
Jayson Blair:I mean like right, exactly Right. So they go back to Delaware, they have at least one daughter. They're believed to have had two more children, right, right. So the way they described Jessie agreeable dude, large, attractive man really loved her wit, the fact that she was charismatic, that she danced, that she was into music, but then, you know. So they establish the fairy, but then Jesse dies, right, yeah. And so what the neighbors report is that Jesse and Patty had started to fight each other and Jesse's health then rapidly declined. Yes, and the neighbors literally said that he died of grief due to the relationship falling apart. But years later, to a priest, patty would confess to have poisoned him.
Allison Dickson:Yeah, yeah, patty went on a bit of a confession spree, which, yeah, we'll get to in the end there. But I find that there are a lot of figures that we see throughout history and true crime and whatnot, that love to hear themselves talk. So once they start to get in that sort of mythologizing, self-narrative kind of thing HH Holmes was known to, which is why you don't want to believe many historical accounts of what HH Holmes did, because most of it came from his own mouth. But now I wanted to ask you too, your sources that you read for this, the Entailed Hat was one.
Allison Dickson:It's a fictional account of it by a guy called ross yeah, there are a few, and so finding finding details on patty is a interesting uh dive. It does require to really get into some actual hard book reading.
Jayson Blair:Uh, from what it sounds like, because the online accounts kind of vary, you know, yeah, the best um yes, yes yes, yes, there, I mean, part of the problem is that the story became prominent and, uh, you know, it became prominent through a pamphlet that was written, where they didn't use the real names, like they called patty lucretia cannon, they called Alonzo, I mean Jesse Alonzo, but it was a very, you know, somewhat hyperbolic maybe not as hyperbolic as people thought, but there is a second book that's really key. It's sort of like the gold standard for Patty Cannon research and it's called the Monster's Handsome Face. And it's sort of like the gold standard for patty cannon research and it's called the monster's handsome face. Yeah, it's because people said that patty had a um, uh, handsome handsome face the paintings of her out there are.
Allison Dickson:There are a couple that I've seen that they are depictions of her that are from these fictional accounts. They're a creepy. There aren't any real portraits of her that we were able to uncover, quite, but the handsome description was the one that I kept seeing pop up, that she, you know, she wasn't exactly like, she didn't look like a monster, but she, you know, I often wonder like who would play her in a movie, as I've been doing the research on this. But anyway, the what I find interesting too is that a lot of these historical accounts being fiction, it sort of reminds me if we're thinking of a contemporary equivalent. People were writing about crimes back then, sort of the way like Penny Dreadfuls or some of these blown up accounts, and it's almost like watching these days like a investigation, discovery kind of true crime show with a lot of bad reenactments.
Jayson Blair:That's sort of the modern day of what was available back then.
Jayson Blair:They would write them. Yes, exactly, they would write them like the sort of half fictionalized documentaries that we do on true crime, sort of like grabbing the uh, you know most salacious details, the best rumors, so. But in recent years a number of historians have really tried to like, slice as much as they can, um, you know, between the, the sort of fact and fiction of it. But one of the things that happens after the untimely death of Patty's husband you alluded to this before, we talked about it before one of the daughters marries a man named Henry Beerton, and he was supposedly the one who introduced them although some accounts suggest Patty was already doing it before him to the illegal slave trading. Yes, so, here or there, which one was responsible for sort of starting it? But it's very clear that Bearden and Patty are working together in slave trading by the time her daughter has the, by the time her daughter's first marriage has happened.
Jayson Blair:And you know, one of the real interesting things that I spent time researching Allison was this idea of like was it really weird for a woman to be involved in the illegal slave trade after 1808? And the ban on the importation of slaves gave women a real opportunity to sort of leverage familial and other relationships, you know, with sort of like all sorts of people to sort of break out on their own and have some independence and control, as men were doing other jobs that were more, more official. So you, what you find during this period and we were talking about Marie Delphi- oh, Madame LaLaurie.
Allison Dickson:Yeah, Madame LaLaurie.
Jayson Blair:You know a lot of women during the time were interacting a lot with slaves, whether it was from the illegal slave trade or it was like actually managing the slaves, and you know you can tell her story. But she was essentially a New Orleans socialite who was a serial killer, yes, who tortured and murdered a ton, ton unknown number of slaves in her house. But you know people, people call patty the, the, the northern version of her. Although I think it might be backwards, I think that you know it's really sad.
Allison Dickson:this is kind of a messed up way to put it, but I think too, maybe part of this is that when you're talking about like, when you look at the time, like the social hierarchy of the time, I think women found a foothold in doing stuff like this to slaves, because it was almost like women could finally be like, wow, there's somebody actually below me on the social ladder that I can abuse, and then it just becomes this sort of like. I don't know, I think there might have been a little bit of something like that going on, where there's certain type of powerful, rich women, just like men, who find that, hey, I can get my jollies here hurting other people if you're already inclined to being a violent, murderous, criminal type. It's just really funny Like, yeah, women finally had a to be the, the murdering people, the, the murdering violent criminals that their husbands were it's kind of messed up, but well, it's like the same thing.
Jayson Blair:That you know during world war ii is all the men went off to war. It opened up jobs and factories for women.
Jayson Blair:Same thing yeah, yeah just serial killer style, but the but but, the thing about it is and I see we have a good question about where the bodies ended up, and we'll definitely get to that also a gender bias at play, in the sense that, just like in new orleans, you know, in new orleans the only reason she got caught was because her house went on fire and then the fire marshals came and found a 70 year old black woman tied to a stone yeah who then pointed them to where all the bodies were in the attic.
Jayson Blair:She just basically people go up to the attic and never come back.
Allison Dickson:Yeah, there was a really interesting recent series on her on the last podcast on the left that I recommend if you want a good background on Madame LaLaurie. But yeah, it's interesting that we call her. People think of the Madame LaLaurie first. But you're absolutely right.
Jayson Blair:I do wonder if it was you know it had a rumors about her were going on forever. And the rumors about patty were not going on forever and there is historical documentation that basically says that there are times where patty was not prosecuted. Norlo prosecuted um Because of her gender Right. They either didn't believe it or they didn't want to do the prosecution Unclear on which one it was. So basically you have those rumors going around. It's 1811. And Henry Beerton is arrested. And starts serving a prison sentence for kidnapping probably white people's slaves.
Allison Dickson:Right.
Jayson Blair:So he escapes from jail in Georgetown, delaware, which is like one of the county capitals. After his escape he reunites with Patty and they launch this plan to sort of ambush this slave trader named Rigel who is staying. And this is one of Patty's favorite things to do. She would like wine because she was charismatic. She would wine and dine people, fill them with food, ask them all sorts of questions, get them laughing and joking, find out whether they had money, slaves or what their setup was. And with the original situation, they essentially let him leave, kept him there, gave him more free drinks, more free drinks. Let him leave. One group, along with Patty, went ahead of him leave. One group, along with Patty, went ahead of him, knocked down a tree to block them. Another group went between them and basically tried to kill them. They did a terrible job, horrendous job. They killed one guy.
Jayson Blair:Two got away At this point. They're not great. They get better. What eventually happens is Beerton is caught and he ultimately will be executed at a later down this down the road, but what that does is after he's caught. That forces Patty to really move out on her own, and you and so one of the things you then see happen is she starts to build her own sort of independent gang, and a key part of that is Joe Johnson.
Jayson Blair:So when we were looking at the map, if you go here you can see right here on the border of Sussex County and I think is it Carolyn County or is it Dorchester, I forget which one you have Patty's house in Reliance, maryland, literally right across, is Joe Johnson's tavern. Yeah, they would keep the slaves or the free Blacks that they captured primarily at Patty's house. Yeah, the attic and then the rollover space was Joe Johnson's tavern. Now, the tavern's main purpose was to sort of wine and dine the slave traders, to try and ambush them. But its attic was also used to store slaves, because when you're talking about three to ten thousand slaves over a 20 year period, you are running a factory, you are running a factory. You are running a factory.
Jayson Blair:So they are in Patty's house, in Joe's house, and then they would frog march them from Joe Johnson's house or from Patty's house down to what's in the middle of the map in front of us, which is the location of Cannon's Ferry, now Woodland Ferry, and they would take them down the Nanticoke River out to the Chesapeake Bay. And one of the things that they would do is they'd have to frog march them all day right. So what do you do with the slaves that you've left? Before the ship has gone down the ferry, there was an island outside of where the ferry was and they would tie the free Black slaves, whoever they captured, to the trees there. And that's when they would do their survey, and their survey was figuring out is this person sellable? Is this person going to be problematic somehow? And according to the history, if they found that they would be problematic on some level, they would either throw them in the river or kill them and put them in a building called Cannon Hall that was there At the same time.
Jayson Blair:Patty also could not stand the sound of children crying. Could not stand the sound of children crying, and so one of the real famous pictures of her that was in that magazine which I think I do, I have it up here. I don't think I have it here, but it's on. The cover is of her holding a Black child in front of a fire. Well, apparently that child had been screaming um, and she grabbed the child, she walked it to the fireplace, scorched the child in front of the fire it was mortal wound, to the point where it burned her own hand, wow and then buried that child in the cellar. And that wasn't the only child that she killed.
Allison Dickson:Yeah, because they found several. It wasn't the only one that she killed over crying. Yeah, they found a couple of dead children on her property. See what I'm saying.
Jayson Blair:There's more than profit going on here.
Allison Dickson:Oh, absolutely, she just seemed like someone who was an opportunistic killer. You know, if she could kill someone, she would kill them If they inconvenienced her, unless they can make her money, that was the only real path. Now I wanted to ask now I mentioned the War of 1812 sort of being a factor in this earlier and I see it here in the notes as well. So we're not going to discuss the entire War of 1812, obviously, but the conditions of that war were such that the Americans and our Native allies basically went back to battle against Great Britain and their Native allies In their native alleys, in their native alleys. Yes, it was a very interesting conflict, but what it essentially did was it opened up even more of a pathway right for Patty and her gang to get the free Blacks and the slaves down to the Carolinas in the Deep South. Is that correct?
Jayson Blair:Yeah, and a big part of it. If you think about it, it's their geography. Right During the War of 1812, if we jump back and take a look at, let's say, this slide, if you look at the Delmarva Peninsula and at the Virginia part that's sticking out, the British would send ships up the chesapeake bay. They would stop those ships and require everyone to prove they were american, an american citizen. Yes, if you were a slave or you were someone who was not american citizen, they would free you and this is a part of their harassment. But they stopped at the mouth of the nantuckke River. So that allowed Patty's group to bring people down by the river, either go through the bay or break further down on the peninsula or cross over into Maryland. So that river and the fact that the British did not go up the river also gave her a competitive market advantage.
Allison Dickson:Oh, yeah, yeah. And speaking of that market, I was really fascinated by the economics of the situation, because when they ban the import of Africans for slavery, what tends to happen obviously whenever you ban an import is it makes what's here go up in in value, starts costing more, um, and so the price of a slave back then was a thousand dollars in that currency, worth about $22,500 today. That's still kind of disgusting in terms of like that's, all human life is worth is twenty two thousand five hundred dollars.
Jayson Blair:Um, anyway, um, but uh I pay people twenty two thousand five hundred dollars to stay away from me there is that, there is that.
Allison Dickson:But I find it really interesting though, because there were other states, right, that hadn't that weren't. Weren't they kind of like like south carolina was still trying to bring people in?
Jayson Blair:um, yeah, there were other states right so yeah there were states that tried to break it. But you also have to remember the louisiana purchase, right, oh yeah. So new orleans, the Louisiana Purchase, right, oh yes. So New Orleans was exempted for a while from the ban on imports the slaves so they were still able to bring in slaves. It was done illegally. But I think the thing to realize about the War of 1812, obviously this is going on illegally. Quote unquote. That gave the British an opportunity to harass the Americans about it. It allowed them to free slaves, right. But I think an important thing to look at it is, if I'm Britain and I'm competing against a country that has enormous agricultural and other resources, that has a free labor force, it's going to be harder to beat them.
Allison Dickson:So if I can free that labor force, See, this was the thing that I was wondering and one thing I wanted to ask you am I being cynical here? When I noticed that the great redheads abolished slavery in the same year, I was like wait, are they trying to offer competitive packages like who is your better uh leader here, the queen or the king, I'm sorry? Or?
Jayson Blair:I mean, you have to look at it like look at what's happening in haiti and the caribbean and other spots like that, right, you essentially have in the Caribbean, slave revolts happening and people are captured by those on islands, yes, and the British start to have much less land that they can cultivate using slavery, so slavery becomes less to their advantage, right, and it's highly to the Americans' advantage. So if you're competing with the Americans, there is a great advantage to slavery going out of favor. You're not going to beat them one for one anymore.
Allison Dickson:Right.
Jayson Blair:Right.
Allison Dickson:That is very interesting. And so, with all this going on, then, of course and this again, this happened this is all taking place over about 20 years. Is that right Is about how active Long, long patty was, active for um, so she was able to really uh, capitalize on on the market and the war and everything that was going on. And now, with the war of 1812, was there any like active fighting, like going on in the country, or was the war mainly?
Jayson Blair:kind of I mean, you know so, no, no, no, no, I mean the war came to dc it came to dc.
Allison Dickson:Oh you're absolutely right, you're right. Okay, this is a war I have not studied as much in depth as, like, the revolution in the civil war. So, uh, so I I I've been trying to backfill a couple of knowledge gaps on this one.
Jayson Blair:The White House was burned by the.
Allison Dickson:British, that's right. The original White House, that's right, it did burn in the war of 1812. So the reverse underground railroad that they were doing, that was what stayed active for a long time. But they were doing other gang activities as well, right, because, like you said, they were killing other slave dealers, they were kidnapping people and bringing them south, but they were also getting them from Philadelphia, and that's who I wanted to kind of bring in New Jersey. Because you had mentioned Henry Barreton.
Allison Dickson:He was kidnapping other people's slaves right yeah, he was going on to other people's plantations and stealing their slaves, which is incredibly dangerous.
Jayson Blair:Or their homes, if it wasn't yeah.
Allison Dickson:Right. And not just kidnapping free people but I mean that and not just robbing slave traders who were transporting slaves, but also just going on to the plantations and taking slaves.
Jayson Blair:And you see less of that in the history. As the gang evolves, they start to get out of the business or the gang itself. Once Joe Johnson and Patty are running, it are not no longer doing that.
Allison Dickson:And what's interesting too, as I had read that they also utilized within their gang black members or members of mixed race as sort of decoys, like if you want to make, if you want to put somebody you're trying to kidnap at ease and you have black people in your gang, then they're going to not maybe not feel like they're as much in danger.
Jayson Blair:but that was part of uh, yeah, so that's definitely a part of it. Right, like you're trying to lure people into kidnapping, it helps to have people who can tell you of great jobs or opportunities or whatever it is, but it also serves another purpose. Just like with the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in the 1950s, you have built in Fall Guys. Right, there were two black men who were a part of that group that went with them. See that the slave traders inevitably had some black servants, or whatever you want to call them right, somehow involved in their work.
Jayson Blair:It served many utilities and what they would do, um and this is part of what led to her downfall and, um, her capture is that you know, one of the one of the guys who worked for her and I'm trying to remember which of the two it was, I think it was Cyrus, cyrus, cyrus, I can't think of Cyrus's name, but one of the one of the black men who worked for her would go to Philadelphia, would charm both women and men and would attempt to get them to come to jobs in other places or spots where they essentially would get kidnapped, and so that was essentially the way that, eventually, philadelphia gets involved in the case. But there were others who would travel across Delaware and do similar things. There were others who would do similar things in New Jersey. So this group you know Western Maryland, western Pennsylvania, very expansive. They had a very expansive reach and ultimately that reach into the northern states and the ethics of some people in the Deep South are what lead to their downfall.
Allison Dickson:Right, Right it's. It's just incredible. What they were able to get away with, you know, is going through a lot of the sort of gang activities that you had, you know, written down. You'd mentioned the child in the fireplace and and then there were travelers that would come to the tavern. I think you mentioned one that she had stabbed him in the heart with a dagger and other people had walked into the house during the killing and she caught up with them and threw him on a table that had dishes on it, covered him in the tablecloth and thrust him into a chest in the room, then called accomplices who robbed him and took his body on a small boat into the river. So this is just but one night hanging out with Patty Cannon.
Jayson Blair:This is what happens but one night hanging out with Patty Cannon. This is what happens.
Jayson Blair:Yeah, there was one that she allowed to board a slave trader board in her house and there was a secret passage. They came up and they clubbed him. She clubbed him. There's another example of somebody who was at the tavern another slave trader who was at the tavern, another slave trader who was at the tavern and they seated him by a window so someone could come from the back of the window and stab him there. So you know, like People talk about like mere presence, right? Yeah, when they're like 30 or 40 people disappearing and it all seems to be around you, yeah, and it becomes a little more than mere presence.
Allison Dickson:The sheer body count of killers from earlier eras is astounding.
Allison Dickson:I think mostly because it was harder to get caught, probably back in those days People could just do a lot more killing before, and you know this is, of course, well before we even knew the term serial killer was a thing. But it's utterly fascinating to me that this woman had a house full of bodies and you just look at this sheer body count. Count, aside from all the kidnapping that she did, um responsible for the death of probably over 10 000 people in indirectly or directly. Yeah, I mean a lot of these people that were sold.
Allison Dickson:now there were people that were recovered and I and I do want to uh bring that up, because there were people that she sold down the river literally. That did get recovered and that was thanks in large part to the mayor of Philadelphia so our friend Mike Ely Trust Legal History.
Jayson Blair:Check it out if you have not seen it.
Allison Dickson:Yes, and I'm on an episode, jason's on an episode. Oh yeah, that's right, that's right that's right.
Jayson Blair:That's right, brett, yep brett is on episode.
Jayson Blair:He's got lots of really good guests. But he asked where did he put the body? So when people ask me that question, where did she put the bodies? I have like one story that can give you all of the many examples. So there was this black boy who worked for her in the house, 15-year-old Black boy. She became very suspicious that he was going to rat her out and escape at some point. So he had been like a waiter and a servant in the house and she really became or he, the 15-year-old appeared to become really really, really uncomfortable once.
Jayson Blair:She burned that child to death that I was talking about before. So she became worried about him. So the gang basically went after him, beat him with a large shovel right then patty took him alive, locked him in the cellar where she kept most of the dead bodies before they were transported out um, it also had skeletons of children that she had murdered down there left him there for two days and two nights with no food and water. Um, then she came down and she asked him she wanted to check to see if he was still alive, brought him a little bit of food, then asked him whether he'd inform on her. He pointed out all the other stuff and said, of course he would. And then she took a stone, beat him to death, buried him in the garden.
Jayson Blair:So the answer to your question is in the in the cellar itself skeletons in the garden. Out back, uh, there were bodies. And then another field there were bodies and you know when she ultimately gets arrested later in the story there were 20, I think 21 people uh chained up in the tavern ready for transport, and then there were several, uh many, many, many, many bodies and a couple of people at her house.
Allison Dickson:Yeah. Yeah, I just wanted to get that. And and yes, if you're curious, uh, about how it smelled, it was probably terrible. I mean, you know, you think about these houses full of bodies and and whatnot. I think that there are people that just um, I think, if you're into killing that much, I don't, I don't know that you necessarily notice or care. Uh, maybe you like it, maybe you just like being.
Jayson Blair:I'll let you know when I start my next career.
Allison Dickson:I. I for one would like to keep it clean, you know, but the there were. It just feels like an almost hopeless kind of situation, right, because people, her victims are still largely not considered real victims at this point in time. These are these are slaves or black people, that don't matter to the, you know, the white population, so nobody's going to take it seriously. This is how people have gotten away with serial murder for millennia. Going after people, you know sex workers. Nobody cares about them either, right? So uh, countless.
Jayson Blair:But something, something was changing, though yes, you have to.
Allison Dickson:You know like as much as people. You do something long enough. You're gonna piss off enough people or the wrong person although also some of it is the economic incentives, right.
Jayson Blair:So something was changing with the, the economics. As much as I like to beat up america because I really do uh, if you, if you, want to get into a boxing match, let me sit tell me about this great country that we love.
Allison Dickson:I mean I want to, I want to get in that fight too.
Jayson Blair:Yeah, let's well. Yeah, we can duke it out, so, um, but but part of what was changing right as you have more free blacks in the north and slavery is no longer a part of what was changing right. As you have more free Blacks in the North and slavery is no longer a part of what's happening in the North, they start becoming vital parts to the industrial economy. So kidnapping free Blacks from a state like Maryland or a state like Delaware is probably pretty safe, right, delaware is probably pretty safe, right. Kidnapping them from a city like philadelphia, where they're beginning to be seen a little bit more like citizens yes, pretty dangerous yeah, and mayor joseph wilson, he, he was getting philadelphia of philadelphia.
Allison Dickson:He was getting damn tired of people from his city of brotherly love getting kidnapped. Yep, and it's really interesting to hear about a mayor, a city mayor, reaching well beyond the borders not only of a city but his several states, uh, to reach his people back.
Jayson Blair:Yeah, you basically have three key nemesis Mayor Joseph Wilson of Philadelphia, john Clayton, who is in the US House of Representatives. He represented Delaware. He was later, toward the end of Patty's run. He was the Delaware Secretary of State. He was sent to the Senate after and he was one person who had been fighting and fighting and fighting, fighting to take care of it. He was a prominent close associate of the soon-to-be President Taylor, close associate of the soon to be president Taylor. And then the best part of the story to me, I the Philadelphia part's great, but it's actually an attorney and a slave owner from Mississippi that are the key to breaking the case.
Allison Dickson:Yes, john Henderson Correct.
Jayson Blair:Yeah, yes, john Henderson Correct.
Allison Dickson:Yeah, an attorney for Hamilton and later A US Senator from Mississippi that's according to your notes that are wonderful Said that if the statements of his blacks provided accurate, they should be published. So the people of Philadelphia the quote colored people of Philadelphia could be guarded against similar outrages and he was convinced of Johnson's guilt. Do you want me to give you a little?
Jayson Blair:background on how he got involved in it.
Allison Dickson:Yeah, that'd be great.
Jayson Blair:Yeah. So in a town called Rocky Spring, mississippi, there were three boys, three black boys and two women, who were offered for sale. One of the boys told the man, the slave owner, john Hamilton, that they weren't slaves but they'd actually been stolen from Philadelphia. So Hamilton sent for a Mississippi justice of the peace who questioned the people who brought them down. The people who brought them down, there were several people, but one of them was Ebenezer Johnson, who was related to Joe Johnson. He produced a bill of sale for the Blacks and agreed to let them remain with Hamilton until their backgrounds were verified. Enter John Henderson, who's Hamilton's lawyer. Meanwhile, johnson, ebenezer Johnson disappears.
Jayson Blair:Well, you eventually find out that you're dealing with. They ultimately find out that you're dealing with people who are captured from Philadelphia. Later they will find people captured from Delaware who were sold in Alabama. People captured from and these were children, these were women, these were men, in an assortment of different people.
Jayson Blair:But really, what spurred it was John Henderson, the attorney for Hamilton, you, what spurred it was John Henderson, the attorney for Hamilton reaches out to Mayor Wilson of Philadelphia and says hey, we've got this problem down here of free Blacks who are being offered up for sale and every incentive in the world that John Henderson and his client had would have been to be silent and just let it happen in the background. But they wanted to adhere the raw law, um, or had some kind of moral conviction related to it, um, you know. But basically they, the henderson gives them the advice to investigate it. They had no idea in that moment that they were unraveling and people talk about how it just starts with one clue. They had no idea they were unraveling one of the biggest kidnapping organizations in American history.
Jayson Blair:And so Wilson follows his advice, which eventually connects him with Delaware's Attorney General James Rogers, and also John Clayton who, in the Attorney General of Delaware, had tried previously to bring Patty to justice, because Patty had been arrested previously with joe johnson and she had been released. He was actually punished at the pillory, and if you guys have ever seen the pillory, it's like the thing where your head goes through the wood and your hands go through on the other side. The part that they leave out is that they nail your ears to the yes, the little soft part of your ears yeah.
Jayson Blair:So joe, like you can still see it in the newspaper where joe was put against the pillory and this was over a kidnapping, put against the pillory from like 10 to 4 on a day. Patty was initially charged with it but the charges were dropped against her and others. So they're kind of onto her right, like they are onto her. But it really takes this guy, this slave owner with some kind of conscience in Mississippi, his attorney and the mayor of Philadelphia to come together to finally get the resources that the Delaware attorney general needs to to to bring this to justice. So at the time she gets arrested we're at 1821 is when she gets arrested with Johnson. Johnson is the only one um punished in 1824. So they think at this point Johnson's now out of the business right. But in 1824, so they think at this point Johnson's now out of the business right.
Jayson Blair:But in 1824, a Black woman named Hannah McCauley files a petition for freedom in Maryland against Johnson and another man. So they're like, why does fakes leaving the area right but is still active? And so really it's the period of 1826 to 1829 where you, johnson is allegedly not there, patty's in semi-retirement. There are all these stories and there are these little newspaper clippings about her going to different Maryland homes where she's like, entertaining the host, the hostesses, telling gossip, amusing stories.
Jayson Blair:You know she's supposedly in semi-retirement, but eventually they find a number of records that suggest that they are still killing Blacks, they're still moving slaves. But what really causes it to unravel are a couple of different things, one of which was one of the people who were in Mississippi who was actually free was a woman from Elkton, maryland, a Black woman who had, which is on the Eastern shore, closer to the, closer to the bay, and that caused the Maryland authorities to kind of go a little bit. So you have all these forces working against her and rumors spreading in the neighborhood, and so so sort of. The final thing is these forces are coming together, is and I love this, and you guys should take this as a PSA if you think your neighbor has dead bodies in their house or something like that, the neighbors put together a group, right?
Allison Dickson:It was next door, it was old-timey next door.
Jayson Blair:The next door and they pretend that they want to buy a part of the property and they sneak on the property and they basically convince one of her servants, who's black, and they say they'll protect her if they let her down in the cellar.
Allison Dickson:and they let her down in the cellar and that ultimately leads to patty's oh they, oh my god, wow, yeah, because then they were able to get a see something, say something a sheriff came out with a warrant and had about a dozen armed men and this is speaking of border.
Jayson Blair:This is so crazy that it's like the maryland sheriffs are on the delaware property. The delaware sheriffs are hitting the maryland. Nobody knows what's going on.
Allison Dickson:It's a jurisdictional nightmare, I mean really, and it still can be in that part of the country, I think, especially if you just think, oh, this was in DC. Dc is not a state. What are you doing?
Jayson Blair:But I mean, I'm going now if I need someone to disappear.
Allison Dickson:Right, right. But you know, what's interesting is that amid all of this, they find all these people, they find all these bodies. She was only charged with four murders at the at the end of it, and so I mean, really in our system, I mean, one will usually get you put away for life or or or hanged um in this in this day and age, age that we're talking about, but but she and her and the gang were all tried and convicted and sentenced to execution, but Patty, patty didn't go out quite quite so.
Jayson Blair:Simply no, because Patty went out like in the same murdering way that she came in.
Jayson Blair:Yeah, she basically started poisoning herself that's what the historians believe and she started poisoning herself and, like the way they started noticing something was wrong, like chunks of her hair were coming off and then she started tearing her clothes off and they had to replace them and then she started biting anyone she could reach replace them.
Jayson Blair:And then she started biting anyone she could reach. And then she would get calm and be fine for a little while and become more composed. And in those composed moments she started expressing remorse right, and then she would go on one of her rages of badness again because she was probably poisoning herself again. And and then back to remorse. In one of those remorse moments she asked for a priest and she confesses to 11 murders by her own hand and gives accounts of them and says she's been the accessory of one of her children who was three days old. Yeah, and then the poisoning of her husband and killing two of her wealthy neighbors. The account suggests that the actual number is 24 or more, a minimum of 24, possibly more by Patty's own hand, not to include her accessories.
Allison Dickson:Right, because, yeah, if you put in the accessories, I'm telling you I'm getting some people with some pretty heavy body counts on this show. We have Belle Gunness, who had up to 40, it was believed. And then the Russian guy, vasily Blokin, had 7,000 at least, and now her Patty Cannon. So just to show, I think, how it only takes one person in a lot of cases to ruin a lot of lives, a whole lot of lives.
Jayson Blair:Jill, you are correct, this is gross.
Allison Dickson:Yeah.
Jayson Blair:And Lily, you are correct, she was loka and evil.
Allison Dickson:And Lily wanted to know does she have any children within any of the slaves? Or, you know, I don't know that we could know that, possibly Not that we know that she had children with the slaves.
Jayson Blair:She know, I don't know that we could know not possibly, but not that we know that she had children with the slaves. She did have her own children and that's actually an interesting point. That uh local rumors that were actually, you know, in the other version of the story, the non-canada version of the story. The local version, is that she was uh part mulatto herself yes um, or part native herself.
Jayson Blair:Now there's some people who believe that those stories were made up to disassociate um, disassociate uh her from them. But the intermixing of races in the south, as you can imagine, particularly as you got, uh, into areas like delaware and maryland, was quite high. So like I don't think you can rule out the idea that there may have been some self-loathing thing going on, right?
Allison Dickson:yeah, yeah, um, and so she. They don't know exactly where her body was. Now you have um. They think that they found her skull, but we're not 100 on that.
Jayson Blair:Yeah yeah, so there are two versions of her skull. Um, these are. These are the most prominent one, the ones that were in the. They used to take it out for halloween in uh at the delaware archives. So, um, but in the, the picture on the right of the lady holding the skull and looking into it is um, is uh from it when it was exhibited. Someone sanely passed a law in delaware that said you could not display human remains in the museum so eventually this skull got sent to the Smithsonian.
Jayson Blair:One of the funny stories is that a historian I think it was in the 90s or something like that, I may have the dates wrong but came in asking about Patty Cannon and was talking to the archivist about it and who's the archives director, and he was like, oh, I have her skull right in here. And then just walked over to the shelf and his office, pulled out that little box and then there was Patty's skull.
Allison Dickson:You know, there have been a lot of laws passed about what various institutions can do with human remains, like there are books that are bound in human skin that the Harvard Medical School Library has in their collections, and there's a lot of problems surrounding having those things on hand, so that doesn't surprise me. Do we have any?
Jayson Blair:future horror writers in the chat, because Allison and I have a great horror book idea for you If you go back here. Oh yeah, this picture is Joe Johnson's tavern, where they would like wine, dine and stuff slaves. Well, apparently there is a house now built on the foundation of it.
Allison Dickson:Just a normal looking house.
Jayson Blair:Did not watch Poltergeist and there is a great horror movie.
Allison Dickson:They. They need to remake the Conjuring is a great horror movie. They need to remake the Conjuring, I'm telling you. They need to remake it. Get those charlatan, that couple who's named the Warrens, get them out of that. We need to reset it and put it on this property right here, because, honestly, if there is any piece of haunted land in this country, it's going to be right on that patch.
Allison Dickson:I would think it is interesting to see, though, that at least they're putting some signage up, they're acknowledging the history here in some way, because this story, which I kept noticing over and over again as I was studying it, is that there's just not a lot out there, and what you have dug up for this episode, hopefully, will paint a much broader picture, even going onto YouTube. Much broader picture even going onto youtube. I was telling jason, I'm like we're gonna have to, like, make this video public beyond this after this episode goes live as a podcast, because there's just no content out there about patty cannon, um, really, um, other than you know and it's really interesting to me too, when we talk about things like um the um, you know, like we have these conversations about, like are there women serial killers or are there many, or are there there are many notorious ones.
Jayson Blair:If we talk about like, you know the motives behind things. I think we tend to flatten and simplify them, right. You know, did patty kill over money, or was it about independence, or was about what happened to her as a child, or is it just because, like, she was a psychopath or she was very excitable? Whatever it is, it's usually a wild mix of things, and I think the thing that you have to look at because I tend to come of mind that patty was a serial killer first and not a slave trader first. Right, slave trading was a way to make money, get power. She's a psychopath. It worked for her. Serial killing was also her business.
Jayson Blair:That these times in history where we have turmoil look at something like the war in Ukraine right now or Hurricane Katrina in Florida that is wide open ground for people, even if they're not serial killers, who want to do harm to other people, when we do not take care of each other or take care of laws, and you can still see places like this now. Inner cities like the Navajo reservation during COVID those are wide open opportunities for people who want to do harm whether it's killing or something else to do that harm. And I think there's an important lesson for us that persists in the society today when we turn the blind eye to certain groups or populations or look at some of these real politics things that we're doing in other countries, that we turn the blind eye, we're opening the door. I doubt there's many people although there are probably some who would listen to what they heard in this episode today and not find this horrendous. Right.
Jayson Blair:I bet if we did a real inventory, there's something that we're enabling or not fighting, just like happened in Rwanda or Bosnia or in Ukraine during the war.
Allison Dickson:Or what's happening in Haiti right now, or what's happening in.
Jayson Blair:Haiti right now. That is contributing to the exact same things that your grandkids, or your great grandkids, when they're getting this podcast thing on a chip in their brain are going to be thinking are horrendous yeah. A hundred years from now.
Allison Dickson:Yeah, and also I found, you know, looking back and reading about these horrors that I'm reading on every topic that I'm covering on this show is I find myself playing the Mr Rogers looking for the helpers person because I'm like, all right, where's, where's my hero? Is there a hero anywhere in this narrative? Sometimes there is, often there is not and there is not. I got some reassurance, I think, from the heroes in this particular story because, my God, there were so many who needed somebody and this right here shows, like you said, that importance, I think, of us looking out for one another and holding together that social net and providing the basics for one another. So maybe we don't feel the need to rob and steal and kill, to survive even, and trying to keep this sort of or how about we just don't treat people like property? I think that would also be perhaps a good moral of the story.
Allison Dickson:But is that? Does that wrap it up for you, jason?
Jayson Blair:I mean, I know we had a lot of material here and had the canon to go on forever for me, but the I think I think, in taking and looking back at some of these historical examples, you know it's fascinating and that's one of the things I love about your podcast, but I would just encourage everyone to have a really broad aperture and recognize that there are analogous things happening today, whether it's in Russia or Canada or Mexico.
Allison Dickson:It's all over the world, and if you think a border is going to prevent the chaos in one place from spilling over into another place, that's not going to happen and history has born.
Jayson Blair:My, my, my border is the atmosphere. Yes, that little globe, the border is exactly between here and space.
Allison Dickson:That is the atmosphere. That little globe is my border. The border is exactly between here and space.
Jayson Blair:That is our border Until they're aliens and I will bring them in our border. Well, until we find them or they find us Although you know, I was listening to this really funny thing, this interview, and the guy was like, okay, if aliens did find us, why would they stop?
Allison Dickson:Yeah, no, I liked Michio Kaku as one of my favorite astrophysicists and the way when he talks about sometimes about how other civilizations would view us. Anyway, a lot of the prevailing theory is that they would just view us the way we view ants, in the sense that you just walk on them or by them. You don't really, unless they're getting into your stuff. You just don't really think about them. Um, but uh, but yeah, it's um. I hope to welcome every opportunity to examine history and find the parallels. That's why I love to do that zeitgeist, because it's like things that were happening then affecting what's happened in the broader scope, often give you a, a slice of like why, why is this happening here in the in the closer up? So, um, I want to do that with every episode and I hope that, if you liked today's episode, that you will be back for more, that jason will come back for more guests, uh, guest spots and cause.
Allison Dickson:I just love this discussion and I love the knowledge that you have to share on this topic has been hugely valuable to me and I know it'll be very valuable to my listeners. And you know, while you're waiting for the next episode, I hope that you will consider joining the vintage villains Patreon, or join Jason's the silver lin Linings Handbook, or both, or both. Is it the either or thing? No, we're not in competition, man. We really should just, you know, open it up and combine it.
Jayson Blair:But, that's the prosecutor. Vintage villain ding-dong darkness, Silver Linings Handbook, Santa, maybe, yeah, Santa, maybe I mean you know. Get it all in one package, the kingdom is growing.
Allison Dickson:Look out, wondery, we're coming for you. Um, but uh, but there's um that. But the patreon is where you will get to stay up on more events like this, like live recordings. You can participate in the chats and have questions answered. Um, and there's also this discussion over on Facebook at the Vintage Villain Soiree, where, of course, you can also bring up new topics or post related things to what we're talking about here and any questions that you have. And, of course, you can also leave ratings and reviews over on Apple and Spotify. And finally, go and check out Jason Blair's podcast, the Silver Liningsings handbook. He is giving some of the best interviews that you'll find out there. Period. If you love an interview podcast seriously, where that where he'll talk to any variety of people and just get down into you know what really makes them tick uh, you have a gift for that, my friend and I need to go and check out your show, and that's it.
Allison Dickson:That's all I've got here for this episode of Vintage Villains, but now it's time for you all to go on and make good history, and I'll see you next time in another century.