May 27, 2025 • 34 mins
Years ago, if you wanted to start a fight in Hartlepool in north eastern England, all you'd have to do is start calling people 'monkey hangers'. But why? Join the guys as they explore how the Napoleonic War, a terrified village and one incredibly unlucky monkey collided -- allegedly -- in one of the most ridiculous events of its time.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow ridiculous historians. We are going abroad in this week's
classic episode, to northeastern England. I'm Ben your nol And
right before we re listened to this episode and recorded this,
you and I were looking back at our notes and
we immediately said, oh, man, and you said that's a word.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I did say that's a word. Folks from Hartpool in
northeastern England are apparently referred to as Heartapudlians, much like
people from Liverpool are referred to as Liverpudlians, much like
people from Lilliput are referred to as Lilliputians. Ben, have
you seen the new sort of horror comedy The Monkey.
(00:45):
I have.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yes, it was fine.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
It was a bit final destination coded.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Let's just say yeah, yeah, actually you know what I'm
going to go on a Wednesday. It wasn't very good.
I was not. You know, it's it's making your plused. Yeah,
sure I was, because you know, I'm kind of like
a Larry David character. So about fifteen minutes in I
give every film at least ten to fifteen minutes. Fifteen
(01:11):
minutes in I thought, man, I'm not gonna get a
refund on it.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I bought it on Amazon's I paid the price. I
honestly Ben didn't finish it. But that's neither here nor there, y'all.
We're not a movie criticism podcast, though we do critique
things from time to time. Today we are talking about
monkeys from Heartlepull hertlepull.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Yes, Hartleplian monkeys hangers even. Yeah, if you wanted to
have fighting words with some people in this part of
northeastern England, all you would have to do is walk
into the local or the local pub. I guess we
should say and start calling people monkey hangers. And this
goes back to the Napoleonic War, classic war. Yes, actually
(01:57):
for tacticians and students of you know, war colleges, which
I'm sure a huge demographic for us, along with hungover
substitute teachers. Uh, the Napoleonic War. Thank you for the
thank you for the shrug there, Maxis. The facts are
the facts. Do they have war summer camps? Yeah? They?
Oh man, that is actually a great idea for another
(02:20):
episode in the future. Noel, we are sharing a story
that I think made us both feel kind of bad
because you know, I'm a huge fan of pretty much
every animal other than the Honda Odyssey, and uh, I
don't rank it as a reputable vehicle. But this is
(02:43):
also the tale of one incredibly unlucky little monkey.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Man Ah, the unlucky little monkey, that's right, And how
the Napoleonic War, a terrified village and said unlucky Simeon
collided in a ridiculous historical explosion for the ages.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
(03:34):
fellow ridiculous historians. My name is Ben.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
You usually do something that you usually do A bit
at the beginning of the show. Threw me for a
loop there, Ben, do.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
You want a bit? We can? I think I need
to go back. I need a bit. Okay, guys, journey
with us back to the beginning. Wait, should we keep
this all on my Yeah, of course do that. Yeah,
we need a full time all right. So there's our
super producer, Casey Pegram. Everybody give him a hand. You guys,
we are flying blind today. We are. Here's instead of
(04:04):
a bit, let's do a bit of background.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
How about that, Ben, that's smart. That is a smart
use of the word bit.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
So everyone knows where we're coming from right now.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Well, that's very important. Setting up the scene is very important.
So today's scene starts in h well, in France and
Europe in general. I guess in the late seventeen hundreds,
because you see in seventeen ninety nine Napoleon Bonaparte, remember
the guy that got formed by cute little bunnies. He
(04:32):
overthrew the French Revolutionary government, right, yes, and this triggered
what is known as the Napoleonic Wars. Yeah, because he
had designs on conquering like everything.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, he was like a more successful William Walker, who
you'll recall from previous episodes. The Napoleonic Wars occurred between
eighteen o three and eighteen fifteen, and this was the
French Empire led by Napoleon against just a mixtape of
various European powers voltroning together, usually led by the United
(05:10):
Kingdom that was the ringleader.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
And just just for a little bit of a quick bookkeeping,
it was in eighteen o two that there was a
thing called the Piece of Our Means that ended a
decade of war between Great Britain and France.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Right right, So things were not particularly stable to begin with.
When the wars begin in eighteen o three and before
we go on this is this is gonna be a
punchy episode, folks. I think that's the word you use. No,
because when I said a bit of background, I was
also talking on a meta level about our situation today.
(05:45):
We are Noel Casey and I are in the studio
for this episode, and then we're going to be here
into the night making an appearance on a favorite show
of ours. Behind the Bastards. Should go ahead and plugged
that and assume that we survived this recording session. Yeah,
we'll see.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
We're gonna be some punchy characters by the time that's
all said and done. But yeah, our buddy Robert Evans
asked to be on the show, and we thought he
was joking when he said, yeah, you know, just be
about three or four hours.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
We're like, okay, you know, we're game.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
But I'll tell you who else was game? Was Napoleon
for some conquerings?
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yes, no, why don't you walk us through a few
of these conflicts, because this context is very important to
today's story.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Well, the US was actually involved a little bit as well.
Napoleon got back Louisiana from Spain in eighteen hundred, and
then he made a brash attempt to overthrow a revolution
in Haiti, but it did not succeed, and so having
Louisiana was not a valuable thing without the strategic stronghold
(06:49):
of Haiti, so he decided to give it back to
the US in the Louisiana Purchase of eighteen oh three,
before Great Britain could invade it.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Yes, and in addition to this, the British forces were
increasingly creeped out, irritated, angered, upset, and eventually frightened by
Napoleon's actions in Europe, right with Switzerland, Germany, Italy and
the Netherlands. And they were also concerned, as you said,
(07:21):
that Napoleon might not stop at Haiti, he might become
a threat to Britain's overseas colonies.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
That's right, because the British had the Royal Navy and
they were doing quite a good job of defending their
shores and French invasion attempts had not gone so well.
But the tide kind of turned when there were some
big successes by the French military and the power of
the British navy started to wane a little bit and
(07:51):
they really needed to kind of bolster that up. So
there was a lot of paranoia there would be a
direct invasion by sea of British territories. And that is
where our story truly begins with this paranoia and this
concept of the French are coming.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yes, the French are coming. There was a nationwide fear
that some historians describe as interrational anxiety about Napoleon's motives
and intentions. They were especially spooked when Napoleon assurded control
over Switzerland. They thought the French the British. They just
(08:27):
thought the French could be coming at any given moment.
And one day, according to the story, or a legend,
or at the very least alleged story, a French ship
actually did land in England, but it wrecked. It wrecked
by an old fishing village named Hartleypool. Yeah, it was like.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Right there on the beach, and supposedly the heart Pudlians
hart Lapulions came running and there were supposedly no survivors
to this wreck, no humans. Well, oh, man, come on,
come now, no human survivors to this wreck. But there
(09:09):
was a little hairy guy who was, you know, in
fact or in fiction, a monkey.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yes, the only survivor of the wreck. There on the
northeastern coast of England was a very panicked and traumatized
little monkey who washed ashore miraculously survived. Keep in mind,
everybody else on the ship drowned, right and the hard
Lipudlians had never seen a primate like this before.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
That is what they say, And according to a source
from historicuk dot com, the monkey was possibly dressed in
a tiny military uniform.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
See, that's that's interesting. I appreciate these say possibly because again,
there are things about this story. I think you can
tell by the way we're carefully hedging some of these statements.
There are things about this story that can't really be proven,
but we do know internally the logic jibes because the
monkey's supposed to be a mascot of the ship, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
But this is the thing, though, Ben, I mean, do
do all ships have mascots? That's not something I'd ever
heard of.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Surely not.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
You carry around like a signature animal, like a familiar.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
No, some military groups have done that.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, but I guess so like I can actual living
create well, I guess like a football team, like having
like the Uga bulldog or whatever.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
I guess when I think of a mascot. I think
of somebody wearing a you know, a big custos Yeah, exactly.
So yeah, So this is a supposed primate, supposedly dressed
in a tiny military uniform, was panicked as one could imagine,
and gibbering mindlessly as monkeys do. And according to the tale,
(10:53):
the Hartleypudlians interpreted this gibbering as as a foreign language,
possibly French.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Let's pause there for a second, casey, could you do
us a massive favor and play the sound of a
monkey chattering, because we all know a little bit about
French enough to know what it sounds like roughly, so
clearly not French.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Why if you don't know French, who's to say? Who's
to say? And that is the crux of the story, nol,
Because the people of this town, the Hartleypudlians, had an
awareness of the nation of France and the threat that
opposed geopolitically, but not a person in the village had
ever seen a French person. And to make matters worse, apparently,
(11:44):
a lot of political satire cartoons of the day depicted
frenchmen as hairy, monkey like creatures with sales and sub
humans exactly because they were the enemy. I mean it
was sort of like the you know, the Red Scare
type stuff. I mean, this guy is like gunning for
their their lands, right. So yeah, so what do they do.
They do like any god fearing, French fearing person would do.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
They panic.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
They panic, They absolutely freak out.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
They bug out, and according to the story, they seize
again this poor traumatized monkey who has skirted death once already.
So they panic, It's exactly what they do, and they say,
we have to do something about this frenchman. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
But thankfully, you know, they had their their wits were
about them. They didn't let justice go unserved.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
They they decided to put this monkey on trial.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Unfortunately, due to the language barrier, yes, the monkey was
not able to defend itself or provide satisfactory answers to
the townspeople's question.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
That's right, because the thing is, Ben, they didn't just
think the monkey was it was a Frenchman. They thought
the monkey was a French spy. And I've yet to
find a detail that that justifies why exactly that was.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
But those are the questions they were asking him, a
lot of them. Are you a spy? Right, I said,
are you a spy. He just keeps speaking frendship me.
I know, I know.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
So. Yeah, so they sentenced the monkey to death according
to the tale.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, you can read different accounts of this, but sources
that cleave to the story or the anecdote say that
the townsfolk literally dragged this monkey into the town square
and then they hanged him and he died. But this
is where we get a couple of different I don't
know interpretations and questions about credibility, because there's a darker
(13:40):
side to the tale that we found in HISTORICUK dot com. Yeah,
I know the one you're talking about on Ben The
Hanging of the Heartlepool Monkey by Ben Johnson. The dark
turn is this, maybe the villagers didn't actually hang a monkey,
but instead a small bully pretty a child who was
(14:03):
employed on the warship because at this time there were
boys who were hired on and worked on these ships
to prime the cannons with gunpowder. Yeah, with the very
convenient name of powder monkeys. Right. So is this a
game of telephone throughout history with the misinterpretation occurring as
(14:23):
people tell the story over and over again. Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
These are all very important questions that we probably won't
have an actual satisfactory answer to spoiler. But it's because
no one was there and it was you know, a
lot of ships went down around that time, because, like
I said, the naval exploits of Napoleon weren't all always that.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Successful, right, And according to Historic England's records of thirty
eight thousand shipwrecks around the coast of Britain, fourteen ships
sank in the Hartlepool Bay area around that time, so
there it was not incredibly uncommon for shipwrecks to occur.
(15:12):
So that's I think we can agree that's more or
less the gist of the legend.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Correct, correct, But that's not the gist of the episode.
I mean, we wouldn't just stop short there. There's got
to be more, Ben, There's got to be more. Please
give us more.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
There has to be more. You're right, because you see,
this is where the credibility of the tail comes into question.
So you could say maybe something like this happened and
it got embellished over time, right. But the problem is
this tale is attributed to more than one place. There's
(15:45):
a remarkably similar tale from seventeen seventy two that centers
on Bodom near Peterhead in Aberdeenshire. I love British town names.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
There's an even better one, ben, I believe that's a
Welsh town or I'm sorry, a Cornish town, right, yes, yeah,
I'll give this one a go. My never legacy, okay, nevigacy,
that's good. Yeah, come on, Cornish folk tells us I
would have done the same. I'm with you on that.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
So in both of these cases, villagers supposedly find a monkey.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Yeah, and in one of them I believe they it
was the last survivor of the shipwreck, and so they
killed it so that they could have claim on the cargo.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Isn't that the deal with some kind of technicality law? Yeah,
it's aberdeen Shire. H it's a brutal The monkey was
human enough. I guess what would it have done. Would
it have become the new captain of the wreck?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Would it have made a claim? And then the other one,
I believe the monkey was an organ grinder monkey. It
wasn't the same. It was a slightly different did a
kid uh huh?
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah? That monkey had a comment that still happens when
animals attack people.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Have you ever seen that show when animals attack people.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
I've seen when animals attack.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Yes, but my favorite one is the one where it's
specifically they attack people.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
I you know what, I'm fond of animals attacking cars.
H that's the thing. Yeah, have you ever seen those videos? Like,
first off, if you have never been around a monkey,
some of those monkeys are brutal. They are not playing no,
and it will break into tart. Don't they eat their
young too? Did I make that up? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Never mind, let us know if that's just the primate
stereotype that we've we've seen spread or we could just
check it now.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Right. So those are two points against the veracity of
the story that one thing very similar is attributed to
a completely different town, And there are other points that
stick with it. A lot of people who say that
it definitely happened they're in Heartlepool are supportive of it
(17:54):
as a being a part of local culture.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yeah. No, it's totally like part of their heritage because
it's weird. It's like, on the one hand, it seems
like a term of abuse, but on the other hand,
some people look at it as a term of pride.
Heartlepudlians are often described as monkey hangers.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yeah, And for centuries after the legend spread, references to
monkey hanging were used to mock the residents the Heartlepudlians
and apparently at football matches today between local rivals they
have this chant who hung the monkey? Which I would
have loved to hear out of context.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
There's also a quote in this BBC article called was
a Monkey Really Hanged in Hartleypool from a historian by
the name of Keith Gregson, who mentions the fact that
there was sort of a divide between the town because
of a newly industrialized area.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
I believe so.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
There was a sense that the folks that lived in
this new industrialized part of the town called West Hartleypool
were more intelligent than those who would and the old
more antiquated, you know, old and clinging on to the
old way as part of the town. Who may have
been the ones who hanged this monkey? So it was
kind of a there is a divide.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
There and that's the older part of the town is
also where the fishing industry continued, right, so they would
have been most likely to be hanging out by the waters. Yeah,
And as the years passed, the people of Hartlepool begin
to embrace this story as you mentioned, know, as you
alluded to earlier, it becomes a point of cultural pride
(19:33):
or something that differentiates their town from other nearby towns,
and people begin to fall in love with it. It
becomes the subject of books. There's even a graphic novel.
I think, there's a play. And there's even a song
with a little bit of story behind it. Yeah, let's
(19:54):
hear that.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Well, a lord there of auto was walking along the shore.
But you se a little Harry Man he's never seen before,
sitting in the sun. Was very little man punching a banana,
and a little Harry.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Hansing also not proven. No, no, this this song spoiler.
This song essentially does the entire story.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
It really does, and it takes a good four and
a half minutes to do it. So we'll go ahead
and give it a nice little fade out right now.
But the song is actually a big part of how
this legend kind of came to be what it is today, right, Ben, Right,
that's how it got popularized, or at least the evolution
of a song. I'm not quite sure if it's this song.
So they can actually find any attribution for what this
song is and there's a set of lyrics that's a
(20:40):
little different. That is a reference to a song that
was first performed in eighteen fifty five by a performer
from the area by the name of mister E Corvin
or Edward ned Corvin, who is a Victorian performer who
toured around the area known as the Tyne Side.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
You ever heard of this Ben? Yeah, he was a
Tyne Side concert hall player, wrote songs and stuff. Tyneside
is the banks of the River Tyne in northeast England,
so its region that includes a couple of places, a
couple of different places that have great names. Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, Tynemouth, Wallsend,
(21:22):
south Shields and Jarrow. Probably mispronounced a couple of those,
but if you're listening, you're from that part of the world. Hey,
shout out to you. Shout out to you. I thought
you were gonna tell him to shut up no more.
I want more Tyne Side. You know what's interesting about
Ned we can call him Ned because we're fans of his,
was that he was known for writing like a satirical song,
(21:46):
a little bit of a lighthearted roast for every town
that he visited. So he would go visit a town
and he would write a song about them while he
was there, and he would perform it in the town.
So when Ned goes to heart Lip, he writes a
song about Yeah, he writes to talking about the monkey
hanging hm. And this song becomes popular in the region.
(22:08):
People love it. Eventually, from what I understand, hart Lipudleyan's
themselves begin to be fans of the song. Well, here's
the thing.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
In this BBC article, they talk about how he was
making references to a previous song that existed called the Baboon,
which has written in eighteen twenty five, or which was
first heard around eighteen twenty five, and it was a
different story entirely about a baboon that visited the region
with some Cossack soldiers. So I don't quite see the
connection there, but just they both happened in Tyneside. Yeah too.
(22:37):
But how did he know about the He just made
up the Napoleonic? Is that what's being implied here, Ben,
that he just made this thing up wholesale.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
What it seems they're implying is that this was a
remix or a reworked version of the song, and that
he took elements from the Baboon and used them in
his song about the heartlek Pudlian monkey hankers.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
But at that point was this already a legend? That's
my question is like is the legend coming from the song?
Like where is the uh? Where's the seed of truth here?
Because there are people that still we're gonna talk about
a second that still hang on to the fact that
the idea of this could well have happened. Is it's
such a bizarre story, but that logic always eludes me.
When you say it's so crazy it must be true.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Well, also those folks, as we'll find, have skin in
the game, right, The main people who believe it are
themselves Heartlepudlians. It feels like Corvin heard the story, the
French monkey story right, and then mixed with it aspects
(23:41):
of the story about the baboon, also from Tyne side,
and then added a dash of his own stuff. I'll
here we go, and then set the whole thing in heartlepool. Okay,
that makes sense, and here we go.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
We also have something from this BBC article that says
the original song had some phrases in it that he
reused like hairy French spy Andan's uncle, and I wish
I could find the lyrics to the Baboon. But there's
another set of lyrics called the Monkey Song that's not
the same as only played. There's a lot of these
songs floating around, but it goes in former times when
(24:12):
Warren strife, the French invasion threatened life, and all was
armed to the knife. The fisherman hung the monkey. Oh,
the fisherman with courage high seized on the monkey for
a French spy, hang him, says one, he's to die.
They did, and they hung the monkey.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
But it's like it's got that same sing songy folky
quality that the song we played has in the original song.
That's when we played it because they think he's a spy,
so we'll hang him in the square. And this one's
just a little bit different. If the fishermen were courage high,
seized on the monkey for a French spy, hang him,
says one, he's to die, They did, and they hung
the monkey.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Oh. So I don't know, man like, is it.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Song that's like making this legend a thing or is
it oral history?
Speaker 1 (24:52):
It's oral history first, and then the song, which is
borrowing from other songs I got it, okay, So it's
still and because it's a song, it's oral history. It's true.
That's a good point. Then here's where we find disagreements.
As as we mentioned earlier, a lot of the people
(25:12):
who wholeheartedly believe in this story or claimed to are
themselves heart Leapudlians. The successful mayoral candidate in the two
thousand and two local elections, it's a guy named Stuart Drummond.
He campaigned dressed in the costume of.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Oh he wasn't just dressed in it, man, He was
the official mascot of the Heartleaputulian Football Club.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Right, and he campaigned for mayor dressed in that character.
But that was a it was like a sort of
a goof. It was sort of a goof. But he
maintains that it really did happen. But of course you
would maintain that really did happen. He's running for mayor,
wants the town to be unique. It's great pr and
as as we said, he was the mascot for a time.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, but he also won. He did win and stayed
mayor for like, I think eleven years.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
He was mayor. Three election victories.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
He succeeded and yeah, and it just goes to and
he you know, he maintains that nobody can say whether
or not this happened or not because nobody was there.
And that's okay, that's one way of looking at it.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
I saw a quote where he said that it definitely
something happened. The problem is most of the people who
disagree with him are professional historians, and even if they
don't go so far as to say this never happened,
they end up saying, we looked everywhere for proof of this,
and we could find absolutely no proof. There was some
(26:38):
excitement in two thousand and five when an animal bone
was found buried on the beach, despite the fact that
in the story the monkeys hanged in the town square.
People thought, well, this might be physical proof of a
small primate washing ashore. Unfortunately, it was not a primate bone.
It was the bone of a prehistoric deer.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
That's right, a deer from somewhere the neighbor had a
six thousand years ago when herds of deer would have
migrated across that part of the country, and they were
followed by tribes of hunters who wanted them for sustenance
and for you know, the byproducts like their skin and
there in their antlers and stuff. And this is from
a great article. Well this is my headline, very very
(27:19):
pithy headlined, very good ancient bone not from monkey spy.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Hopes of unraveling the mystery of the legendary Heartlepool monkey,
said to have been hanged as a Napoleonic spy, have
been scuppered by science. Scuppered scupperd's a great word. We
need to bring that back. Like a scuppernog. What's a scuppernog.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
It's like a type of grape, I think, Oh, yeah, yeah,
sort of like a muscat.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Oh, okay, muscott, I know, but scupper see it again, scuppernog,
scupper dog. That sounds so tolkien esque.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Yeah, you can make wine out of it. And in fact,
it is compared to a muscadine. It is a large
variety of muscadine. Oh, there you go, a species of
grape native to the southern United States, so right here
in our backyard.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
And at this point it becomes somewhat of a matter
of opinion, what do you feel better about believing the
main argument for proponents of the story is that it's
not hurting anyone and there's no proof that it didn't happen,
which is not a particularly strong position to take, especially
because on the other side of the coin, there's no
proof that it did happen. That's right. So what do
(28:21):
you believe? What do you choose to believe? Folks?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Oh, we're putting it to the people, well and to
you as well, though, Okay, well, I don't know, man.
I don't want to poop you on anybody's monkey parade
or anything. But it feels to me like with the
nature of the multiple monkey stories, some of the kind
of you know, mutating facts in the story and the
different accounts in song, I feel like this is rife
(28:45):
for having been a kind of a good gag, poking
fun at the intellect of the people of Hartlepool.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yeah, personally, I choose to believe it didn't happen because
I don't like the idea of a town of people
hanging a monkey, you know, man, come on, that's brutal.
For me to be able to laugh at it and
derive enjoyment from it, I have to think of it
as a tall tale. There you go. So this is
this is the story? Oh man, I can't wait for
the flood of email from people who have strong opinions.
(29:17):
We're gonna get a lot of time side people have.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Strong opinions and they send emails.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
It's a new thing. It's insane. You can be part
of it. We'll give you the information at the end.
But speaking of emails, enough about us, what about you?
Did you see any good listener mails today?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Nol? As a matter of fact, I do, Ben, I did,
and I do still doing this one. Yeah, this one
comes from mister venomous and it says Ben and Nole
Agents of discord is what he's referring to, toss, which
I like. In all of history, my favorite historical figure
is Emperor Norton. His story makes him a perfect candidate
for ridiculous history. In eighteen forty eight, he was bequeathed
(29:56):
forty thousand dollars from his father's estate. He tried making
it as a business man and Sam Cisco, but made
a bad investment in buying one hundred tons of pure
Peruvian rice. A prolonged core battle over the loss of
his investment led him to go bankrupt in eighteen fifty eight.
Penniless and discontent with the legal system and politics, he
declared himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of
Mexico in eighteen fifty nine. Let's just leave it there, Ben,
(30:19):
because I like this one and it almost sounds like
it's something stuffy miss in history class our peer podcast
may have done, but if not, we're going to snatch
it up.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
And Agents of Discord is a reference, I believe to
one of our other shows. Mister Venomous has written into
us before on stuff they don't want you to know
what it does. Ring a bell. Yeah, well, it's great
to hear from you again, man, I agree with my
trustee co host here. That is a fantastic idea for
an episode if we're the first ones to get to
(30:48):
the plate on it. We have one more emails that's
a little bit long from Adam s. He titled it
lots of topics. Sorry, I'm just going to read some
of the greatest hits of the excerpts here. So Adam,
you say, hey, guys recently picked up the podcast, So
catching up, and I'm nearly there. I love the show
so far, but I do listen to the new episodes
(31:10):
then go back to make my way through that golden backlog. Huh.
And I've never heard us our backlog described as golden.
He has some suggestions for food fils. Adam says, you
talked about food fails. Can I point a drink one
your way? Here in the UK, Coca Cola released a
water which I think you may still get in the
(31:31):
US Desani. They use the marketing as something like can't
live without spunk. Here in the UK, that's a slang
word for something you really wouldn't want in your drink.
We said that over here plenty. Yeah. I think that
what made it across the pond. And Adam says it
got better when it was found out that it was
treated tapwater from a suburb in London and was no
(31:52):
better than said tapwater. When the press got a hold
of it, it was a pr nightmare and pulled. I
think it may be one of the funniest and worst
pas our disasters here for a while now. This got
me thinking, at least we could do an episode on
some of the biggest historic food fails. There used to
be a museum in the States A long time ago.
(32:15):
There was a Hall of shame for foods that appeared
and disappeared from supermarkets, Things like peas that were pressed
into a shape of French fries to try to trick
kids into eating their vegetables.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Ah. Yeah, as a as a father of a nine
year old, I can tell you.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
That's not gonna fly. It did not fly.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
But I tried making my kid eat cauliflower because you
can like make cauliflower into like a rice tiy.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Yeah, she doesn't buy it. She knows it's non rice.
I'll make a cauliflower pizza. I bet she did it. Well,
that's different.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
I feel like that's that's that's a good example, Ben,
because that's like you're baking it and it has that crunch.
But with rice, it's just they're not they're not rice
sized grains. You're not gonna mistake them for RTT. That's
why it's rice cauliflower, not cauliflower rice.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Right. So thank you mister venomous, Thank you Adam for writing.
And we want to hear some more food fails. So
send us your favorite ones from your neck of the
global woods.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Yeah, you can write to us at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks
dot com. You can hit us up on social media Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter and all that. You can join our Facebook group
Ridiculous Historians, where we still kick around some fun ideas
and have a really nice community that's sprung up there,
So come come hang out with us there on Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Of course, we want to thank you for listening. We
want to thank our super producer Casey Pegram, thanks to
Christopher Hasiotis and Eve's Jeff Cod our research associates, and
thanks to Alex Williams who composed our track We'll see
you next time, folks, can we go out on the
monkey song?
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Let's catch you, oh man, Let's do it.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
It was a pond old nay pool about the time
of France the Emperor Napoleon Leslie Insance, where a pullo
on the post. I'm a British man of Wall. The
captain's old but monkey washed the bottle the shop and
singing oh boo to everyone on each come and see
(34:01):
the French eat has landed on the beach. He's got
my hams a great one telling his co ad doll
in a spy so ill likeabre.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow ridiculous historians. We are going abroad in this week's
classic episode, to northeastern England. I'm Ben your nol And
right before we re listened to this episode and recorded this,
you and I were looking back at our notes and
we immediately said, oh, man, and you said that's a word.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I did say that's a word. Folks from Hartpool in
northeastern England are apparently referred to as Heartapudlians, much like
people from Liverpool are referred to as Liverpudlians, much like
people from Lilliput are referred to as Lilliputians. Ben, have
you seen the new sort of horror comedy The Monkey.
(00:45):
I have.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yes, it was fine.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
It was a bit final destination coded.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Let's just say yeah, yeah, actually you know what I'm
going to go on a Wednesday. It wasn't very good.
I was not. You know, it's it's making your plused. Yeah,
sure I was, because you know, I'm kind of like
a Larry David character. So about fifteen minutes in I
give every film at least ten to fifteen minutes. Fifteen
(01:11):
minutes in I thought, man, I'm not gonna get a
refund on it.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I bought it on Amazon's I paid the price. I
honestly Ben didn't finish it. But that's neither here nor there, y'all.
We're not a movie criticism podcast, though we do critique
things from time to time. Today we are talking about
monkeys from Heartlepull hertlepull.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Yes, Hartleplian monkeys hangers even. Yeah, if you wanted to
have fighting words with some people in this part of
northeastern England, all you would have to do is walk
into the local or the local pub. I guess we
should say and start calling people monkey hangers. And this
goes back to the Napoleonic War, classic war. Yes, actually
(01:57):
for tacticians and students of you know, war colleges, which
I'm sure a huge demographic for us, along with hungover
substitute teachers. Uh, the Napoleonic War. Thank you for the
thank you for the shrug there, Maxis. The facts are
the facts. Do they have war summer camps? Yeah? They?
Oh man, that is actually a great idea for another
(02:20):
episode in the future. Noel, we are sharing a story
that I think made us both feel kind of bad
because you know, I'm a huge fan of pretty much
every animal other than the Honda Odyssey, and uh, I
don't rank it as a reputable vehicle. But this is
(02:43):
also the tale of one incredibly unlucky little monkey.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Man Ah, the unlucky little monkey, that's right, And how
the Napoleonic War, a terrified village and said unlucky Simeon
collided in a ridiculous historical explosion for the ages.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
(03:34):
fellow ridiculous historians. My name is Ben.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
You usually do something that you usually do A bit
at the beginning of the show. Threw me for a
loop there, Ben, do.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
You want a bit? We can? I think I need
to go back. I need a bit. Okay, guys, journey
with us back to the beginning. Wait, should we keep
this all on my Yeah, of course do that. Yeah,
we need a full time all right. So there's our
super producer, Casey Pegram. Everybody give him a hand. You guys,
we are flying blind today. We are. Here's instead of
(04:04):
a bit, let's do a bit of background.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
How about that, Ben, that's smart. That is a smart
use of the word bit.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
So everyone knows where we're coming from right now.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Well, that's very important. Setting up the scene is very important.
So today's scene starts in h well, in France and
Europe in general. I guess in the late seventeen hundreds,
because you see in seventeen ninety nine Napoleon Bonaparte, remember
the guy that got formed by cute little bunnies. He
(04:32):
overthrew the French Revolutionary government, right, yes, and this triggered
what is known as the Napoleonic Wars. Yeah, because he
had designs on conquering like everything.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, he was like a more successful William Walker, who
you'll recall from previous episodes. The Napoleonic Wars occurred between
eighteen o three and eighteen fifteen, and this was the
French Empire led by Napoleon against just a mixtape of
various European powers voltroning together, usually led by the United
(05:10):
Kingdom that was the ringleader.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
And just just for a little bit of a quick bookkeeping,
it was in eighteen o two that there was a
thing called the Piece of Our Means that ended a
decade of war between Great Britain and France.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Right right, So things were not particularly stable to begin with.
When the wars begin in eighteen o three and before
we go on this is this is gonna be a
punchy episode, folks. I think that's the word you use. No,
because when I said a bit of background, I was
also talking on a meta level about our situation today.
(05:45):
We are Noel Casey and I are in the studio
for this episode, and then we're going to be here
into the night making an appearance on a favorite show
of ours. Behind the Bastards. Should go ahead and plugged
that and assume that we survived this recording session. Yeah,
we'll see.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
We're gonna be some punchy characters by the time that's
all said and done. But yeah, our buddy Robert Evans
asked to be on the show, and we thought he
was joking when he said, yeah, you know, just be
about three or four hours.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
We're like, okay, you know, we're game.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
But I'll tell you who else was game? Was Napoleon
for some conquerings?
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yes, no, why don't you walk us through a few
of these conflicts, because this context is very important to
today's story.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Well, the US was actually involved a little bit as well.
Napoleon got back Louisiana from Spain in eighteen hundred, and
then he made a brash attempt to overthrow a revolution
in Haiti, but it did not succeed, and so having
Louisiana was not a valuable thing without the strategic stronghold
(06:49):
of Haiti, so he decided to give it back to
the US in the Louisiana Purchase of eighteen oh three,
before Great Britain could invade it.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Yes, and in addition to this, the British forces were
increasingly creeped out, irritated, angered, upset, and eventually frightened by
Napoleon's actions in Europe, right with Switzerland, Germany, Italy and
the Netherlands. And they were also concerned, as you said,
(07:21):
that Napoleon might not stop at Haiti, he might become
a threat to Britain's overseas colonies.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
That's right, because the British had the Royal Navy and
they were doing quite a good job of defending their
shores and French invasion attempts had not gone so well.
But the tide kind of turned when there were some
big successes by the French military and the power of
the British navy started to wane a little bit and
(07:51):
they really needed to kind of bolster that up. So
there was a lot of paranoia there would be a
direct invasion by sea of British territories. And that is
where our story truly begins with this paranoia and this
concept of the French are coming.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yes, the French are coming. There was a nationwide fear
that some historians describe as interrational anxiety about Napoleon's motives
and intentions. They were especially spooked when Napoleon assurded control
over Switzerland. They thought the French the British. They just
(08:27):
thought the French could be coming at any given moment.
And one day, according to the story, or a legend,
or at the very least alleged story, a French ship
actually did land in England, but it wrecked. It wrecked
by an old fishing village named Hartleypool. Yeah, it was like.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Right there on the beach, and supposedly the heart Pudlians
hart Lapulions came running and there were supposedly no survivors
to this wreck, no humans. Well, oh, man, come on,
come now, no human survivors to this wreck. But there
(09:09):
was a little hairy guy who was, you know, in
fact or in fiction, a monkey.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yes, the only survivor of the wreck. There on the
northeastern coast of England was a very panicked and traumatized
little monkey who washed ashore miraculously survived. Keep in mind,
everybody else on the ship drowned, right and the hard
Lipudlians had never seen a primate like this before.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
That is what they say, And according to a source
from historicuk dot com, the monkey was possibly dressed in
a tiny military uniform.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
See, that's that's interesting. I appreciate these say possibly because again,
there are things about this story. I think you can
tell by the way we're carefully hedging some of these statements.
There are things about this story that can't really be proven,
but we do know internally the logic jibes because the
monkey's supposed to be a mascot of the ship, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
But this is the thing, though, Ben, I mean, do
do all ships have mascots? That's not something I'd ever
heard of.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Surely not.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
You carry around like a signature animal, like a familiar.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
No, some military groups have done that.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, but I guess so like I can actual living
create well, I guess like a football team, like having
like the Uga bulldog or whatever.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
I guess when I think of a mascot. I think
of somebody wearing a you know, a big custos Yeah, exactly.
So yeah, So this is a supposed primate, supposedly dressed
in a tiny military uniform, was panicked as one could imagine,
and gibbering mindlessly as monkeys do. And according to the tale,
(10:53):
the Hartleypudlians interpreted this gibbering as as a foreign language,
possibly French.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Let's pause there for a second, casey, could you do
us a massive favor and play the sound of a
monkey chattering, because we all know a little bit about
French enough to know what it sounds like roughly, so
clearly not French.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Why if you don't know French, who's to say? Who's
to say? And that is the crux of the story, nol,
Because the people of this town, the Hartleypudlians, had an
awareness of the nation of France and the threat that
opposed geopolitically, but not a person in the village had
ever seen a French person. And to make matters worse, apparently,
(11:44):
a lot of political satire cartoons of the day depicted
frenchmen as hairy, monkey like creatures with sales and sub
humans exactly because they were the enemy. I mean it
was sort of like the you know, the Red Scare
type stuff. I mean, this guy is like gunning for
their their lands, right. So yeah, so what do they do.
They do like any god fearing, French fearing person would do.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
They panic.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
They panic, They absolutely freak out.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
They bug out, and according to the story, they seize
again this poor traumatized monkey who has skirted death once already.
So they panic, It's exactly what they do, and they say,
we have to do something about this frenchman. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
But thankfully, you know, they had their their wits were
about them. They didn't let justice go unserved.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
They they decided to put this monkey on trial.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Unfortunately, due to the language barrier, yes, the monkey was
not able to defend itself or provide satisfactory answers to
the townspeople's question.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
That's right, because the thing is, Ben, they didn't just
think the monkey was it was a Frenchman. They thought
the monkey was a French spy. And I've yet to
find a detail that that justifies why exactly that was.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
But those are the questions they were asking him, a
lot of them. Are you a spy? Right, I said,
are you a spy. He just keeps speaking frendship me.
I know, I know.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
So. Yeah, so they sentenced the monkey to death according
to the tale.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, you can read different accounts of this, but sources
that cleave to the story or the anecdote say that
the townsfolk literally dragged this monkey into the town square
and then they hanged him and he died. But this
is where we get a couple of different I don't
know interpretations and questions about credibility, because there's a darker
(13:40):
side to the tale that we found in HISTORICUK dot com. Yeah,
I know the one you're talking about on Ben The
Hanging of the Heartlepool Monkey by Ben Johnson. The dark
turn is this, maybe the villagers didn't actually hang a monkey,
but instead a small bully pretty a child who was
(14:03):
employed on the warship because at this time there were
boys who were hired on and worked on these ships
to prime the cannons with gunpowder. Yeah, with the very
convenient name of powder monkeys. Right. So is this a
game of telephone throughout history with the misinterpretation occurring as
(14:23):
people tell the story over and over again. Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
These are all very important questions that we probably won't
have an actual satisfactory answer to spoiler. But it's because
no one was there and it was you know, a
lot of ships went down around that time, because, like
I said, the naval exploits of Napoleon weren't all always that.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Successful, right, And according to Historic England's records of thirty
eight thousand shipwrecks around the coast of Britain, fourteen ships
sank in the Hartlepool Bay area around that time, so
there it was not incredibly uncommon for shipwrecks to occur.
(15:12):
So that's I think we can agree that's more or
less the gist of the legend.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Correct, correct, But that's not the gist of the episode.
I mean, we wouldn't just stop short there. There's got
to be more, Ben, There's got to be more. Please
give us more.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
There has to be more. You're right, because you see,
this is where the credibility of the tail comes into question.
So you could say maybe something like this happened and
it got embellished over time, right. But the problem is
this tale is attributed to more than one place. There's
(15:45):
a remarkably similar tale from seventeen seventy two that centers
on Bodom near Peterhead in Aberdeenshire. I love British town names.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
There's an even better one, ben, I believe that's a
Welsh town or I'm sorry, a Cornish town, right, yes, yeah,
I'll give this one a go. My never legacy, okay, nevigacy,
that's good. Yeah, come on, Cornish folk tells us I
would have done the same. I'm with you on that.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
So in both of these cases, villagers supposedly find a monkey.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Yeah, and in one of them I believe they it
was the last survivor of the shipwreck, and so they
killed it so that they could have claim on the cargo.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Isn't that the deal with some kind of technicality law? Yeah,
it's aberdeen Shire. H it's a brutal The monkey was
human enough. I guess what would it have done. Would
it have become the new captain of the wreck?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Would it have made a claim? And then the other one,
I believe the monkey was an organ grinder monkey. It
wasn't the same. It was a slightly different did a
kid uh huh?
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah? That monkey had a comment that still happens when
animals attack people.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Have you ever seen that show when animals attack people.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
I've seen when animals attack.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Yes, but my favorite one is the one where it's
specifically they attack people.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
I you know what, I'm fond of animals attacking cars.
H that's the thing. Yeah, have you ever seen those videos? Like,
first off, if you have never been around a monkey,
some of those monkeys are brutal. They are not playing no,
and it will break into tart. Don't they eat their
young too? Did I make that up? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Never mind, let us know if that's just the primate
stereotype that we've we've seen spread or we could just
check it now.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Right. So those are two points against the veracity of
the story that one thing very similar is attributed to
a completely different town, And there are other points that
stick with it. A lot of people who say that
it definitely happened they're in Heartlepool are supportive of it
(17:54):
as a being a part of local culture.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yeah. No, it's totally like part of their heritage because
it's weird. It's like, on the one hand, it seems
like a term of abuse, but on the other hand,
some people look at it as a term of pride.
Heartlepudlians are often described as monkey hangers.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yeah, And for centuries after the legend spread, references to
monkey hanging were used to mock the residents the Heartlepudlians
and apparently at football matches today between local rivals they
have this chant who hung the monkey? Which I would
have loved to hear out of context.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
There's also a quote in this BBC article called was
a Monkey Really Hanged in Hartleypool from a historian by
the name of Keith Gregson, who mentions the fact that
there was sort of a divide between the town because
of a newly industrialized area.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
I believe so.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
There was a sense that the folks that lived in
this new industrialized part of the town called West Hartleypool
were more intelligent than those who would and the old
more antiquated, you know, old and clinging on to the
old way as part of the town. Who may have
been the ones who hanged this monkey? So it was
kind of a there is a divide.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
There and that's the older part of the town is
also where the fishing industry continued, right, so they would
have been most likely to be hanging out by the waters. Yeah,
And as the years passed, the people of Hartlepool begin
to embrace this story as you mentioned, know, as you
alluded to earlier, it becomes a point of cultural pride
(19:33):
or something that differentiates their town from other nearby towns,
and people begin to fall in love with it. It
becomes the subject of books. There's even a graphic novel.
I think, there's a play. And there's even a song
with a little bit of story behind it. Yeah, let's
(19:54):
hear that.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Well, a lord there of auto was walking along the shore.
But you se a little Harry Man he's never seen before,
sitting in the sun. Was very little man punching a banana,
and a little Harry.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Hansing also not proven. No, no, this this song spoiler.
This song essentially does the entire story.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
It really does, and it takes a good four and
a half minutes to do it. So we'll go ahead
and give it a nice little fade out right now.
But the song is actually a big part of how
this legend kind of came to be what it is today, right, Ben, Right,
that's how it got popularized, or at least the evolution
of a song. I'm not quite sure if it's this song.
So they can actually find any attribution for what this
song is and there's a set of lyrics that's a
(20:40):
little different. That is a reference to a song that
was first performed in eighteen fifty five by a performer
from the area by the name of mister E Corvin
or Edward ned Corvin, who is a Victorian performer who
toured around the area known as the Tyne Side.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
You ever heard of this Ben? Yeah, he was a
Tyne Side concert hall player, wrote songs and stuff. Tyneside
is the banks of the River Tyne in northeast England,
so its region that includes a couple of places, a
couple of different places that have great names. Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, Tynemouth, Wallsend,
(21:22):
south Shields and Jarrow. Probably mispronounced a couple of those,
but if you're listening, you're from that part of the world. Hey,
shout out to you. Shout out to you. I thought
you were gonna tell him to shut up no more.
I want more Tyne Side. You know what's interesting about
Ned we can call him Ned because we're fans of his,
was that he was known for writing like a satirical song,
(21:46):
a little bit of a lighthearted roast for every town
that he visited. So he would go visit a town
and he would write a song about them while he
was there, and he would perform it in the town.
So when Ned goes to heart Lip, he writes a
song about Yeah, he writes to talking about the monkey
hanging hm. And this song becomes popular in the region.
(22:08):
People love it. Eventually, from what I understand, hart Lipudleyan's
themselves begin to be fans of the song. Well, here's
the thing.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
In this BBC article, they talk about how he was
making references to a previous song that existed called the Baboon,
which has written in eighteen twenty five, or which was
first heard around eighteen twenty five, and it was a
different story entirely about a baboon that visited the region
with some Cossack soldiers. So I don't quite see the
connection there, but just they both happened in Tyneside. Yeah too.
(22:37):
But how did he know about the He just made
up the Napoleonic? Is that what's being implied here, Ben,
that he just made this thing up wholesale.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
What it seems they're implying is that this was a
remix or a reworked version of the song, and that
he took elements from the Baboon and used them in
his song about the heartlek Pudlian monkey hankers.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
But at that point was this already a legend? That's
my question is like is the legend coming from the song?
Like where is the uh? Where's the seed of truth here?
Because there are people that still we're gonna talk about
a second that still hang on to the fact that
the idea of this could well have happened. Is it's
such a bizarre story, but that logic always eludes me.
When you say it's so crazy it must be true.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Well, also those folks, as we'll find, have skin in
the game, right, The main people who believe it are
themselves Heartlepudlians. It feels like Corvin heard the story, the
French monkey story right, and then mixed with it aspects
(23:41):
of the story about the baboon, also from Tyne side,
and then added a dash of his own stuff. I'll
here we go, and then set the whole thing in heartlepool. Okay,
that makes sense, and here we go.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
We also have something from this BBC article that says
the original song had some phrases in it that he
reused like hairy French spy Andan's uncle, and I wish
I could find the lyrics to the Baboon. But there's
another set of lyrics called the Monkey Song that's not
the same as only played. There's a lot of these
songs floating around, but it goes in former times when
(24:12):
Warren strife, the French invasion threatened life, and all was
armed to the knife. The fisherman hung the monkey. Oh,
the fisherman with courage high seized on the monkey for
a French spy, hang him, says one, he's to die.
They did, and they hung the monkey.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
But it's like it's got that same sing songy folky
quality that the song we played has in the original song.
That's when we played it because they think he's a spy,
so we'll hang him in the square. And this one's
just a little bit different. If the fishermen were courage high,
seized on the monkey for a French spy, hang him,
says one, he's to die, They did, and they hung
the monkey.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Oh. So I don't know, man like, is it.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Song that's like making this legend a thing or is
it oral history?
Speaker 1 (24:52):
It's oral history first, and then the song, which is
borrowing from other songs I got it, okay, So it's
still and because it's a song, it's oral history. It's true.
That's a good point. Then here's where we find disagreements.
As as we mentioned earlier, a lot of the people
(25:12):
who wholeheartedly believe in this story or claimed to are
themselves heart Leapudlians. The successful mayoral candidate in the two
thousand and two local elections, it's a guy named Stuart Drummond.
He campaigned dressed in the costume of.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Oh he wasn't just dressed in it, man, He was
the official mascot of the Heartleaputulian Football Club.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Right, and he campaigned for mayor dressed in that character.
But that was a it was like a sort of
a goof. It was sort of a goof. But he
maintains that it really did happen. But of course you
would maintain that really did happen. He's running for mayor,
wants the town to be unique. It's great pr and
as as we said, he was the mascot for a time.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, but he also won. He did win and stayed
mayor for like, I think eleven years.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
He was mayor. Three election victories.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
He succeeded and yeah, and it just goes to and
he you know, he maintains that nobody can say whether
or not this happened or not because nobody was there.
And that's okay, that's one way of looking at it.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
I saw a quote where he said that it definitely
something happened. The problem is most of the people who
disagree with him are professional historians, and even if they
don't go so far as to say this never happened,
they end up saying, we looked everywhere for proof of this,
and we could find absolutely no proof. There was some
(26:38):
excitement in two thousand and five when an animal bone
was found buried on the beach, despite the fact that
in the story the monkeys hanged in the town square.
People thought, well, this might be physical proof of a
small primate washing ashore. Unfortunately, it was not a primate bone.
It was the bone of a prehistoric deer.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
That's right, a deer from somewhere the neighbor had a
six thousand years ago when herds of deer would have
migrated across that part of the country, and they were
followed by tribes of hunters who wanted them for sustenance
and for you know, the byproducts like their skin and
there in their antlers and stuff. And this is from
a great article. Well this is my headline, very very
(27:19):
pithy headlined, very good ancient bone not from monkey spy.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Hopes of unraveling the mystery of the legendary Heartlepool monkey,
said to have been hanged as a Napoleonic spy, have
been scuppered by science. Scuppered scupperd's a great word. We
need to bring that back. Like a scuppernog. What's a scuppernog.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
It's like a type of grape, I think, Oh, yeah, yeah,
sort of like a muscat.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Oh, okay, muscott, I know, but scupper see it again, scuppernog,
scupper dog. That sounds so tolkien esque.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Yeah, you can make wine out of it. And in fact,
it is compared to a muscadine. It is a large
variety of muscadine. Oh, there you go, a species of
grape native to the southern United States, so right here
in our backyard.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
And at this point it becomes somewhat of a matter
of opinion, what do you feel better about believing the
main argument for proponents of the story is that it's
not hurting anyone and there's no proof that it didn't happen,
which is not a particularly strong position to take, especially
because on the other side of the coin, there's no
proof that it did happen. That's right. So what do
(28:21):
you believe? What do you choose to believe? Folks?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Oh, we're putting it to the people, well and to
you as well, though, Okay, well, I don't know, man.
I don't want to poop you on anybody's monkey parade
or anything. But it feels to me like with the
nature of the multiple monkey stories, some of the kind
of you know, mutating facts in the story and the
different accounts in song, I feel like this is rife
(28:45):
for having been a kind of a good gag, poking
fun at the intellect of the people of Hartlepool.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yeah, personally, I choose to believe it didn't happen because
I don't like the idea of a town of people
hanging a monkey, you know, man, come on, that's brutal.
For me to be able to laugh at it and
derive enjoyment from it, I have to think of it
as a tall tale. There you go. So this is
this is the story? Oh man, I can't wait for
the flood of email from people who have strong opinions.
(29:17):
We're gonna get a lot of time side people have.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Strong opinions and they send emails.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
It's a new thing. It's insane. You can be part
of it. We'll give you the information at the end.
But speaking of emails, enough about us, what about you?
Did you see any good listener mails today?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Nol? As a matter of fact, I do, Ben, I did,
and I do still doing this one. Yeah, this one
comes from mister venomous and it says Ben and Nole
Agents of discord is what he's referring to, toss, which
I like. In all of history, my favorite historical figure
is Emperor Norton. His story makes him a perfect candidate
for ridiculous history. In eighteen forty eight, he was bequeathed
(29:56):
forty thousand dollars from his father's estate. He tried making
it as a business man and Sam Cisco, but made
a bad investment in buying one hundred tons of pure
Peruvian rice. A prolonged core battle over the loss of
his investment led him to go bankrupt in eighteen fifty eight.
Penniless and discontent with the legal system and politics, he
declared himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of
Mexico in eighteen fifty nine. Let's just leave it there, Ben,
(30:19):
because I like this one and it almost sounds like
it's something stuffy miss in history class our peer podcast
may have done, but if not, we're going to snatch
it up.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
And Agents of Discord is a reference, I believe to
one of our other shows. Mister Venomous has written into
us before on stuff they don't want you to know
what it does. Ring a bell. Yeah, well, it's great
to hear from you again, man, I agree with my
trustee co host here. That is a fantastic idea for
an episode if we're the first ones to get to
(30:48):
the plate on it. We have one more emails that's
a little bit long from Adam s. He titled it
lots of topics. Sorry, I'm just going to read some
of the greatest hits of the excerpts here. So Adam,
you say, hey, guys recently picked up the podcast, So
catching up, and I'm nearly there. I love the show
so far, but I do listen to the new episodes
(31:10):
then go back to make my way through that golden backlog. Huh.
And I've never heard us our backlog described as golden.
He has some suggestions for food fils. Adam says, you
talked about food fails. Can I point a drink one
your way? Here in the UK, Coca Cola released a
water which I think you may still get in the
(31:31):
US Desani. They use the marketing as something like can't
live without spunk. Here in the UK, that's a slang
word for something you really wouldn't want in your drink.
We said that over here plenty. Yeah. I think that
what made it across the pond. And Adam says it
got better when it was found out that it was
treated tapwater from a suburb in London and was no
(31:52):
better than said tapwater. When the press got a hold
of it, it was a pr nightmare and pulled. I
think it may be one of the funniest and worst
pas our disasters here for a while now. This got
me thinking, at least we could do an episode on
some of the biggest historic food fails. There used to
be a museum in the States A long time ago.
(32:15):
There was a Hall of shame for foods that appeared
and disappeared from supermarkets, Things like peas that were pressed
into a shape of French fries to try to trick
kids into eating their vegetables.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Ah. Yeah, as a as a father of a nine
year old, I can tell you.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
That's not gonna fly. It did not fly.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
But I tried making my kid eat cauliflower because you
can like make cauliflower into like a rice tiy.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Yeah, she doesn't buy it. She knows it's non rice.
I'll make a cauliflower pizza. I bet she did it. Well,
that's different.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
I feel like that's that's that's a good example, Ben,
because that's like you're baking it and it has that crunch.
But with rice, it's just they're not they're not rice
sized grains. You're not gonna mistake them for RTT. That's
why it's rice cauliflower, not cauliflower rice.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Right. So thank you mister venomous, Thank you Adam for writing.
And we want to hear some more food fails. So
send us your favorite ones from your neck of the
global woods.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Yeah, you can write to us at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks
dot com. You can hit us up on social media Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter and all that. You can join our Facebook group
Ridiculous Historians, where we still kick around some fun ideas
and have a really nice community that's sprung up there,
So come come hang out with us there on Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Of course, we want to thank you for listening. We
want to thank our super producer Casey Pegram, thanks to
Christopher Hasiotis and Eve's Jeff Cod our research associates, and
thanks to Alex Williams who composed our track We'll see
you next time, folks, can we go out on the
monkey song?
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Let's catch you, oh man, Let's do it.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
It was a pond old nay pool about the time
of France the Emperor Napoleon Leslie Insance, where a pullo
on the post. I'm a British man of Wall. The
captain's old but monkey washed the bottle the shop and
singing oh boo to everyone on each come and see
(34:01):
the French eat has landed on the beach. He's got
my hams a great one telling his co ad doll
in a spy so ill likeabre.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
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Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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