Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Hollley Frye and I'm Tracy be Wilson. This is one that I've had on my list for a minute, and it got on my list for one reason because I didn't know the whole story. And then it became a different story, which is that I stumbled across a piece of art by Richard Dad for reasons because it had come up in the news last year, I believe, And then I discovered the story behind him. Having already thought, oh, this is an interesting person, I wished to do an artist episode on him. So it is an artist episode, but it is also a murder episode, and it is also a madness episode. So we are talking about artist Richard Dad, whose life story is quite a ride and quite sad, so be worn there. There's some a good bit of violence in here, as well as some issues of delusion. If those are not enjoyable for you to hear about, this one might not be for you. But if you're like me and you find this utterly engaging, it's like an on ramp to our Halloween time. I actually had kind of thought that as I was reading through that line, it was like, this feels almost like something that we would do in October, but not quite. Nope. So Richard Dad was born August first, eighteen seventeen in Chatham, Kent, That's in England, born to Robert and Mary Anne Dad. His father, Robert was a chemist and his maternal grandfather was the well known shipwright Richard Martin. This younger Richard was the couple's fourth child out of eleven and as a boy, Richard attended King's School, Rochester, and he loved literature, particularly Shakespeare, and from the time he was quite young it was very obvious to everyone that he had a natural talent for drawing. By the time he was a teenager, Richard had started to really sketch with focus on the path to becoming an artist. In eighteen thirty seven, Richard was admitted to the Royal Academy of Arts, where his teachers all noted his skill as well as his gentle and kind personality, and in his third year at art school he won a medal for his life drawing. As a young man, Richard seemed poised to become one of the most prominent and perhaps even influential artists of England. He and several other artists founded a group known as the Clique. That group included such artists as William Powell Frith, who would become known for his scenes capturing English life, and Augustus Egg who was a friend of Charles Dickens and painted images that were often historical or anecdotal, and Henry Nelson O'Neill, who became known for his painting of the Indian Rebellion of eighteen fifty seven. Dad was generally seen as the leader of this group, or at least the most talented of them. Their focus was on promoting naturalistic art, and Richard really excelled at it. I will note that in watching a couple of videos with English art historians, they pronounce it the Clique, which I found quite charming. In eighteen forty two Dad illustrated the book of British Ballads by Samuel Carter Hall. And this is a substantial project. It's a two hundred and thirty three page book and about one third of that space is illustration, including frames that he created for every page. So this was really a lot of work on Dad's part. In July of eighteen forty two, Sir Thomas Phillips contracted Dad to accompany him on a grand tour of continental Europe, then through Greece, into Turkey, over to Syria and into Egypt, and then back to London. Phillips was the former mayor of Newport and this, of course was all before people could take photos of their travels, so he hired Dad to capture the trip through sketches along the way. David Roberts, a well known Scottish painter, was a friend of the family and had recommended Richard for this job. This was a pretty good gig. It was a way to see some of the world and also get paid to do it. The artist both loved and hated the trip for reasons we will explain, but more than anything, it was a trip that was life changing for Dad, and not in a good way. Dad and Phillips were not really of the same temperament when it came to travel. Whereas Phillips was sort of working through the sites they visited as a tourist, wanting to see things and then quickly move on to the next, Dad wanted to linger. Since Phillips also arranged it, presumably he had a greater sense of the schedule where his dad was just trying to capture what he saw, and he got frustrated because he felt he wasn't given enough time to really sketch things as fully as he would have liked. And then on long horse journeys he wanted to stop and sketch because he had difficulty sketching while he was riding, but his desires were not prioritized. And then at night when they camped, he found it was just too dark to do any serious work. So this whole trip was just not what he envisioned at all. In November of eighteen forty two, the group spent time in Syria and Egypt, and this was grueling travel. In December, Dad and Phillips were traveling up the Nile River on a boat when Dad started to behave oddly. He was described as having just a huge change in his demeanor and personality. Dad started to say things that were clearly delusional. He believed that the Egyptian god Osiris had been communicating with him. At the time, Phillips thought Richard was experiencing a sunstroke or heat exhaustion. As a note, there are some other versions of what happened with Dad at the end of this trip, at the very end, and some of this suggests that it was a more gradual change that got worse on the Nile, and that it may have been brought about by drug use during the journey. Even Dad said things like this at various points, but in any case, by the end of this trip, Richard definitely did not seem the same as when he had started on the journey, and as the group headed home through Europe, Dad continued to have difficulty discerning reality from his delusions. He described feeling an intense compulsion to kill the Pope when they were traveling through Italy, but his fear of the Vatican Guard was the only thing that kept him from it. Dad did not make it back to London with the rest of the Phillips party. He disappeared while they were all in Paris, and then he returned to London on his own. When Dad returned home, his odd behavior continued. He had a rented room at seventy one Newman Street, Oxford Street and started eating only a very limited diet. He would only eat eggs and only ale, and it seems like he was eating these eggs. Raw Newspaper reports state that the floor of his room was covered with eggshells, and he had huge quantities of eggs and ale on hand when the room was later examined. Dad's strange behavior did not go unnoticed, and his friends started to speak with his father about getting him some help. And although Robert Dad consulted with physicians and was advised that his son Richard needed to be in a hospital, he decided that the best thing for his son would be to go into the country for a respite from the city, where he could get plenty of fresh air and regain his health. And there are some accounts that suggest that this trip may have actually been Richard's idea, but in any case, they secured rooms in a cottage and Cobbham, where they had spent time earlier in Richard's life, and the night of their arrival they had dinner at a public house near those rooms. According to a waiter that worked at the public house where they dined, whose name was John Adams, the Dad's had stopped there inquiring about a place to sleep first, and he had told them they had no beds, but that he would check with a nearby cottage. Robert Dad had told Adams that one bed would be fine because Richard was his son. But Richard insisted that they have two beds, and so Adams went away to make these arrangements. He got two beds for them, and then he came back to the inn and told the dads that he had secured these lodgings. After dinner, Richard wanted to go for a walk, but Robert said he had walked enough that day. He ordered a whiskey and a water, and his son left. Robert and the waiter Adams chatted for a little while, and then Richard returned. At about eight forty five pm. Adams left the room to attend to some work, and when he got back at nine thirty, both of the men were gone. According to Adams, they waited until twelve thirty for the men to return before finally giving up and locking up the public house. Yeah, it seems like because he had secured the rooms in a cop and they hadn't gone there yet after dinner, he was going to take them over there, so he was waiting, but they never should back up. And apparently at one point, as the two men went out walking together after their dinner, the elder dad stepped away from the path to urinate, and when he did, his son Richard, attacked him. He first punched him in the head, and then he stabbed him in the chest and cut his throat, and according to his own account, Richard then shouted to the sky, go and tell the great godd o Cyrus that I have done the deed which is to set him free. Coming up, we'll talk about what happened after this murder, but first we will pause for a sponsor break. On the morning following the murder, a butcher named Abraham Lister was driving a buggy through Common Park with his nephew, Charles Lister. This was about seven am, and the two of them noticed a gentlemanly looking man lying in the park on his face, with his arms over his head and without his hat. He was about thirty yards away from the road, so the Lister thought the man may have been asleep or in distress, and they stopped to check on him and offer assistance, but a prawn approach saw that the body was covered in blood. They immediately reported the find, calling on the constable, and this body was soon identified as Robert Dad. A locked knife, a razor, and Robert's hat were soon found near where the body had been found. This Constable William Dawes, believed that Robert's body had been dragged some distance, and also noted that he had money and a gold watch still in his pockets. The surgeon who performed a post mortem, named William Saunders, reported to the coroner's jury that he had found an incision on the left side of the throat, although it wasn't big enough to have caused Robert's death. He also noted bruce on the deceased's face and head, and a number of small puncture wounds on the right thumb. The lungs had been penetrated by a knife in two places. He was confident that none of the wounds could have been caused by Robert himself. After hearing testimony for several hours, the coroner's jury declared this death to be a wilful murder. Initially, after Robert's body was found, questions arose about whether someone had attacked both father and son, and if Richard might also be somewhere in the park dead. No one had seen him since that waiter at the public house had left him and his father in the dining room. Then there was speculation that this may have been a murder suicide scenario and that Richard may have gone elsewhere and taken his own life, but that theory soon died down as reports began to surface of other people who had seen and interacted with him after Adams the Waiter. Additionally, when Richard's room in London was searched, authorities found some really troubling artwork that he had made. These artworks depicted people in his life, family and friends, each of which was shown with their throat slit. Richard became the prime suspect in Robert Dad's murder. After this discovery, police put out an internal notice that read quote description of Richard Dad who was suspected of having murdered his father at Cobham Park, Kent on the twenty eighth or twenty ninth, twenty four years of age, five feet eight inches high, dark hair, light blue eyes, thick, dark eyebrows, sallow complexion, no whiskers, dressed in a dark blue frock coat, light blue trousers. His linen marked Richard Dad or RD. Up to the time of the murder, he resided at number seventy one Newman Street, Oxford Street. Every exertion is to be used for the apprehension of the individual in question. Not long after, a bulletin went released to keep an eye on railroad stations, and another that every police division should start making inquiries at their local lodging houses. As the manhunt for Richard got into full swing, Robert Dad was buried at Gillingham Churchyard near Chatham, with Richard's brothers in attendance. According to a newspaper account published a week later. Immediately after the murder, Dad went to a tavern called Soul's Arms. Tavern was popular with artists, and he asked for a glass of water. According to the Chester Chronicle, published on September fifteenth, eighteen forty three, quote, his extraordinary appearance and excitement caused a remark from the barmaid that she thought the young gentleman was not in his right mind, which expression being overheard by him, he hurried from the house. Richard made his way to Rochester and from there took a carriage to the port at Dover. There, he stated at the Ship Hotel while working to secure passage to Frances. According to accounts from people who saw him there and noted his disheveled state, he claimed that he had fallen from a coach in an accident. He was noted as carrying large amounts of cash, and he paid ten pounds for his passage to Calais. In Calais, Dad was taken to the passport office. He told officials there that he was on pressing business. His passport was brand new, having just been issued the week before, but it was valid and he was sent on his way. He purchased new clothes in Calais and left his old, bloody suit behind at the hotel that was later seized as evidence. As newspaper reports relayed the grizzly details of Robert's murder at his son's hand, they offer up what's now a classic description of the perpetrator that's actually become kind of a trope, like this one in the Chester Chronicle quote, he has always been considered as a young man of the most mild disposition, and had ever exhibited fear links of the warmest and most affectionate attachment to his father. The unfortunate father was also devotedly attached to and proud of his son, whose abilities as an artist are stated to be of a very high order. Coverage of the murder was so extensive that the Lester Chronicle included it in an editorial that questioned whether newspapers had started to focus too much on satanic topics instead of things like literature when there isn't much political news. The article notes of Dad's story quote, this is a rare specimen. The world heard little enough of Richard Dad, the humble artist. But Richard Dad, the patricide becomes at once a man of reputation, his career worthy of a memoir, his artistic abilities of an essay, and his productions of a place in the pictorial times. Patricides are found to be a saleable commodity. Public patronage is fished for an atroci murder, being employed as bait. And as all of this was being hashed out in the papers, the English and French authorities worked cooperatively on Richard's case. This was not only because the French were helping to apprehend the suspect. It was because he also committed a violent crime in France and was arrested for it. Richard was not planning to stay in France. He was passing through it because he wanted to go to Vienna. He believed that he needed to get to Austria and assassinate Emperor Ferdinand the Ist, and as part of this journey, he had boarded a stagecoach at Fontainebleau headed from Montreux. But on this leg of the journey, Richard attacked one of the other passengers and attempted to slit his throat. Richard was quickly subdued and arrested, and his victim survived the attack. Dad would later say that he had a communication from ursa Major directing him to attack this man. French newspapers ran an account of the attack claims made by Dad. While in custody quote, it appears that the young man states himself to be the son and envoy of God, since to exterminate the men most possessed with the demon. He relates with great coolness that in the park of Lord Darnley he was seized being with him who is said to be his father, with the divine inspiration which commanded him to sacrifice him. So, in case it's unclear from the somewhat stilted phrasing of that time period, Richard thought the man he was with was not his father, but was some sort of demonic presence pretending to be or perhaps the physical body of his father, but in a state of demonic possession. When French doctors asked Dad how he felt about his actions, he stated that he had done the right thing because he destroyed an enemy of God. He similarly felt he must attack his felf traveler as something commanded by a higher power. Incidentally, that quote stating that he believed he was the son of God actually makes this belief a little unclear, because he didn't believe he was the son of the Christian God, which the paper's readers likely assumed. Dad thought he was the son of the Sun, as in the center of the solar system. His delusion wasn't as simple as that, though he would later say he was the son of the Egyptian god Osiris, sent to the Earth to cleanse it of demons. One of the interesting points of news coverage as Richard's arrest in Paris was covered was what was going to happen to him and how things would be handled between England and France. As we said, the two countries were cooperating, but they had to decide how to proceed with his charges in both France and England. But as the Essex Hertz and Kent Mercury noted in its coverage quote, should he, however, be dispatched to this country, there is not a doubt that his relatives will be spared the distress attending a public examination, with the understanding that they will immediately adopt measures for his safe keeping in the lunatic asylum. Since Dad had confessed to murdering his father, French authorities held him in an asylum while decisions were made about how to handle the case. French doctors declared him homicidal and noted that Dad would stare straight at the sun for long periods of time without blinking. Richard was prescribed cold water bats as part of his therapy, which did not improve his condition. After several months in France, he was sent back to England and that made him the first person ever extradited between the two countries. We'll talk about Dad's life after he returned to England after we hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class going As mentioned in the papers that we read from earlier, British authorities did not put the Dad family through a trial. There was a brief hearing and then on August twenty second, eighteen forty four, Dad was committed to Bethlum Hospital, So this is the same Bethlum that has come up on the show before. It had the nickname Bedlam because of its terrible reputation regarding the treatment of its patients, but it had been rebuilt in the eighteen teens and it was considered quite a bit reformed, although it still had problems and because of his violent past, Dad was sent to the criminal ward Though Richard Dad was cut off from the outside world. After he was allowed art materials by the warden, he continued to sketch and paint, often working from memory and also using the staff at the hospital as models. Even for women. He would use men there as stand ins to do his figure work. He also sometimes used his fellow patients as models. The staff at Bethlum often encouraged him in his work, and they even commissioned art from him from time to time. Some of these works depict events in the place of Shakespeare, even occasionally writing lines from the plays at the bottom of the works are on the back. Several of these focus on instances of violence or murder in the place, such as one titled Hatred, which depicts Henry the Six being killed by Richard of Gloucester. He also drew from classic literature and biblical stories for inspiration, including a watercolor of Cain. Just after his murder of Abel titled Murder. In eighteen fifty five, Dad created one of his most famous works called Sketch of an Idea for Crazy Jane. I shows a character from a folk ballad titled Poor Crazy Jane, who goes mad when her lover abandons her. This sketch shows Jane in the foreground, staring directly at the viewer, with her arms overhead, clutching a switch with ribbons tied onto it, and looking as though she may be dancing. She's bedraggled but not dirty, and in the middle ground ravens fly overhead. In the distant background, there's a castle. This is a striking image for a number of reasons. It's a watercolor done almost entirely in pale shades of blue gray and faint brown. It also looks almost oddly modern. It would be right at home in a modern goth or even manga inspired sketchbook. Yeah, there is something about the shape of her face and the furrow of her brow that I was like, this looks like it literally looks like manga to me, like prota manga. It's very interesting. Another work that he started in eighteen fifty five and that really defines the painter's ouvre, is The Fairy Feller's master Stroke, which was commissioned by the hospital's head steward, George Hayden, and this painting features Oberon and Titanya from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, as well as other fairies, but the rest of the fairies are original characters created by da The Fairy Feller is a character he's poised to cut open a chestnut that's to be used in construction, presumably for a palace for the Fairy Queen, and this is considered by many people to be his masterpiece, and it has earned him the nickname the Fairy Painter, although this particular work was never completed. In eighteen fifty two, Bethleem had gotten a new superintendent, William Charles Hood, who was interested in further reforming the facility. He was also keenly interested in Dad's case. Dad wrote out his entire account of what happened the night he killed his father and gave it to Hood, but that account has not survived Hood's notes on Dad half, though on March twenty first, eighteen fifty four, Hood wrote quote, for some years after his admission, he was considered a violent and dangerous patient, for he would jump up and strike a violent blow without any aggravation, and then beg pardon for the This arose from some vague idea that filled his mind and still does to a certain extent, that certain spirits have the power of possessing a man's body and compelling him to adopt a particular course, whether he will or not. When he talks on this subject, and on any other at all associated with the motive that influenced him to commit the crime for which he is confined here, he frequently becomes excited in his manner of speaking, and soon rambles from the subject and becomes quite unintelligible. He is very eccentric, and glories that he is not influenced by motives that other men pride themselves in possessing. Thus he pays no sort of attention to decency, and acts or words if he feels the least inclination to be Otherwise, he is a perfectly sensual, being a thorough animal. But he also noted after describing some rather gross behaviors that Dad was smart, educated and a gifted artist and could be quite agreeable and enjoyable to talk to. In eighteen fifty seven, Dad was moved out of the criminal ward in Bethleem to an ordinary ward along with three dozen other residents who had been determined to be ready for a more homelike environment in the hopes that it would benefit their well being. And this was one of Woods's efforts at changing the way mental illness was managed. And these new surroundings were much less hospital like and more like a dormitory, and there were things like open windows for natural light, and pets and a parlor where the men could sit and converse. In eighteen sixty four, construction was completed on the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum in Berkshire and Richard was transferred there. He had not had any violent outbursts in years at that point and he was transferred to this new facility even though it was a criminal lunatic asylum. He continued to paint there, along many of the same thematic lines that he always had. He lived and painted at Broadmoor for twenty two years, steadfastly and absolute certainty that his delusions were real. He died there in January of eighteen eighty six of lung disease and was buried on the asylum grounds. So while Dad's story has inspired other artists and writers, you can find mention of him in a lot of modern pop culture things, in many ways he remains really inscrutable. Right. We kind of buzzed through the last twenty two years of his life because there's not a lot of specific information other than paintings he made even while he was still alive. Art dealers who may have had his paintings pass through their hands often just went ahead and told buyers he was deceased so that they wouldn't have to explain that he was still being held in an asylum, and because he didn't want to see visitors most of the time. The only accounts that we have about his years past eighteen forty three, so like more than four years of his life, are from doctors who had assessed and treated him, and this has led a lot of modern doctors to debate over what mental illness he may have had, but there's no sure way to know at this point. There are entire papers written about kind of building a case file around his what we do know about him, but without him here to actually have a current assessment, it's all guesswork. Even Dad's last painting, which is a portrait of a man, remains something of a mystery. For a long time, many believed that this was a painting of the head of Broadmoor, a man named doctor William Orange who had taken over there in eighteen seventy. It's a very beautiful and detailed painting, But then photographs of doctor William Orange surfaced and it became a parent that that painting was probably misidentified because it doesn't look like him. Dad's works have been shown in exhibitions fairly frequently over the years. They're often included in shows that are curated with an eye to examining the relationship between art and mental illness or institutional experiences. People frequently point out how figures in some of his paintings look like his father or other specific people in his life, including the staff of both Bethlem and Broadmoor. One of Dad's works during his institutionalized life was a portrait labeled sketch of Mister George Bailey by Richard Dad August thirteenth, eighteen fifty five, Bethlehem Hospital, London. George Bailey was an attendant at Bethlum. He was born in eighteen twenty one, so he was four years younger than the artist, and he had been working at the facility since he was twenty eight in eighteen forty eight, so this means he was there at a time when some reforms had been made, but before William Charles Hood became superintendent, and then he was there as Hood further changed the way residents were cared for. So these two men, Bailey and Dad would likely have seen a lot of each other, as Jeffrey Munn noted in an article about Dad and Bailey for British Art Journal in twenty twenty three, Bailey was transferred to Broadmoor for his job, just six months before Richard moved there. The Bethlum facility is now the Imperial War Museum at It includes a Museum of the Mind, which features quote portraiture by and of people suffering from mental illness. Dad's work is included in the collection. A work Dad painted while at Bethlum, called Portrait of a young Man, is on loan to Bethlum from the Tate. There are other works of art from him in that collection, but that one just last year got loaned by the Tate to be part of it. I could be misremembering, but I feel like there are works by Louis Wayne in the same I would not be surprised at all. Yeah. Adding to the mystery of Dad's story is that a number of works he is documented as having painted are nowhere to be found. They just kind of vanished at various points in time, often when they were on loan for exhibitions. One of them, it's titled Halt in the Desert. It goes by a couple other names as well, was painted in eighteen forty five after he had been at Bethleem for a couple of years, and he painted this work from sketches and notes that he made while traveling with Sir Thomas Phillips when they had to travel at night across the Eemeddy in Israel, which is west of the Dead Sea. This is a very striking night scene in watercolor, showing the group stopped to make camp for the night. A man named Thomas Birchall owned Halt in the Desert in the eighteen fifties. He loaned it to an exhibition in Manchester in eighteen fifty seven and then to another exhibition in London in eighteen sixty two, and then the painting just dropped off off all records. It's not as though it was believed to be stolen. There just wasn't tracking in place for it, so it's whereabouts were a mystery until nineteen eighty six, and then a couple brought a painting they had in their family loft at Barnstable to the Antiques road Show to see if it was worth anything, and it was halt in the desert expert Peter Nay, who valued the work at one hundred thousand pounds, which is what the British Museum paid to acquire it, and now it remains part of the British Museum collection. It's just one of the many ways that Dad continues to pop up and surprise people. I'm hoping that some of these other works. There were two other works that had been loaned by Birchall to that London collection, and I think they also kind of vanish from the record at the same time, so they may still be out there in someone's family home somewhere. That's Richard dad who breaks my heart. Yeah, and fascinates me. It's one of those things where overwhelmingly people who are experiencing delusions aren't violent and aren't a danger to other people. But he was also living in a time when there was no way to actually treat like the root cause of any delusion. The cold water bath thing was not go do it good. Yeah, yeah, and I mean it can like there are treatments and pharmaceuticals and things today which can like try to resolve some of the delusional and like that just it wasn't that didn't exist at the time. It was not an option. Yeah. We'll talk about it some more in the behind the scenes on Friday. But one of the there was a phrase that stuck out in one of the articles or books I was reading about him that mentioned specifically that part of it, given all of the things you just said about there not being a lot of treatment, was that he had such a complex layered religious delusion that even in terms of something like talk therapy, it was hard for people to like pluck out a thread and go with it because he would have wedged in something that didn't really make any sense to someone that knows any of those religions that was, you know, like they just didn't know how to even approach discussing it with him. So it's very, very heartbreaking. It's one of those He's one of those people where I feel like if he had existed today and the same thing had happened, We're on a trip. He had this whatever happened to him, whether that was you know, a sunstroke that caused a sort of mental issue or some sort of break, and he got back to London and everyone told his parents he really needs a lot of help. He may have ended up getting help and being a very prolific artist that you know, doesn't kind of fall off the historical radar. So that's why he breaks my heart. I love looking at his work because he really talented. Since this one is so sad, I have two listener males that are pretty brief, pretty light, pretty fun, and they have something in common which I was like, why have we not had this before? Okay, this is from our listener Megan or Megan, I'm not sure how you pronounce it. Who writes Hi, Holly and Tracy. I have been a fan for years, complete with a missed in history PhD. I've wanted to write in for years to tell you how wonderful I think you both are. Your recent episode on Perms finally gave me an excuse to write an email. As a person born in the late eighties, my naturally thick and curly hair has been out of fashion my entire life. Okay, Holly fry aside, If you look at history, curly hair has been popular more often than straight hair, So she's just you know, historically. Writing away, Megan continues hearing about a time when perms, where the end thing is always amusing. For me, I spent most of my young life flattening it and using all the products to try and make it straight and easier to manage. In the last decade plus, I gave up and embraced the curly lifestyle. I bet your curly hair is beautiful. The thing I never knew about curly hair was that the follicle shape and orientation is what makes it curly. Having lived with curly hair my entire life, I miss this little thing that I find fascinating now that I know it. I'm so excited that we are soon going to be in spooky season, as the October episodes are frequently my favorites. I saw you in October a fe years ago in Denver and would like to request another tour N eight in Colorado. Please. Attached is my pet tax widget is my distinguished bearded poodle dude and two of my favorite geckos, Galactica the gargoyle gecko and Molder the Dalmatian spotted crested gecko. Okay, let's break down this pet situation. HM. Widget is so cute. I would approve him for a credit card. That beard makes him look very smart and very capable, and like he would manage his money in a very good way. Like seriously, I've told you guys, I have poodle fever lately. I'm not going to get a dog. My life is not conducive to it right now. But I do love poodles, and I don't know that we've gotten geckos before, but these babies are beautiful. Yeah, I love geckos. I have a lot of friends over the years that have had them. I feel like I'm scared to ever have them because I feel like I always hear that they're kind of delicate, and I worry that I would do something wrong and never forgive myself. I also want to mention another listener mail because our listener Cheryl also wrote and sent a picture of a gecko named Desdemona. Well, I'm like, is it gecko season? What's happening? I love it? And Cheryl just writes, very simply, I love listening to your podcast, especially behind the scenes, and here are my babies for pet Tax and so Tesdemona is very cute. She's a very sweet expression. And then there are some birds, some beautiful, very sweet looking birds. So I just loved it. It seemed like a confluence of geckos, and I didn't want to let that go unnoted. So thank you to both of you for sharing geckos with us. I love it. I love a new pet zone in our behind the scenes and in our pet Tax photos, So keep those coming. Anything that you have is great. Don't feel bad if you only have dogs and cats, we love those too. If you would like to write to us share your animal pictures, you can do that at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. I just forgotten the email that I've said a million times. You can also subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Hollley Frye and I'm Tracy be Wilson. This is one that I've had on my list for a minute, and it got on my list for one reason because I didn't know the whole story. And then it became a different story, which is that I stumbled across a piece of art by Richard Dad for reasons because it had come up in the news last year, I believe, And then I discovered the story behind him. Having already thought, oh, this is an interesting person, I wished to do an artist episode on him. So it is an artist episode, but it is also a murder episode, and it is also a madness episode. So we are talking about artist Richard Dad, whose life story is quite a ride and quite sad, so be worn there. There's some a good bit of violence in here, as well as some issues of delusion. If those are not enjoyable for you to hear about, this one might not be for you. But if you're like me and you find this utterly engaging, it's like an on ramp to our Halloween time. I actually had kind of thought that as I was reading through that line, it was like, this feels almost like something that we would do in October, but not quite. Nope. So Richard Dad was born August first, eighteen seventeen in Chatham, Kent, That's in England, born to Robert and Mary Anne Dad. His father, Robert was a chemist and his maternal grandfather was the well known shipwright Richard Martin. This younger Richard was the couple's fourth child out of eleven and as a boy, Richard attended King's School, Rochester, and he loved literature, particularly Shakespeare, and from the time he was quite young it was very obvious to everyone that he had a natural talent for drawing. By the time he was a teenager, Richard had started to really sketch with focus on the path to becoming an artist. In eighteen thirty seven, Richard was admitted to the Royal Academy of Arts, where his teachers all noted his skill as well as his gentle and kind personality, and in his third year at art school he won a medal for his life drawing. As a young man, Richard seemed poised to become one of the most prominent and perhaps even influential artists of England. He and several other artists founded a group known as the Clique. That group included such artists as William Powell Frith, who would become known for his scenes capturing English life, and Augustus Egg who was a friend of Charles Dickens and painted images that were often historical or anecdotal, and Henry Nelson O'Neill, who became known for his painting of the Indian Rebellion of eighteen fifty seven. Dad was generally seen as the leader of this group, or at least the most talented of them. Their focus was on promoting naturalistic art, and Richard really excelled at it. I will note that in watching a couple of videos with English art historians, they pronounce it the Clique, which I found quite charming. In eighteen forty two Dad illustrated the book of British Ballads by Samuel Carter Hall. And this is a substantial project. It's a two hundred and thirty three page book and about one third of that space is illustration, including frames that he created for every page. So this was really a lot of work on Dad's part. In July of eighteen forty two, Sir Thomas Phillips contracted Dad to accompany him on a grand tour of continental Europe, then through Greece, into Turkey, over to Syria and into Egypt, and then back to London. Phillips was the former mayor of Newport and this, of course was all before people could take photos of their travels, so he hired Dad to capture the trip through sketches along the way. David Roberts, a well known Scottish painter, was a friend of the family and had recommended Richard for this job. This was a pretty good gig. It was a way to see some of the world and also get paid to do it. The artist both loved and hated the trip for reasons we will explain, but more than anything, it was a trip that was life changing for Dad, and not in a good way. Dad and Phillips were not really of the same temperament when it came to travel. Whereas Phillips was sort of working through the sites they visited as a tourist, wanting to see things and then quickly move on to the next, Dad wanted to linger. Since Phillips also arranged it, presumably he had a greater sense of the schedule where his dad was just trying to capture what he saw, and he got frustrated because he felt he wasn't given enough time to really sketch things as fully as he would have liked. And then on long horse journeys he wanted to stop and sketch because he had difficulty sketching while he was riding, but his desires were not prioritized. And then at night when they camped, he found it was just too dark to do any serious work. So this whole trip was just not what he envisioned at all. In November of eighteen forty two, the group spent time in Syria and Egypt, and this was grueling travel. In December, Dad and Phillips were traveling up the Nile River on a boat when Dad started to behave oddly. He was described as having just a huge change in his demeanor and personality. Dad started to say things that were clearly delusional. He believed that the Egyptian god Osiris had been communicating with him. At the time, Phillips thought Richard was experiencing a sunstroke or heat exhaustion. As a note, there are some other versions of what happened with Dad at the end of this trip, at the very end, and some of this suggests that it was a more gradual change that got worse on the Nile, and that it may have been brought about by drug use during the journey. Even Dad said things like this at various points, but in any case, by the end of this trip, Richard definitely did not seem the same as when he had started on the journey, and as the group headed home through Europe, Dad continued to have difficulty discerning reality from his delusions. He described feeling an intense compulsion to kill the Pope when they were traveling through Italy, but his fear of the Vatican Guard was the only thing that kept him from it. Dad did not make it back to London with the rest of the Phillips party. He disappeared while they were all in Paris, and then he returned to London on his own. When Dad returned home, his odd behavior continued. He had a rented room at seventy one Newman Street, Oxford Street and started eating only a very limited diet. He would only eat eggs and only ale, and it seems like he was eating these eggs. Raw Newspaper reports state that the floor of his room was covered with eggshells, and he had huge quantities of eggs and ale on hand when the room was later examined. Dad's strange behavior did not go unnoticed, and his friends started to speak with his father about getting him some help. And although Robert Dad consulted with physicians and was advised that his son Richard needed to be in a hospital, he decided that the best thing for his son would be to go into the country for a respite from the city, where he could get plenty of fresh air and regain his health. And there are some accounts that suggest that this trip may have actually been Richard's idea, but in any case, they secured rooms in a cottage and Cobbham, where they had spent time earlier in Richard's life, and the night of their arrival they had dinner at a public house near those rooms. According to a waiter that worked at the public house where they dined, whose name was John Adams, the Dad's had stopped there inquiring about a place to sleep first, and he had told them they had no beds, but that he would check with a nearby cottage. Robert Dad had told Adams that one bed would be fine because Richard was his son. But Richard insisted that they have two beds, and so Adams went away to make these arrangements. He got two beds for them, and then he came back to the inn and told the dads that he had secured these lodgings. After dinner, Richard wanted to go for a walk, but Robert said he had walked enough that day. He ordered a whiskey and a water, and his son left. Robert and the waiter Adams chatted for a little while, and then Richard returned. At about eight forty five pm. Adams left the room to attend to some work, and when he got back at nine thirty, both of the men were gone. According to Adams, they waited until twelve thirty for the men to return before finally giving up and locking up the public house. Yeah, it seems like because he had secured the rooms in a cop and they hadn't gone there yet after dinner, he was going to take them over there, so he was waiting, but they never should back up. And apparently at one point, as the two men went out walking together after their dinner, the elder dad stepped away from the path to urinate, and when he did, his son Richard, attacked him. He first punched him in the head, and then he stabbed him in the chest and cut his throat, and according to his own account, Richard then shouted to the sky, go and tell the great godd o Cyrus that I have done the deed which is to set him free. Coming up, we'll talk about what happened after this murder, but first we will pause for a sponsor break. On the morning following the murder, a butcher named Abraham Lister was driving a buggy through Common Park with his nephew, Charles Lister. This was about seven am, and the two of them noticed a gentlemanly looking man lying in the park on his face, with his arms over his head and without his hat. He was about thirty yards away from the road, so the Lister thought the man may have been asleep or in distress, and they stopped to check on him and offer assistance, but a prawn approach saw that the body was covered in blood. They immediately reported the find, calling on the constable, and this body was soon identified as Robert Dad. A locked knife, a razor, and Robert's hat were soon found near where the body had been found. This Constable William Dawes, believed that Robert's body had been dragged some distance, and also noted that he had money and a gold watch still in his pockets. The surgeon who performed a post mortem, named William Saunders, reported to the coroner's jury that he had found an incision on the left side of the throat, although it wasn't big enough to have caused Robert's death. He also noted bruce on the deceased's face and head, and a number of small puncture wounds on the right thumb. The lungs had been penetrated by a knife in two places. He was confident that none of the wounds could have been caused by Robert himself. After hearing testimony for several hours, the coroner's jury declared this death to be a wilful murder. Initially, after Robert's body was found, questions arose about whether someone had attacked both father and son, and if Richard might also be somewhere in the park dead. No one had seen him since that waiter at the public house had left him and his father in the dining room. Then there was speculation that this may have been a murder suicide scenario and that Richard may have gone elsewhere and taken his own life, but that theory soon died down as reports began to surface of other people who had seen and interacted with him after Adams the Waiter. Additionally, when Richard's room in London was searched, authorities found some really troubling artwork that he had made. These artworks depicted people in his life, family and friends, each of which was shown with their throat slit. Richard became the prime suspect in Robert Dad's murder. After this discovery, police put out an internal notice that read quote description of Richard Dad who was suspected of having murdered his father at Cobham Park, Kent on the twenty eighth or twenty ninth, twenty four years of age, five feet eight inches high, dark hair, light blue eyes, thick, dark eyebrows, sallow complexion, no whiskers, dressed in a dark blue frock coat, light blue trousers. His linen marked Richard Dad or RD. Up to the time of the murder, he resided at number seventy one Newman Street, Oxford Street. Every exertion is to be used for the apprehension of the individual in question. Not long after, a bulletin went released to keep an eye on railroad stations, and another that every police division should start making inquiries at their local lodging houses. As the manhunt for Richard got into full swing, Robert Dad was buried at Gillingham Churchyard near Chatham, with Richard's brothers in attendance. According to a newspaper account published a week later. Immediately after the murder, Dad went to a tavern called Soul's Arms. Tavern was popular with artists, and he asked for a glass of water. According to the Chester Chronicle, published on September fifteenth, eighteen forty three, quote, his extraordinary appearance and excitement caused a remark from the barmaid that she thought the young gentleman was not in his right mind, which expression being overheard by him, he hurried from the house. Richard made his way to Rochester and from there took a carriage to the port at Dover. There, he stated at the Ship Hotel while working to secure passage to Frances. According to accounts from people who saw him there and noted his disheveled state, he claimed that he had fallen from a coach in an accident. He was noted as carrying large amounts of cash, and he paid ten pounds for his passage to Calais. In Calais, Dad was taken to the passport office. He told officials there that he was on pressing business. His passport was brand new, having just been issued the week before, but it was valid and he was sent on his way. He purchased new clothes in Calais and left his old, bloody suit behind at the hotel that was later seized as evidence. As newspaper reports relayed the grizzly details of Robert's murder at his son's hand, they offer up what's now a classic description of the perpetrator that's actually become kind of a trope, like this one in the Chester Chronicle quote, he has always been considered as a young man of the most mild disposition, and had ever exhibited fear links of the warmest and most affectionate attachment to his father. The unfortunate father was also devotedly attached to and proud of his son, whose abilities as an artist are stated to be of a very high order. Coverage of the murder was so extensive that the Lester Chronicle included it in an editorial that questioned whether newspapers had started to focus too much on satanic topics instead of things like literature when there isn't much political news. The article notes of Dad's story quote, this is a rare specimen. The world heard little enough of Richard Dad, the humble artist. But Richard Dad, the patricide becomes at once a man of reputation, his career worthy of a memoir, his artistic abilities of an essay, and his productions of a place in the pictorial times. Patricides are found to be a saleable commodity. Public patronage is fished for an atroci murder, being employed as bait. And as all of this was being hashed out in the papers, the English and French authorities worked cooperatively on Richard's case. This was not only because the French were helping to apprehend the suspect. It was because he also committed a violent crime in France and was arrested for it. Richard was not planning to stay in France. He was passing through it because he wanted to go to Vienna. He believed that he needed to get to Austria and assassinate Emperor Ferdinand the Ist, and as part of this journey, he had boarded a stagecoach at Fontainebleau headed from Montreux. But on this leg of the journey, Richard attacked one of the other passengers and attempted to slit his throat. Richard was quickly subdued and arrested, and his victim survived the attack. Dad would later say that he had a communication from ursa Major directing him to attack this man. French newspapers ran an account of the attack claims made by Dad. While in custody quote, it appears that the young man states himself to be the son and envoy of God, since to exterminate the men most possessed with the demon. He relates with great coolness that in the park of Lord Darnley he was seized being with him who is said to be his father, with the divine inspiration which commanded him to sacrifice him. So, in case it's unclear from the somewhat stilted phrasing of that time period, Richard thought the man he was with was not his father, but was some sort of demonic presence pretending to be or perhaps the physical body of his father, but in a state of demonic possession. When French doctors asked Dad how he felt about his actions, he stated that he had done the right thing because he destroyed an enemy of God. He similarly felt he must attack his felf traveler as something commanded by a higher power. Incidentally, that quote stating that he believed he was the son of God actually makes this belief a little unclear, because he didn't believe he was the son of the Christian God, which the paper's readers likely assumed. Dad thought he was the son of the Sun, as in the center of the solar system. His delusion wasn't as simple as that, though he would later say he was the son of the Egyptian god Osiris, sent to the Earth to cleanse it of demons. One of the interesting points of news coverage as Richard's arrest in Paris was covered was what was going to happen to him and how things would be handled between England and France. As we said, the two countries were cooperating, but they had to decide how to proceed with his charges in both France and England. But as the Essex Hertz and Kent Mercury noted in its coverage quote, should he, however, be dispatched to this country, there is not a doubt that his relatives will be spared the distress attending a public examination, with the understanding that they will immediately adopt measures for his safe keeping in the lunatic asylum. Since Dad had confessed to murdering his father, French authorities held him in an asylum while decisions were made about how to handle the case. French doctors declared him homicidal and noted that Dad would stare straight at the sun for long periods of time without blinking. Richard was prescribed cold water bats as part of his therapy, which did not improve his condition. After several months in France, he was sent back to England and that made him the first person ever extradited between the two countries. We'll talk about Dad's life after he returned to England after we hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class going As mentioned in the papers that we read from earlier, British authorities did not put the Dad family through a trial. There was a brief hearing and then on August twenty second, eighteen forty four, Dad was committed to Bethlum Hospital, So this is the same Bethlum that has come up on the show before. It had the nickname Bedlam because of its terrible reputation regarding the treatment of its patients, but it had been rebuilt in the eighteen teens and it was considered quite a bit reformed, although it still had problems and because of his violent past, Dad was sent to the criminal ward Though Richard Dad was cut off from the outside world. After he was allowed art materials by the warden, he continued to sketch and paint, often working from memory and also using the staff at the hospital as models. Even for women. He would use men there as stand ins to do his figure work. He also sometimes used his fellow patients as models. The staff at Bethlum often encouraged him in his work, and they even commissioned art from him from time to time. Some of these works depict events in the place of Shakespeare, even occasionally writing lines from the plays at the bottom of the works are on the back. Several of these focus on instances of violence or murder in the place, such as one titled Hatred, which depicts Henry the Six being killed by Richard of Gloucester. He also drew from classic literature and biblical stories for inspiration, including a watercolor of Cain. Just after his murder of Abel titled Murder. In eighteen fifty five, Dad created one of his most famous works called Sketch of an Idea for Crazy Jane. I shows a character from a folk ballad titled Poor Crazy Jane, who goes mad when her lover abandons her. This sketch shows Jane in the foreground, staring directly at the viewer, with her arms overhead, clutching a switch with ribbons tied onto it, and looking as though she may be dancing. She's bedraggled but not dirty, and in the middle ground ravens fly overhead. In the distant background, there's a castle. This is a striking image for a number of reasons. It's a watercolor done almost entirely in pale shades of blue gray and faint brown. It also looks almost oddly modern. It would be right at home in a modern goth or even manga inspired sketchbook. Yeah, there is something about the shape of her face and the furrow of her brow that I was like, this looks like it literally looks like manga to me, like prota manga. It's very interesting. Another work that he started in eighteen fifty five and that really defines the painter's ouvre, is The Fairy Feller's master Stroke, which was commissioned by the hospital's head steward, George Hayden, and this painting features Oberon and Titanya from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, as well as other fairies, but the rest of the fairies are original characters created by da The Fairy Feller is a character he's poised to cut open a chestnut that's to be used in construction, presumably for a palace for the Fairy Queen, and this is considered by many people to be his masterpiece, and it has earned him the nickname the Fairy Painter, although this particular work was never completed. In eighteen fifty two, Bethleem had gotten a new superintendent, William Charles Hood, who was interested in further reforming the facility. He was also keenly interested in Dad's case. Dad wrote out his entire account of what happened the night he killed his father and gave it to Hood, but that account has not survived Hood's notes on Dad half, though on March twenty first, eighteen fifty four, Hood wrote quote, for some years after his admission, he was considered a violent and dangerous patient, for he would jump up and strike a violent blow without any aggravation, and then beg pardon for the This arose from some vague idea that filled his mind and still does to a certain extent, that certain spirits have the power of possessing a man's body and compelling him to adopt a particular course, whether he will or not. When he talks on this subject, and on any other at all associated with the motive that influenced him to commit the crime for which he is confined here, he frequently becomes excited in his manner of speaking, and soon rambles from the subject and becomes quite unintelligible. He is very eccentric, and glories that he is not influenced by motives that other men pride themselves in possessing. Thus he pays no sort of attention to decency, and acts or words if he feels the least inclination to be Otherwise, he is a perfectly sensual, being a thorough animal. But he also noted after describing some rather gross behaviors that Dad was smart, educated and a gifted artist and could be quite agreeable and enjoyable to talk to. In eighteen fifty seven, Dad was moved out of the criminal ward in Bethleem to an ordinary ward along with three dozen other residents who had been determined to be ready for a more homelike environment in the hopes that it would benefit their well being. And this was one of Woods's efforts at changing the way mental illness was managed. And these new surroundings were much less hospital like and more like a dormitory, and there were things like open windows for natural light, and pets and a parlor where the men could sit and converse. In eighteen sixty four, construction was completed on the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum in Berkshire and Richard was transferred there. He had not had any violent outbursts in years at that point and he was transferred to this new facility even though it was a criminal lunatic asylum. He continued to paint there, along many of the same thematic lines that he always had. He lived and painted at Broadmoor for twenty two years, steadfastly and absolute certainty that his delusions were real. He died there in January of eighteen eighty six of lung disease and was buried on the asylum grounds. So while Dad's story has inspired other artists and writers, you can find mention of him in a lot of modern pop culture things, in many ways he remains really inscrutable. Right. We kind of buzzed through the last twenty two years of his life because there's not a lot of specific information other than paintings he made even while he was still alive. Art dealers who may have had his paintings pass through their hands often just went ahead and told buyers he was deceased so that they wouldn't have to explain that he was still being held in an asylum, and because he didn't want to see visitors most of the time. The only accounts that we have about his years past eighteen forty three, so like more than four years of his life, are from doctors who had assessed and treated him, and this has led a lot of modern doctors to debate over what mental illness he may have had, but there's no sure way to know at this point. There are entire papers written about kind of building a case file around his what we do know about him, but without him here to actually have a current assessment, it's all guesswork. Even Dad's last painting, which is a portrait of a man, remains something of a mystery. For a long time, many believed that this was a painting of the head of Broadmoor, a man named doctor William Orange who had taken over there in eighteen seventy. It's a very beautiful and detailed painting, But then photographs of doctor William Orange surfaced and it became a parent that that painting was probably misidentified because it doesn't look like him. Dad's works have been shown in exhibitions fairly frequently over the years. They're often included in shows that are curated with an eye to examining the relationship between art and mental illness or institutional experiences. People frequently point out how figures in some of his paintings look like his father or other specific people in his life, including the staff of both Bethlem and Broadmoor. One of Dad's works during his institutionalized life was a portrait labeled sketch of Mister George Bailey by Richard Dad August thirteenth, eighteen fifty five, Bethlehem Hospital, London. George Bailey was an attendant at Bethlum. He was born in eighteen twenty one, so he was four years younger than the artist, and he had been working at the facility since he was twenty eight in eighteen forty eight, so this means he was there at a time when some reforms had been made, but before William Charles Hood became superintendent, and then he was there as Hood further changed the way residents were cared for. So these two men, Bailey and Dad would likely have seen a lot of each other, as Jeffrey Munn noted in an article about Dad and Bailey for British Art Journal in twenty twenty three, Bailey was transferred to Broadmoor for his job, just six months before Richard moved there. The Bethlum facility is now the Imperial War Museum at It includes a Museum of the Mind, which features quote portraiture by and of people suffering from mental illness. Dad's work is included in the collection. A work Dad painted while at Bethlum, called Portrait of a young Man, is on loan to Bethlum from the Tate. There are other works of art from him in that collection, but that one just last year got loaned by the Tate to be part of it. I could be misremembering, but I feel like there are works by Louis Wayne in the same I would not be surprised at all. Yeah. Adding to the mystery of Dad's story is that a number of works he is documented as having painted are nowhere to be found. They just kind of vanished at various points in time, often when they were on loan for exhibitions. One of them, it's titled Halt in the Desert. It goes by a couple other names as well, was painted in eighteen forty five after he had been at Bethleem for a couple of years, and he painted this work from sketches and notes that he made while traveling with Sir Thomas Phillips when they had to travel at night across the Eemeddy in Israel, which is west of the Dead Sea. This is a very striking night scene in watercolor, showing the group stopped to make camp for the night. A man named Thomas Birchall owned Halt in the Desert in the eighteen fifties. He loaned it to an exhibition in Manchester in eighteen fifty seven and then to another exhibition in London in eighteen sixty two, and then the painting just dropped off off all records. It's not as though it was believed to be stolen. There just wasn't tracking in place for it, so it's whereabouts were a mystery until nineteen eighty six, and then a couple brought a painting they had in their family loft at Barnstable to the Antiques road Show to see if it was worth anything, and it was halt in the desert expert Peter Nay, who valued the work at one hundred thousand pounds, which is what the British Museum paid to acquire it, and now it remains part of the British Museum collection. It's just one of the many ways that Dad continues to pop up and surprise people. I'm hoping that some of these other works. There were two other works that had been loaned by Birchall to that London collection, and I think they also kind of vanish from the record at the same time, so they may still be out there in someone's family home somewhere. That's Richard dad who breaks my heart. Yeah, and fascinates me. It's one of those things where overwhelmingly people who are experiencing delusions aren't violent and aren't a danger to other people. But he was also living in a time when there was no way to actually treat like the root cause of any delusion. The cold water bath thing was not go do it good. Yeah, yeah, and I mean it can like there are treatments and pharmaceuticals and things today which can like try to resolve some of the delusional and like that just it wasn't that didn't exist at the time. It was not an option. Yeah. We'll talk about it some more in the behind the scenes on Friday. But one of the there was a phrase that stuck out in one of the articles or books I was reading about him that mentioned specifically that part of it, given all of the things you just said about there not being a lot of treatment, was that he had such a complex layered religious delusion that even in terms of something like talk therapy, it was hard for people to like pluck out a thread and go with it because he would have wedged in something that didn't really make any sense to someone that knows any of those religions that was, you know, like they just didn't know how to even approach discussing it with him. So it's very, very heartbreaking. It's one of those He's one of those people where I feel like if he had existed today and the same thing had happened, We're on a trip. He had this whatever happened to him, whether that was you know, a sunstroke that caused a sort of mental issue or some sort of break, and he got back to London and everyone told his parents he really needs a lot of help. He may have ended up getting help and being a very prolific artist that you know, doesn't kind of fall off the historical radar. So that's why he breaks my heart. I love looking at his work because he really talented. Since this one is so sad, I have two listener males that are pretty brief, pretty light, pretty fun, and they have something in common which I was like, why have we not had this before? Okay, this is from our listener Megan or Megan, I'm not sure how you pronounce it. Who writes Hi, Holly and Tracy. I have been a fan for years, complete with a missed in history PhD. I've wanted to write in for years to tell you how wonderful I think you both are. Your recent episode on Perms finally gave me an excuse to write an email. As a person born in the late eighties, my naturally thick and curly hair has been out of fashion my entire life. Okay, Holly fry aside, If you look at history, curly hair has been popular more often than straight hair, So she's just you know, historically. Writing away, Megan continues hearing about a time when perms, where the end thing is always amusing. For me, I spent most of my young life flattening it and using all the products to try and make it straight and easier to manage. In the last decade plus, I gave up and embraced the curly lifestyle. I bet your curly hair is beautiful. The thing I never knew about curly hair was that the follicle shape and orientation is what makes it curly. Having lived with curly hair my entire life, I miss this little thing that I find fascinating now that I know it. I'm so excited that we are soon going to be in spooky season, as the October episodes are frequently my favorites. I saw you in October a fe years ago in Denver and would like to request another tour N eight in Colorado. Please. Attached is my pet tax widget is my distinguished bearded poodle dude and two of my favorite geckos, Galactica the gargoyle gecko and Molder the Dalmatian spotted crested gecko. Okay, let's break down this pet situation. HM. Widget is so cute. I would approve him for a credit card. That beard makes him look very smart and very capable, and like he would manage his money in a very good way. Like seriously, I've told you guys, I have poodle fever lately. I'm not going to get a dog. My life is not conducive to it right now. But I do love poodles, and I don't know that we've gotten geckos before, but these babies are beautiful. Yeah, I love geckos. I have a lot of friends over the years that have had them. I feel like I'm scared to ever have them because I feel like I always hear that they're kind of delicate, and I worry that I would do something wrong and never forgive myself. I also want to mention another listener mail because our listener Cheryl also wrote and sent a picture of a gecko named Desdemona. Well, I'm like, is it gecko season? What's happening? I love it? And Cheryl just writes, very simply, I love listening to your podcast, especially behind the scenes, and here are my babies for pet Tax and so Tesdemona is very cute. She's a very sweet expression. And then there are some birds, some beautiful, very sweet looking birds. So I just loved it. It seemed like a confluence of geckos, and I didn't want to let that go unnoted. So thank you to both of you for sharing geckos with us. I love it. I love a new pet zone in our behind the scenes and in our pet Tax photos, So keep those coming. Anything that you have is great. Don't feel bad if you only have dogs and cats, we love those too. If you would like to write to us share your animal pictures, you can do that at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. I just forgotten the email that I've said a million times. You can also subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.