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Bottle Conjurer's Hoax

52:03 recording · EN · 2 speakers

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Brief overview

Historian Maddy Pelling shows how Enlightenment-era hoaxer Mary Bateman read people's hopes, then robbed and poisoned them.

  1. Hoaxers sell hope, not tricksPelling argues scammers find what is missing in people's lives and promise exactly that.
  2. Private manipulation escapes detection longestMary avoided showing her power off, so an impersonal, fast-growing Leeds never joined the dots.
  3. Cost and authority signal false legitimacyA listener's aunt paid $15,000 for a PC scrolling coloured text because the price made it credible.
Executive Summary AI
  • Tim Harford interviews historian Maddy Pelling about her book Hoax, Truth and Lies in the Age of Enlightenment, arguing the supposedly rational 18th century was a chaotic, post-truth age that bred hoaxers.5:06
  • Her opening example is the bottle conjurer: hundreds paid to see a man climb into a wine bottle at the Haymarket Theatre, nobody came, a thrown candle set the curtain alight and soldiers had to quell the riot.8:25
  • Mary Bateman, born in 1768 near Thirsk, moved to Leeds, worked as a dressmaker's assistant and sold charms and ill wishes; in 1803 she announced the apocalypse, writing 'Crist is coming' in vinegar on boiled eggs she reinserted into her hens and charged people to watch being laid.22:10
  • She stripped Rebecca and William Perigo of nearly everything they owned for a fictitious witch, Miss Blythe of Scarborough, then had them bake a pie laced with arsenic; Rebecca died over days with her tongue swollen black, and William survived on one bitter mouthful.25:12
  • William kept the letters she told him to burn, Mary was convicted at York, pleaded the belly unsuccessfully, fed her baby a final time and was hanged, after which anatomist William Hay dissected her over three days and her bones stayed on display in Leeds until 2015.29:51
Key Quote
“Do you think she killed them?”
— Tim Harford21:07
Key Quote
“I think there is a very good chance that she has poisoned these sisters.”
— Maddy Pelling21:21
Key Quote
“She announces to the city that the apocalypse is coming.”
— Maddy Pelling22:10