Two Screaming Skulls

Screaming skull lore is something that is unique to Britain, though specific skull lore varies. The first episode has roots in the English Civil war, and the second is tied to colonialism in the Caribbean and the slave trade.

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  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

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  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey. And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. It's Halloween time, so we're continuing some of our Halloweeny topics. And this one, this one, I suppose, could be considered a sequel to the Ghosts of the British Isles episode we did last year, because we're going to talk about screaming skulls. And screaming skull lore is something that is unique to Britain, although specific skull lore varies. That's not to say that no other culture has ever thought a skull was haunted or had things. It's just there is a very specific flavor of it that is very British. And screaming skulls, by the way, don't necessarily scream.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  It's really just a loose term for a skull that people believe is haunted, possibly cursed, maybe carries on some dismayed feelings of the deceased. So while haunted skull might be more accurate, that doesn't alliterate and thus not as catchy. In the 1895 book by T.F. Thistleton Dyer titled Strange Pages from Family Papers, which is a title I love, there is a mention of such skulls and their shared lore. The opening passage from the section of the book that's about screaming skulls reads, quote, "There are told of certain houses in different parts of the country many weird skull stories. The popular idea being that if any profane hand should be bold enough to remove or in

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  any way tamper with such gruesome relics of the dead, misfortune will inevitably overtake the family. Hence, for years past, there have been carefully preserved in some of our country homes numerous skulls, all kinds of romantic traditions accounting for their present, isolated, and unburied condition." So there are pretty commonly mentioned seven screaming skulls that are known of in Britain. There may be more, but those are like the ones that come up every time you look at any lore about it. We are not covering all of them here. We're only covering two of them today. And the first of them has roots in the English Civil War, and the second one is tied to

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  colonialism in the Caribbean and the slave trade. Sort of, maybe. You'll see. The English Civil War has come up a lot of times on the podcast, and this time it's the starting point for a screaming skull story. We don't really need to get into all the particulars of the English Civil War, but the very quick setup is that Charles I was at odds with Parliament, and this conflict was fueled by financial disagreements and taxation, and religious tensions between Anglicans and Catholics, and levels of control within the government. The story goes that a man named Theophilus Brom was a devoted royalist going into the English Civil War.

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  But as the war played out, the way that prisoners were treated by the king's army really did not sit well with him. Seeing horrible behavior that was being carried out in the name of the king made Brom reconsider whether his ideals truly aligned with the royalist cause anymore, and he ultimately switched sides to join the parliamentarians. The war ended, and Brom started his next phase of life at Higher Chilton Farm in the village of Chilton Cantalou in Somerset, England. He lived there with his sister. But after the restoration of the monarchy, when Charles II ascended to the throne in 1660, Brom, who had backed the parliamentarian roundheads, was considered a traitor to the

• 6:29Speaker 03

  throne. I will say, I don't know if his sister was married or not. She is always referenced, and the only time I've seen her referenced as being someone's wife was in a very modern, kind of splashy story. So I don't know if that was an assumption that she had a husband that was also involved, but he is not mentioned anywhere that I found. As Brom was reaching his relative old age in the 1660s, so he was born in 1601, he would have been getting into his late 60s, he worried that in his death, he could be made an example of. And his fear was that after he was buried, royalist agents would dig up his body, cut

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  off his head, and put it on a pike for display as what happens to a traitor to the throne. And this was not a cockamamie idea that he made up in a fit of paranoia. This had happened to Oliver Cromwell, who had died in 1658, and then was exhumed for a posthumous execution for regicide in 1661, after the monarchy was restored. And Cromwell's dead body was hanged at Tiburn in London and then beheaded, and his head was displayed on a pike at Westminster Hall. That was where Charles I had been tried by Parliament. Two of Cromwell's colleagues, Henry Ierton and John Bradshaw, had also been exhumed, hanged, and displayed as Cromwell had.

• 7:54Speaker 03

  So this was not a fate that Theophilus Brom wanted for himself. So his solution was that he asked his sister to cut off his head when he died and keep it in the house. And she agreed that she would honor his wishes. So Brom died in 1670, and his sister kept her word. His body was buried in a crypt at the church in Chilton Cantalou, but his head, as requested, was kept in the house. Incidentally, Oliver Cromwell's head was still on display on the pike when this happened. It stayed at Westminster until it was stolen sometime in the mid-1680s.

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  When Brom's sister died, it seems without a next of kin, the property passed through a number of hands. And then, over the centuries, a lot of stories have accumulated about Theophilus and his skull. The first tenants of the home who lived at higher Chilton Farm after Brom's sister were absolutely not interested in cohabitating with a skull, so they buried it, but immediately experienced strange noises and an unsettling feeling in the house. The skull was retrieved and those problems stopped. Then, believing that maybe the skull just needed a consecrated location for its final resting place, the head was buried in the churchyard. And according to legend, the man who was in the process of burying the skull

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  was killed on the spot when a piece of slate from the church's roof suddenly broke off and fell directly onto him. The first time the Brom story appeared in print was in 1791 in a three-volume publication titled, "The History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset Collected from Authentic Records and an Actual Survey Made by the late Mr. Edmund Rack, Adorned with a Map of the County and Engravings of Roman and Other Relics, Town Seals, Baths, Churches, and Gentlemen's Seats." This was written by the Reverend John Collinson. His description of Chilton Cantaloupe is quite charming.

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  Quote, "The parish contains 28 houses and about 150 inhabitants. Most of the houses form two straggling streets near the church. The situation is low and woody, but the lands are strong clay, very good, and worth, on an average, from 30 to 50 shillings an acre. A small stream rising at Sanford Orcas runs under a stone bridge of one arch and turns a gristmill in this parish." And then, at the end of his brief entry on Chilton Cantaloupe, Collinson gets to the skull, writing, quote, "At the north end of the transept is a stone with this inscription. Here lie at the body of Theophilus Brom of the Bromes

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  of the house of Woodlowes near Warwick Town in the county of Warwick, who deceased the 18th of August, 1670, aged 69. A man just in the actions of his life. True to his friends, forgave those that wronged him and died in peace." So this writing then goes on to describe the decoration that's on the stone. Arms sable on a chevron argent, three sprigs of broom proper. And then it continues, quote, "There is a tradition in the parish that the person here interred requested that his head might be taken off before his burial and be preserved at the farmhouse near the church, where a head chopped fallen enough is still shown,

• 11:24Speaker 03

  which the tenants of the house have often endeavored to commit to the bowels of the earth, but have been as often deterred by horrid noises, portentative of sad displeasure. And about 20 years since, which perhaps was the last attempt, the sexton, in digging the place for the skull's repository, broke his spade in two pieces and uttered a solemn asseveration, never more to attempt an act so evidently repugnant to the quiet of Brom's head." According to a 2022 article in the Somerset Live paper, during restoration work on the village church, Brom's crypt was opened and the skull was missing. This would corroborate the story, and the St. James Church at Chilton Cantaloupe did undergo restoration work in the 1820s.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  But Holly wasn't actually able to locate any reports from the time suggesting that the crypt had been opened and the remains examined. So maybe. We're going to talk about more stories of Theophilus Brom's skull after we pause for a sponsor break.

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  Oh, man. Well, Matt, you know, I like to take a night walk, and YouTube Premium is perfect for this because of the background play. So I can pull up a documentary about the neighborhood I'm walking around in, put the phone in my pocket, and still hear everything perfectly.

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  In 1985, parapsychologist Peter Underwood published a book titled Ghosts of Somerset that included several stories about the skull. He published a lot of books, so this one is a little tricky to get a hold of, but I managed through a weird secondhand book dealer. One of these stories dates back to 1826, when the farmhouse was undergoing renovations. According to the story, two of the workmen took the skull from the cabinet where it was kept and drank beer out of it, but they put it back when they were done and nothing bad happened. But this is often pointed to as evidence that the skull just wanted to stay in the house. You didn't have to be super reverent with it.

• 18:40Speaker 03

  Then in 1977, two researchers from London visited the farm and they asked to see the skull. They were given permission to see and examine it, but as they did, they talked about not believing that the screaming skull story was legitimate and maybe they even made jokes about it. They left the skull at the farm and they headed back to London, but during the drive home, one of them collided with a tree after thinking he saw headlights coming directly at him. He survived, but was badly injured. The other researcher suffered severe burns on his leg after accidentally dropping a match into the cuff of his pants.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, they attributed this to the skull. Underwood also interviewed the couple that was living at High Chilton Farm at the time he was writing the book. That was a Mr. And Mrs. Curtin, and they seemed very comfortable with Theophilus Brom's skull staying in the house. They told Underwood that they knew he wouldn't harm them as long as his head remained in the home and that they sort of viewed him as a guardian to the property. They did add, though, quote, "He doesn't like being handled too much. If he objects, he soon lets us know, but as long as he is treated with respect, he never causes trouble." I don't mean to laugh at the dead, but it sounds like when you're talking about a difficult cat.

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  Not everyone over the centuries has believed that Brom was haunting the house. In a 1910 letter to the Taunton Courier Bristol and Exeter Journal, the contributor, who's not named in the publication, makes their case, quote, "The signature of Theophilus Brom now in the writer's hand does not at all suggest he was the sort of man to make a silly fuss about the interment of his skull. The signature is as clear as the day, October 4th, 1650, when it was written. Nearly every letter is written separately and as legibly as possible." The letter describes the document as being about an annuity to be paid to Theophilus

• 20:46Speaker 03

  Brom by the Earl of Bristol and to Brom's wife in the event of his death. Brom had to prove he was still alive and had not sold the annuity. And then in the missive to the paper, after laying out these particulars, the writer concludes with, quote, "It seems from this that he had not himself taken any part against Parliament in the Civil War. A man named Theophilus with an annuity and a wife could have no excuse for making horrid noises because his skull was buried." Yeah, and I will say that annuity was no joke. It was like 20 pounds a year, which in the 1650s was a lot of money. It was basically like saying, look, he was sad. He didn't need to be fussy about his skull. Today, the higher farmhouse is a listed building on the National Heritage List for

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  England. The description of the house in the list entry describes its physical attributes, its architectural style, the times it has been renovated, and mentions that part of the building is still being used to make cider. Of Theophilus, it says, quote, "In Hall, Brom's head, a skull recorded by Collinson, 1791, which has defied many attempts at burial." The 1897 book, The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain, starts its discussion of this next skull this way, quote, "There is a certain old farmstead known as Bedescombe or Bedescombe House in a parish of the same name about six miles from Bridport in Dorsetshire.

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  This ancient dwelling, which is still inhabited, is celebrated for the so-called screaming skull that it contains." While the haunted skull story associated with Bedescombe had appeared in print for more than two decades at that point, this appears to be the earliest appearance of the lore that is most associated with it, that being the story that it was the skull of a black person who was either enslaved or who worked as some sort of house servant at the manor. We will be digging into that shortly. The 1891 book, Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset, says this of the Bedescombe skull,

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  quote, "The superstition attaching to the above skull has from time to time excited considerable interest amongst folklorists and others, and has drawn forth various comments in the press and otherwise from those who have had the opportunity of investigating its supposed origin." The story of the skull has a lot of missing information. The main version of it goes like this. There was a plantation owner in Dorset named Azariah Penny, and he somehow acquired an enslaved man whose name remains unknown. Penny, according to some people, was himself involved in the slave trade, although that seems like it might be a conflation of different details. We'll talk more about that in a bit.

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  There is also a murder component to this story, although some versions cast the enslaved man as the victim, while others name him as the perpetrator. In the version where he was the murderer, he was put to death for the crime. So both versions indicate that this man died in Dorset. Another variation indicates that this person was not enslaved when he died, but had been earlier in his life, and upon being freed, he became a house servant to the Penny family. In a lot of versions of this story, he is described as a, quote, "loyal servant." And in line with other screaming skull stories, this person did not end up being laid to rest where he desired.

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  He wanted, according to the lore, to be returned to the West Indies where he was born and lived before his time in England, specifically the island of Nevis, but instead he was buried in the churchyard at Bedescombe. From the time this unnamed person was buried, the story goes that the house and the community became riddled with a series of disturbances of a ghostly nature. These have been described as screams coming from the grave itself, windows in the house at Bedescombe rattling, doors making noises and shaking in their frames, and other strange noises in the house like creaking and thumping. Finally, the inhabitants of the home exhumed the body and these strange disturbances stopped.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  After a while, he was buried again, but the problem popped back up. And then this cycle of burial, haunting, exhumation, peace for a little while, then somebody buries it, and it all starts over and so on and so on began. And over time, according to various owners of the house, the main part of the skeleton was lost, but the skull remained, and that was apparently enough to continue the haunting. Eventually, the skull was moved to the attic of the house, and this ended the paranormal activity, and from that point on, any subsequent owners had to take the skull along with the property. So that's the very basic, often repeated story of the Bedescombe screaming skull.

• 25:53Speaker 03

  So to look at it a little more closely, let's unpack the Pennies, because elements of their family story seem to have informed this skull. More, but in a way that really seems to tangle fact and fiction. Azariah Penny was born in 1661, and when he was 23, he participated in the Monmouth Rebellion. That was a rebellion led by James Scott, who was the Duke of Monmouth and also Charles II's illegitimate son. Charles did not have a legitimate heir, and his brother, James, the Duke of York, was next in line for the throne. But the Duke of York was Catholic, so when Charles II died in 1685, it set off a conflict. There is more to this whole event, but the short version is that the Duke of Monmouth

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  attempted a rebellion to seize power, and Azariah Penny was part of it. After the rebellion, which was a pretty sloppy affair that was suppressed, Monmouth was put to death, and 600 of his followers faced their accusations in a series of trials known as the Bloody Assizes. Azariah Penny, like the rest of them, was tried for high treason. He was found guilty, and he was sentenced to death. But his family managed to leverage their connections and standing to have that sentence commuted. Instead of execution, Azariah was sent to Nevis as an indentured servant to work on a sugar plantation. But he also did not serve out his 10-year indenture because that indenture was purchased

• 27:23Speaker 03

  by his family. A little bit of like wealth-making loopholes. So he really didn't face any long-term consequences for treason, aside from being shipped to the Caribbean. But that forced travel seems to have worked out for him because once he was free, he started his own plantation on Nevis and made a fortune. Azariah returned to England around 1700, leaving family members to run the plantation. And he died in London circa 1720. I saw one that said he died in 1719, so somewhere around there. In records from 1765, three enslaved people are listed in the plantation book for the Penny Nevis property.

• 28:03Speaker 03

  They're named Bedescombe, Brynport, and Weymouth, after the family properties back in England. Some accounts say that these were births, but others list these as purchases. This has got some theories attached to it, and we're going to talk through those. There were members of the Penny family on Nevis until 1830, and at that point, the family holdings in the Caribbean were liquidated, and the remaining Pennies returned to England. Azariah, or one of his sons, built Bedescombe Manor in Dorset sometime around 1700. His son, John Frederick Penny, owned the Nevis estate until his death in 1762.

• 28:45Speaker 03

  At that point, according to property records, it passed to John Penny, who was perhaps his son or another relative. That person had been living in England but went to Nevis in 1764. So it kind of seems like the story that has been ascribed to the screaming skull of Bedescombe is really a pastiche of family history that plays pretty fast and loose with the timeline. In 1842, Anna Maria Penny went through all of the family records, going back 200 years, to compile a comprehensive family history. And she didn't live at Bedescombe, but her grandfather did, and she visited in 1847. And at that time, she met with a farmer's wife in the village who knew the whole story about the skull.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  And that woman told Anna that as long as the skull stayed in the house and not in the ground, the house would not be haunted. And Anna Maria collected this information for family records, but none of it was published until the 1870s. And then it kind of took on a life of its own. We will talk about how the Bedescombe skull story got even more embellishment starting in the late 19th century. But first, we will hear from the sponsors that keep the show going.

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  Oh, yeah, that includes, but it's not limited to, ad-free viewing of YouTube. Imagine no more ads popping up in the middle of videos or at the end of videos, uninterrupted videos.

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  Oh, man. Well, Matt, you know, I like to take a night walk, and YouTube Premium is perfect for this because of the background play. So I can pull up a documentary about the neighborhood I'm walking around in, put the phone in my pocket, and still hear everything perfectly.

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  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.

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  Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy

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  only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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  Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself.

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• 35:39Speaker 03

  That 1895 book, Strange Pages From Family Papers, that we mentioned at the very top of the show, includes a narrative that was relayed to the author by a Miss Garnett, who in 1883 went with her father, Dr. Richard Garnett, and a family friend to visit Bedescombe in the hopes of learning more about the skull. And her story begins with, quote, "One fine afternoon, a party of three adventurous spirits started off hoping to discover the skull and investigate its history. This much we knew, that the skull would only scream when it was buried, and so we hoped to get leave to inter it in the churchyard." Miss Garnett describes the trio simply going to the house

• 36:22Speaker 03

  and asking its then-owner, a woman who had recently acquired the farmhouse, for a glass of milk, and then trying to subtly work in questions about the skull. The woman told them the skull was there, but that she didn't know much about it, except that she, quote, "had been obliged to take possession of the skull also when she bought the property." And the Garnetts and their friend convinced this woman to let them see the skull. They did see it in the home's attic. The account then states, quote, "We tramped up the fine old staircase till we reached the top of the house. When, opening a cupboard door, she showed us a steep, winding staircase leading to the roof, and from one of the steps, the skull sat grinning at us.

• 37:07Speaker 03

  We took it in our hands and examined it carefully. It was very old and weather-beaten, and certainly human. The lower jaw was missing, the forehead very low and badly proportioned. One of our party, who was a medical student, examined it long and gravely. And then, after first telling the good woman that he was a doctor, pronounced it to be, in his opinion, the skull of a negro." So, once this medical student identified the skull as having belonged to a black person, the farmhouse owner told them the whole story of the skull as she knew it. That's where the uncertain story of the murder was apparently introduced. This woman told the three visitors that, yes, the skull had belonged to a black servant,

• 37:51Speaker 03

  quote, "who had lived in the service of a Roman Catholic priest. Some differences arose between them, but whether the priest murdered the servant in order to conceal some crimes known to the negro, or whether the negro, in a fit of passion, killed his master, did not clearly appear." Yeah, you'll notice, none of that involves the Pennies. Not in any way. Some other person who is priest. Research into the Penny family and their connection to this skull was done in the early 1900s by a judge named John Simmons Udall. He described sort of stumbling across the Pennies' name in Nevis this way, quote, "In my capacity of chief judicial officer of the colony, it is my duty to go on circuit from time to time

• 38:35Speaker 03

  to the principal presidencies constituting the Leeward Islands. And last February brought me to the island of Nevis. One day, on passing through a sugar plantation, I by chance inquired of its name and was informed that it was called Pennies. And further inquiry elicited the fact that until about a century ago, it belonged to a family of that name." The story of the Bedescombe skull at once flashed across my memory, and I thought, how strange! And with all interesting, it would be if I had come across the actual home or source of the legend. Because up to this time, though the story had been told in print for several decades, no one ever had any kind of information

• 39:17Speaker 03

  to pinpoint when the alleged burial and haunting had begun. Judge Udall went on to explain, but a couple of days later, he saw a memorial inscription in a church for John Penny, which stated that he was the only son and heir to Azariah Penny. The family crest was the same as the Penny family of Dorset. Udall also connected several other instances of Pennies on the island back to Azariah, including one that said his cousin, John Frederick Penny, inherited the house on Nevis, after which it passed to John's nephew, John Pretor, who changed his last name to Penny when he assumed the ownership of the house.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  Udall weighed the likelihood that there could be two Azariah Pennies from Bedescombe, who both participated in the Monmouth Rebellion and were sentenced to death and then shipped to Nevis. He came to the conclusion that the odds of that were quite long. But, then he wonders, in the writing, if Azariah or one of his descendants brought the skull home from Nevis. So, the skull, not a living person who came to work on the property. And if this was a descendant, he kind of wonders if this could be the skull of the enslaved man named Bedescombe, who he believed must have been dead at that point,

• 40:44Speaker 03

  based on just the timeline. Additionally, Udall pointed out that Bedescombe, the person, does not appear in the plantation book in the early 1800s. So, he says that's evidence that he must have died already. And he published this work, first as a paper, in 1904. So Udall had pieced together the family lore and had used his time in Nevis to examine available records there. He was the one who discovered the record of the enslaved person named Bedescombe and put forth the theory that the skull could possibly be that person's. But that was an awful lot of speculation. Still, it was more than anyone had in hand before that regarding the skull and its possible provenance.

• 41:27Speaker 03

  And the story quickly became cemented in local lore and took on additional embellishments in various retellings. In 1934, Bedescombe was visited by five men from Australia, who were all brothers. At that time, the home was inhabited by Michael Penny, and the brothers informed him that their father had worked on the farm when he was young, and that at one point, he had thrown the skull into a pond. He or somebody else must have retrieved it at some point. Another account was shared with the owners by the sons of a former tenant. A few years after that, they said that when they were tiny and lived on the farm there, they had hidden the skull in a haystack and then moved it to the stables.

• 42:12Speaker 03

  That night, the china in the house started to shake, and the boys brought the skull back in. Those are fun stories that would seem to corroborate all of this haunting stuff, but the claims themselves cannot really be corroborated. Yeah, like saying, oh, we used to live here, and this kooky stuff happened is fun, but like, there's no evidence of that kooky stuff. Ah, but wait. In the 1960s, the skull was examined by Gilbert Cozy of the Royal College of Surgeons. And his findings, published in the Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, kind of destroyed the entire Bedescombe skull story. Because in Cozy's estimation, this was not the skull of a man who had died in the 18th century.

• 42:57Speaker 03

  It was dated as being much older, perhaps thousands of years old. And it was also determined to be a woman's skull, most likely European, who had been between 25 and 30 when she died. So, now that would mean there is another nameless person attached to the skull. But honestly, we know as much or more about her than the mystery enslaved person who may or may not have ever existed at Bedescombe Manor. Yeah, and so if his assertion is correct in this paper, that would mean this person has absolutely nothing to do with Nevis. Because if it's a woman whose skull is thousands of years old, she would have died in Dorset. In that general area, at least. Yes, yes.

• 43:41Speaker 03

  And remember, Udall is the one who is like, I bet they brought that skull back from Nevis. And he just kind of was putting pieces of a puzzle together that were basically white blanks that he was drawing on. In 1999, a man named Christopher Marsden Smedley, a descendant of Azariah Penny, appeared on the BBC series Untold: Britain's Slave Trade, which examined the role that slavery played in establishing many of the economic successes of Britain. Marsland Smedley emphasized on that program that while the Penny family did definitely have enslaved people on their plantation, they were not a part of the slave trade as a business.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, they were not out there actually dealing in human bodies for their own personal gain. Today, the Bedescombe skull is kept in an inset wall cabinet in the Bedescombe farmhouse. It is unfortunately not open to the public. But perhaps if you go ask for a glass of milk, it'll be an entree to a conversation. Those are two screaming skulls. That means we have plenty more to talk about in the future. Yeah. I don't have any plans to do it this Halloween season, but one never knows what could come up later on. Do you have some listener mail for us? I do, I do.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  It's from our listener, Shawna, who just made me laugh and laugh. Shawna writes, "Hello, ladies. I could not believe when y'all mentioned baby alive in a recent behind the scenes. I'm listening September 20th. I'm a bit behind, and it happens to be my birthday. Well, we're a bit behind in wishing you happy birthday. I hope it was wonderful. As soon as you mentioned it, I called my mother, because she got me a baby alive for my eighth birthday. I hadn't thought of that thing in years. My recollection was that I took it everywhere and kept diapers in my backpack. Her recollection is that it was super gross, and she kind of hated how much I loved it. I think that was probably a pretty common feeling among parents whose children had baby alive." Shawna writes, "Thank you for this hilarious and delightful memory." Well, delightful for me.

• 45:50Speaker 03

  I think my mom wishes I hadn't reminded her. And thank you for being my favorite podcast. I'm so grateful for the work y'all do. All the best, Shawna." Shawna, I love this. I love that I was not the only person who was like, "Baby alive!", and got really excited. Because, listen, the toys of my youth are still very delightful to me. I, my husband and I, collect toys. We have a lot of them in the house. So, I'm always delighted to hear that other people have fun memories kicked off by my blathering about the toy world. If you would like to write to us, talk about your toys, because I'm here for that, for sure. You can do that at [email protected]. If you would like to look at the show notes for this episode or any of our episodes, you can find those at missedinhistory.com. Just click in the episode link,

• 46:35Speaker 03

  and you will find all of the resources we used in putting these together. If you would like to subscribe to the podcast, that is as easy as can be. Anybody could do it. Even a monkey could do it. You could do that on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  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.

• 47:08Speaker 03

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick

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  Hola a todos. Soy Jamie Lynn Sigler. Cuando me diagnosticaron tenía veintitantos años y todo mi mundo cambió por completo. Pero con el tiempo decidí que no iba a permitir que eso frenara mi vida. Quise tomar las riendas. Y después de hablar con mi médico sobre mis opciones, la elección para mí fue obvia. Boom! Eso es Kisimtah. Obtenga más información sobre Kisimtah o fotumab en kisimtah.com.

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