Consistently Eccentric History

This week we are meeting Mary Willcocks, a young woman from a poor family who didn't want to accept her lot as a future housewife scraping an existence in a tiny rural village. Armed only with her own sense of self importance and a gift for making up stories, she left for London, determined to make her fortune. Free to reinvent her past she began presenting herself first as a globetrotter and then...

This week we are heading Stateside with a young Welshman who was determined to prove that the continent had been discovered by a Welsh Prince. Convinced that somewhere in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains was a Tribe of Welsh native Americans, John Smith headed out into the wilds with only the clothes on his back and less than two dollars in his pocket. Did he find the tribe? Did he even survive?...

Deciding what to do with your retirement is always difficult. But for Arthur English an advertisement from Canada provided him with a chance to fulfil a lifelong dream at the age of 48. That lifelong dream was to become an executioner. Donning a fake name and a sharp suit he became the go to guy for hanging prisoners throughout the 1910s and roaring 20s. But would even a former soldier be able to...

This week we are discussing a woman who broke multiple glass ceilings in the world of Victorian Science. The daughter of a Jewish Watchmaker, Phoebe Marks couldn't have expected to climb too far socially, however her intelligence, tenacity (and the fact that her aunts just so happened to run a school) allowed her to pursue her love of science and mathematics all the way to Cambridge university. An...

Science! This week we are discussing the life and times of one of the most influential scientists of the Georgian era. Henry Cavendish was a man who liked playing with acid much more than spending time with people, and was fortunately rich enough to dedicate his entire life to scientific discovery. Pausing only for his weekly dinner with the Royal Society Henry spent over half a decade dedicating...

All aboard! This week we are going to be sailing with one of the lesser known of Queen Elizabeth's sea dogs. Sir George Somers, a boyhood friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, was a man with almost obscene amounts of luck. Everything he tried his hand at seemed to go well and by his 50s he was a rich and successful landowner, MP and Mayor. However when his old buddy Walter needed someone to lead a fleet t...

No more cats! This week we are discussing an inventor/adventurer from Devon whose large family meant he had to get experimental to find ways of feeding them. Originally a wool trader, and probably aware of just how many ships were sinking as global trade increased, John Lethbridge realised that the sea floor was now awash with free money. If only there was a way of getting to it. With a simple pla...

150 Episodes of Consistently Eccentric History! After nearly four years of talking about the weirder bits of history I have finally relented and agreed to give Emma a full episode of nothing but cats cats cats. Specifically a motley collection of eight moggys who have held the prestigious role of Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office over the past nearly 100 years. It is a story full of scandal which...

This week we are looking at how the English were out of sync with the rest of Europe for nearly 200 years because of a refusal to accept that a pope might be right about something. The history of identifying where in the yearly cycle you are is an interesting one and, for the most part, one that has been defined by a move to ever greater accuracy over the centuries. That was until a minor adjustme...

This week we are talking about a princess born in the midst of a civil war and whose future plans had to change on an almost yearly basis. Despite the constant uncertainty, the potential marriages to foreign princes and the deaths of most of her family members, Elizabeth of York managed to remain in England and eventually managed to help end the war with the power of love.... .... well, arranged m...

This week we are talking about a man who dealt with his grief in a particularly extreme manner. Former petty London Criminal Edward Low was a man of extremes, which is why he responded to the untimely death of his wife by becoming a pirate and engaging on a three year campaign of death and destruction. Capable of extreme cruelty which he would justify with a very idiosyncratic moral code Ned Low p...

We are over in the North East of England today to meet a radical preacher and sometime asylum inhabitant, Jonathan Martin. A man who was never backwards in coming forwards about his views on the state of the Christian Church. Born into a nomadic family, Jonathan consoled himself by convincing himself that his life would be in service of a greater purpose. While this allowed him to cope with extrem...

A day late but with double the content, this week we are discussing two sisters who married the King of England (luckily it was not the same king each time, or we might have needed a Jerry Springer style intervention) in order to shore up the position of their father Charles, the mad king of France. However despite both Isabella and Catherine doing the dutiful thing it was a later decision by Cath...

This week we are delving into the murky world of espionage during the interwar years, with a tale about a man who took advantage of the fact that the emerging intelligence services were not actually sure how to run a spy network effectively. Arthur Owens, a Welshman with a chip on his shoulder, was a man who wanted money and was not in the least bit concerned about the amount of treason he might n...

For our first episode of 2024 we are talking about a son of William the Conqueror who couldn't help but to sabotage his own chances of inheriting all the lands his father had fought for Robert Curthose, the oldest son and heir to William, was a young man with a chip on his shoulder. This was partly due to his derogatory nickname, but also due to the fact that his father made it clear that he wasn'...

No official episode this week as we are busy celebrating the holidays. However for those of you who love to know what goes on behind the scenes, please enjoy this bonus conversation with Jack when we stumble upon the story of the first official transatlantic swim attempt. See you for more official new episodes in 2024. Guest Host: Jack Heathcote Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more info...

It is a very Merry Christmas from all at Consistently Eccentric, as this week we talk about how the festive season has been celebrated in Britain over the past 10,000 or so years. Beginning in the Neolithic, join us for a whistle stop tour of how a pagan celebration of renewal developed into the unstoppable juggernaut of presents and overeating that we enjoy today. Just watch out for the hot cockl...

This episode we are venturing into outer space to discuss a very British UFO encounter in 1950s Scotland. While our American cousins had been seeing aliens regularly for almost a decade, the British had been much less willing to disclose any extraterrestrial encounters. That was until pulp fiction writer and amateur astronomer Cedric Allingham spotted a saucer while walking on the Scottish coast....

This week we are heading to the other side of the world for a story of how the British desire for tea accidentally led to the creation of a truly unique city. After forcing China to give up Hong Kong for the grave offence of having tried to stop traders from the East India Company smuggling opium into the country a plan to extend the newly British territory led to a small area in Kowloon being ess...

This week we are discussing one of the lesser known Queen consorts of England, Catherine of Braganza. Promoted to princess status at the age of 2 thanks to her dad's efforts to kick the Spanish out of Portugal, little Catherine was destined to be Queen of France. But plans change and new alliances suddenly left Catherine with the prospect of having to sail across the channel to a wet little island...

This week we are talking about beer, so naturally I have a guest host on board who hates the stuff. The development of porter in Georgian Britain led to a boom time for brewers across the country including the Meux family, who were able to become fabulously wealthy supplying the people of London with the means to forget their troubles. Unfortunately the chasing of profit above all else does not si...

This week we discussed what it takes to become a saint, and it was so exciting that I did it twice. That is to say that I thought I had recorded the episode with Emma, but it turns out the recording had cut out after 15 minutes, so we had to re-record with Ollie stepping into the breach. And what a story it is! covering over 500 years and thousands of miles we follow the four men (possibly 5) who...

This week we are going back to a story we told before releasing our first episode back in August of 2020. The Loch Line was a shipping company set up by two idealistic Scotsmen who wanted to recreate the golden age of sail ships in the grime of Victorian Britain. But while their cause was noble, their business sense (and ability to choose competent captains) left much to be desired. It is less a c...

This evening we invite you to join us for a tale of blood and death as we discuss one of the more unique execution methods ever used in England. A head chopping machine with a lovely view of the nearby brook, the Halifax gibbet was essentially a business sponsored initiative to reduce the amount of cloth theft in the local area. An obscenely over the top (though arguably very successful) method of...

This week we are discussing a man who could be described as the perfect example of a truly British eccentric. Sir Patrick Moore's enthusiasm for astronomy was a passion so intense that he was able to create a 50 year television institution based on the sheer force of his personality alone. A man who believed that the truth should never get in the way of a good story, he was more than happy to cont...