Speaker 1: Unsolved mysteries. Active providence is a phrase so carelessly used
Speaker 1: today as to have almost lost the very significance of
Speaker 1: its meaning. But at no time has it held so
Speaker 1: much meaning as in the true historical case of the
Speaker 1: Crown versus John Applegate, as reported in the Newgate Calendar.
Speaker 1: The scene is the Sessions court of the County of Middlesex.
Speaker 1: The courthouse sprunts, the village green and hold, the attire
Speaker 1: of the villagers, the laughter of children, and the entire
Speaker 1: atmosphere is one of gaiety, a gaiety almost beyond our comprehension,
Speaker 1: since the occasion of it is a murder trial. Laughter
Speaker 1: gives way to excited chattering name. Rumor has it that
Speaker 1: the jury have reached a verdict. Justice Selden White, wigged
Speaker 1: in the black gowned, mounts to the bench. The small
Speaker 1: square of black cloths lying ready to the session's clerk's hand,
Speaker 1: rivets the prisoner's eyes as he is marched to the dock.
Speaker 2: Y Hey the schon call of the County of Middlesex,
Speaker 2: no inciti she Justice Solden presiding, all signed.
Speaker 3: While a justice and the.
Speaker 2: Jury have taken their places in the port Louis.
Speaker 4: Then John Applegate that she must face the jury and
Speaker 4: prepare to abide by their verdict. I'll say you, gentlemen
Speaker 4: of the jury, you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty.
Speaker 5: We find the prisoner Dan Applegate guilty.
Speaker 3: Of murder as charged in the indictments led by the
Speaker 3: Sesson's Clock.
Speaker 4: John Applegate, you have heard the verdict returned against you.
Speaker 4: Have you anything to say why the sentence of death
Speaker 4: should not be carried out upon you? Your honor.
Speaker 5: I'm not guilty, I swear it.
Speaker 1: I was never at the Rose and Thistle tavern.
Speaker 4: I never saw the murdered man.
Speaker 5: I'm not guilty. I'm not guilty.
Speaker 4: Five men and four women have identified. Yet you say
Speaker 4: that you spent the night in company with the gentlemen
Speaker 4: of quality, But no gentleman, either quality or of the common,
Speaker 4: has come forward to.
Speaker 5: Bear your weakness. I don't know was your honor. I
Speaker 5: never saw it before. I only know.
Speaker 4: I'm not guilty, John napplegad Here this the sentence of
Speaker 4: death is to be carried out upon you. You shall
Speaker 4: be taken from this place to the place when you came,
Speaker 4: and thence to the public gallows, where you shall be
Speaker 4: hanged by the neck until you be dead, dead, dead,
Speaker 4: and may Almighty God have mercy upon your soul.
Speaker 1: In those days, public hangings were regarded as a legitimate entertainment,
Speaker 1: and the old men loitering around the gallows being erected
Speaker 1: by the public executioner and his assistants discussed previous hangings
Speaker 1: they had attended. In his dank cell, John Applegate prays
Speaker 1: incessantly for deliverance, his stuttered, broken sentences punctuated by the
Speaker 1: dull ominous thud of the carpenter's hammers, as the gallows
Speaker 1: grows stick by stick, beam by beam, and nail by nail.
Speaker 4: All p.
Speaker 1: It's time to get up, eh, eh, what's that?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 5: Yes, time to get up, odd fish. It's still dark.
Speaker 6: He said to you, said three o'clock.
Speaker 5: I did, did I?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 5: I don't remember where am I going? That I must
Speaker 5: need rise this early.
Speaker 6: I don't know this, but he did say so that
Speaker 6: you had to get to the dinner's earlier.
Speaker 5: Shall be it? Shell be it? If I did, I
Speaker 5: did it, But I swear that it's beyond me. I
Speaker 5: don't know a thing of it.
Speaker 6: Sadie, Sadie. Have you wake the master? Yes, mister it
Speaker 6: he'll be down directly. I don't know what's wrong, is he,
Speaker 6: Miss Katie? What do you mean, Wench? He swears that
Speaker 6: he doesn't remember giving up order to wake him, and
Speaker 6: now he's half asleep. Yet wait till he wakes, he'll remember.
Speaker 6: Come now hurry and said table, yes, miss Jenny's and
Speaker 6: remember Wench, though breakfast be in the middle of the night,
Speaker 6: tutor must be clean caple it.
Speaker 5: Yes, Miss Jenny. I swear I don't know what this
Speaker 5: is all about. I never said that I wanted to
Speaker 5: be about at three in the morning.
Speaker 6: Hi, you've forgotten, sir. He came to my room last night,
Speaker 6: wake me and said, Janet, I want breakfast at three.
Speaker 6: I must needs get to the village before nine.
Speaker 5: But I have nothing to go to the village for you, Katie.
Speaker 5: When did I tell you that I must rise early
Speaker 5: last night?
Speaker 3: Sis?
Speaker 5: Late? It was sy oh.
Speaker 6: I was fast asleep and you came and knocked on
Speaker 6: the door. He said, Katie, I must be up and
Speaker 6: about at dawn. I'll break fast at three. You've forgotten, sir,
Speaker 6: Come master.
Speaker 5: That this is ready? What feesh, I haven't forgotten it,
Speaker 5: I tell you I I've not to go to the
Speaker 5: village to day, or be saddled and ready. Master? What's
Speaker 5: this you too, Jacob? Mad too? What ails?
Speaker 3: Ye?
Speaker 1: Master?
Speaker 5: Did I waken you two in the middle of the
Speaker 5: night and tell you that I must be to the
Speaker 5: village this morning early? Indeed that you did?
Speaker 3: Master, Don't you remember I told you it was foolish
Speaker 3: like to be coming out of the stables and the
Speaker 3: cold of the night with no coat on your back.
Speaker 5: Arts, fish that it seems that I must have done.
Speaker 3: Yes, Master, you said that the best horse must be
Speaker 3: saddled and ready for the road at free.
Speaker 6: Come, Master, you're not eating enough. If you're for the road,
Speaker 6: you can set saddle better on a full stomach.
Speaker 5: Jacob, Yes, Master, I never go to the stables and
Speaker 5: my slippers. No, Master, Then if I did last night,
Speaker 5: there will be traces on the slippers. Bring them to me. Yes, Master,
Speaker 5: it seems that I must. Whether I will or not
Speaker 5: be off to the village. I would that the good
Speaker 5: Lord would tell me what for? For I have no idea.
Speaker 6: Aye, but you'll remember, the master when you're on your way.
Speaker 5: Ohs, be act as if my memory were leaving me
Speaker 5: the slippers, Master, and clean as a home, much tooth
Speaker 5: and dry as a bone. I'll be bound yes Masday.
Speaker 5: This smacks of witchery, but I'll go. I'll go to
Speaker 5: the village and see what befalls.
Speaker 1: Come This up good, down the dark highway, rides Kingsley,
Speaker 1: a strange feeling, half fear, half anxiety drives him on
Speaker 1: and ever and anon. He mutters to himself about the
Speaker 1: foolishness of the journey. Three hours later, the horse's pace slackens.
Speaker 1: The horse knows that around the next turn is the
Speaker 1: toll bridge, which he must cross to complete the journey
Speaker 1: to the village.
Speaker 5: What a fool I am. The bridge will be closed, locked, tight,
Speaker 5: and old Jerry doesn't open it too nigh.
Speaker 2: On nine for the kingly sir, mister Kingley, is that you, Jerry?
Speaker 5: Jerry?
Speaker 6: Hit it you, Jerry?
Speaker 5: Quiet on, master, right on? The bridge is open.
Speaker 2: There he is there, he is riding a horse. The man,
Speaker 2: the gentleman of quality. I was with the Knight of
Speaker 2: the murders. For praises to God, Sir, you've saved my life.
Speaker 1: And so John Applegate did not hang mister Kingsley. Gentlemen
Speaker 1: of quality identified Applegate as having been with him far
Speaker 1: from the scene of the murder. So firmly did Applegate
Speaker 1: believe that Providence had intervened because of his prayers, that
Speaker 1: he forsook the world and retired to a monastery well
Speaker 1: until his death he was called Brother Jonathan, the man
Speaker 1: whom God had saved. Out of deference to people who
Speaker 1: may still be living, character names in some of these
Speaker 1: unsolved mys stories have been changed in as much as
Speaker 1: any solution must have necessarily be supposition, liberties of time, place,
Speaker 1: and characters have been taken. In just a moment, you
Speaker 1: will hear a solution to the toll Bridge mystery, Ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, the solution for which you have been waiting.
Speaker 4: Do you mean to say that you have an explanation
Speaker 4: of the toll Bridge mystery?
Speaker 1: I believe I have. Of course, you understand that I'm
Speaker 1: not an authority on the subject, but in consulting writings
Speaker 1: by world authorities such as Manhood of Humanity by Alfred Korsibski,
Speaker 1: the files of the London Society of Psychical Research and others,
Speaker 1: have formed a definite opinion I see in the first place,
Speaker 1: Further investigation of the mystery disclosed that the toll bridge keeper,
Speaker 1: Old Jerry, had been warned about twelve the night before
Speaker 1: by mister Kingsley and told that he would be wanting
Speaker 1: to cross the bridge about seven in the morning.
Speaker 4: But didn't the tollgate keeper think that's strange?
Speaker 1: I mean, the idea of mister Kingsley riding that three
Speaker 1: hour trip at midnight and turning.
Speaker 4: Round to ride home again.
Speaker 1: Well, naturally he thought it strange. But the very strangeness
Speaker 1: of it provides the solution.
Speaker 5: I don't quite follow you.
Speaker 1: Well, don't you see? It was impossible for mister Kingsley
Speaker 1: to be at the toll gate at midnight and at
Speaker 1: the same time waken Janet, Katy and Jacob the groom.
Speaker 4: Yes, of course Kingsley couldn't have got home till three.
Speaker 1: It is accepted by many, and I think justifiably that
Speaker 1: wishing precedes thinking, and wish forms precede thought forms. Now, Applegate,
Speaker 1: lying in jail and knowing that he was innocent, was
Speaker 1: wishing to be saved as natural. Applegate knew that the
Speaker 1: only person who could save him was the as he said,
Speaker 1: gentlemen of quality, who would provide him with his alibi.
Speaker 1: He concentrated his every thought is every wish on Kingsley.
Speaker 1: Although he didn't know him. Since mind is everywhere, Kingsley's
Speaker 1: subconscious was aware of the dire straits of the man Applegate,
Speaker 1: and these thoughts, in turn were directed toward the persons
Speaker 1: necessary to assist Kingsley in getting to the village.
Speaker 4: In other words, Applegate's direct thoughts were taken into partnership
Speaker 4: with Kingsley's subconscious thoughts, and Katie Janet Jacob and the
Speaker 4: toll bridge keeper were awakened by the strength of these
Speaker 4: thought ways rather than by the physical appearance of Kingsley himself.
Speaker 1: Yes, and you must not lose sight of the fact
Speaker 1: that neither Katy Janet Jacob or the toll bridge keeper
Speaker 1: had any suspicion that there was an execution impending, much
Speaker 1: less that their friend and master, mister Kingsley had anything
Speaker 1: whatever to do with it. That is the final proof
Speaker 1: that the entire thing hinged on thoughts rather than anything physical.
Speaker 2: Stan