Stephanie Foo
Appearances
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
In 1926 in Toronto, Canada, a 72-year-old lawyer named Charles Vance Miller was at lunch at the Queen's Hotel with two lawyer friends. They got into an argument over some legal matter. Miller told them they were both wrong, and he'd prove it if they followed him up to his office. He eagerly ran up three flights of stairs, grabbed a law book, plopped it on his desk, and then died.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Just put his head down on the desk and was gone. A couple days later, rumors started swirling. Charles Vance Miller had done well for himself, gotten rich. He'd avoided scandal his whole life, was an upstanding citizen, though he had no family, never married. He'd hinted that he'd leave his fortune to the University of Toronto.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
But when his fellow lawyers brought out his will, that's not what they found. As soon as Miller's people started executing his will, they realized that his will was like an elaborate prank, as if he'd thrown a bunch of money out of a window to watch what would happen. He left stock in a brewery to prohibitionist pastors. He gave his racing stock to people who didn't believe in betting.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
He said he wanted to leave his vacation home in Jamaica to three other lawyers. A nice thing for them to share, except for the fact that the three lawyers all hated each other. But by far, the clause that unleashed the most mayhem was the last one. It's about all the rest of his money. I'll just read it to you. End quote.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
In other words, the woman who had the most babies in the 10 years after his death would be awarded a whole lot of money. Nine million Canadian dollars in today's money, or almost seven million US dollars. There were immediately a number of theories as to why Miller did this, but none of them were charitable.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
If he really wanted to support a young woman with a bundle of kids, he could have just willed all the money to her at the time of his death. But setting this up over the next 10 years created a twisted contest. Some said he was an avid supporter of birth control, so maybe setting off a baby-making storm could be a wicked way to force a conversation about it.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Some said he was trying to test the legal system's ability to hold up a crazy will, but that he'd really expected it would be thrown out, that the money would automatically just be donated to the University of Toronto, his alma mater. People said that Miller had been obsessed with the idea of what people would do for money. He liked to talk about how everybody had their price.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Maybe he was testing the women of Toronto to see what theirs was.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
This is Elizabeth Wilton. She wrote a 200-page dissertation on the contest.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
I feel like the modern-day word for it would be that he was basically a troll.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
He pretty much cops to it in his will. He says, This will is necessarily uncommon and capricious, because I have no dependents or near relations, and no duty rests upon me to leave any property at my death. And what I do leave is proof of my folly in gathering and retaining more than I required in my lifetime.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Apparently, Miller really liked to drop dollar bills on the sidewalk and hide and watch people pick them up. When I think about the kind of person who'd plant a wallet in the street and put it on YouTube today as a commentary on human nature, yeah, I feel like I know who that guy is. For the first few years after Miller died, nothing happened. A few newspaper articles were written.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Nobody took it very seriously. Some relatives went to court, arguing that the money should go to them. And then, six years after his death, the attorney general introduced a bill trying to nullify the will and have the money donated to the University of Toronto. This was a mistake. Totally backfired. Before this, not many people knew about the well.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
But now that the government was trying to invalidate it, the press picked it up, and there was a huge public outcry. But not in the way you might think. The public was like, baby-making race? Hell yeah, we want a baby-making race. Women's groups supported the contest because they felt women should have a fair shot at the money, which, what can I say, was a different time.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Others disagreed with the government intervening in people's wills and affairs. Altogether, it caused an uproar. The government backtracked, said, OK, fine, you people have fun. And with that, the race was on. Usually when this story has been told, it's like, ha ha, a man created this zany will that set off a wild baby-making storm in Canada.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
It conjures Brady Bunch images of big families happily shdupping their way to fame and fortune, knee-deep in cabbage patch children. But the way it unfolded was actually much darker. Because, of course, the story is about an old man encouraging women to go through the excruciating pain and danger of childbirth as often as possible in a 10-year period. a 10-year period that was already half over.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
This contest didn't really get started until six years in. That made it skewed from the start. It meant suddenly the only contenders were women who had about six babies in the last six years, women who didn't even know there was a contest to be part of. They found out about it quick, when reporters started pounding on their doors.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
This is Karen Nolan. She worked with Elizabeth to develop a screenplay for a movie based on the contest that aired on Canadian television in 2002. As soon as the will was verified, reporters went through the birth registry, found women who had already given birth to about six children since Charles' death, and dashed to their homes to try and get the exclusive.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
It must have been a jarring experience to be an automatic frontrunner in this bizarre contest. But most of the mothers went along with it because of the $9 million. Many of the contestants were desperately poor. During those first six years, the Great Depression had taken hold. Nearly a quarter of Toronto's families were on welfare. Families were living in shacks or camps.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Some even ate groundhogs to keep from starving. Canada's birth rate had actually plummeted at the time. And so most of the families that suddenly found themselves in the running to receive this dork derby money agreed to media scrutiny because they wanted the chance at the prize and because, in the short term, the newspapers offered them money.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
exclusive contracts where reporters could come and photograph and interview the families whenever they wanted to. Sometimes the families even got advertising deals for things like soap. In many ways, this was sort of like an OG reality show, albeit a really perverse one. The frontrunners of the stork derpy even became household names, like John and K Plus 8, or maybe more like Octomom.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
After all, it was billed on the newsreels as freak Canadian race. Papers all over the world, from the New York Daily News to the Marshfield Wisconsin News-Herald, picked up the story. The press followed a bunch of contenders, but I'm only going to run through three of the long-term favorites to win. One of the first competitors that the newspapers dug up was Mrs. Grace Bignotto.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
I don't want to give away who won or how many kids Mrs. Bignotto actually had during the race, but over her lifetime, Mrs. Bignotto was pregnant 24 times, though only 12 of those children lived. She was a working mother, she was a whiz with languages, picked up Polish, German, Yiddish, and worked as a court interpreter in Italian.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
All the while, she raised her 12 children and would get up at 4.30 in the morning to make two dozen butter tarts, macaroni, meatballs, sausage, and her famous red sauce for her family. But the public didn't exactly see her as a hero. Here's Karen again.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Mrs. Bagnato's husband was an Italian immigrant, and some papers weren't kind about that. These were the years leading up to World War II. Of course, it didn't help that one of the other Italian contestants named one of their derby babies Little Benito Mussolini.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
But because of their nationality, Italian families in the race received phone calls calling their families fascists and threatening to kidnap their children. Contestant number two was Mrs. X. She was the scandalous one.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
That's a saucy word. I should start using that. Mrs. X had five children from her husband, but then her marriage fell apart. He moved out, and she entered into a new relationship with a man and had another five kids with him. She wanted to marry him, but didn't have enough money to go through with her divorce. All in all, Mrs. X had 10 children by the time she was 24.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
She tried to hide her identity because of the circumstances of her situation, but her name was eventually revealed. Pauline May Clark. Contestant number three was Mrs. Kenney.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Mrs. Kenney was in it to win it. She was under five feet tall, but over the course of her lifetime, she wound up carrying 19 pregnancies to term. She was French-Canadian, married to an Irish man, and she believed that money was hers. She said she had the gift of second sight and a divine connection with Miller, who told her she was going to win. So of course it had to be true.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Mrs. Kenney was a talented woodcarver and often sold her carvings in the street. And she carved a large number of statues of Miller, even named one of her children after him. At one point, a bunch of the leading derby mothers got together and said, screw this whole race, let's just share the winnings. It was a ton of money, they were all poor, it would still result in plenty for everyone.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
But Mrs. Kenney was the sole holdout. The only one who insisted, no. I'm the winner, she shouted once, and I won't split with anybody. Why should I? It's my money. And if the judge doesn't give it all to me, I'll walk right up to the bench and punch him in the eye. So yeah, Mrs. Kenny was tough as nails. But she probably was the poorest of the three.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Her family lived in a slum, and their home was infested with rats. One night, rats attacked three of her children. Tiny, three-month-old Patrick had the worst of it. Here's Karen.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Mrs. Kenney and her neighbors tried desperately to have the public health nurse visit her home, but to no avail. The baby died.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
It's hard to say how many women had babies specifically for this race. When they talked to reporters, everyone always said the same thing. I would have had this child anyway. I tend to believe Mrs. Bignotto and many of the other Catholic families in the race. I don't think Mrs. Bignotto was ever playing the game. She'd been cranking out a baby a year long before she heard a word about the Derby.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
So the whole contest was just an added bonus to her. But then there was Mrs. Kenny, who was obviously playing to win and said outright that she was trying to make babies. And then you have Mrs. Clark. Mrs. Clark's situation was the most unsettling. It came out that Mrs. Clark's lover had drawn up a contract with her where he could get half her winnings if he impregnated her enough.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Mrs. Clark's lover was also abusive. He'd given her a black eye, broke her door down, chased her out into the street after a fight. So maybe she didn't want to be pregnant as many times as she was. Maybe she was forced to. Here's Elizabeth.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
So you were sort of insinuating that maybe these women might have been coerced or... You know, I mean, I don't know.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
In 1933, it looked like Mrs. Bignotto was going to win. Then in 1934, headlines read that Mrs. Kenney had taken the lead. In 1935, another woman, Mrs. Timlick, quote, sped to the front. In 1936, Madam X was listed as a late entry, tied for second. All the while, the physical toll for these mothers was enormous.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Mrs. Bagnato suffered a hemorrhage near the end of her final pregnancy, and many of the Stork Derby mothers were in and out of the hospital for operations and transfusions. And all three mothers suffered the emotional toll of having stillborn babies during the race. Most of the women couldn't afford to have their children in hospitals.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
And so the infant mortality rate of the Derby babies was six times that of the national average. 34% of these babies died. But aside from an article or two, again, the press only saw these deaths in the context of the race. The headline in a 1936 Montreal paper was Stillborn Infant May Assure Prize.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Underneath, A Stillborn Child May Assure Mrs. Matthew Kenny the Prize in the Stork Derby Under the Will of Late Charles Vance Miller. Her nearest competitor is believed to be Mrs. Joseph Bignato. The race ended on Halloween 1936. But at first, it wasn't clear who'd won. Here's how our three competitors stood on that date. Mrs. Kenney claimed to have had 11 children.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Mrs. Clark said she had 11 as well. Mrs. Bignotto had nine. But Mrs. Kenney and Mrs. Clark didn't walk away with the prize that easily. With Mrs. Clark, the scandalous one who had tied for the largest number of children, the lawyers in charge of the estate had some questions about her case and raised the question of whether children born out of wedlock should count.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
This is where it was clear that there had been a huge oversight. Nobody had actually set rules for this contest at its beginning. Remember, Miller explained this whole contest in two sentences in his will.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
So as the court saw it, there were nuances that needed to be figured out, rules to be set, but of course only after the fact of everything, after the babies had been born and the blood transfusions administered. A massive multi-way court battle broke out. All of the contestants had to go to court to prove that they had the most children.
This American Life
668: The Long Fuse
Each woman had to lawyer up and go up against the lawyers for the executors of the estate. The fight went on for two years. And of course, now the rules would be determined in front of an audience. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.