Lady Undertakers of Old Texas: An Interview w/ Author Kathy Benjamin Pt. 2

CC_Kathy Part 2

Speakers: Benjamin Morris & Kathy Benjamin

Benjamin Morris (00:00):

Well, welcome back to Crime Capsule. Kathy, we're delighted to have you.

Kathy Benjamin (00:06):

Thank you. Thank you for having me again.

Benjamin Morris (00:09):

So, having taken the bird's eye view of the graveyard last week, this week we are going to perch on a couple of individual headstones. How does that sound?

Kathy Benjamin (00:23):

That sounds great.

Benjamin Morris (00:25):

Okay. All of my metaphors during spooky season revolve around one theme and one theme only.

Kathy Benjamin (00:34):

Hey, it works.

Benjamin Morris (00:37):

Alright. So, Anna Mary Beetham, she is in a way, almost like the heroine of your story. She's at the very least one of your protagonists.

Kathy Benjamin (00:53):

Yes.

Benjamin Morris (00:53):

And she's a fascinating individual. She was a pioneer. She was an entrepreneur. She was an innovator. And I mean, this is maybe the understatement of the century, she was a shrewd businesswoman. I mean, she knew what was up. So, tell us a little bit about Anna Mary.

Kathy Benjamin (01:18):

Yeah. So, Anna Mary is living in Texas with her husband, and she gives birth to a child that sadly dies. She pretty quickly has another child which lives, but s

CC_Kathy Part 2

Speakers: Benjamin Morris & Kathy Benjamin

Benjamin Morris (00:00):

Well, welcome back to Crime Capsule. Kathy, we're delighted to have you.

Kathy Benjamin (00:06):

Thank you. Thank you for having me again.

Benjamin Morris (00:09):

So, having taken the bird's eye view of the graveyard last week, this week we are going to perch on a couple of individual headstones. How does that sound?

Kathy Benjamin (00:23):

That sounds great.

Benjamin Morris (00:25):

Okay. All of my metaphors during spooky season revolve around one theme and one theme only.

Kathy Benjamin (00:34):

Hey, it works.

Benjamin Morris (00:37):

Alright. So, Anna Mary Beetham, she is in a way, almost like the heroine of your story. She's at the very least one of your protagonists.

Kathy Benjamin (00:53):

Yes.

Benjamin Morris (00:53):

And she's a fascinating individual. She was a pioneer. She was an entrepreneur. She was an innovator. And I mean, this is maybe the understatement of the century, she was a shrewd businesswoman. I mean, she knew what was up. So, tell us a little bit about Anna Mary.

Kathy Benjamin (01:18):

Yeah. So, Anna Mary is living in Texas with her husband, and she gives birth to a child that sadly dies. She pretty quickly has another child which lives, but she almost dies, and she is just getting sicker and sicker. And what a lot of people did at that time was they thought, oh, we'll go to a desert climate. It was very common with like tubercular patients, things like that. We'll go to a drier desert climate, and somehow that will just make us better.

Kathy Benjamin (01:48):

So, she and her husband leave kind of East Texas and they start moving towards West Texas, but they stop to camp because it was a camp, it was not a town in those days. We're talking about the early 1880s. And she and her husband stop in Mineral Wells, which is a little bit to the west of Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Kathy Benjamin (02:11):

And mineral wells, the wells and the minerals’ part, they have springs there, they still do. And they were very famous already at that time. She, while they were camping there for a couple weeks, starts feeling a bit better, putting on some weight, and they're like, oh, like so many others who went, it's down to the spring water, for whatever reason, that she got better, she got better there, and they decided to stay.

Kathy Benjamin (02:37):

But she got better, well, because of these famous springs that are supposed to make you better. A lot of people who would come to Mineral Wells to try and get better did not get better. So, you have a population of people where the lucky ones survive. And the unlucky ones who are most of them die.

Kathy Benjamin (02:58):

This is, again, basically a camp at this point. There is no undertaker. And so, she gets better, and she's like, "We're going to stay and I'm going to become an undertaker." And she not only starts an undertaking business, but she starts it under her own name. Her initials, but her initials are different than her husband's.

Kathy Benjamin (03:20):

Her husband was involved with the bath houses and hotels and things like that. She ran the undertaking business, and it was called AM Beetham. It was her. So, that is just groundbreaking. Not only because she was one of the first, but she was definitely ... I cannot find any example (and believe me, I looked), of a woman who started in undertaking business earlier than that in Texas.

Kathy Benjamin (03:56):

So, this is about 1881, 188 when she's starting her own business in what was then the frontier. And running it herself and being part of this kind of brand-new area of business that is undertaking as a money making operation.

Benjamin Morris (04:16):

As they say, death is a growth sector in different ways. And you got to go where the clientele is at. So, we cannot underestimate her business savvy in the slightest. How did you find Anna Mary? How did you find Mrs. Beetham as you're doing your research?

Kathy Benjamin (04:37):

The same way I found everybody else. No, I found her pretty early on. I can't call her famous or anything, but because she did things under her own name, she's much easier to find because even women into the 20th century are much more likely to be almost a silent partner with their husband or with a sibling or their father.

Kathy Benjamin (05:02):

So, the fact that she was full on, here are my initials, here's my name, I'm going to be in the paper both in advertising and in stories, write-ups, articles under my own name. She was one of the first ones that came up for me.

Kathy Benjamin (05:21):

And then, I was able to find a photo of her and it just kind of went from there. And then her son, Robert became hugely involved in the Texas undertakers and then Funeral Directors and Embalmers Association. So, her son went on to be kind of very famous and important in that sector.

Kathy Benjamin (05:45):

And then all of his stuff you can trace back to her. So, the name, even if in later decades, it wasn't her name, it was his name. The name is very big among any funeral information that you try and find in Texas.

Benjamin Morris (05:59):

Last week you were telling us a little bit about the sort of roots to professionalization and those societies that were emerging (emphasis on emerging), at the turn of the last century in old Texas. Who trained Anna Mary and where did she get her training and what did it look like?

Kathy Benjamin (06:21):

Well, she definitely did not have any sort of official professional training in the 1880s the nearest what would you call, school of embalming was in Chicago and New York. Those were where you went at that period. And she did not go to those places, which means

Kathy Benjamin (06:41):

Eventually there's one in Dallas and you eventually can get a degree without leaving Texas, but at this period, absolutely not. So, I don't have any evidence of like, if she learned it from her mother, if she had a father or anyone involved in it.

Kathy Benjamin (06:57):

It appears to be an idea that she just plucked out of thin air and went, "I'm going to do this." I'm not sure when she started exactly offering involvement. It may not have been in those first few years, but when she did eventually start doing it, it was still the period, say the late 1880s, 1890s, well before 1903, when you had to pass a test in order to be an embalmer.

Kathy Benjamin (07:26):

So, she was able from the beginning if she wanted to, to practice embalming and call herself an embalmer with no actual education, no training. So, yeah, a lack of evidence is definitely there, but it appears that it just was an idea that came to her. She was in a place that needed an undertaker, and she decided that was her job. She was going to do it.

Benjamin Morris (07:51):

Do you think that there is any possibility, just based on what you've read about the place and the time being so close to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, do you think that she might have, say, undertaken an apprenticeship with a mortician with an undertaker in that growing metropolis at the time?

Kathy Benjamin (08:13):

It's definitely, I wouldn't say it's not, it's not impossible. There's no evidence for it. So, we would just be sure spit balling here. I would base it on the fact that she wasn't really expected to. Again, to us it seems bizarre, but she absolutely could just one day decide she's an undertaker and call herself an embalmer and do it. And she wasn't breaking any laws. No one was going to come test her. But also, she had young kids at this point.

Kathy Benjamin (08:43):

And so, when you're talking about even going from Mineral Wells to Dallas, if you're talking about having two toddlers running around, which she did at this point, back then, she would've been expected to take care of them. And because she wasn't around her people, so to speak, she was in a new place. We know she wouldn't have had extended family to help with that. So, I think just a matter of the reality of being a mom would've made it very difficult.

Benjamin Morris (09:14):

What are some of the other kinds of sources that we have for her and for her family? You mentioned that you obtained some information through her son, but what kind of primary documents do we have associated with Mary?

Kathy Benjamin (09:29):

And we have a very rare example of that. You get a lot of information from the advertisements at the time. Even just things you have to infer or things that change in the ads over time.

Kathy Benjamin (09:51):

For example, when she eventually does bring her son on, her name is still number one and it's Beetham and son, he doesn't get to take over. We have just even things that just tell you about their life in the old days when they were trying to fill up newspapers, they would even talk about, so and so had a bridge party. And those are the kind of things that didn't get included in my book in the end, but that kind of fill out this person's life.

Kathy Benjamin (10:22):

And you can see, oh, okay, so she traveled this summer, so who was taking care of her job when she was away that summer? And okay, here's the record of birth for a child that didn't live. So, we know she was pregnant for the nine months before that.

Kathy Benjamin (10:39):

All those kind of things you have to add together to get a picture of her life and what she could have been doing, and when. And you can definitely see the point where she kind of steps back from her job and kind of has a teenage daughter to get married off, things like that.

Kathy Benjamin (10:59):

You see where things become more her son and less her. But in those early decades specifically, you just have to pick at those little, tiny things to get a view of this woman and what she was doing in her job. Because you don't expect a rural lady undertaker in the 1880s to be leaving a huge record behind of who she was and what she was doing.

Benjamin Morris (11:21):

Yeah. You tend to get a sense of who has paper trails and who doesn't pretty quickly when you're doing this kind of research. It's always nice to find someone who has at least a semblance of a trail that you can follow and piece it together.

Benjamin Morris (11:36):

Now you have this interesting claim as you describe her. It's going to take a second to unpack, but I think it's important that we do so because you're very careful about your nominations here. You write that she was the first to own and manage her company under her own name in the state of Texas.

Benjamin Morris (12:09):

And then you write immediately afterwards, I think I got that right. Please correct me if I didn't. But reason I accentuate it is you write that it is extremely important to qualify each of those conditional phrases and clauses. Because at every stage of the game in this period of the growing funerary industry in Texas, somebody is going to tweak one of those little clauses, whether it's first to own or first to manage or first to manage under someone's name or their own name or in this region or from that other region.

Benjamin Morris (12:51):

Like everybody wants a little piece of the firstness pie. And you get all of these kind of competing lady undertakers or male undertakers in some cases, but you're writing about the ladies here who are all angling. They're all posturing, they're all kind of like ... you see what I'm getting at?

Kathy Benjamin (13:15):

Yeah.

Benjamin Morris (13:16):

Everybody wants some little badge of distinctiveness, some little gold star for being first at something, even if it is literally like, I'm the only angel on the head of this pen.

Kathy Benjamin (13:29):

Yeah, it-

Kathy Benjamin (13:30):

But I want to starve for that.

Kathy Benjamin (13:32):

It was one of the things I did not expect going into this. And I should say, just to add to all those things you said specifically woman, so she wasn't the first man to own it. Yeah, yeah. Or person. She was the first woman to own it under her own name, blah, blah.

Kathy Benjamin (13:48):

Yeah. Because I would read — I would find a woman and I would read about her and it's usually in advertisements. You would read an ad and it'll say, the only lady undertaker in the panhandle, or the only lady undertaker in San Antonio or something like that. Or the first one in Texas.

Kathy Benjamin (14:06):

And it was when I started reading, sometimes you get it in obituaries as well because family stories change or whatever. So, you'd have an obituary from 1950 and it'd be like, oh, she was the first licensed lady undertaker in Texas, and I would go and look her up and learn that she didn't become an undertaker until 1920.

Kathy Benjamin (14:28):

And I'm like, well, I've got a hundred women that I've already researched that were under ... so that can't be true. So, suddenly I realized that these superlatives, you can't believe any of them. You have to actually look into it.

Kathy Benjamin (14:42):

So, it's one of the first things that I go over in my book is that if there is a family story, if there is not, if you have some piece of evidence going, no, really this person was first, or even in some cases this person was second. I have one example of that where a woman claims to be the second lady undertaker in Texas. And she genuinely didn't start until well into the 1900s.

Kathy Benjamin (15:10):

And I was just like, why would you claim to be second if you weren't? But again, that one comes from an obituary. So, it may be one of those things that came down in families and things get changed and messed up a little bit.

Kathy Benjamin (15:22):

But yeah, so anytime I saw this, the only one here, the first one here, whatever, you have to go back and check and across the board they tend to be either wrong or you can't prove them. Or there are two people who both claim to have that same first or only, or whatever. Yeah. But it is kind of that human thing of like, yeah, we want that piece. We want to be able to say, I was the first, or I'm the only.

Kathy Benjamin (15:58):

I will say the other thing that I point out about it though is that in many cases, I don't think in most cases they were setting out to lie. If you're going to say you're the only woman embalmer in San Antonio, for example, because we've talked about how San Antonio for some reason had like a million lady embalmers. That's one thing. Because you're going to know that's not true. You're going to know there are other lady embalmers there.

Kathy Benjamin (16:22):

But if you're in a town of 5,000 people in the middle of West Texas, it is very likely that you are the first woman undertaker that anyone in that town has ever heard of. So, if you're going to advertise yourself as the first, you don't necessarily know that's wrong, especially before you have to be tested. It's just like, "Oh, I'm the first one I've ever heard of. So, guess what? I'm first."

Benjamin Morris (16:45):

I think my absolute favorite of any of them in your book was — and I don't remember her name off the top of my head. It was such a small little detail, this one mention that you gave and then moved right on. But I think my favorite was the lady who advertised herself as the first woman undertaker in Texas from Illinois.

Kathy Benjamin (17:09):

It was, yeah ... Hold on. Where'd she go? Yeah, it was Harriet Kreidler. Yes. She lived in Chicago before moving to McAllen, and she claimed to be, "First licensed woman in Balmer, in Illinois," but she was claiming that while she lived in McAllen.

Benjamin Morris (17:25):

Right. Thank you.

Kathy Benjamin (17:26):

And so, it's like well, no one in Texas knows. Sure. I didn't even bother looking into it because I'm like, I'm not worried about what happened in Illinois. I am worried about what happened in Texas.

Benjamin Morris (17:48):

Well, before we move on from Ms. Beetham, maybe one or two more questions. You have described some of the sort of landscape of competition that is out there for her. I guess I was just curious, based on your reading, what set her apart, what would persuade a grieving family to visit her as opposed to any of her competitors, female or otherwise? I mean, was there something unique about her practice?

Kathy Benjamin (18:27):

I don't know. I think in the beginning she was the only one in, again, in what was very much a one-horse town, if that. And then, a decade later, a woman and her husband come in and they start their own undertaking parlor. And that really does seem to be kind of the first competition that she has at all. So, I think that first decade it's really she’s there. And then after that-

Benjamin Morris (18:57):

Good way to build a clientele, if you're the only one.

Kathy Benjamin (18:59):

You're the only one there. And then after that because it's something that her son really promotes, it's you have that decade on everybody else. You have the, oh, we were founded in 1882, we've been around longer. And again, you see it in those little things about who's throwing what parties or who's going to what church and all these things that are reported in newspapers.

Kathy Benjamin (19:24):

At the time, she was very involved in the community. And the photo that we have of her, she looks like a very strong individual. She's quite a bit older in the image we have, but-

Benjamin Morris (19:38):

I'm so glad you mentioned that photograph. Kathy, I'm so glad you mentioned that photograph because I was going to ask you about it. And this is one of those things where, folks out there in podcast land, you all need to pick up a copy of this book for this photograph and for one other, but mostly for this photograph, because you've got this lady who ...

Benjamin Morris (20:08):

Can we just have some real talk here, Kathy? Can we just go straight up, all cards on the table? She looks like a bruiser. She looks like she regularly engages in bare knuckle boxing matches. And not only would she kill you in a fight, I wouldn't pick a fight with her. First of all, she would kill you, then she would embalm you. And lastly, she would charge you for the privilege of her embalming services. And she's so fierce, man. Wow.

Kathy Benjamin (20:39):

Yeah. And so, the image that we have, if you do go get the book, it's on page 80. The image that we have is labeled … it’s a whole bunch of women and one man who I believe is a reverend sitting on someone's porch. And so, you have a whole bunch of these kind of younger to middle-aged women. A couple of them are even smiling, which was less common in photos. Then you have some, they're holding young children.

Kathy Benjamin (21:04):

And then in the back you have three older-ish women who are all dressed in black. And the most formidable by far is Anna Mary Beetham. She is the person that you see when you look at this photo with a dozen or more people in it. She's got a fabulous hat on. She's got a big old dress and yeah, I think your description is right on. She does look like she's about to punch the photographer, even though she's kind of far away.

Benjamin Morris (21:30):

She cuts the profile of Andre the Giant. I mean, she dominates the image, it's amazing.

Kathy Benjamin (21:41):

And this is from around 1910, so if she's 30, she's in her early 70s. So yeah, she's in her 50s, early to mid-50s at this point. So, she's not a young woman anymore, but she's not old-old. I say as someone who turned 40 this year.

Benjamin Morris (22:00):

Happy birthday.

Kathy Benjamin (22:01):

Thank you.

Benjamin Morris (22:01):

So, my other favorite photograph in your book is found on page 19, and it is of the exterior of her emporium. And I like the word emporium to describe what we're looking at here, because yes, it's very old timey, and it looks like it's full of knick-knacks in the way that modern day cracker barrels wish they were.

Benjamin Morris (22:24):

But this is the real deal. And I just love the lettering on the awning because the lettering is like doodads, knick-knacks, this and that, saddles, livery, dry goods, blah, blah, blah. And it's all in like this sort of little, little lettering until you get to the very end of the awning. And in the largest type available, the largest font size is what we would call it now, 600-point font on the top of the awning. It just goes and coffins.

Kathy Benjamin (22:58):

Coffins.

Benjamin Morris (22:59):

Coffins. That's the first word you see on the establishment. It's great.

Kathy Benjamin (23:05):

I will peel you up slightly. It's not hers. It's Betty Latner, who is the one that I mentioned a few minutes ago, the competition that came in a decade later. So, same place. Also, a woman undertaker, but it's Betty Latner and her husband. But yeah, everything else you said, totally correct. And yeah, furniture, light, running, sewing machines, tiny letters and coffins.

Benjamin Morris (23:31):

And coffins. Sorry, I must have read — when I read the caption where it says pictured is the Beetham's first location, sorry, I was picking up on that. They used to be there until they moved and then her competitor moved.

Kathy Benjamin (23:47):

Yes.

Benjamin Morris (23:47):

Is that fair to say?

Kathy Benjamin (23:48):

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Morris (23:50):

Okay.

Kathy Benjamin (23:50):

Exactly.

Benjamin Morris (23:50):

Got you.

Kathy Benjamin (23:51):

Sorry. Yeah, now that I look at it, it's confusing, but yes.

Benjamin Morris (23:55):

Coffins.

Kathy Benjamin (23:56):

Coffins.

Benjamin Morris (23:58):

A lot of coffins. Skip the furniture, skip the saddles, skip the dry goods. We're going straight to the good stuff, so-

Kathy Benjamin (24:05):

Well, and I like, like sewing machines were like a revolution at that point, still. They were important. It's like, oh, sewing machines, tiny letters, coffins. This is what people need.

Benjamin Morris (24:16):

That's the good stuff. So, part of your research, turning away from Miss Beetham for a moment, although she won't let us turn ourselves away for very long, she does still does cast to that shadow over the whole of our conversation here.

Benjamin Morris (24:33):

No, part of the joy of the research that you've done is the stuff that turns up. Again, back to our metaphor theme here, the skeletons in the closet, the bodies in the bog. There's sort of this element in your book of the things that you've discovered that you didn't expect to find, but which just brings so much color and kind of a variety to your account. And I wanted to ask you if we could do like a little lightning round of fun little things.

Benjamin Morris (25:13):

You have a number of subheadings as you work through your material. And I was quite taken with some of your subheadings. And I would just love to ask you to give us the two-second version of a couple of these because they are such a joy.

Benjamin Morris (25:29):

And this is a call to our listeners to make sure that when they pick up the book, spend some time in the detail here. Because the detail is great. The detail is great. Let's start off with lightning round number one, question number one is notable bodies. Famous corpses. What was your favorite famous corpse that you encountered in the course of your ... in the corpse of your research? I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Low hanging fruit. You got to forgive me. No apologies. No regrets. What you got.

Kathy Benjamin (26:04):

It's fine. Well, I think, oh gosh, I mean, there's three that are like properly fully notable. Unfortunately, they are all men, which I do point out in my book means that the women — and this is something that we haven't kind of mentioned yet. Women undertakers, lady undertakers were advertised as dealing with the bodies of women and children.

Kathy Benjamin (26:25):

So, when you have a man, unless it's specifically stated somewhere, you can assume that she probably wasn't the one embalming or dealing with that body. So, unfortunately, all three of these are men. They probably weren't the ones specifically dealing with it, it was probably their husbands.

Kathy Benjamin (26:41):

But so, John Wesley Hardin, who I guess is an El Paso kind of legend. And they are fighting to keep his remains there. I guess his family want his remains moved.

Kathy Benjamin (26:53):

Anyway, outlaw folk hero, sounds like a complete psychopath from what I read about him. He was just a murdering crazy person. But he shows up in El Paso in 1894 and starts causing crazy mayhem killing a lot of people. Supposedly he had a kill list with him, and he starts just going through it because he's mad, he was in jail and then eventually he's killed.

Kathy Benjamin (27:19):

And a lady undertaker, so she's Sarah Ross and her husband is J.C. Ross. We know J.C. Ross dealt with the body and took the photos that we have of his dead body. And we know that within a day or two the photos of John Wesley Hardin's corpse were being sold on the streets of El Paso. Which, I mean, people were bored, they didn't have TV or the internet, so, but-

Benjamin Morris (27:47):

They were also opportunists. I mean, I'm sorry, has anyone ever turned down the opportunity at a quick buck in this country? Come on.

Kathy Benjamin (27:57):

So, I just think that's just fascinating to me that regardless of who this guy was or what he did, or even because of those things, it's like people wanted … I mean, sure if he's been terrorizing your town and now, he's dead, it's almost like, can I have proof he's dead? Can I see the body?

Kathy Benjamin (28:14):

But yeah, because of what he did, he doesn't interest me in the same way. I think that people kind of think of as a folk hero. I really liked — this is confusing because they're both John Wesley's, this confused me.

Kathy Benjamin (28:26):

So, there's John Wesley Hardin in Outlaw, and there's John Wesley Carhart, who claimed to have invented the automobile. Now no one specifically invented the automobile, but I really like him. He's just kind of very weird, nuts in a more fun way.

Kathy Benjamin (28:44):

And one of the things, it's actually, you have to read my footnote to find out about it. He also wrote one of the first novels to address lesbianism in a positive manner. And he got arrested for sending pornography through the mail, which was a rule back then.

Kathy Benjamin (29:00):

Yeah. So, he was just kind of fun. So, when he died, they were saying, he was the inventor of the automobile, less about his writing. So, Matilda establishment in San Antonio did it and gets the headline of First Auto Builder dies at San Antonio. So, that was fun.

Benjamin Morris (29:21):

There you go.

Kathy Benjamin (29:23):

And then, I had to throw in just real fast. I had to throw in, even though this is supposed to stop at 1830, when I found out that Cora Gehrig worked at the undertaking establishment that dealt with Clyde Barrow's body in Dallas in 34, I was like, well, I have to just note that, she was working there at the time. And so, I'm like, I have to note that one of my-

Benjamin Morris (29:44):

That's a good conclusion. Yeah, no, that's key.

Kathy Benjamin (29:46):

It was there.

Benjamin Morris (29:46):

That's key. Yeah. That's arguably one of the absolutely most notable corpses in the entire book, in the whole period. I mean that is cool.

Benjamin Morris (29:59):

Alright, lightning round number two. You have a section on funerary accidents and this category, to distinguish it slightly from the third category, this category is kind of like when bad luck comes to find you in the chop shop. And I'm thinking there's lots of volatile chemicals around, there's lots of wood framed buildings, guess what happens? So, what was your favorite funerary accident that you stumbled across?

Kathy Benjamin (30:34):

Oh gosh. Yeah. I mean, I think the one that ... there were a lot, the one that pops out to me definitely is you mentioned fires is the one that happened in El Paso. And after San Antonio, El Paso probably had like the most kind of collection of lady undertakers that I found. And so, this one happens in 1905 and it affected up to five lady undertakers.

Kathy Benjamin (31:01):

Yeah. Which is, yeah, amazing. But it's a fire in El Paso, which at the time the El Paso Times called the greatest fire in the history of the city. So, at the time, I don't know if they've had one worse since then, but it was really bad. Cost an estimated a hundred thousand dollars in damage in their money.

Kathy Benjamin (31:19):

And so, what happens is it's doing the Opera House. The Opera House eventually is going to collapse and that's going to damage one of the lady undertaker's funeral homes.

Kathy Benjamin (31:30):

But then the fire's getting closer to another lady undertaker funeral home. And there are people who are recently dead in that funeral home. So, they're not thinking about how do we get our expensive things out. They're thinking there are our bodies in there that we are in charge of and need to bury, but they have-

Benjamin Morris (31:49):

Free cremation, right? I mean, it saves everybody the time and trouble.

Kathy Benjamin (31:51):

Yeah, exactly. You take that now, then maybe not, but what adds to this for me, it's like, that's bad enough. That's weird and unfortunate enough, but what adds to this, again, people were bored. There are people standing out in the street like most of El Paso at this point, standing the street watching everything burn. So, you can't just go in and take the bodies and carry them through the front door to try and get them out.

Benjamin Morris (32:17):

You might become one of the bodies that then has to be dragged out. Right.

Kathy Benjamin (32:20):

Well, and you don't want to traumatize everyone being like, here's a fire and here's some courses that we've just taken out of the house.

Kathy Benjamin (32:27):

So yeah. So, they end up trying to ... they take them out the back and around the back street to another undertakers, which at the time had three lady undertakers working there. So, together we've got five lady undertakers who were affected by this.

Kathy Benjamin (32:40):

So, they get the bodies out of the one that is going to get close to being damaged and get it to one that's in safety while trying to avoid showing the bodies to the crowd and not get injured by the fire in any way.

Benjamin Morris (32:54):

That is legit pretty grizzly. Okay. So, that's kind of amazing. Everybody loves a good public spectacle and I think you've just upped the ante there.

Benjamin Morris (33:06):

Alright. Round three of the lightning round is what I like to call, you had one job. And the subheading in your book here is sort of screw ups. It's like somebody was either drinking on the job, it wasn't just a bad luck or an accident, it was like someone actually made like a consequential mistake in the line of duty. What would you say was your favorite case of this particular ...

Kathy Benjamin (33:39):

Oh man. I'd say, it's hard to call it favorite because it is horrible. But it is definitely the one that there was the most information on. And it's a Dora Dobbins and in this case, the lady undertaker was probably directly involved because we're talking about a girl child, a female child that died around 1927.

Kathy Benjamin (34:04):

So again, based on how women were advertised she most likely would've embalmed this child. Something went wrong, lots of things appear to have gone wrong. We don't know kind of what was on purpose or what was just bad or accidental, but basically this young girl died. She was buried, embalmed buried, by Dora Dobbins and her husband Clyde. And then the father of the young girl wanted her remains exhumed and removed to another cemetery in a different location.

Kathy Benjamin (34:38):

That is not an uncommon thing at this time. As families move, they want to take their loved ones with them. For whatever reason, the Dobbins's refuse to do the exhumation. And there's a whole bunch of legal wrangling over it. Finally, a different undertaker agrees they do it in the middle of the night, bring the girl's coffin out. And according to the witnesses who were there, again, it was dark. So, there's a bit of question.

Kathy Benjamin (35:01):

She was in a coffin that was too small, and her legs had been broken to get her in it. And she was just in a night dress instead of the outfit she was supposed to be in. And that she didn't appear to have been embalmed, which would indicate that some putrification had happened. And this becomes a huge, huge, just legal issue.

Kathy Benjamin (35:24):

It was eventually discovered that she had been embalmed, which Dora would've done, but just not well. So, she screwed up somewhere along the lines.

Benjamin Morris (35:36):

Oh, no.

Kathy Benjamin (35:36):

Yeah, there's so many, and not just in Texas, there's so many articles on this. It's one of those stories that just kind of has everything to it for newspapers. And so, they just pick it up everywhere. These people's lives were ruined essentially. I mean, obviously I feel very, very, very badly for the father of this child as well, but there's a lot of question about for example, they thought she wasn't embalmed and she was.

Kathy Benjamin (36:01):

But at that time, you can't guarantee that an embalming is going to go well. So, was it on purpose, was it cutting corners or was it just unfortunate? Yeah, so in the end, no legal charges can be brought for a variety of reasons. But then the family sues, the father sues, but by then the Dobbins’s have gone, they've cleared out and they don't even know, the articles are like, "We think they're in Colorado." They have just picked up and left. Which you're like, yeah, you would have to, you wouldn't be able to stay in a place after that.

Benjamin Morris (36:37):

No. Sure. At that point, you run yourself out of town. You don't wait on the pitchfork wheel and mob to come and do it for you.

Benjamin Morris (36:47):

Your last section that I want to just ask for lightning round number four. You have a section on jokes, you have a section on bad funerary jokes, which I'm so sorry, but I just could not resist asking you what is your favorite mortuary, I mean, is it a pun? Is it like a anecdote? I mean, you got something to choose from, but we got to go there. We got to.

Kathy Benjamin (37:18):

Yeah. I have three pages on these in the book because it was just not, and again, these are also from outside of Texas. This I didn't leave, but specifically to Texas. But you get this idea of during this 50-year period, the idea of a lady undertaker, even as people were utilizing their services, was ridiculous. It was an easy way to make a joke or a pun or something. And I hesitate to call them jokes because I mean, at best they’re dad jokes and they're from 150 years ago.

Benjamin Morris (37:47):

Oh man. Century year old dad jokes, come on. Could there be anything better?

Kathy Benjamin (37:52):

Let's see. And the thing is, they also have themes. God and weirdly, a lot of them have vaguely, or even more than vaguely, like sexual undertone to them, which is so weird. So, this is from Kansas, but again, these would be repeated. So, these weren't necessarily made up by a specific newspaper.

Kathy Benjamin (38:16):

And it says St. Joe, which is a location in Kansas, "Has a young lady in Balmer, but it doesn't make death any easier for the men who know that a woman will lay them out and squirt embalming fluid into them.” And that's meant to be a joke that very clearly makes it sound like a woman having a sexual relationship.

Benjamin Morris (38:36):

Yes, I'm making a face here. I don't even know what to say. I'm just making kind of a sad face.

Kathy Benjamin (38:42):

So, that one is maybe the most vividly like that, but yeah, you get these-

Benjamin Morris (38:48):

A century ago, people went for that. Wow.

Kathy Benjamin (38:51):

Yeah. Essentially you get the same joke over and over again of men will be willing to die, or lonely men will be looking to die if they get to be prepared by a lady undertaker. And it's a very weird-

Benjamin Morris (39:08):

It's a different kind of creepy. Yeah. It's a multiple overlapping kind of creepy, which is I guess an appropriate somewhat place for us to-

Kathy Benjamin (39:19):

Yeah. And then so many of them don't have what we would call a punchline because the punchline to the readers at the time was lady undertaker. So, it'll just be like, oh, so-and-so has a lady undertaker. That's weird. Kind of and that's it. And that's meant to be the joke.

Benjamin Morris (39:37):

It's kind of like predating Seinfeld by a hundred years as well, where it's just like that observational humor where the situation is the thing. And it twists with people's expectations. But no, these little moments, I mean, there's only one way to dig them up. Which is to spend all the time in the newspapers, in the archives.

Benjamin Morris (40:00):

And your book is such a real delight, from a cop topic. It's a real delight to get a window into an ancient practice, a timeless practice truly in one very specific place that the stories are so revealing, and you really get a sense of what it was like both to live and to die in West Texas. And I really appreciate you're giving us that little portal through which to travel there.

Benjamin Morris (40:39):

Now I want to return at the very end here to Mrs. Beetham. There's a slight irony. And I think it is important to signal this because you mentioned it at the very end of your book, and I thought it was almost poetic in a way, Kathy.

Benjamin Morris (40:55):

There's a slight irony in that you write that Anna Mary Beetham, pioneer, entrepreneur, innovator, businesswoman, possible back-alley brawler, we don't really know. But extremely important figure in her day and age, and who did so much for the recognition of women in this profession.

Benjamin Morris (41:21):

She was buried in a grave that has since been lost. And I was curious, how did you determine that? First of all, and second of all, how has it felt for you really, to undo that? I mean, her physical grave might be lost, but her story is not lost. And you have done so much through the research and the writing of this book to ensure that she and others like her will in fact continue to be remembered.

Kathy Benjamin (41:56):

Thank you. That's important to me. So, I'm glad to see that that was recognized. Yeah. I couldn't believe it. I went on find a grave obviously, which is the first place you look, and it had no photos or a photo of a bare space or something. I believe there's no photo at all, actually.

Kathy Benjamin (42:14):

She's buried next to her husband. We know that from the records of her obituary and the articles about her funeral. But yeah, and then when I went up to Mineral Wells, I was like I got to see this for my own eyes. I got to go and make sure that this is true.

Kathy Benjamin (42:29):

Because it just seemed, yeah. I mean, the irony is horrible. But yeah, she definitely doesn't have a gravestone. Neither does her husband. And it appears that there's not any record, at least not that the people I spoke to can find of where she is in the cemetery in Mineral Wells. So yeah.

Benjamin Morris (42:51):

That might be the hardest thing to believe in your entire account.

Kathy Benjamin (42:55):

Yeah. I can't say that it wasn't a big part of why I went up there because it just seemed ridiculous. The other thing that felt just kind of crazy was when I already knew that I wanted to do up until 1930. Because after 1930 you get women all over the place.

Kathy Benjamin (43:17):

I researched into the 1930s and went, "Okay, I have to stop at 1930, already the 1920s are giving me tons more women than I expected. After that, women are really in the profession." She dies three days before 1930 ends. And I didn't know that at the time. And I was like, I'm starting with her and then I'm ending with her. That's such a bookend of that 50-year period. And she would've seen all of these changes.

Kathy Benjamin (43:45):

When it comes to like her memory, it's one of those things where I've looked into how you can get a historical marker placed because there isn't one. There are plenty of historical markers that have to do with historic undertaking establishments in funeral homes. And I think she definitely deserves one.

Kathy Benjamin (44:04):

And then Betty Latner or Latner also being there a decade later in Mineral Wells, I think it's an important place to maybe put something to remember these women who were real pioneers in that. So, it's something that I definitely will do now that I know how to do it, and we'll see what happens.

Benjamin Morris (44:24):

Well, don't forget when you do that, don't forget to just add the magic word, coffins for both of them on the awning.

Kathy Benjamin (44:33):

I'm just going to turn in that photo and circle her. And be like this is her. And tell me, this woman doesn't deserve a sign. Just because of this, going to tell you nothing else about her. Look at her hat.

Benjamin Morris (44:46):

Perfect plan. What could possibly go wrong? That's absolutely the way forward. Well, we may not be able for the moment to locate Mrs. Beetham. And if that changes anybody out there in podcast land, speak up please. If you know something, let Kathy know. But we may not be able to locate Ms. Beetham, but we sure can locate you. What is the best way for folks to find your books and the work that you've done and so forth?

Kathy Benjamin (45:14):

Yeah, my books are ... if you want all of them in one place, they're on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. You can buy history press books, as I'm sure you mentioned on here before through the Acadia website.

Kathy Benjamin (45:29):

And I do have my own personal website. Maybe this will encourage me to actually go update it. It's kathybenjamin.com. I'm on Twitter, is at Kathy Benjamin, at least for the present. Blue Sky, Threads, everything, Instagram, everything is a version of my name kabenjamin18, or Kathy the writer. So, you can find me kind of everywhere.

Benjamin Morris (45:52):

That's great. Well, we sure do appreciate your taking some time for us. I wish you all the best with your future research and may you find many more terrible dad jokes in the archives in years to come. And we hope that you'll come back and tell us all about them.

Until then, thank you so much again for joining us, and we will see you soon.

he almost dies, and she is just getting sicker and sicker. And what a lot of people did at that time was they thought, oh, we'll go to a desert climate. It was very common with like tubercular patients, things like that. We'll go to a drier desert climate, and somehow that will just make us better.

Kathy Benjamin (01:48):

So, she and her husband leave kind of East Texas and they start moving towards West Texas, but they stop to camp because it was a camp, it was not a town in those days. We're talking about the early 1880s. And she and her husband stop in Mineral Wells, which is a little bit to the west of Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Kathy Benjamin (02:11):

And mineral wells, the wells and the minerals’ part, they have springs there, they still do. And they were very famous already at that time. She, while they were camping there for a couple weeks, starts feeling a bit better, putting on some weight, and they're like, oh, like so many others who went, it's down to the spring water, for whatever reason, that she got better, she got better there, and they decided to stay.

Kathy Benjamin (02:37):

But she got better, well, because of these famous springs that are supposed to make you better. A lot of people who would come to Mineral Wells to try and get better did not get better. So, you have a population of people where the lucky ones survive. And the unlucky ones who are most of them die.

Kathy Benjamin (02:58):

This is, again, basically a camp at this point. There is no undertaker. And so, she gets better, and she's like, "We're going to stay and I'm going to become an undertaker." And she not only starts an undertaking business, but she starts it under her own name. Her initials, but her initials are different than her husband's.

Kathy Benjamin (03:20):

Her husband was involved with the bath houses and hotels and things like that. She ran the undertaking business, and it was called AM Beetham. It was her. So, that is just groundbreaking. Not only because she was one of the first, but she was definitely ... I cannot find any example (and believe me, I looked), of a woman who started in undertaking business earlier than that in Texas.

Kathy Benjamin (03:56):

So, this is about 1881, 188 when she's starting her own business in what was then the frontier. And running it herself and being part of this kind of brand-new area of business that is undertaking as a money making operation.

Benjamin Morris (04:16):

As they say, death is a growth sector in different ways. And you got to go where the clientele is at. So, we cannot underestimate her business savvy in the slightest. How did you find Anna Mary? How did you find Mrs. Beetham as you're doing your research?

Kathy Benjamin (04:37):

The same way I found everybody else. No, I found her pretty early on. I can't call her famous or anything, but because she did things under her own name, she's much easier to find because even women into the 20th century are much more likely to be almost a silent partner with their husband or with a sibling or their father.

Kathy Benjamin (05:02):

So, the fact that she was full on, here are my initials, here's my name, I'm going to be in the paper both in advertising and in stories, write-ups, articles under my own name. She was one of the first ones that came up for me.

Kathy Benjamin (05:21):

And then, I was able to find a photo of her and it just kind of went from there. And then her son, Robert became hugely involved in the Texas undertakers and then Funeral Directors and Embalmers Association. So, her son went on to be kind of very famous and important in that sector.

Kathy Benjamin (05:45):

And then all of his stuff you can trace back to her. So, the name, even if in later decades, it wasn't her name, it was his name. The name is very big among any funeral information that you try and find in Texas.

Benjamin Morris (05:59):

Last week you were telling us a little bit about the sort of roots to professionalization and those societies that were emerging (emphasis on emerging), at the turn of the last century in old Texas. Who trained Anna Mary and where did she get her training and what did it look like?

Kathy Benjamin (06:21):

Well, she definitely did not have any sort of official professional training in the 1880s the nearest what would you call, school of embalming was in Chicago and New York. Those were where you went at that period. And she did not go to those places, which means

Kathy Benjamin (06:41):

Eventually there's one in Dallas and you eventually can get a degree without leaving Texas, but at this period, absolutely not. So, I don't have any evidence of like, if she learned it from her mother, if she had a father or anyone involved in it.

Kathy Benjamin (06:57):

It appears to be an idea that she just plucked out of thin air and went, "I'm going to do this." I'm not sure when she started exactly offering involvement. It may not have been in those first few years, but when she did eventually start doing it, it was still the period, say the late 1880s, 1890s, well before 1903, when you had to pass a test in order to be an embalmer.

Kathy Benjamin (07:26):

So, she was able from the beginning if she wanted to, to practice embalming and call herself an embalmer with no actual education, no training. So, yeah, a lack of evidence is definitely there, but it appears that it just was an idea that came to her. She was in a place that needed an undertaker, and she decided that was her job. She was going to do it.

Benjamin Morris (07:51):

Do you think that there is any possibility, just based on what you've read about the place and the time being so close to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, do you think that she might have, say, undertaken an apprenticeship with a mortician with an undertaker in that growing metropolis at the time?

Kathy Benjamin (08:13):

It's definitely, I wouldn't say it's not, it's not impossible. There's no evidence for it. So, we would just be sure spit balling here. I would base it on the fact that she wasn't really expected to. Again, to us it seems bizarre, but she absolutely could just one day decide she's an undertaker and call herself an embalmer and do it. And she wasn't breaking any laws. No one was going to come test her. But also, she had young kids at this point.

Kathy Benjamin (08:43):

And so, when you're talking about even going from Mineral Wells to Dallas, if you're talking about having two toddlers running around, which she did at this point, back then, she would've been expected to take care of them. And because she wasn't around her people, so to speak, she was in a new place. We know she wouldn't have had extended family to help with that. So, I think just a matter of the reality of being a mom would've made it very difficult.

Benjamin Morris (09:14):

What are some of the other kinds of sources that we have for her and for her family? You mentioned that you obtained some information through her son, but what kind of primary documents do we have associated with Mary?

Kathy Benjamin (09:29):

And we have a very rare example of that. You get a lot of information from the advertisements at the time. Even just things you have to infer or things that change in the ads over time.

Kathy Benjamin (09:51):

For example, when she eventually does bring her son on, her name is still number one and it's Beetham and son, he doesn't get to take over. We have just even things that just tell you about their life in the old days when they were trying to fill up newspapers, they would even talk about, so and so had a bridge party. And those are the kind of things that didn't get included in my book in the end, but that kind of fill out this person's life.

Kathy Benjamin (10:22):

And you can see, oh, okay, so she traveled this summer, so who was taking care of her job when she was away that summer? And okay, here's the record of birth for a child that didn't live. So, we know she was pregnant for the nine months before that.

Kathy Benjamin (10:39):

All those kind of things you have to add together to get a picture of her life and what she could have been doing, and when. And you can definitely see the point where she kind of steps back from her job and kind of has a teenage daughter to get married off, things like that.

Kathy Benjamin (10:59):

You see where things become more her son and less her. But in those early decades specifically, you just have to pick at those little, tiny things to get a view of this woman and what she was doing in her job. Because you don't expect a rural lady undertaker in the 1880s to be leaving a huge record behind of who she was and what she was doing.

Benjamin Morris (11:21):

Yeah. You tend to get a sense of who has paper trails and who doesn't pretty quickly when you're doing this kind of research. It's always nice to find someone who has at least a semblance of a trail that you can follow and piece it together.

Benjamin Morris (11:36):

Now you have this interesting claim as you describe her. It's going to take a second to unpack, but I think it's important that we do so because you're very careful about your nominations here. You write that she was the first to own and manage her company under her own name in the state of Texas.

Benjamin Morris (12:09):

And then you write immediately afterwards, I think I got that right. Please correct me if I didn't. But reason I accentuate it is you write that it is extremely important to qualify each of those conditional phrases and clauses. Because at every stage of the game in this period of the growing funerary industry in Texas, somebody is going to tweak one of those little clauses, whether it's first to own or first to manage or first to manage under someone's name or their own name or in this region or from that other region.

Benjamin Morris (12:51):

Like everybody wants a little piece of the firstness pie. And you get all of these kind of competing lady undertakers or male undertakers in some cases, but you're writing about the ladies here who are all angling. They're all posturing, they're all kind of like ... you see what I'm getting at?

Kathy Benjamin (13:15):

Yeah.

Benjamin Morris (13:16):

Everybody wants some little badge of distinctiveness, some little gold star for being first at something, even if it is literally like, I'm the only angel on the head of this pen.

Kathy Benjamin (13:29):

Yeah, it-

Kathy Benjamin (13:30):

But I want to starve for that.

Kathy Benjamin (13:32):

It was one of the things I did not expect going into this. And I should say, just to add to all those things you said specifically woman, so she wasn't the first man to own it. Yeah, yeah. Or person. She was the first woman to own it under her own name, blah, blah.

Kathy Benjamin (13:48):

Yeah. Because I would read — I would find a woman and I would read about her and it's usually in advertisements. You would read an ad and it'll say, the only lady undertaker in the panhandle, or the only lady undertaker in San Antonio or something like that. Or the first one in Texas.

Kathy Benjamin (14:06):

And it was when I started reading, sometimes you get it in obituaries as well because family stories change or whatever. So, you'd have an obituary from 1950 and it'd be like, oh, she was the first licensed lady undertaker in Texas, and I would go and look her up and learn that she didn't become an undertaker until 1920.

Kathy Benjamin (14:28):

And I'm like, well, I've got a hundred women that I've already researched that were under ... so that can't be true. So, suddenly I realized that these superlatives, you can't believe any of them. You have to actually look into it.

Kathy Benjamin (14:42):

So, it's one of the first things that I go over in my book is that if there is a family story, if there is not, if you have some piece of evidence going, no, really this person was first, or even in some cases this person was second. I have one example of that where a woman claims to be the second lady undertaker in Texas. And she genuinely didn't start until well into the 1900s.

Kathy Benjamin (15:10):

And I was just like, why would you claim to be second if you weren't? But again, that one comes from an obituary. So, it may be one of those things that came down in families and things get changed and messed up a little bit.

Kathy Benjamin (15:22):

But yeah, so anytime I saw this, the only one here, the first one here, whatever, you have to go back and check and across the board they tend to be either wrong or you can't prove them. Or there are two people who both claim to have that same first or only, or whatever. Yeah. But it is kind of that human thing of like, yeah, we want that piece. We want to be able to say, I was the first, or I'm the only.

Kathy Benjamin (15:58):

I will say the other thing that I point out about it though is that in many cases, I don't think in most cases they were setting out to lie. If you're going to say you're the only woman embalmer in San Antonio, for example, because we've talked about how San Antonio for some reason had like a million lady embalmers. That's one thing. Because you're going to know that's not true. You're going to know there are other lady embalmers there.

Kathy Benjamin (16:22):

But if you're in a town of 5,000 people in the middle of West Texas, it is very likely that you are the first woman undertaker that anyone in that town has ever heard of. So, if you're going to advertise yourself as the first, you don't necessarily know that's wrong, especially before you have to be tested. It's just like, "Oh, I'm the first one I've ever heard of. So, guess what? I'm first."

Benjamin Morris (16:45):

I think my absolute favorite of any of them in your book was — and I don't remember her name off the top of my head. It was such a small little detail, this one mention that you gave and then moved right on. But I think my favorite was the lady who advertised herself as the first woman undertaker in Texas from Illinois.

Kathy Benjamin (17:09):

It was, yeah ... Hold on. Where'd she go? Yeah, it was Harriet Kreidler. Yes. She lived in Chicago before moving to McAllen, and she claimed to be, "First licensed woman in Balmer, in Illinois," but she was claiming that while she lived in McAllen.

Benjamin Morris (17:25):

Right. Thank you.

Kathy Benjamin (17:26):

And so, it's like well, no one in Texas knows. Sure. I didn't even bother looking into it because I'm like, I'm not worried about what happened in Illinois. I am worried about what happened in Texas.

Benjamin Morris (17:48):

Well, before we move on from Ms. Beetham, maybe one or two more questions. You have described some of the sort of landscape of competition that is out there for her. I guess I was just curious, based on your reading, what set her apart, what would persuade a grieving family to visit her as opposed to any of her competitors, female or otherwise? I mean, was there something unique about her practice?

Kathy Benjamin (18:27):

I don't know. I think in the beginning she was the only one in, again, in what was very much a one-horse town, if that. And then, a decade later, a woman and her husband come in and they start their own undertaking parlor. And that really does seem to be kind of the first competition that she has at all. So, I think that first decade it's really she’s there. And then after that-

Benjamin Morris (18:57):

Good way to build a clientele, if you're the only one.

Kathy Benjamin (18:59):

You're the only one there. And then after that because it's something that her son really promotes, it's you have that decade on everybody else. You have the, oh, we were founded in 1882, we've been around longer. And again, you see it in those little things about who's throwing what parties or who's going to what church and all these things that are reported in newspapers.

Kathy Benjamin (19:24):

At the time, she was very involved in the community. And the photo that we have of her, she looks like a very strong individual. She's quite a bit older in the image we have, but-

Benjamin Morris (19:38):

I'm so glad you mentioned that photograph. Kathy, I'm so glad you mentioned that photograph because I was going to ask you about it. And this is one of those things where, folks out there in podcast land, you all need to pick up a copy of this book for this photograph and for one other, but mostly for this photograph, because you've got this lady who ...

Benjamin Morris (20:08):

Can we just have some real talk here, Kathy? Can we just go straight up, all cards on the table? She looks like a bruiser. She looks like she regularly engages in bare knuckle boxing matches. And not only would she kill you in a fight, I wouldn't pick a fight with her. First of all, she would kill you, then she would embalm you. And lastly, she would charge you for the privilege of her embalming services. And she's so fierce, man. Wow.

Kathy Benjamin (20:39):

Yeah. And so, the image that we have, if you do go get the book, it's on page 80. The image that we have is labeled … it’s a whole bunch of women and one man who I believe is a reverend sitting on someone's porch. And so, you have a whole bunch of these kind of younger to middle-aged women. A couple of them are even smiling, which was less common in photos. Then you have some, they're holding young children.

Kathy Benjamin (21:04):

And then in the back you have three older-ish women who are all dressed in black. And the most formidable by far is Anna Mary Beetham. She is the person that you see when you look at this photo with a dozen or more people in it. She's got a fabulous hat on. She's got a big old dress and yeah, I think your description is right on. She does look like she's about to punch the photographer, even though she's kind of far away.

Benjamin Morris (21:30):

She cuts the profile of Andre the Giant. I mean, she dominates the image, it's amazing.

Kathy Benjamin (21:41):

And this is from around 1910, so if she's 30, she's in her early 70s. So yeah, she's in her 50s, early to mid-50s at this point. So, she's not a young woman anymore, but she's not old-old. I say as someone who turned 40 this year.

Benjamin Morris (22:00):

Happy birthday.

Kathy Benjamin (22:01):

Thank you.

Benjamin Morris (22:01):

So, my other favorite photograph in your book is found on page 19, and it is of the exterior of her emporium. And I like the word emporium to describe what we're looking at here, because yes, it's very old timey, and it looks like it's full of knick-knacks in the way that modern day cracker barrels wish they were.

Benjamin Morris (22:24):

But this is the real deal. And I just love the lettering on the awning because the lettering is like doodads, knick-knacks, this and that, saddles, livery, dry goods, blah, blah, blah. And it's all in like this sort of little, little lettering until you get to the very end of the awning. And in the largest type available, the largest font size is what we would call it now, 600-point font on the top of the awning. It just goes and coffins.

Kathy Benjamin (22:58):

Coffins.

Benjamin Morris (22:59):

Coffins. That's the first word you see on the establishment. It's great.

Kathy Benjamin (23:05):

I will peel you up slightly. It's not hers. It's Betty Latner, who is the one that I mentioned a few minutes ago, the competition that came in a decade later. So, same place. Also, a woman undertaker, but it's Betty Latner and her husband. But yeah, everything else you said, totally correct. And yeah, furniture, light, running, sewing machines, tiny letters and coffins.

Benjamin Morris (23:31):

And coffins. Sorry, I must have read — when I read the caption where it says pictured is the Beetham's first location, sorry, I was picking up on that. They used to be there until they moved and then her competitor moved.

Kathy Benjamin (23:47):

Yes.

Benjamin Morris (23:47):

Is that fair to say?

Kathy Benjamin (23:48):

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Morris (23:50):

Okay.

Kathy Benjamin (23:50):

Exactly.

Benjamin Morris (23:50):

Got you.

Kathy Benjamin (23:51):

Sorry. Yeah, now that I look at it, it's confusing, but yes.

Benjamin Morris (23:55):

Coffins.

Kathy Benjamin (23:56):

Coffins.

Benjamin Morris (23:58):

A lot of coffins. Skip the furniture, skip the saddles, skip the dry goods. We're going straight to the good stuff, so-

Kathy Benjamin (24:05):

Well, and I like, like sewing machines were like a revolution at that point, still. They were important. It's like, oh, sewing machines, tiny letters, coffins. This is what people need.

Benjamin Morris (24:16):

That's the good stuff. So, part of your research, turning away from Miss Beetham for a moment, although she won't let us turn ourselves away for very long, she does still does cast to that shadow over the whole of our conversation here.

Benjamin Morris (24:33):

No, part of the joy of the research that you've done is the stuff that turns up. Again, back to our metaphor theme here, the skeletons in the closet, the bodies in the bog. There's sort of this element in your book of the things that you've discovered that you didn't expect to find, but which just brings so much color and kind of a variety to your account. And I wanted to ask you if we could do like a little lightning round of fun little things.

Benjamin Morris (25:13):

You have a number of subheadings as you work through your material. And I was quite taken with some of your subheadings. And I would just love to ask you to give us the two-second version of a couple of these because they are such a joy.

Benjamin Morris (25:29):

And this is a call to our listeners to make sure that when they pick up the book, spend some time in the detail here. Because the detail is great. The detail is great. Let's start off with lightning round number one, question number one is notable bodies. Famous corpses. What was your favorite famous corpse that you encountered in the course of your ... in the corpse of your research? I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Low hanging fruit. You got to forgive me. No apologies. No regrets. What you got.

Kathy Benjamin (26:04):

It's fine. Well, I think, oh gosh, I mean, there's three that are like properly fully notable. Unfortunately, they are all men, which I do point out in my book means that the women — and this is something that we haven't kind of mentioned yet. Women undertakers, lady undertakers were advertised as dealing with the bodies of women and children.

Kathy Benjamin (26:25):

So, when you have a man, unless it's specifically stated somewhere, you can assume that she probably wasn't the one embalming or dealing with that body. So, unfortunately, all three of these are men. They probably weren't the ones specifically dealing with it, it was probably their husbands.

Kathy Benjamin (26:41):

But so, John Wesley Hardin, who I guess is an El Paso kind of legend. And they are fighting to keep his remains there. I guess his family want his remains moved.

Kathy Benjamin (26:53):

Anyway, outlaw folk hero, sounds like a complete psychopath from what I read about him. He was just a murdering crazy person. But he shows up in El Paso in 1894 and starts causing crazy mayhem killing a lot of people. Supposedly he had a kill list with him, and he starts just going through it because he's mad, he was in jail and then eventually he's killed.

Kathy Benjamin (27:19):

And a lady undertaker, so she's Sarah Ross and her husband is J.C. Ross. We know J.C. Ross dealt with the body and took the photos that we have of his dead body. And we know that within a day or two the photos of John Wesley Hardin's corpse were being sold on the streets of El Paso. Which, I mean, people were bored, they didn't have TV or the internet, so, but-

Benjamin Morris (27:47):

They were also opportunists. I mean, I'm sorry, has anyone ever turned down the opportunity at a quick buck in this country? Come on.

Kathy Benjamin (27:57):

So, I just think that's just fascinating to me that regardless of who this guy was or what he did, or even because of those things, it's like people wanted … I mean, sure if he's been terrorizing your town and now, he's dead, it's almost like, can I have proof he's dead? Can I see the body?

Kathy Benjamin (28:14):

But yeah, because of what he did, he doesn't interest me in the same way. I think that people kind of think of as a folk hero. I really liked — this is confusing because they're both John Wesley's, this confused me.

Kathy Benjamin (28:26):

So, there's John Wesley Hardin in Outlaw, and there's John Wesley Carhart, who claimed to have invented the automobile. Now no one specifically invented the automobile, but I really like him. He's just kind of very weird, nuts in a more fun way.

Kathy Benjamin (28:44):

And one of the things, it's actually, you have to read my footnote to find out about it. He also wrote one of the first novels to address lesbianism in a positive manner. And he got arrested for sending pornography through the mail, which was a rule back then.

Kathy Benjamin (29:00):

Yeah. So, he was just kind of fun. So, when he died, they were saying, he was the inventor of the automobile, less about his writing. So, Matilda establishment in San Antonio did it and gets the headline of First Auto Builder dies at San Antonio. So, that was fun.

Benjamin Morris (29:21):

There you go.

Kathy Benjamin (29:23):

And then, I had to throw in just real fast. I had to throw in, even though this is supposed to stop at 1830, when I found out that Cora Gehrig worked at the undertaking establishment that dealt with Clyde Barrow's body in Dallas in 34, I was like, well, I have to just note that, she was working there at the time. And so, I'm like, I have to note that one of my-

Benjamin Morris (29:44):

That's a good conclusion. Yeah, no, that's key.

Kathy Benjamin (29:46):

It was there.

Benjamin Morris (29:46):

That's key. Yeah. That's arguably one of the absolutely most notable corpses in the entire book, in the whole period. I mean that is cool.

Benjamin Morris (29:59):

Alright, lightning round number two. You have a section on funerary accidents and this category, to distinguish it slightly from the third category, this category is kind of like when bad luck comes to find you in the chop shop. And I'm thinking there's lots of volatile chemicals around, there's lots of wood framed buildings, guess what happens? So, what was your favorite funerary accident that you stumbled across?

Kathy Benjamin (30:34):

Oh gosh. Yeah. I mean, I think the one that ... there were a lot, the one that pops out to me definitely is you mentioned fires is the one that happened in El Paso. And after San Antonio, El Paso probably had like the most kind of collection of lady undertakers that I found. And so, this one happens in 1905 and it affected up to five lady undertakers.

Kathy Benjamin (31:01):

Yeah. Which is, yeah, amazing. But it's a fire in El Paso, which at the time the El Paso Times called the greatest fire in the history of the city. So, at the time, I don't know if they've had one worse since then, but it was really bad. Cost an estimated a hundred thousand dollars in damage in their money.

Kathy Benjamin (31:19):

And so, what happens is it's doing the Opera House. The Opera House eventually is going to collapse and that's going to damage one of the lady undertaker's funeral homes.

Kathy Benjamin (31:30):

But then the fire's getting closer to another lady undertaker funeral home. And there are people who are recently dead in that funeral home. So, they're not thinking about how do we get our expensive things out. They're thinking there are our bodies in there that we are in charge of and need to bury, but they have-

Benjamin Morris (31:49):

Free cremation, right? I mean, it saves everybody the time and trouble.

Kathy Benjamin (31:51):

Yeah, exactly. You take that now, then maybe not, but what adds to this for me, it's like, that's bad enough. That's weird and unfortunate enough, but what adds to this, again, people were bored. There are people standing out in the street like most of El Paso at this point, standing the street watching everything burn. So, you can't just go in and take the bodies and carry them through the front door to try and get them out.

Benjamin Morris (32:17):

You might become one of the bodies that then has to be dragged out. Right.

Kathy Benjamin (32:20):

Well, and you don't want to traumatize everyone being like, here's a fire and here's some courses that we've just taken out of the house.

Kathy Benjamin (32:27):

So yeah. So, they end up trying to ... they take them out the back and around the back street to another undertakers, which at the time had three lady undertakers working there. So, together we've got five lady undertakers who were affected by this.

Kathy Benjamin (32:40):

So, they get the bodies out of the one that is going to get close to being damaged and get it to one that's in safety while trying to avoid showing the bodies to the crowd and not get injured by the fire in any way.

Benjamin Morris (32:54):

That is legit pretty grizzly. Okay. So, that's kind of amazing. Everybody loves a good public spectacle and I think you've just upped the ante there.

Benjamin Morris (33:06):

Alright. Round three of the lightning round is what I like to call, you had one job. And the subheading in your book here is sort of screw ups. It's like somebody was either drinking on the job, it wasn't just a bad luck or an accident, it was like someone actually made like a consequential mistake in the line of duty. What would you say was your favorite case of this particular ...

Kathy Benjamin (33:39):

Oh man. I'd say, it's hard to call it favorite because it is horrible. But it is definitely the one that there was the most information on. And it's a Dora Dobbins and in this case, the lady undertaker was probably directly involved because we're talking about a girl child, a female child that died around 1927.

Kathy Benjamin (34:04):

So again, based on how women were advertised she most likely would've embalmed this child. Something went wrong, lots of things appear to have gone wrong. We don't know kind of what was on purpose or what was just bad or accidental, but basically this young girl died. She was buried, embalmed buried, by Dora Dobbins and her husband Clyde. And then the father of the young girl wanted her remains exhumed and removed to another cemetery in a different location.

Kathy Benjamin (34:38):

That is not an uncommon thing at this time. As families move, they want to take their loved ones with them. For whatever reason, the Dobbins's refuse to do the exhumation. And there's a whole bunch of legal wrangling over it. Finally, a different undertaker agrees they do it in the middle of the night, bring the girl's coffin out. And according to the witnesses who were there, again, it was dark. So, there's a bit of question.

Kathy Benjamin (35:01):

She was in a coffin that was too small, and her legs had been broken to get her in it. And she was just in a night dress instead of the outfit she was supposed to be in. And that she didn't appear to have been embalmed, which would indicate that some putrification had happened. And this becomes a huge, huge, just legal issue.

Kathy Benjamin (35:24):

It was eventually discovered that she had been embalmed, which Dora would've done, but just not well. So, she screwed up somewhere along the lines.

Benjamin Morris (35:36):

Oh, no.

Kathy Benjamin (35:36):

Yeah, there's so many, and not just in Texas, there's so many articles on this. It's one of those stories that just kind of has everything to it for newspapers. And so, they just pick it up everywhere. These people's lives were ruined essentially. I mean, obviously I feel very, very, very badly for the father of this child as well, but there's a lot of question about for example, they thought she wasn't embalmed and she was.

Kathy Benjamin (36:01):

But at that time, you can't guarantee that an embalming is going to go well. So, was it on purpose, was it cutting corners or was it just unfortunate? Yeah, so in the end, no legal charges can be brought for a variety of reasons. But then the family sues, the father sues, but by then the Dobbins’s have gone, they've cleared out and they don't even know, the articles are like, "We think they're in Colorado." They have just picked up and left. Which you're like, yeah, you would have to, you wouldn't be able to stay in a place after that.

Benjamin Morris (36:37):

No. Sure. At that point, you run yourself out of town. You don't wait on the pitchfork wheel and mob to come and do it for you.

Benjamin Morris (36:47):

Your last section that I want to just ask for lightning round number four. You have a section on jokes, you have a section on bad funerary jokes, which I'm so sorry, but I just could not resist asking you what is your favorite mortuary, I mean, is it a pun? Is it like a anecdote? I mean, you got something to choose from, but we got to go there. We got to.

Kathy Benjamin (37:18):

Yeah. I have three pages on these in the book because it was just not, and again, these are also from outside of Texas. This I didn't leave, but specifically to Texas. But you get this idea of during this 50-year period, the idea of a lady undertaker, even as people were utilizing their services, was ridiculous. It was an easy way to make a joke or a pun or something. And I hesitate to call them jokes because I mean, at best they’re dad jokes and they're from 150 years ago.

Benjamin Morris (37:47):

Oh man. Century year old dad jokes, come on. Could there be anything better?

Kathy Benjamin (37:52):

Let's see. And the thing is, they also have themes. God and weirdly, a lot of them have vaguely, or even more than vaguely, like sexual undertone to them, which is so weird. So, this is from Kansas, but again, these would be repeated. So, these weren't necessarily made up by a specific newspaper.

Kathy Benjamin (38:16):

And it says St. Joe, which is a location in Kansas, "Has a young lady in Balmer, but it doesn't make death any easier for the men who know that a woman will lay them out and squirt embalming fluid into them.” And that's meant to be a joke that very clearly makes it sound like a woman having a sexual relationship.

Benjamin Morris (38:36):

Yes, I'm making a face here. I don't even know what to say. I'm just making kind of a sad face.

Kathy Benjamin (38:42):

So, that one is maybe the most vividly like that, but yeah, you get these-

Benjamin Morris (38:48):

A century ago, people went for that. Wow.

Kathy Benjamin (38:51):

Yeah. Essentially you get the same joke over and over again of men will be willing to die, or lonely men will be looking to die if they get to be prepared by a lady undertaker. And it's a very weird-

Benjamin Morris (39:08):

It's a different kind of creepy. Yeah. It's a multiple overlapping kind of creepy, which is I guess an appropriate somewhat place for us to-

Kathy Benjamin (39:19):

Yeah. And then so many of them don't have what we would call a punchline because the punchline to the readers at the time was lady undertaker. So, it'll just be like, oh, so-and-so has a lady undertaker. That's weird. Kind of and that's it. And that's meant to be the joke.

Benjamin Morris (39:37):

It's kind of like predating Seinfeld by a hundred years as well, where it's just like that observational humor where the situation is the thing. And it twists with people's expectations. But no, these little moments, I mean, there's only one way to dig them up. Which is to spend all the time in the newspapers, in the archives.

Benjamin Morris (40:00):

And your book is such a real delight, from a cop topic. It's a real delight to get a window into an ancient practice, a timeless practice truly in one very specific place that the stories are so revealing, and you really get a sense of what it was like both to live and to die in West Texas. And I really appreciate you're giving us that little portal through which to travel there.

Benjamin Morris (40:39):

Now I want to return at the very end here to Mrs. Beetham. There's a slight irony. And I think it is important to signal this because you mentioned it at the very end of your book, and I thought it was almost poetic in a way, Kathy.

Benjamin Morris (40:55):

There's a slight irony in that you write that Anna Mary Beetham, pioneer, entrepreneur, innovator, businesswoman, possible back-alley brawler, we don't really know. But extremely important figure in her day and age, and who did so much for the recognition of women in this profession.

Benjamin Morris (41:21):

She was buried in a grave that has since been lost. And I was curious, how did you determine that? First of all, and second of all, how has it felt for you really, to undo that? I mean, her physical grave might be lost, but her story is not lost. And you have done so much through the research and the writing of this book to ensure that she and others like her will in fact continue to be remembered.

Kathy Benjamin (41:56):

Thank you. That's important to me. So, I'm glad to see that that was recognized. Yeah. I couldn't believe it. I went on find a grave obviously, which is the first place you look, and it had no photos or a photo of a bare space or something. I believe there's no photo at all, actually.

Kathy Benjamin (42:14):

She's buried next to her husband. We know that from the records of her obituary and the articles about her funeral. But yeah, and then when I went up to Mineral Wells, I was like I got to see this for my own eyes. I got to go and make sure that this is true.

Kathy Benjamin (42:29):

Because it just seemed, yeah. I mean, the irony is horrible. But yeah, she definitely doesn't have a gravestone. Neither does her husband. And it appears that there's not any record, at least not that the people I spoke to can find of where she is in the cemetery in Mineral Wells. So yeah.

Benjamin Morris (42:51):

That might be the hardest thing to believe in your entire account.

Kathy Benjamin (42:55):

Yeah. I can't say that it wasn't a big part of why I went up there because it just seemed ridiculous. The other thing that felt just kind of crazy was when I already knew that I wanted to do up until 1930. Because after 1930 you get women all over the place.

Kathy Benjamin (43:17):

I researched into the 1930s and went, "Okay, I have to stop at 1930, already the 1920s are giving me tons more women than I expected. After that, women are really in the profession." She dies three days before 1930 ends. And I didn't know that at the time. And I was like, I'm starting with her and then I'm ending with her. That's such a bookend of that 50-year period. And she would've seen all of these changes.

Kathy Benjamin (43:45):

When it comes to like her memory, it's one of those things where I've looked into how you can get a historical marker placed because there isn't one. There are plenty of historical markers that have to do with historic undertaking establishments in funeral homes. And I think she definitely deserves one.

Kathy Benjamin (44:04):

And then Betty Latner or Latner also being there a decade later in Mineral Wells, I think it's an important place to maybe put something to remember these women who were real pioneers in that. So, it's something that I definitely will do now that I know how to do it, and we'll see what happens.

Benjamin Morris (44:24):

Well, don't forget when you do that, don't forget to just add the magic word, coffins for both of them on the awning.

Kathy Benjamin (44:33):

I'm just going to turn in that photo and circle her. And be like this is her. And tell me, this woman doesn't deserve a sign. Just because of this, going to tell you nothing else about her. Look at her hat.

Benjamin Morris (44:46):

Perfect plan. What could possibly go wrong? That's absolutely the way forward. Well, we may not be able for the moment to locate Mrs. Beetham. And if that changes anybody out there in podcast land, speak up please. If you know something, let Kathy know. But we may not be able to locate Ms. Beetham, but we sure can locate you. What is the best way for folks to find your books and the work that you've done and so forth?

Kathy Benjamin (45:14):

Yeah, my books are ... if you want all of them in one place, they're on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. You can buy history press books, as I'm sure you mentioned on here before through the Acadia website.

Kathy Benjamin (45:29):

And I do have my own personal website. Maybe this will encourage me to actually go update it. It's kathybenjamin.com. I'm on Twitter, is at Kathy Benjamin, at least for the present. Blue Sky, Threads, everything, Instagram, everything is a version of my name kabenjamin18, or Kathy the writer. So, you can find me kind of everywhere.

Benjamin Morris (45:52):

That's great. Well, we sure do appreciate your taking some time for us. I wish you all the best with your future research and may you find many more terrible dad jokes in the archives in years to come. And we hope that you'll come back and tell us all about them.

Until then, thank you so much again for joining us, and we will see you soon.