Murdoch Histories

Ever seen a historical figure on Murdoch Mysteries and wanted to know more about them? This blog is here to help! Submissions are also highly encouraged! I track the tag #MurdochHistories. Please message me if you want to be a blog member! Also, if you have any additional information on a certain figure, please share it!

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Ed Archibald was an athlete in Pole Vault. Born in 1884 in Ontario, there was not much information about his early life. In 1905, he achieved his first major record at the University of Toronto, vaulting 3.10m and a world record of 3.78m He also competed in shot put and gymnastics, hammer throw, and javelin.

in 1908, Archibald went to the London Olympics and was the flag bearer in the Parade of Nations. During these Olympics, he got Canada’s first and even to this day only medal in pole vault with a jump of 3.58m!

In World War I, he served as director of Recreation Sports and Social Work in the Canadian Army. Between the wars, he worked as sports journalist and was the president of the Ottawa and District Hockey Association. In World War II, he was a member of Canadian YMCA War services staff.  

In 1979, he was inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame.

Fun fact: Archibald’s medals went on sale on eBay.

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Hello! I’ve been gone for such a long time, but I got very excited when watching the new episode of Murdoch Mysteries that I started researching the athletes while watching the episode! 

Walter Knox was a prodigious Canadian Athlete from 1896 - 1933. Born in 1878 in Listowel Ontario, he is now known as an all rounder track and field athlete. His career highlight is when he won five Canadian titles in one afternoon in 100 yards, broad jump, pole vault, hammer throw and shot put. He often went to different towns under different names to compete, usually betting on his races. Knox got the American all-rounder professional title by defeating John A McDonald (not the Prime Minister) in 1913. In 1916, it was planned for him to go to the Olympics as a coach, but World War I canceled the Olympics, though eventually, he was a coach at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics. Walter Knox was inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame in 1955. 

His records include (all national records at the time) 

22.8 seconds for the 200yd dash

46'5" in the 16-pound shot put

12'6" in the pole vault 24'2" in the running broad jump

10'7.5" in the standing broad jump 

128' in the discus

9.8 seconds in the 100yd dash

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Lastly today we have Ernest Jones (Nathan Carroll). Next time we have historical characters, I’ll jump right on it (and be back soon-ish with the ones I’ve missed).

 Ernest Jones was born in Gowerton, Wales on January 1, 1879. He studied in Cardiff before moving to London to stay at the University Hospital, specializing in Neurology, medical psychology and psychopathology. In 1908, he was charged but acquitted of adult of two girl under his care. As a result of his, he quit and moved to Toronto and became a part of the psychiatry department at the University of Toronto. He became Associate Professor of Psychiatry and established the American Psychoanalytical Association. In 1908, he started his collaboration with Carl Jung and Sandor Ferenczi. Later, he returned to London where he founded the London Psychoanalytical Society, but was disbanded after World War I and re-established as the British Psychoanalytical Society. Not finished with establishing things, he created the Institute of Psychoanalysis, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and the Psychoanalytic Library.  

During Hitlier’s rise to power in Germany, he started helping people escape Vienna, most notably Sigmund Freud and his wife, though this unintentionally caused a war between two sides of scholars of psychoanalysis, the Kleinists and the Freudists. Jones sided with Melaine Klein since she was a close friend and he took great interest in her work.

Not one to be idle even after retirement, Jones became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1942, Honorary President of the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1948 and awarded Honorary D.Sc. degrees in 1954. He died on February 11, 1949 in London.

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Sandor Ferenczi was born on July 7, 1873 in Miskolc, Hungary in a family of 12 children. He studied at the University of Vienna and served as an army doctor after his graduation. Ferenczi specialized in neurology, neuropathy, and hypnosis. In 1908, he met Sigmund Freud and became a part of his Psychological Wednesday Society and more importantly Freud’s inner circe.

Ferenczi’s studies were not met with acceptance, as one of his theories said to practice abstinence to store up libido (emotional energy) to make therapy go faster. Sex starved patients were unhappy. In 1929, he moved his ideas to create a “loving, permissive atmosphere by therapist to counterbalance the rejection and emotional deprivation the patient had experience with his parents.”

In 1913, he founded Hungarian Psychoanalytic Society and later in his career the Journal of Psycho Analysis. He passed away in 1933 in Budapest.

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In Murdoch on the Couch, we meet the famous Sigmund Freud. He had been mentioned briefly in season 6 when Julia studied in Vienna under Freud. Now we get to see his face (as acted by Diego Matamoros) and see him psychoanalyze all of Station House 4. 

Sigmund Freud was born on May 6. 1856 in what was Freiberg, Moravia, Austrian Empire and is now modern day Pribor, Czech Republic. His father was a Jewish wool merchant and was distant and authoritarian to Freud, and his mother was a nurturing figure to him. Freud moved to Vienna and studied medicine at the University of Vienna in 1873, where he was mentored by Josef Breuer. While under the teachings of Breuer, they met and studied a patient under the pseudonym of Anna O who suffered for hysteria. Here Freud theorized that the mind had three levels: conscious, preconscious, and unconscious, to which he compares to an iceberg, with different levels seen above water. Later in 1923, he proposed that the mind iceberg was composed of three parts: Id (instincts), Ego (reality), and Superego (morality). Other than the mind, he studied defence mechanisms, psychosexual stages and dream analysis. To read more about his studies, read  Simply Psychology’s article about Freud.

In 1902, he was appointed the Professor of Neuropathy at the :University of Vienna where he created the Psychological Wednesday Society, a group of his followers who would meet in his waiting room to discuss. Out of the Psychological Wednesday Society grew his inner circle which was the “Committee”.

He married in 1886 to Martha Bernays and had six children with her. For most of his career, he stayed in Vienna at their university until the Nazis annexed Austria when he fled to London with his wife and daughter with the help of Ernest Jones. He died of cancer in London on September 23, 1939.

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Hello Hello Hello! Welcome back! Maybe the ball was dropped but I’m back with four bios from the most recent episode Murdoch on the Couch, starting with Jung (acted by Jeff Lillico). 

Carl Gustav Jung was born in Kesswil Switzerland on July 26, 1875. He had a lonely childhood and spent his time analyzing the adults around him. Though in childhood he was going to be a pastor or minister, he found philosophy in his teens and turned his career path accordingly. He studied medicine at the :University of Basel and the :University of Zurich after which he became a psychiatrist. At the University of Zurich, he was one of the pioneers of the classical studies of mental illness. Through these studies, he confirmed some of Freud’s findings and ideas and started collaborating with him in 1907, but in 1912, Jung published his Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (Psychology of the Unconscious) which directly countered Freud’s ideas. Later in his career, he studied introverted vs extroverted personality types.

In 1903, he married Emma Rauschenbach and had five children with her. She died before him in 1955 and he followed on June 6, 1961.

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We hit 300 followers!!

(I like making puns, don’t judge me)

Seriously guys, we never would have expected the amount of love you have sent our way. Stay safe and keep deducing! <3 - Sophie

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The other historical figure from the season premiere of season 14 was Stanley Laurel! 

He was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson on June 16, 1890 in Ulverston, Lancaster, England to a family of actors and theatre. He joined the same vaudeville company as Charlie Chaplin and became his understudy. Laurel became famous later for his impressions of Chaplin. He legally changed his name to Stan Laurel. He started his film career with Nuts in the May in 1918, though his career as a movie star was almost over before it began. He had light blue eyes which didn’t show up on the film of that time. A cameraman, George Stevens, found a new film stock to properly film Laurel’s blue eyes. 

Stanley Laurel is most famous for his duo act Hardy and Laurel. He met Oliver Hardy when doing the film The Lucky Dog in 1921, but didn’t start their iconic duo until 1925. Their iconic films include Sons of the Dester, March of the Wooden Soldiers, Way Out West and Saps at Sea. Their partnership continued for 20 years. In 1950, they retired, but did shows and smaller gigs or years after. 

In 1957, Oliver Hardy died and apparently Laurel didn’t fully get over his partner’s death, he refused to do comedy without him. Stan Laurel died on February 23, 1965. 

 Stan had a daughter, Lois. She hated Olver Hardy because in Hardy and Laurel’s acts, Hardy would bully Laurel. In  One Good Turn, Stan put in a revenge act.   

When Stan died, Buster Keaton said “Forget Chaplin. Stan was the best.” 

Stan was friends with Dick Van Dyke! He thought that Van Dyke’s impression of him was the best. 

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The newest episode of Murdoch Mysteries was totally hilarious, and of course, it’s not Murdoch Mysteries without some cameos by famous comedians! Buster Keaton was a relatively small role compared to that of Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel, but it was still a great shoutout to one of the most influential figures in cinema. 

Buster Keaton was born as Joseph Frank Keaton on October 4, 1895 in Piqua, Kansas to a family who was already in the vaudeville business. The story of how he got the stage name “Buster” varies on who’s telling it: for example, an actor friend named George Pardey saw the eighteen month old Joseph fall down a flight of stairs without injury. When the little boy stood up and shook it off, Pardey remarked that he was a “regular buster”. However, according to Keaton in a 1964 interview, he claimed that this happened when he was six months old and it was Harry Houdini who witnessed this. (And thus historians have been arguing with each other over which story was true ever since.)

At the age of three, Keaton was already part of his parents’ vaudeville act, and they became known as The Three Keatons. Like was shown in the episode, he was known for goading his father into throwing him around the stage and sometimes even into the audience. Despite concerns, Keaton always gave evidence that he was perfectly fine afterwards. However, as laws were passed banning children from performing in vaudeville, Keaton eventually left for New York, where he began his extensive film career. 

In 1917, Keaton landed his first role in The Butcher Boy with another famous comedian, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. It was such a smash hit that he would go on to appear in another fourteen shorts with Arbuckle, until 1920. 

Keaton moved on to feature films, such as Sherlock Jr. in 1924, but what most people know him for is 1928′s Steamboat Will, Jr., which featured the famous sequence where the façade of a house fell upon him, yet he emerged unscathed through a small window (which was parodied in the Murdoch Mysteries episode). He would go on to make a vast number of films for the next forty years, his final film being A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum in 1966, passing away from lung cancer that same year. 

Interesting fact: 

Perhaps what Keaton is most famous for is his stoic expressions on film, despite all the funny things happening around him, earning him the nickname “Stoneface”. (In fact, Charlie Chaplin references this in the episode.) He came up with this technique during his vaudeville days, claiming that when his father tossed him around stage, he would actually start laughing himself, but he noticed that drew little laughs from the audience, so he decided to stick with minimal reactions instead. 

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Charlie Chaplin! The ultimate silent movie star. It was such a treat to see him before he became The Charlie Chaplin and I’ll regale you with the story before he came to Station House 4. In Murdoch Mysteries, he’s acted by Matthew Finlan. 

Charlie Chaplin was born Charles Spencer Chaplin on April 16, 1889 in London, England, to actor father and opera singer and actress Hannah Chaplin, known as her stage name, Lily Harley. His father died when he was 10 and his mother couldn’t take care of Charlie and his brother Spencer so the two brothers turned to what they knew: The Stage.

In 1910, he went to the United States of America with the Fred Karno Repertoire Company on tour and a second one in 1912 where he got his first motion picture contract by Keystone Film company in 1913. He was paid $150/week for his first contract, which would be about $3400 today. He gained nearly overnight fame and after his contract expired, he moved companies to a huge raise.

Through his career, he made many movies, most notably the Great Dictator, Limelight, Modern Times, A Dog’s Life, Countess from Hong Kong and Easy Street. He’s also credited with 72 directing credits form many movies he also stared in and dabbled in composing as well.

He was married many times, to Mildred Harris (actress), Lita Grey (actress in The Kid, The Gold Rush) , Paulette Goddard (actress in Modern Times, The Great Dictator) and eventually stayed with Oona O’Neil with who he had eight children. Oona was only 18 while Charlie was 53, but they were very happy together.

In 1952, he went to London for the premier of Limelight and was not allowed back into the United States because was considered a threat to national security even though there was no evidence. This was probably because some previous scandals that Charlie had during World War II where he was accused of being sympathetic to the Nazis and sympathetic to Communists.

He died on December 25, 1977 in Switzerland.

His corpse was stolen from his grave in 1978 three months after his death

Hitler hated Chaplin (because he erroneously thought that Chaplin was Jewish) but allegedly grew his famous moustache because he knew how much people like Chaplin’s famous moustache

Chaplin earned about $150,000 in his later movies, about $2.2 million today

Eight of his films are preserved in the Library of Congress: Kid Auto Races at Venice, The Immigrant, The Kid, The Gold Rush, Show People, City Lights, Modern Times, and The Great Dictator.

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We’ve hit 250 followers!

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From the episode In the Company of Woman (one of my fav episodes last season), we had the female entrepreneur Martha Matilda Harper. 

Martha Matilda Harper was born in Oakville, Ontario. The recorded year of birth conflicts as either 1857 or 1868, most likely so that Harper could appear younger. When she was young, she didn’t have a formal education and moved to Rochester, New York to work as a domestic servant.

While in New York, she started work on her hair tonic (shampoo).  Harper had floor-long hair that she used to promote the use of her hair tonics. She opened her first beauty office in 1888, Harper Method Shop which was a combination of beauty parlour and factory. She opened her franchise in Buffalo, New York in 1891 and was able to open in Chicago the following year. Her first Canadian factory was in Niagara Falls in 1921.

She married Robert Arthur MacBain in 1920. 

Her company was called President Martha Matilda Harper, Inc.

Her products included hair preparations, creams and make up, permanent wave and hair colouring products.

She also opened beauty training schools in Rochester, Atlanta, Madison, and Alberta.

Her philosophy was that beauty was based in good health and every person was beautiful.

Her clients included Woodrow Wilson, Susan B Anthony, Calvin Coolidge, and Jacky Kennedy.

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Sir Clifford Sifton was in the episode the Trail of Lawrence Myers. He was a lawyer and politician in Canada during the late 1800s and early 1900s. He was born on March 1861 in Arva, Canada West to a family of politicians with a brother Arthur Lewis Sifton, who would become Alberta premier n 1910. During Clifford’s childhood, he had a case of scarlet fever which made his partial deaf. In 1875, the Sifton’s moved to Manitoba because of Sifton Sr’s job, but Clifford Sifton moved back to Ontario in 1876 to attend Victoria College where he graduated top of his class. He returned to Manitoba to take the Bar and start a law practice with his brother. the Sifton’s father was part of the Manitoba legislature and Clifford Sifton followed his father’s footsteps buy becoming MLA for Brandon North. He was named Attorney general of Manitoba and provincial lands commissioner in 1891.

In 1896, Sifton joined Sir Wlfrid Laurier’s government. He was the federal minister of interior and superintendent general of Indian Affairs. He was in charge of immigration and settlement of the prairies. Along with immigration, Sifton had a huge part in the Canadian Pacific Railway even before he was part of the national government.

The issue that Sifton had the most influence over was the immigration and the settlement of Western Canada (Last Best West, baby!). During his promotion of immigration, the number of immigrants rose from 16 000 to 141 000, though immigration policies were quite racists, discouraging south Europeans, Blacks, British urbanites, East Asians from immigrating as they were considered as non-agricultural immigrants.

Sifton neglected his other duty as superintendent general of Indian Affairs, cutting costs in Department of Indian Affairs and to Indigenous education. He wrote up Treaty 8 which covers northern Alberta, northwest Saskatchewan, and parts of Northwest Territories and British Columbia. He wanted to get this territory for passage to the gold rush in the Yukon. in 1903, he tried to negotiate Canada’s case for Alaska.

In 1905, Sifton resigned from Cabinet because of a dispute with Laurier over schools in Alberta and Saskatchewan. He wanted only one school system, without the Catholic school system that still remains to this day. Sifton was the chairman of Canadian Commission of Conservation from 1909-1918.

After World War I, he supported William Lyon Mackenzie King and his policy in wanting Canada’s independence from Britain.

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Hi! I finally managed to do the last three guests from season 13. Armand Lavergne was in Trail of Lawrance Myers, which I rewatched while researching him and Clifford Sifton. I was surprised how much historical information they shoved into that episode and each of the historical figures expressed their political opinions, maybe on the nose type way, but still great information and way to see political landscape in 1907 Toronto. 

 Armand Lavergne was born in 1880 to Joseph Lavergne and Emilie Barthe, though it is thought that he is the illegitimate son of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Joseph and Laurier had a law practice and it was thought that Emilie was having an affair with the future Prime Minister. Aramad studied at Collège Sacré-Coeur at Arthabaska, the Séminaire de Québec, the University of Ottawa, Université Laval and Paris. He had a law practice in Québec City and Montmagny. He wrote for a couple of newspapers including Henri Bourassa’s Le Devoir. in 1904, he was elected to parliament and in 1907, he was kicked out of the Liberal Party by Laurier. He and Henri Bourassa became part of the legislative assembly. During World War I, he was against conscription. He was a huge French language rights advocate outside of Québec. He died in 1935 after a long life of politics. 

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Episode titles and references, seasons 11, 12, 13

I added season 13 onto this list because I could only find one reference in all of the episode titles. 

11.2: Merlot Mysteries - riff on Murdoch Mysteries

11.6: 21 Murdoch Street - a 2012 movie 21 Jump Street staring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill (which was adapted from the 1987 tv show)

11.9: The Talking Dead - the AMC show The Walking Dead

12.3: My Big Fat Mimico Wedding - a 2002 rom com My Big Fat Greek Wedding

12.4: Murdoch without Borders - a riff on the organization Doctors Without Borders 

12.5: The Spy who Loved Murdoch - the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me

12.10: Pirates of the Great Lakes - the franchise Pirates of the Caribbean (probably) 

13.10: Parker in the Rye - a 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

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episode titles and references, seasons 9 and 10

Again, there are a couple that I think I might have missed in these two season. Feel free to add them onto the end of the list! 

9.4: Barenaked Ladies - name of Canadian rock band formed in 1988

9.7: Summer of ’75 - song “Summer of ’69” by Bryan Adams

10.3: A Study in Pink - both the Sherlock Homles novel A Study in Scarlet and the episode the in BBC show “Sherlock” “A Study in Pink”

10.6: Bend it Like Brakenreid - a 2002 rom com Bend it like Beckham staring Keira Knightly about a girl playing soccer.

10.8: Weekend at Murdcoh’s - a 1989 movie Weekend at Bernie’s with a similar plot to the episode

10.13: Mr. Murdoch’s Neighbourhood - a riff on Mr. Roger’s Neighbourhood, which is literally my childhood

10.15: Hades Hath No Fury - a riff on “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorn” or originally “Nor hell a fury like a woman scorn’d”

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Episode titles and references

The last couple of lists are short, but wow there are a lot coming up in the next couple of seasons. Also there are a lot of episodes that I thought there might be some reference in there but I couldn’t find it. 

7.2 Tour de Murdoch - a riff on Tour de France, a 21 day long bicycle race eld in France.

7.4 The Return of Sherlock Holmes - The third collection of Sherlock Holmes short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Return of Sherlock Holmes” 1903-1905

7.5 Murdoch of the Living Dead - a 1968 zombie movie, Night of the Living Dead by George Romero

7.7 Loch Ness Murdoch - a riff on the Loch Ness Monster

7.8 Republic of Murdoch - the CBC show Republic of Doyle, star of Republic of Doyle Jake Doyle guest stars in this episode

7.11 Journey to the Centre of Toronto - a 1864 novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

7.14 Friday the 13th, 1901 - series of horror movies from 1980s

7.15 The Spy who came up to the cold - a 1963 novel of the same name by John Le Carre about the Cold War

7.16 Kung Fu Crabtree - a 2008 movie Kung Fu Panda (probably)

8.1/8.2 On the Waterfront-  a 1954 movie of the same name about gangs and illegal activities

8.10 Murdoch and the Temple of Death - again the 1984 movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

8.11 All that Glitters - quote from Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice II.vii

8.12 The Devil wears Whalebone - a 2006 movie The Devil Wears Prada starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway

8.18 Artful Detective - the American name of Murdoch Mysteries