Out of the Box

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0:44Our earliest childhood memories can feel so visceral.

0:48Phoebe Judge:I have this memory of my mother standing on the beach, you know, the wind whipping her hair and her jacket, calling into the wind with my siblings out in the lake and the dam, you know, looming in the distance. But none of these memories were true. This week on Explain It To Me from Vox, why can't I remember being a baby?

1:17Phoebe Judge:Hi, it's Phoebe. When we decided to spend this month re-releasing some of our favorite episodes since the show began, I knew I wanted this one on the list. It's a perfect criminal story to me, funny and unexpected, and when I talked to Reg Spears, I kept thinking, who is this, and where did he come from? I hope you like it.

1:40This episode contains language that may not be suitable for everyone. Please use discretion. Phoebe, I don't know how old you are, but do you remember when you were 22? Yes. What could you do? Everything. You could do everything. Well, that's how it was.

2:02How did you begin throwing the javelin? by accident. When I went to school, they didn't ask you if you wanted to go and participate in sport. They told you to. And I did that, and I found out that I was good at it. Picked up a javelin and was able to throw it, and that was about it. What did you like about it? What I liked about it was the effort. The throw is the lightest implement in athletics, and you can hit the living shit out of it. And I like that. It was a moment in your life when you could do something full effort. This is Reg Spears. He grew up in Adelaide, Australia in the 1940s. By the time he was in his early 20s, he'd become one of the best javelin throwers in the country.

2:56Javelin throwing is a track and field event, and it's an old one. It was added to the Olympic Games in Greece in 708 BC. The current Olympic record for the longest throw is just over 323 feet. I just took to it, and it felt right. And eventually I got in the Australian team for the Commonwealth Games in Perth in 1962. While he was there, he met a javelin thrower from England named John McSorley. And the moment we met, we became friends. is rather brash, but he was very open, and we instantly had a rapport. We instantly got on with each other. John McSorley. And from that point on, he wanted to show me as much of Australia as he could, because he was always saying it's the greatest country in the world, and we became really good friends.

3:55Look, I was describing as he's actually outgoing for an Australian. Australian's normally outgoing, and he's outgoing for an Australian. But he's got a heart of gold. After the Commonwealth Games, John went home to London, and Reg went back to Adelaide and started training. He was hoping to qualify for the Australian team for the 1964 Olympics. But I got injured. My right arm at the elbow was damaged, and nobody seemed to know what it was. Because of his injury, Reg ran out of time to qualify for the Australian team. But he thought there might still be a chance for him to compete if he went to England.

4:44He got a job on a boat so he could work his way to England without having to pay. Did you look John up right when you got to England? Oh, yeah, sure. He suddenly turned up at my front door. Look, I was delighted to see him, but I was shocked.

5:03Phoebe Judge:What did he say when he showed up? Ah, Mac, good to see you. He was telling me, I think he'd given his last two and ninepence or something as a tip to the taxi driver. But he's full of joy. He was happy and he had no money. He was happy and he had no money. and he stayed with me and we managed to get by. Today, Reg and John are in their 80s, but in 1964, they were in their early 20s. Life was a laugh a minute. I mean, typically, he would step out of my flat into the main road and stick his thumb out to hitch, hitch a ride, and a car would have a choice of running him down or stopping. And he would walk around to the driver and say, geez, mate, thanks for stopping him.

5:58I'm just going up here, up into town, can you give us a lift? And he was so charming, he used to get away with it. But Reg's injury didn't improve, and he didn't qualify for the Olympics. And then the dilemma was how to get back to Australia. When you have no money. A friend helped him get a job working with cargo at Heathrow Airport in London. But it was going to be a long time before he could save enough money to afford a plane ticket home. His daughter was about to turn three, and he says he wanted to get back before her birthday. He started thinking about other ways he could get home. And I saw them shipping animals by their various aircraft, and I knew that you could ship animals in these big jets, mainly little beagle dogs, that they shipped all over the place.

6:54And I thought, well, if the dogs can survive it, I could. So that's where I came up with the bright idea of jumping in a box and coming back home to Oz. So you saw that the beagles were making it alive and you thought, maybe, I guess I could too. Yes, exactly that. I put a stamp on my ass and sent myself home. Basically, that was it. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

7:31Reg Spears isn't the first person to come up with the idea of shipping himself from one place to another. In 1849, an enslaved man in Virginia named Henry Brown escaped enslavement by shipping himself to a free state in the north. A carpenter helped him build a box that was labeled dry goods. It had three small air holes, and when Henry Brown climbed inside, he brought a pointed metal tool in case he needed to make more. He was in the box for 27 hours, traveling by wagon, train, and steamboat, before he arrived in Philadelphia. After his successful escape, Henry Brown became famous, and he toured America and England to tell his story and perform magic tricks.

8:23He changed his middle name to Box. Sometimes he would burst out of a box on stage. the same one he'd burst out of when it was delivered to Philadelphia. In the early 1900s in England, an accountant named Reginald Bray spent a lot of time coming up with ways to test the limits of the British postal system. He sent a turnip with the address carved into it, a half-smoked cigar, and a bowler hat. When he learned that it was possible to send live creatures, he decided to try to mail both himself and his Irish terrier, Bob. The regulations permitted sending anything bigger than a bee and smaller than an elephant.

9:09Reginald Bray successfully mailed himself three times. The process just involved being escorted by a mail carrier. There's a photograph of him being delivered by registered mail to his own house in 1903. He's standing on the doorstep while his father signs for the package at the door. In 1909, two British suffragettes got the idea to send themselves to the Prime Minister's residence so they could speak with him face to face. They went to the post office and were escorted directly to 10 Downing Street. But when they were delivered, nobody would sign for them, and they were sent right back to the post office.

9:52It wasn't a total failure for the suffragettes, though. The stunt generated a lot of attention and put them on the front page of the Daily Mirror. At the same time in the United States, the Postal Service only delivered packages that were fewer than four pounds. But in 1913, the limit was increased. The regulations were a little vague, and people started testing the system. They mailed eggs, bricks, snakes, and children. Typically, parents would hand their children to postal carriers, and they were just carried or walked along the postal route to their destination, which was normally a relative's house.

10:36One Ohio couple shipped their 10-pound baby a mile away to his grandmother's house. The postage was 15 cents. They also decided to get the$50 insurance. The next year, the postmaster general made a new rule. No humans in the mail.

10:59In 1964, when Reg Spears started thinking he could ship himself from England to Australia, he confided in his friend, John McSorley. When you first brought this idea to John, what did he say? He said, you're crazy. He said, you're out of your mind, crazy bloody Aussie. But eventually he knew the situation, had no money, wanted to get back home. And this was plausible, you know, when you thought about it. And the main thing was it was COD. Cash on delivery. So you don't have to pay? You don't have to pay until it actually arrives. Did you ever try and convince him not to do it? Yeah, of course.

11:47I said, you're mad, you're mad. Crazy. Why would you do that? But water on a duck's back it was. And he was persistent. He said, look, I want to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. And I said, listen, if you're going to do it, then I've got to make the crate. I'm not having you going in some bloody orange box and busting out of the thing. And so that was it. So we were then, they were full on, that's what we were going to do. First John had to figure out how to make a box that Reg could fit in, and stay in, for hours and hours. And it couldn't look like there was a person inside.

12:34For a start, I didn't want it to look like a coffin. So it couldn't be coffin size. The biggest box you could put on a jet aircraft was five feet by three feet by two and a half feet. Now, that's a big box. How tall are you? I'm about six foot one. It wouldn't be the most comfortable journey, but you could do it. You're right, but I was 22. You can put up with a lot when you're that age. Ask me now to do it, and I wouldn't. There wasn't enough room in John's apartment to build the box, so he worked on it in secret at a nearby college. John and Reg had spent a lot of time on campus training for the javelin throw and eating in the cafeteria there and knew a few people at the school.

13:22They didn't know what the box was for. It was just a box. We didn't advertise it but we were able to just put it out of the way so that not too many questions were asked. But then if they did ask questions, they wouldn't believe you anyway. John and Reg tried to think through everything that could go wrong and designed the box so that Reg would have what he needed, could stay hidden and be able to breathe. He built it so that the slats were plenty of air in it, and I could even see through the slats. And if the box was going to have little spaces so you could see and breathe, How were you hidden within the box?

14:07Well, we put brown paper over the inside so that nobody could see in. And I could just remove the paper and see out. The whole idea, of course, is, well, it never occurred to me at the time, or John, about claustrophobia, or you're going to be in pitch darkness all the way, and all that didn't come in. We didn't think about that. We just went and did it. Where you were, I mean, inside the box, did you have anything so that you could hold on in case the box was tumbled around? Yes, there were straps that fit in there to hang on to that would keep me in place. Also, he had a strap attached so that while he was lying down, he could strap himself in when he was being moved.

14:54And there was a way to get out? Yes, both ends. I could, they're just locks, they just undo them, and the end would pop out, either end. Did you have to say what was in the box? Phoebe, we told lies. We hit on this idea that he should go as rubberized emulsion for a shoe company. How did you come up with the idea for emulsion? Did you just pick something? Well, something that had a bit of weight in it and a bit of, you know, something that people wouldn't even know what it was. So we invented this shoe company called the Supreme Shoe Company, Gloucester Road, London. And it was to be delivered to a Mr.

15:39Graham in Perth, collected by Mr. Graham and paid COD. Was Mr. Graham real? No. Just made up? It's all made up. But we thought the Supreme Shoe Company sounded pretty good. And Mr. Graham, that sounded sort of in a pretty ordinary kind of name. Acceptable. So that was it. And you had labeled this cash on delivery. So they assumed that someone would pay for it when they picked the box up. That was the whole idea, Phoebe. I mean, because I bet it was really expensive. Yeah, it was about 400 pounds, 440 pounds.

16:29Phoebe Judge:How much would a ticket home have cost? Not much less than that. It would have been 300 pounds, 350 pounds, which was right out of my league in those days. It would take me a year to save it. 350 pounds in 1964 would be about 8 ,500 U.S. dollars today. The route they chose started in London, stopped in Paris, and stopped again in Mumbai, where he would have to change planes. From Mumbai, he would go to Singapore for a fuel stop before finally arriving in Perth, Australia. Did you tell anyone at home that you were planning on... No, no, I didn't say anything to anyone. And did you have any idea how long it would take?

17:16Well, no, not really Reg and John put a couple of pillows and a blanket inside the box And then they tried to think through what else Reg would need He liked baked beans And I was working for Heinz at that stage So he'd have a number of tins of baked beans which he'd eat raw And he loved them So that's what he brought, baked beans Baked beans, yeah. Baked beans. Did you have anything else to eat? No. No, because I figured, you know, I didn't particularly want to have a bowel movement in there. I mean, Rich had an appetite of a horse. He really did. And so we thought, right, let's slow down your system so you don't need to go to the loo.

18:11He packed water, a flashlight, and a gift for his mother. Placemats with pictures of guards at the Tower of London. He also packed a suit to change into when he landed in Australia. They put two labels on the box, fragile and this way up. When you were just about to get in the box, did you run around a little bit or stretch knowing that you were going to be in there for a while? No. No, there's the bloody box. Get in the damn thing and stop buggerizing around. So you weren't nervous? No. Strangely enough, I'm not trying to say I was brave. I think I was closer to being stupid. No, once the ball started to roll, there wasn't time to sort of be frightened or anything like that.

19:02Just put up with it and ride it out. And that's basically it. Was John worried at all to do sense?

19:12Well, he could have had some thoughts in that regard, but it was never mentioned. It was a bit of a joke, if anything. We just did it. What you have to remember is we were young and careless and carefree, and so I think if we'd been older, we'd got a bit more sense, we probably would never have done it. Do you remember the last thing you said before they closed you up in the box? See you later, Johnny. That's all. No, no big deal. Once I was in, I'm in. And we're off. Well, I said, look, look, good luck, Rog. Good luck. Hope you make it, mate. But don't forget to let me know when you get there.

20:03A few of John's friends, who had a van, helped load up the box and drive it to the airport. I remember there was a frustrating and anxious time when we were taking him into the freight shed and the guy behind the desk was sort of looking a bit sort of suspiciously. That was a bit of an anxious moment, but fortunately time passed and it was okay, and then they took the crane away. I was in a huge bloody warehouse. I could see out through the slats, and I was put up high too. And when they come to get me, some young bugger apprentice was driving the forklift and he almost dropped me because it was teetering on the bloody thing.

20:49But I threw myself back towards it and it settled down. But those things happen. And then in the afternoon, the fog came down. The fog came down and all the planes were delayed. so he had to stay in there for hours and hours and hours but we couldn't do anything about it. What was it like when you finally heard the plane's engines and you realised you were in the air? Here we go. Here we go. So it begins. That's what I thought.

21:28Phoebe Judge:We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus.

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23:54Reg Spears was in his box in the cargo hold of a Boeing 707 on his first leg of the journey from London to Paris. Was it strange to be in the cargo area of the plane knowing that above you were, you know, 100 people? Yeah. No, it never crossed my mind, but the thing is, here I am. You know, what can I do? I decided to do this, and so far, so good. He says he'd already been in the box for 24 hours because of the fog delay. So once the plane was in the air and he was alone, he decided to let himself out. I was dying for a leak, but I had a big can there, and I peed in that when I got out of the box.

24:38Silly me, I got out of the box, and from London to Paris is not very long. So in my haste to get back, I put the container of pee on top of the box and got back in and realized I'd left the bloody thing there. It was too late to get out of the box again. He felt the plane landing and then heard the cargo door opening and the French baggage handlers talking to each other as they entered the cargo area. And then that's when they discovered the baked can full of pee, and they weren't happy. I could hear Anglise, you know, swearing at the English. But I thought that they'd know then that someone's in this bloody box, but they didn't.

25:23Nothing happened. When you were on the grounder, you knew that people around, were you ever worried about making a noise, sneezing or something? No, no, it wasn't. The funny thing was, I remember that. When people are around, you're sort of smiling. to yourself because you're in the box. They don't know you're in there and everything is normal or seems normal, but it's not. And that made me smile a bit. Eventually, the plane took off for the second leg of Reg's flight, heading to Mumbai. It was the longest part of the journey. I just recall it being pitch black. And most of the time, I had a pillow and blanket, so I was asleep.

26:09I would just sleep. You were sleeping, but when you weren't sleeping, what were you thinking about? Everything. You know, reflect on your life. You just think about yourself and your family and what you've done and all the things that people think about. He brought a book, which he could read using the flashlight he brought. It was called The Bedside Esquire, a collection of short stories that had been published in Esquire magazine by authors like Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck. That's helped run out the batteries. I read a bit of that, and when it went dark, that was that. It's about 4 ,300 miles from Paris to Mumbai.