Ira Glass Act Two, Babies Got Bank. OK, I know how unlikely this sounds, but we now have another old guy basically pranking the world right before he dies, but on a scale that gets hundreds of thousands of people involved, and excited, and talking about this guy's plan that he set in motion for years and years. Stephanie Foo explains.

Stephanie Foo In 1926, in Toronto, Canada, a 72-year-old lawyer named Charles Vance Miller was at lunch at the Queens Hotel with two lawyer friends. They got into an argument over some legal matter. Miller told them they were both wrong, and he'd prove it if they followed him up to his office. He eagerly ran up three flights of stairs, grabbed a law book, plopped it on his desk, and then died. Just put his head down on the desk, and was gone. A couple days later, rumors started swirling. Charles Vance Miller had done well for himself, gotten rich. He'd avoided scandal his whole life, was an upstanding citizen, though he had no family, never married. He'd hinted that he'd leave his fortune to the University of Toronto. But when his fellow lawyers brought out his will, that's not what they found. As soon as Miller's people started executing his will, they realized that his will was like an elaborate prank, as if he'd thrown a bunch of money out of a window to watch what would happen. He left stock in a brewery to prohibitionist pastors. He gave his racing stock to people who didn't believe in betting. He said he wanted to leave his vacation home in Jamaica to three other lawyers, a nice thing for them to share, except for the fact that the three lawyers all hated each other. But by far, the clause that unleashed the most mayhem was the last one. It's about all the rest of his money. I'll just read it to you. "At the expiration of 10 years from my death, give it and its accumulations to the mother who has, since my death, given birth in Toronto to the greatest number of children, as shown by the registrations under the Vital Statistics Act," end quote. In other words, the woman who had the most babies in the 10 years after his death would be awarded a whole lot of money-- 9 million Canadian dollars in today's money, or almost $7 million US. There were immediately a number of theories as to why Miller did this, but none of them were charitable. If he really wanted to support a young woman with a bundle of kids, he could have just willed all the money to her at the time of his death. But setting this up over the next 10 years created a twisted contest. Some said he was an avid supporter of birth control, so maybe setting off a baby-making storm could be a wicked way to force a conversation about it. Some said he was trying to test the legal system's ability to hold up a crazy will, but that he'd really expected it would be thrown out, that the money would just automatically be donated to the University of Toronto, his Alma mater. People said that Miller had been obsessed with the idea of what people would do for money. He liked to talk about how everybody had their price. Maybe he was testing the women of Toronto to see what theirs was.

Elizabeth Wilton I don't think anybody fully knows why he did this.

Stephanie Foo This is Elizabeth Wilton. She wrote a 200-page dissertation on the contest.

Elizabeth Wilton I just think he saw it as a big joke.

Stephanie Foo I feel like the modern day word for it would be that he was basically a troll.

Elizabeth Wilton That would be a good word for it, yeah.

Stephanie Foo He pretty much cops to it in his will. He says, "This will is necessarily uncommon and capricious, because I have no dependents or near relations, and no duty rests upon me to leave any property at my death. And what I do leave is proof of my folly in gathering and retaining more than I required in my lifetime." Apparently, Miller really liked to drop dollar bills on the sidewalk, and hide and watch people pick them up. When I think about the kind of person who'd plant a wallet in the street and put it on YouTube today as a commentary on human nature, yeah, I feel like I know who that guy is. For the first few years after Miller died, nothing happened. A few newspaper articles were written. Nobody took it very seriously. Some relatives went to court, arguing that the money should go to them. And then, six years after his death, the attorney general introduced a bill trying to nullify the will and have the money donated to the University of Toronto. This was a mistake-- totally backfired. Before this, not many people knew about the will. But now that the government was trying to invalidate it, the press picked it up, and there was a huge public outcry. But not in the way you might think. The public was like, baby-making race? Hell, yeah, we want a baby-making race. Women's groups supported the contest because they felt women should have a fair shot at the money, which, what can I say? It was a different time. Others disagreed with the government intervening in people's wills and affairs. Altogether, it caused an uproar. The government backtracked, said, OK, fine. You people have fun. And with that, the race was on. Usually when this story has been told, it's like, ha ha. A man created this zany will that set off a wild baby-making storm in Canada. It conjures Brady Bunch images of big families happily schtupping their way to fame and fortune, knee deep in Cabbage Patch children. But the way it unfolded was actually much darker, because, of course, the story is about an old man encouraging women to go through the excruciating pain and danger of childbirth as often as possible in a 10-year period-- a 10-year period that was already half over. This contest didn't really get started until six years in. That made it skewed from the start. It meant suddenly the only contenders were women who had about six babies in the last six years, women who didn't even know there was a contest to be part of. They found out about it quick, when reporters started pounding on their doors.

Karen Nolan It was madness, really. It was a media feeding frenzy.

Stephanie Foo This is Karen Nolan. She worked with Elizabeth to develop a screenplay for a movie based on the contest that aired on Canadian television in 2002. As soon as the will was verified, reporters went through the birth registry, found women who had already given birth to about six children since Charles's death, and dashed to their homes to try and get the exclusive.

Karen Nolan You know they coined the phrase, the Stork Derby, comparing it to like a horse race. So there was a mad dash to track down the women, get their exclusive stories, and to follow them and hound them on the very intimate and personal details of their life.

Stephanie Foo It must have been a jarring experience to be an automatic front-runner in this bizarre contest. But most of the mothers went along with it because of the 9 million dollars. Many of the contestants were desperately poor. During those first six years, the Great Depression had taken hold. Nearly a quarter of Toronto's families were on welfare. Families were living in shacks or camps. Some even ate groundhogs to keep from starving. Canada's birth rate had actually plummeted at the time. And so most of the families that suddenly found themselves in the running to receive this Stork Derby money agreed to media scrutiny because they wanted the chance at the prize, and because, in the short term, the newspapers offered them money-- exclusive contracts where reporters could come and photograph and interview the families whenever they wanted to. Sometimes the families even got advertising deals for things like soap. In many ways, this was sort of like an OG reality show, albeit a really perverse one. The front-runners of the Stork Derby even became household names, like Jon & Kate Plus 8, or maybe more like Octomom. After all, it was billed on the newsreels as freak Canadian race. Papers all over the world, from the New York Daily News to the Marshfield, Wisconsin, News Herald picked up the story. The press followed a bunch of contenders, but I'm only going to run through three of the long-term favorites to win. One of the first competitors that the newspapers dug up was Mrs. Grace Bagnato. I don't want to give away who won or how many kids Mrs. Bagnato actually had during the race, but over her lifetime, Mrs. Bagnato was pregnant 24 times, though only 12 of those children lived. She was a working mother. She was a whiz with languages-- picked up Polish, German, Yiddish, and worked as a court interpreter in Italian. All the while, she raised her 12 children and would get up at 4:30 in the morning to make two dozen butter tarts, macaroni, meatballs, sausage, and her famous red sauce for her family. But the public didn't exactly see her as a hero. Here's Karen again.

Karen Nolan The cultural makeup of Toronto at the time was a very WASPy, WASPy society. And we have this Italian family here who is reproducing children at a rate that outpaced the white, Protestant Anglo-Saxons.

Stephanie Foo Mrs. Bagnato's husband was an Italian immigrant, and some papers weren't kind about that. These were the years leading up to World War II. Of course, it didn't help that one of the other Italian contestants named one of their Derby babies little Benito Mussolini. But because of their nationality, Italian families in the race received phone calls calling their families fascists and threatening to kidnap their children. Contestant number two was Mrs. X. She was the scandalous one.

Karen Nolan She was a social outcast because her children were fathered by different men, which was taboo, and she was shamed for that. She was considered to be a trollop by having children with more than one man.

Stephanie Foo That's a saucy word.

Karen Nolan [LAUGHS]

Stephanie Foo I should start using that.

Mrs. X had five children from her husband, but then her marriage fell apart. He moved out, and she entered into a new relationship with a man and had another five kids with him. She wanted to marry him, but didn't have enough money to go through with her divorce. All in all, Mrs. X had 10 children by the time she was 24. She tried to hide her identity because of the circumstances of her situation, but her name was eventually revealed-- Pauline Mae Clark. Contestant number three was Mrs. Kenny.

Karen Nolan She's my favorite character in the whole story.

Stephanie Foo Why is she your favorite?

Karen Nolan I think her eccentricity, for one thing, her passion, and her undeniable belief that she was the chosen one, if you will.

Stephanie Foo Mrs. Kenny was in it to win it. She was under 5 feet tall, but over the course of her lifetime, she wound up carrying 19 pregnancies to term. She was French Canadian, married to an Irish man, and she believed that money was hers. She said she had the gift of second sight, and a divine connection with Miller, who told her she was going to win. So of course, it had to be true. Mrs. Kenny was a talented wood carver, and often sold her carvings in the street. And she carved a large number of statues of Miller, even named one of her children after him. At one point, a bunch of the leading Derby mothers got together and said, screw this whole race. Let's just share the winnings. It was a ton of money. They were all poor. It would still result in plenty for everyone. But Mrs. Kenny was the sole holdout, the only one who insisted no. I'm the winner, she shouted once, and I won't split with anybody. Why should I? It's my money. And if the judge doesn't give it all to me, I'll walk right up to the bench and punch him in the eye. So yeah, Mrs. Kenny was tough as nails, but she probably was the poorest of the three. Her family lived in a slum, and their home was infested with rats. One night, rats attacked three of her children. Tiny, three-month-old Patrick had the worst of it. Here's Karen.

Karen Nolan So yes, it had bitten the baby in the face and neck area. And as we all know, throughout history, rats carry diseases. But they couldn't afford the hospital. They couldn't. This is so difficult to even talk-- it's unbelievable that it still chokes me up.

Stephanie Foo Mrs. Kenny and her neighbors tried desperately to have the public health nurse visit her home, but to no avail. The baby died.

Elizabeth Wilton And then it was all over the front pages of the newspaper, but always written in terms of what this meant for the chances of Mrs. Kenny or whatever other woman that the coverage was centered on. Every loss, or tragedy, or triumph was always put in terms of their chances in the race, not in terms of what kind of a system do we have where someone's baby can die of rat bites in the first place?

Stephanie Foo It's hard to say how many women had babies specifically for this race. When they talked to reporters, everyone always said the same thing. I would have had this child anyway. I tend to believe Mrs. Bagnato, and many of the other Catholic families in the race. I don't think Mrs. Bagnato was ever playing the game. She'd been cranking out a baby a year long before she heard a word about the Derby, so the whole contest was just an added bonus to her. But then there was Mrs. Kenny, who was obviously playing to win, and said outright that she was trying to make babies. And then you have Mrs. Clark. Mrs. Clark's situation was the most unsettling. It came out that Mrs. Clark's lover had drawn up a contract with her where he could get half her winnings if he impregnated her enough. Mrs. Clark's lover was also abusive. He'd given her a black eye, broke her door down, chased her out into the street after a fight. So maybe she didn't want to be pregnant as many times as she was. Maybe she was forced to. Here's Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Wilton You sort of wonder, was she basically abused? Was she taken advantage of? Because if you think about also the kind of power dynamic that Miller set up between men and women-- and at that time, if your partner, or if your husband, or your lover thought that if he got you pregnant over and over, that you might win millions of dollars-- and she was a very young woman. And--

Stephanie Foo So you were sort of insinuating that maybe these women might have been coerced.

Elizabeth Wilton I mean, I don't know. I think it doesn't take a lot for someone to put together with this young woman, and so many babies, and with this huge prize.

Stephanie Foo In 1933. It looked like Mrs. Bagnato was going to win. Then in 1934, headlines read that Mrs. Kenny had taken the lead. In 1935, another woman, Mrs. Timleck, quote, "sped to the front." In 1936, Madam X was listed as a late entry, tied for second. All the while, the physical toll for these mothers was enormous. Mrs. Bagnato suffered a hemorrhage near the end of her final pregnancy, and many of the Stork Derby mothers were in and out of the hospital for operations and transfusions. And all three mothers suffered the emotional toll of having stillborn babies during the race. Most of the women couldn't afford to have their children in hospitals, and so the infant mortality rate of the Derby babies was six times that of the national average. 34% of these babies died. But aside from an article or two, again, the press only saw these deaths in the context of the race. The headline in a 1936 Montreal paper was, "Stillborn Infant May Assure Prize." Underneath, "A stillborn child may assure Mrs. Matthew Kenny the prize in the Stork Derby under the will of late Charles Vance Miller. Her nearest competitor is believed to be Mrs. Joseph Bagnato." The race ended on Halloween 1936. But at first, it wasn't clear who had won. Here's how our three competitors stood on that date. Mrs. Kenny claimed to have had 11 children. Mrs. Clark said she had 11, as well. Mrs. Bagnato had nine. But Mrs. Kenny and Mrs. Clark didn't walk away with the prize that easily. With Mrs. Clark, the scandalous one who had tied for the largest number of children, the lawyers in charge of the estate had some questions about her case, and raised the question of whether children born out of wedlock should count. This is where it was clear that there had been a huge oversight. Nobody had actually set rules for this contest at its beginning. Remember, Miller explained this whole contest in two sentences in his will. So as the court saw it, there were nuances that needed to be figured out, rules to be set. But of course, only after the fact of everything, after the babies had been born and the blood transfusions administered. A massive, multi-way court battle broke out. All of the contestants had to go to court to prove that they had the most children. Each woman had to lawyer up and go up against the lawyers for the executors of the estate. The fight went on for two years. And of course, now the rules would be determined in front of an audience. To figure out if her illegitimate children would count, Mrs. Clark and her lover's abusive sexual history was scrutinized on the stand. He recounted his physical violence with her, admitted to giving her a black eye and busting down the door to her house, and to the contract he drew up. When he mentioned the contract, the courtroom burst out into raucous, mocking laughter. And in fact, the lawyers regularly threw in crude jokes during the trial, soliciting giggles from the audience. In the end, it was decided that illegitimate children could not be counted within the Derby, and so Mrs. Clark's number got knocked down to five. She was out of the running. Then came Mrs. Kenny, the one who believed she was the winner and had carved statues of Miller. She'd also tied for 11, but apparently two of her children had not been properly registered, probably because Mrs. Kenny was too poor to deliver her children in hospitals. She'd had them at home instead. That brought her count down to nine children, but no big deal. She was still in the running. Then the lawyers pointed out three of her children had been stillborn. Quick warning-- I'm about to talk about a lot of traumatic births. Until this point, everyone had assumed that stillborn children would count for the Derby. Again, this hadn't been in the rules. And after all, these women had carried these children to term. But now in Mrs. Kenney's trial, lawyers for the executors of the estate started questioning that. And so Mrs. Kennedy had to sit while a pack of lawyers argued around her about how legitimate her dead children were. They brought up doctors and had them give graphic descriptions of the stillbirths, if each baby breathed, if its heart ever beat. She had to relive the moments all over again. Mrs. Kenny cried throughout this, and eventually ran from the courtroom.

Elizabeth Wilton It was just all too much for her. And at one point, she left the courtroom just screaming that she was being treated like a dog. And there never was a sensitive portrait of this woman. It was all sort of caricature-style, so I think the coverage just continued in that way, you know?

Stephanie Foo The newspaper report said she was shrieking, insinuated that she was drunk, and said, quote, "During the scuffle, Mrs. Kenny dealt at least half a dozen hard blows on the arms and bodies of the officers who showed great restraint in their tactics." In the end, it didn't help her case. "A child born dead is not, in truth, a child," the judge wrote. "It was that which might have been a child." Her count was knocked down to six. Mrs. Kenny was out of the running. Lastly, there was Mrs. Bagnato, who, again, had nine children. But one was stillborn and another was unregistered. Mrs. Bagnato suggested that there was some conspiracy with this. She said she'd registered the child herself at the Parliament Buildings. She was quoted as saying, "If they can't find the record, it'll be just too bad for them up there. I will tear the Parliament Buildings apart before I give up. I'm supposed to be in the hospital now with another baby coming, but I'll stay on my feet until I drop or this is cleared up." But her protestations didn't sway the judge, and she eventually did give up. After all, she did have a job, and almost a dozen mouths to feed. At the end of two years, none of the three favorites wound up at the finish line. Four other women, with nine babies each, won. Each of these women walked away with what today would be about 2 million Canadian dollars, or $1 and 1/2 million US dollars. Most were latecomers who really only became candidates when the heavy hitters were eliminated. And these four women had something else in common. Here's Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Wilton I mean, the families that won were white, Protestant families who were essentially middle class, and who had homes that, when the reporters went into them and described the homes, it was always the clean and tidy home, and the well-kept this. And the forerunners through the whole race were working-class people, and unemployed people, and they had varied ethnic backgrounds.

Stephanie Foo Maybe it wasn't a coincidence that these women didn't win. Maybe they didn't win because they didn't have the means to navigate the system as elegantly. Or maybe the judge who decided the contest had his finger on the scale. In its last four years, the public's view of the contest had turned, as people saw how it played out. It had encouraged the poorest women to have the most children. That set alarm bells off for a big group of people in what was a growing and popular movement at the time-- eugenics. Teddy Roosevelt was into eugenics. Alexander Graham Bell, WEB Dubois, even Helen Keller. A refresher-- eugenicists believed that in order to improve the human species, some people shouldn't be allowed to reproduce. And yes, that's just as creepy as it sounds. At the end of the contest, they came forth in droves to say that the money shouldn't be given to any women. Here's Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Wilton The social commentary was around, who are these people, and should they be reproducing? They're not Canadian-born. They're poor. They're not the right people.

Stephanie Foo A minister, Reverend Claire Sillcox, submitted written testimony against the participants as, quote, "unspeakable women," and argued that these poor children would eventually reduce wages and lower the standard of living. An editor for a Canadian newspaper said that the contest attracted, quote, "those whose progeny would be of little use to the state." Elizabeth and Karen believe that this environment influenced the judge, that he eliminated, on technicalities, all the contestants who had not made the right kinds of babies. Here's Karen.

Karen Nolan Yeah. I do believe that it was intentional, because they went to such lengths to discredit those that were the others-- the French Canadian Catholic, the woman with the illegitimate children, the Italian Catholic with her immigrant husband. It became a platform for them to send the message of, to use of a modern phrase, stay in your lane, like immigrants know their place. They were definitely trying to send a message.

Stephanie Foo After the lawsuit took place, Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Kenny both filed appeals, and both received settlements for the equivalent of 200,000 Canadian dollars each. Mrs. Bagnato, the immigrant translator, walked away with nothing.

Man Ladies and gentlemen, the antipasto bar is now open.

Stephanie Foo Last December, I shuffled around a table piled high with prosciutto and provolone. Santa came into the banquet hall, and little kids ran past me to get their gifts from him. I was at the 89th annual Bagnato holiday party, which, as you can imagine, is bigger than most holiday family gatherings. Mrs. Bagnato, remember, had 12 children, and they had children, who also had children, who by now have had children, too. One of her great-granddaughters gives me a rough estimate. There are over 150 people now who are direct descendants of Grace. About 110 of the descendants and their families are in a reception hall giving generous air kisses, then turning, screaming, oh my god, Uncle Paulie.

Woman 1 Everybody kissy-kissy everybody. Among the attendees? Many teachers, an agent for the cast of the Young and the Restless, a few writers, and a former mayor. So take that, eugenicists. But talking to a bunch of the Bagnatos, not that many of them know much about the Derby. And those who do, don't seem to care.

Stephanie Foo Does it make you mad that Grace didn't get any money?

Woman 2 No. Life's not all about money. But no, I don't think so. From what I hear, she was just that amazing woman with a huge heart. And I don't think she would get angry. Her oldest daughter, Mildred, told me a story that might answer that question. You know, her mother made a huge pot of sauce on the stove for Sunday dinner. And she had asked Mildred and one of the boys to put it out on the back porch to cool off. And when they went out to get it, it was gone. And Mildred was very angry. And her mother said, but just think, Mildred, somebody's having such a wonderful dinner tonight.

Stephanie Foo After the Derby, Grace told the whole family that they weren't ever to talk about that dumb contest ever again, but she otherwise seemed unfazed. She continued having more kids, even took in an orphan from off the street. It's true that the chaos of the Stork Derby turned her into a laughingstock, and rocked Toronto for over a decade. But a century later, it's mostly forgotten-- just a funny old tale from a hundred years ago. Charles Vance Miller didn't have any children, and unless you preface it with, remember that crazy Stork Derby guy, nobody remembers his name. But more than a hundred people get together every year to share stories about Grace Bagnato. There's more than one way to leave a legacy.