On the podcast, Haunted Road, we examine the history of the world's most notoriously haunted sites and talk to people who've experienced the supernatural there first-hand.

Those ghosts are still wandering those halls waiting for someone to come in and talk to them.

Join me, host Amy Bruney from Television's Kindred Spirits and Ghost Hunters for a tour of history, true crime, and of course, ghost stories.

Listen to Haunted Road, season four on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Unobscured, a production of iHeartRadio and Aaron Minky.

Theodore Bryant knew where his bread was buttered and who would butter it.

He was a member of a prominent Quaker family who had risen to prestige as successful London grocers.

The law cut off Quakers from much of British life. They couldn't serve in the military. They couldn't practice law or medicine.

But what they could do was buy and sell. And like many others, the Bryant family took to the market with enthusiasm, starting with the small grocery, their business grew and flourished, and expanded.

And one of the things their grocery sold like hotcakes was the indispensable tool and light source of every Victorian household, the humble match.

Whether you were lighting a stove, a pipe, a fireplace, a candle, or a gas lamp, the match was in demand, and the Bryant's were ready to supply.

Theodore Bryant had seen his family's grocery become profitable, and then what's more powerful. They went from selling to manufacturing.

After all, it was the industrial age. By 1882, the Bryant had a factory in London's east end employing more than 5,000 workers.

In a time when many Quakers still found themselves on the outside of the law looking in, the Bryant had risen so high they even had the ear of Britain's Liberal Party.

So it should be no surprise that Theodore Bryant had a bright idea. Here's historian Louis Raw.

So Bryant and May, as I said, were very well in with the Liberal Party and Gladstone was always being Prime Minister James Peerid, his Prime Minister for several different terms.

So the ultimate act of sucking up my goodness took about asking. Bryant and Major said they will build a statue of William Gladstone, and they will build it on the bow road, and it's actually gesturing with the right hand towards their factory, such humidity.

This is Gladstone saying, look at this wonderful factory. So they decided to build it. They could have paid for themselves. They could have paid for a thousand statues themselves. I'm sure very easily.

But again, why would you when you can make your work his pay?

That's right. Bryant followed one bright idea with another. To pay for his statue celebrating William Gladstone, Titan of the Liberal Party, Bryant took money out of his workers pay.

And of course, on the day of the statues unveiling, he shut down the factory. Bryant said he was giving them a holiday. What he wasn't giving them though was their day's wage.

And to add insult to injury, attendance at the statues unveiling was mandatory. All the women who worked in Theodore Bryant's factory were required to be there. Dressed to the nines.

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