Forensic Anthropology and Forensic Science in the News

New method could help estimate time of death for a ten-day-old corpse

In any murder investigation, one of the most crucial questions is when the victim died. Accurately pinning down the time of death helps forensic teams to track down the whereabouts of their suspects – and whether they had an alibi. Read more at The Conversation.

MSU research on how skulls fracture could impact child abuse cases

The years that Todd Fenton, Roger Haut and their research team spent smashing infant pig skulls in a lab at Michigan State University could change the way forensic scientists interpret skull fractures in children and the way they determine what’s child abuse and what’s not. Read more at the Lansing State Journal.

Colombia to exhume Medellin graves: official (via @CAHIDuod in Twitter)

Colombian authorities will this month begin the grisly task of carrying out what could be the largest exhumation of unmarked graves in the conflict-torn country’s history, local media reported Sunday. Read more at Yahoo! News.

Archaeology in the News

Skeleton from medieval battlefield goes on display at York museum

THE skeleton of a warrior who fought in one of England’s bloodiest battles has gone on display in a York museum. Read more at The York Press.

Mass Grave Reveals Ottoman Soldiers Fought To The Death In 16th Century Romania (via @DrKillgrove on Twitter)

On November 13, 1594, Michael the Brave summoned his subjects in the client state of Wallachia to rise up against the Ottoman Empire. Read more at Forbes.

Strange Stuff

Russian police just published a guide to taking selfies without killing yourself (via @TheGoodDeath on Twitter)

Wanted: One Corpse for Art (via @wunderkamercast on Twitter)

(A) The skull of Johann Sebastian Bach; (B) Haussman’s 1746 oil painting of Bach (C) the bust Seffner modelled on a cast; (D) the bust, in profile, with left half removed to show the relations of the soft parts to the bone. Image credit: Meisenbach, Riffarth & Co. from Wilhelm His, Johann Sebastian Bach, Leipzig, 1895.

Outside of St. Thomas’s Church in Leipzig, Germany stands an eight-foot tall bronze statue of Johann Sebastian Bach, the legendary 17^th century composer, which was built to honor the man who is entombed inside. The monument is the result of a collaboration between an anatomist and an artist, who teamed up to craft the first facial reconstruction.

Facial reconstruction is a tool used by law enforcement to help identify a body or a technique used by researchers to reproduce the face of a famous historical figure (Byers 2008). The techniques of facial reconstruction have evolved over the years with technology. Forensic artists used to use clay to build up tissue on a reproduction of the skull. Today, artists use laser scans and computer modeling to add facial features. The first time facial reconstruction was used was on the skull of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Bach (1685-1750) was a German composer of the Baroque period whose famous works include “The Well-Tempered Clavier“, the “Brandenburg Concertos,” and “Mass in B Minor.” When Bach died in 1750 his body was put in an oak coffin, one of only twelve oak coffins interred that year at the Old St. John’s Church in Leipzig. But because he was buried in an unmarked grave the exact location of Bach’s grave was lost over the years (Zegers, Maas, Koopman, & Maat 2009).

In the late 19^th century there was a lot of interest in Leipzig to find Bach’s burial place. So when St. John’s Church was due for a renovation in 1894, church officials seized the opportunity to look for Bach’s remains. According to oral tradition Bach was buried “six paces from the south door of the church (Stauffer 2000).” On October 22, 1894, when the “excavators” broke ground on a plot in that location the diggers found an oak coffin. “ A team of anatomists and physicians led by Wilhelm His, Sr. the professor of anatomy and physiology at the University of Leipzig, examined the bones to verify they belonged to Bach (Stauffer 2000). His believed that the bones belonged to a man who was about 65 years old, which was Bach’s age at the time of this death (Zegers, Maas, Koopman, & Maat 2009).

Unfortunately this exam loses a wee bit of credibility because of His’ reliance on phrenology. His found a bump on the petrous part of the temporal bone near the ear, which he felt indicated musical talent. Based on the location of the grave, the age of the body at death, and the phrenological feature His asserted the bones belonged to Bach (Zegers, Maas, Koopman, & Maat 2009).

But there was still some question as to what Bach looked like. Although there are many images of the composer, he is only known to have sat for one painting for the artist Elias Gottlob Haussman in 1746, when he was 61. All subsequent paintings and engravings used this picture as a model (Stauffer 2000). So Wilhelm His wanted to use Bach’s skull to reconstruct his fact to test the accuracy of these earlier images. This was a big deal at the time because it was the first facial reconstruction.

As an anatomist His understood that he needed to know tissue thickness of different parts of the face so he obtained 37 cadavers (24 male suicides, 4 female suicides, and 9 males who died from a “wasting disease”). He devised a way to take soft tissue measurements by using a needle. His set a small rubber disk at one end of a sewing needle and a handle at the other end. Then he chose 15 specific locations on the face and pushed the needle into the face until the needle touched the bone, which moved the rubber disk up the needle. When His pulled the needle out he measured the distance from the tip to the rubber disk in millimeters and averaged out the tissue thickness measurements (Wilder 1912).

Wilhelm His hired Carl Seffner, an artist he knew from anatomy class, to do the facial reconstruction. Seffner built up clay on a cast of Bach’s skull according to the tissue thicknesses from His’ cadaver data collection. Seffner then used the painting by Haussman as a guide to help him with the features that tissue thickness could not. The resulting clay model looked like the contemporary paintings and engravings of Bach (“Tour of our permanent exhibition” 2014). This facial approximation confirmed the identity of the skeletal remains for His and Seffner. Using this likeness Seffner sculpted a marble bust that sits in the Bachhaus Museum, and the bronze statue out in front of St. Thomas Church (Stauffer 2000).

Bach’s grave, St. Thomas Church, Leipzig. Image credit: Furfur via Wikipedia.

The remains of Johann Sebastian Bach were reburied in a vault in St. John’s Church. Because Allied bombing destroyed the church during WWII, Bach’s grave was moved to its present location at St. Thomas Church in 1950.

In 2008 the Bachhaus Museum reached out to Centre of Forensic and Medical Art at the University of Dundee to do a modern forensic facial reconstruction because there were some obvious questions about the accuracy of the 1894 approximation. The museum loaned Dr. Caroline Wilkinson and her team a bronze cast that Seffner made of Bach’s skull. The skull was subjected to laser scans and the data was imported into the centre’s computer system. Wilkinson digitally reconstructed Bach’s musculature and skin using their muscle database, and used paintings and written records to help with facial details caused by chronic health problems. The resulting 3D reconstruction went on display at the Bachhaus Museum in Eisenbach, Germany (Abadi 2008, “Building the face of Bach” 2008, Connolly 2008).

The special exhibit at the Bachhaus exhibit in 2008 featuring the University of Dundee 3D forensic reconstruction. Image credit: Bachhaus.eisenach via Wikipedia

Research by Richard Zegers, Mario Maas, A .G. Koopman, and George Maat (2009) questions the validity of the His/Seffner reproduction because of the questionable physical exam, the problematic methods used to locate Bach’s grave, and the reliance on the 1746 painting to approximate his face (Zegers, Maas, Koopman, & Maat 2009). Only a DNA test with Bach’s descendants can confirm or disprove His’ findings.

But for me the data collection of facial tissue thickness and the pioneering first facial reconstruction are the most important parts of this story, not whether or not the bones in the grave at St. Thomas’ Church belong to Johann Sebastian Bach.

Works Cited

“Building the face of Bach.” (2008). Retrieved from: http://app.dundee.ac.uk/pressreleases/2008/prfeb08/bach.html

“Tour of our permanent exhibition.” (2014). Retrieved from: http://www.bachmuseumleipzig.de/en/bach-museum/tour-our-permanent-exhibition

Abadi, C. (2008). Computer models reconstruct Bach’s head. Retrieved from: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4378382

Byers, S. (2008). Introduction to forensic anthropology. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Connolly, K. (2008). Hello, I’m Bach. Retrieved from: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/mar/04/classicalmusicandopera.germany

Stauffer, GB. (2000). Beyond Bach the Monument, Who Was Bach the Man? Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/02/arts/beyond-bach-the-monument-who-was-bach-the-man.html

Wilder, HH (1912). The physiognomy of the Indians of Southern New England. American Anthropologist, 14, 415-436.

Zegers, R.; Maas, M.; Koopman, A.G.; Maat, G. (2009). Are the alleged remains of Johann Sebastian Bach authentic? The Medical Journal of Australia, 190, 213-216.

An iconic scene of the shadow of Count Orlok climbing up a staircase. Image from Wikipedia.

The graves of famous people have been plundered for hundreds of years. Bodies and body parts have been stolen by guards trusted to keep corpses safe, scientists determined to study them, and even admirers with good intentions (i.e. Thomas Paine).

Skulls are usually the part of the body that is the most sought after because of its scientific value or appeal as a trophy. Recently grave robbers looted the burial plot of the man who directed Nosferatu in 1922.

On July 13^th, workers at the Stahnsdorf cemetery discovered that the Murnau family plot had been disturbed. After a closer look at the grave they found that the head of famous director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau had been stolen from his metal coffin (Smith 2015).

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1888-1931) is the director of the legendary black and white vampire film Nosferatu (1922). He directed Sunrise (1927), which one several Oscars at the first Academy Awards in 1929, as well 20 other films. (Smith 2015 and Mejia 2015).

Murnau died in a car crash in California in 1931 when he was just 42-years-old and his body was buried in his family’s plot in a German cemetery (Smith 2015).

Officials at the Stahnsdorf cemetery believe that the skull was stolen some time between July 4^th and 12^th. When the crime was reported a criminal investigation was started and evidence was collected. Investigators believe that Murnau’s skull may have been taken during an occult ritual because of the presence of wax drippings in and around the grave (Smith 2015).

The cemetery is considering either sealing the grave or moving the family plot altogether (Smith 2015). Hopefully his head will be recovered and his body can be reburied.

Below are few examples of heads that have stolen over the centuries. Some have happy endings, others not-so-much.

Mata Hari

Postcard of Mata Hari in Paris. Image from Wikipedia.

Mata Hari (1876-1917), born Margaretha Zelle, was born in the Leeuwarden, Netherlands. Margaretha was raised in a middle class family, had a tumultuous childhood, and was married and divorced by the time she was 25. In 1903   Margaretha started performing in Paris under the stage name Mata Hari in dance halls and nude reviews (WWI spy 2001). She became famous for provocative dancing and barely-there costumes, but her career declined over the next decade and she performed her last show in 1915.

Mata Hari was just as famous for her love life as her stage career. She was an infamous courtesan who dated businessmen, politicians, and high-ranking officers. It was the latter that was her biggest weakness and probably her downfall.

In 1917, the French arrested her for being a German spy in her Paris hotel room. Mati Hari was tried, convicted, and executed by firing squad on October 15, 1917 when she was 41-years-old. She refused to wear a blindfold and was killed by eleven shots from a 12-man squad (WWI spy 2001).

In recent years the French government has considered re-opening the case because she may have been convicted on “trumped up charges” (Schofield 2001). In 1999 a historian British intelligence papers, declassified in 1999, described how they could not find any evidence that Mata Hari worked as a secret agent (WWI spy 2001).

When no one claimed Mata Hari’s corpse it was donated to the Museum of Anatomy in Paris. Her body was dissected and her head removed and preserved in wax. Mata Hari’s head became part of the museum’s display of infamous criminals that were executed in the 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th centuries. When the French Minister of Education threated to close the museum in 2000, the museum director decided to give the minister an inventory of the museum’s collections. However, when he reviewed the list he found that Mata Hari’s head was missing. Officials at the Museum of Anatomy don’t know when the head was taken or by who (Hoffman 2000).

Geronimo

Geronimo, Chiricahua Apache leader. Photograph by Frank A. Rinehart, 1898. Image from Wikipedia.

Geronimo is a nickname that was given to an Apache warrior named Goyahkl, a Chiricahua word meaning He Who Yawns. Goyahkl was born in Arizona on June 16^th, 1829 near the Gila River, along what is now the Arizona and New Mexico border (King 2012). He was one of the most famous American Indian leaders of the 19^th century.

In 1858, Geronimo left his tribe to go on a trading trip and when he returned he found that Mexican soldiers had slaughtered his people, including his mother, wife, and three children. He vowed revenge and participated in a series of revenge attacks against the Mexicans. He got the name Geronimo when one of the men he attacked cried out to Saint Jerome, which is Geronimo in Spanish (King 2012).

For almost 30 years he attacked both Mexican and U.S. troops, and raided both Mexican and American Settlers. When American settlers asked the military to intervene in 1874, the Apaches were forced onto a reservation in Arizona (King 2012). Geronimo and some of his men escaped and were pursued by U.S. troops. He surrendered in 1886 and spent the rest of his life in U.S captivity. In 1901 he marched in Teddy Roosevelt’s inauguration parade and appeared at the World’s Fair in St. Louis in 1904. In 1909 he died from pneumonia and was buried in Ft. Sill, OK (McKinley 2009).

Allegedly in 1918 six members of Yale’s Skull and Bones society, a not-so-secret society at Yale University, robbed Geronimo’s grave. These members, which included Prescott Bush, father of President George H.W. Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush, were stationed at Ft. Sill while serving as army volunteers. They supposedly took Geronimo’s skull, 2 bones, and bridle back to the society’s clubhouse, known as the tomb. The society officially denies this rumor and local historians say there is no evidence that Geronimo’s grave was disturbed in 1918 (McKinley 2009)

In 2009 Geronimo’s descendants filed a lawsuit against Skull and Bones and Yale on the 100^th anniversary of his death. In 2010 a judge dismissed the case because the plaintiffs cited a law that only applies to Native American cultural items that were excavated or discovered after 1990.

Beethoven

Deathmask of Beethoven by Josef Dannhauser. Image from Wikipedia.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) is a legendary Classical composer who was born in Bonn, the capital of Cologne. His best known works include nine symphonies, five piano concertos, and one violin concerto. He suffered a host of health problems including abdominal pain, eye infections, and hearing loss (Lovejoy 2013). He stared to lose his hearing around 1796 and was almost deaf by 1810.

Although his body was autopsied after his death on March 26, 1827, doctors were never able to confirm the cause of death. Beethoven’s grave was exhumed in 1863 so it could be renovated. At this time anatomists, like Dr. Romeo Seligmann, and sculptors examined the bones (Lovejoy 2013).   Historians believe that Gerhard von Breuning, who befriended Beethoven as a teenager, took this opportunity to steal fragments from the back of Beethoven’s skull (pictured here). It was Breuning’s job to transport the bones to and from each scientist and artist. Breuning gave the skull fragments to Seligmann, and the Seligmann family passed them down from family member to family member (Lovejoy 2013).

Then in 1990 a California man by the name of Paul Kauffman inherited the skull fragments after his uncle died. He had heard family rumors that the bones might belong to Beethoven so he submitted them to DNA testing. DNA samples were taken from the skull fragments and Beethoven’s hair. In 2005 the DNA results were publicized and the analysis showed that the DNA from the bone fragments partially agreed with the samples from the hair (Lovejoy 2013).

Beethoven wasn’t the only composer to have his skull swiped. The heads of both Mozart and Haydn suffered the same fate.

René Descartes 

Portrait of Rene Descartes. Image from Wikipedia.

René Descartes (1596-1650) was a French philosopher and mathematician. He’s known as the father of modern philosophy and his celebrated for his work on mind-body dualism and analytical geometry. He coined the philosophical statement, “Cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am.), and his philosophical writings are still taught in universities today.

In 1649 Queen Christina of Sweden invited Descartes to join her court and give her philosophy lessons. He died of pneumonia in 1650 and was buried in a Catholic cemetery in Stockholm (Lovejoy 2013).

Descartes’ body was exhumed in 1666 and returned to Paris and buried at the Church of Sainte-Genevieve-du Mont. As the revolutionary rebels started to attack the church in 1792 Descartes’ bones were supposedly hidden at the Museum of French Monuments in an Egyptian sarcophagus (Lovejoy 2013). After the museum closed in 1819 city officials decided to rebury him at the Abbey of Saint Germain des Près. When they opened the sarcophagus they discovered that the skull was gone along with most of the other bones, but the body was buried anyway (Lovejoy 2013).

A Swedish scientist named Jacob Berzelius attended Descartes’ third burial and had heard about his missing bones. In 1821 Berzelius read about an auction in newspaper that had sold the “skull of the famous Cartesius (Lovejoy 2013).” Berzelius found the owner and offered to buy it from him for what he paid for it at the auction. The owner accepted the offer and handed the skull Berzelius (Lovejoy 2013).

Because the skull had been signed by previous owners (pictured here), historians were able to piece together what happened. It turns out that Descartes’ skull never made it back to France in 1666. A Swedish soldier named Isaak Plantsom, who was hired to guard the bones on the trip from Stockholm to Paris, beheaded Descartes’ corpse at some point (Lovejoy 2013).

The head is currently in the collection at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris.

Marquis de Sade

Depiction of the Marquis de Sade by H. Biberstein in L’Œuvre du marquis de Sade, Guillaume Apollinaire (Edit.), Bibliothèque des Curieux, Paris, 1912. Image from Wikipedia.

The Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) was French aristocrat, politician, and writer infamous for his sexual exploits and crimes. His erotic writings and novels endorsed amoral sexual freedom that involved things like violence and bestiality. Sade also had political interests. In 1792 he became the secretary of the Revolutionary Section of Les Piques in Paris. He also gave speeches in favor of the Revolution.

Marquis de Sade also spent more than 30 years either in jail or asylums and almost fell prey to the guillotine. The last years of his life were spent at an asylum in Charenton, France, where he was under the care of Dr. L.J. Ramon (Lovejoy 2015).

In his will Sade asked to be buried at his estate at Malmaison. However, Ramon didn’t honor this requested and buried the Marquis at the Charenton Asylum. This was likely for selfish reasons because a few years later Ramon dug Sade’s grave and took his skull for his phrenology collection (Lovejoy 2013).

Ramon analyzed the bumps and ridges on the skull and found that the skull belonged to “goodwill . . . no ferocity . . . no aggressive drives . . . no excess in erotic impulses.” And that “in every way similar to that of a father of the church.” Granted phrenology is junk science, but he had to know his patient’s history, right? Either Ramon had a sense of humor or an idiot (Lovejoy 2013 and Lovejoy 2015).

Ramon ended up giving Sade’s skull to a famous phrenologist, Johann Spurzheim. Spurzheim kept the skull until his death but afterwards it vanished. Thibault de Sade, a descendant of the Marquis, said he found a cast made of the elusive skull at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, the same places that Descartes’ skull is housed (Lovejoy 2012).

Works Cited

WW1 spy Mata Hari framed – lawyer. (2001). Retrieved from: http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/10/16/france.spy/index.html?_s=PM:WORLD

Hoffman, B. (2000). Mata Hari heads off – femme fatale’s skull swiped from museum. Retrieved from: http://nypost.com/2000/07/14/mata-hari-heads-off-femme-fatales-skull-swiped-from-museum/

King, G. (2012). Geronimo’s Appeal to Theodore Roosevelt. Retrieved from: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/geronimos-appeal-to-theodore-roosevelt-117859516/?no-ist

Lovejoy, B. (2012). The marquis and his skull. Retrieved from: https://besslovejoy.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/the-marquis-and-his-skull-2/

Lovejoy, B. (2013). Rest in Pieces: The curious fates of famous corpses. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Lovejoy, B. (2015). 6 historical heads stolen from their graves. Retrieved from: http://mentalfloss.com/article/66343/6-historical-heads-stolen-their-graves

McKinley, J.C. (2009). Geronimo’s heirs sue secret Yale society over his skull. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/us/20geronimo.html?_r=0

Mejia, P. (2015). Head Case: Nosferatu director Murnau’s skull swiped from German crypt. Retrieved from: http://www.newsweek.com/head-case-nosferatu-director-murnaus-skull-swiped-german-crypt-354875

Schofield, H. (2001). Mata Hari ‘was framed.’ Retrieved from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1602486.stm

Smith, N.M. (2015). Nosferatu director’s head stolen from grave in Germany. Retrieved from: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jul/14/nosferatu-director-head-stolen-germany-grave-fw-murnau

Forensic Anthropology and Forensic Science in the News

Remains of man missing since 1972 found in car in Lake Rhodhiss

A 43-year-old mystery likely was solved Tuesday after authorities found the remains of Amos Shook – missing since 1972 – and identification cards in a 1968 Pontiac Catalina pulled from the bottom of Lake Rhodhiss in Caldwell County. Read more at the Charlotte Observer.

Remains of Holocaust experiment victims found at French forensic institute

Nazi anatomy professor August Hirt wanted a Jewish skeleton collection. In 1942, he set in motion a scientific study at the Anatomical Institute of Reich University in Strasbourg to try to prove Jews were an inferior race.  Read more at The Washington Post.

Duffy’s Cut: Woman murdered in Philadelphia in 1832 reburied in NI

A wake is being held in County Tyrone for a 29-year-old woman who was buried in an unmarked grave in America 183 years ago. Catherine Burns, a widow from the village of Clonoe near Coalisland, was murdered in 1832 after arriving in Philadelphia to start a new life. Read more at the BBC.

Meet the Living People Who Collect Dead Human Remains (via @alisonatkin on Twitter)

A person’s skeleton is the most durable part of their remains. After the papery skin and tissue of a corpse slowly decay, after the eyeballs flatten and liquefy, the bones stay intact. Because of their longevity, bones are useful in a number of academic disciplines—archaeology, anthropology, and medicine, to name a few—to learn more about human life and death. Read more at Vice.

When unidentified remains are found, police keep looking for answers

Her body was found in her third-floor apartment in Northwest Washington, and among the few valuables she left behind, police said, were a pair of mahogany leather boots, some cheap jewelry and $152 in cash. Read more at the Washington Post.

Archaeology in the News

Skeletons Of Napoleon’s Soldiers Discovered In Mass Grave Show Signs Of Starvation (Via @DrKillgrove on Twitter)

As snow lashed across their faces, archaeologists quickly excavated a mass grave in Vilnius, Lithuania.  The jumbled bones, haphazardly oriented, were punctuated with finds of shoes, clothing, and armor. Read more at Forbes.

Twisted Knee Might Identify Alexander The Great’s Father, But Some Are Skeptical (Via @DrKillgrove on Twitter)

In a new article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Antonis Bartsiokas and colleagues argue that skeletons from Tomb I at Vergina in Macedonia are those of Philip II, the father of Alexander the Great.  Read more at Forbes.

Not All Strange Burials Are Vampires Or Zombies (Via @DrKillgrove on Twitter)

You may have seen a number of recent news items about “Greek zombies” and “Polish vampires.”  In bioarchaeology terms, these are called “revenant” graves, a form of burial made to ensure the corpse did not rise again from the dead. Read more at Forbes.

Child mummy wrapped-in-fur & with ax unearthed in Russia’s Far North

The mummy of a six- to seven-year-old boy dating back to the 13th century has been unearthed in Russia’s Far North, scientists say. The child, wrapped in a cocoon of furs and birch bark, was found with a small bronze ax. Read more at RT.com

How Grave Robbers And Medical Students Helped Dehumanize 19th Century Blacks And The Poor (Via @DrKillgrove on Twitter)

The history of autopsy and dissection of human bodies in the United States may seem like an innocuous topic, a necessary means to study life and its inevitable end. But in the 19th century, the vast majority of people who were dissected and autopsied were socially and economically marginalized groups.  Read more at Forbes.

Strange Stuff

Here are 3 awesome ways Satanists are trolling right-wing Christians

The head of the man who directed Nosferatu was stolen from his grave

An illustration of a body in its coffin starts to bleed in the presence of the murderer during a cruentation 1497. Image from Wikipedia.

The history of criminal justice and forensic science is really interesting because of all the absurd rituals and superstitions that courts used. Before the advent of blood tests, fingerprint analysis, and DNA testing, many cultures relied on various trials by ordeal to help determine a suspect’s guilt or innocence. To prove a murderer was guilty, for example, many European courts relied on a type of trial by ordeal that involved a “bleeding” corpse.

A trial by ordeal is an ancient method of ascertaining guilt or innocence and can be found in cultures all over the world (Roth 2010 and Primm 2013). The societies that used a trial by ordeal believed that a god or gods would protect the innocent from harm and punish the guilty. They were used for crimes like murder, heresy, and witchcraft (Roth 2010).

There were various kinds of ordeals that a court could use to test the innocence of a suspect. During a trial by fire, the accused had to walk across hot coals or pick an object out of a fire. If he or she did not emerge unscathed they were found guilty. In a trial by water, a suspect was bound then submerged in water. If they were innocent, they would sink; if guilty, they would float (Roth 2010).

One ordeal, dating to the end of the Roman Empire, was reserved for accused murderers (Brittain 1965). The bier-right, or cruentation, was based on the belief that the body is still able to hear and act a short time after death, so that if a murderer approached or touched the corpse of their victim then the corpse would bleed or froth at the mouth (Roth 2010 and Brittain 1965). Bier-right got its name from the stand or barrow, called a bier, which held or carried a corpse or coffin. Cruentation comes from the Latin word cruentatio meaning staining of blood or cruentare meaning to make bloody (Brittain 1965).

Funeral bier at the Somerset Rural Life Museum. Image credit: Rodw on Wikipedia.

In Cruentation: In Legal Medicine and Literature (1965), Brittain discusses how a cruentation was performed.

“…the suspect was placed at a certain distance from the victim who had been laid naked on his back. He approached the body, repeatedly calling on it by name, then walked around it two or three times. He next lightly stroked the wounds with his hand. If during this time fresh bleeding occurred, or if the body moved, or if foam appeared at the mouth, the suspect was considered to be guilty of murder.”

The substance that these people were likely seeing was purge fluid, or decomposition fluid. Purge fluid, which drains from the mouth, nose, and other orifices during putrefaction, looks a lot like blood and is often mistaken for it (DiMaio & DiMaio 2001).

The bier-right was so well-known that the ritual made its way into poetry and plays. The best example is probably in Shakespeare’s Richard III, in Act I, Scene II (Fitzharris 2011). During the funeral of King Henry VI, Lady Anne confronts Gloucester, the man who murdered Henry:

“Foul devil, for God’s sake hence, and trouble us not;

For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell,

Fill’d it with cursing cries and deep exclaims.

If thou delight to view thy heinous deeds,

Behold this pattern of thy butcheries.

O! gentlemen; see, see! dead Henry’s wounds

Open their congeal’d mouths and bleed afresh.

Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity,

For ’tis thy presence that exhales this blood

From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells:

Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural,

Provokes this deluge most unnatural.

O God! which this blood mad’st, revenge his death;

O earth! which this blood drink’st, revenge his death;

Either heaven with lightning strike the murderer dead,

Or earth, gape open wide, and eat him quick,

As thou dost swallow up this good king’s blood,

Which his hell-govern’d arm hath butchered!”

England stopped using the bier-right at the end of the 17^th century, and German courts abandoned the cruentation at the end of the 18^th century (Fitzharris 2011 and Brittain 1965). But there are still records of courts in the U.S. using it until 1869 (Lea 1878).

In New Jersey in 1767, a bier-right was used to discover the murderer of Nicholas Tuers, despite the fact that the coroner thought the whole thing was ridiculous.

“In 1767, the coroner’s jury of Bergen County, NJ, was summoned to view the body of one Nicholas Tuers, whose murder was suspected. The attestation of Joannes Demarest, the coroner, stated that he had no belief in the bier-right, and paid no attention to the experiment, when one of the jury touched the body without result. At length Harry, a slave, who had been suspected without proof, was brought up for the same purpose, when he heard the exclamation ‘He is the man,” and was told that Tuers had bled at being touched by Harry. He then ordered the slave to place his hand on the face of the corpse, when about a tablespoonful of blood immediately flowed from each nostril, and Harry confessed the murder in all particulars (Lea 1878).”

In Philadelphia in 1860, a body was actually exhumed for a bier-right after being buried for weeks.

“In 1860, the Philadelphia journals mention a case in which the relatives of a deceased person, suspecting foul play, vainly importuned the coroner, some weeks after the internment, to have the body exhumed, in order that it might be touched by a person whom they regarded as concerned in his death (Lea 1878).”

Last, but not least, probably the largest bier-right ever performed happened in 1869 in Lebanon, IL.

“…in 1869 at Lebanon, IL, the bodies of two murdered persons were dug up, and two hundred of the neighbors were marched past them, each of whom was made to touch them in the hope of finding the criminals.”

Works Cited 

Brittain, RP. (1965). Cruentation: In legal medicine and in literature. Medical History. 9(1): 82–88.

DiMaio, VJ; DiMaio, D. (2001). Forensic Pathology, 2^nd Edition. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Fitzharris, L. (2001). ‘Crying to heaven for revenge’: The bleeding corpse and its significance in history. Retrieved from: http://thechirurgeonsapprentice.com/2011/03/30/crying-to-heaven-for-revenge-the-bleeding-corpse-and-its-significance-in-history/

Lea, HC. (1878). Superstition and force: Essays on the wager of law-the wager of battle-the ordeal-torture. Philadelphia, PA: Collins, Printer.

Primm, A. (2013). A History of “Trial By Ordeal.” Retrieve from: http://mentalfloss.com/article/50161/history-trial-ordeal

Roth, M. (2010). Crime and punishment: A history of the criminal justice system, 2nd Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Mummified body of Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz. Image credit: Hedavid on Wikipedia.

A church in the small village of Kampehl in Brandenburg, Germany displays the mummified remains of a knight who died in the early 18^th century.   It’s not unusual for European churches to show the bodies and body parts of saints and martyrs, especially those bodies that seem to have escaped decomposition through divine intervention. What’s unusual in this case is the church displays the mummified body of a man who was put on trial for murder. And many people believed that the knight’s unexplained preservation is because of a curse and proves he was guilty of his crimes.

Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz (1651-1702) was knight and aristocrat who had 11 legitimate children and 30 illegitimate children. Many people believe that his illegitimate children were the result of a violent tradition called droit du seigneur (Aufderheide 2011).

Droit du seigneur, a French phrase translated as “right of the lord,” is also known as jus primae noctis, a Latin phrase that means “right of the first night.” This tradition allowed a feudal lord or an aristocrat to impose intercourse on the peasant brides on his estates on the bride’s wedding night. This practice of institutionalized rape dates to ancient times. It was mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh and Herodotus notes that this custom was practiced in ancient Libya. Medieval Europeans were rumored to have practiced droit du seigneur but historians have not found evidence of its existence in the written laws of England or European countries, though this doesn’t rule it being performed as a custom (Wettlaufer 2000, Bullough 1991).

Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz tried to enforce droit du seigneur in 1690 with the bride of one of his shepherds. When the bride refused, Kahlbutz reportedly had the shepherd killed (Aufderheide 2011).  The bride accused Kahlbutz of murder and took him to court. Because there were no witnesses and he was a nobleman, all Kahlbutz had to do was swear his innocence to be released. Kahlbutz not only declared his innocence but went overboard and swore that if he was guilty his corpse would not decay (Aufderheide 2011).

Kahlbutz died in 1702 at the age of 51 and his body was sealed in a double coffin and placed in his family’s crypt under the church of Kampehl (Aufderheide 2011).

When the church was renovated in 1794, the coffins in its tombs were removed and buried in the church cemetery, including those in the Kahlbutz family crypt. Workers discovered that all of the bodies had decomposed except the body of Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz (Aufderheide 2011).  His body was kept in the crypt and put on display and the story of the murdered shepherd and his self-impose curse was told as the reason for the body’s unique state of preservation (Aufderheide 2011).

Mummified body of Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz in the crypt of the Kampehl church. Image Credit: Anagoria on Wikipedia.

Kahlbutz’s body has been studied a few times over the years to find a scientific reason for the body’s mummification. Researchers have not been able to conclusively explain how he died or why his body mummified. Reasons for the mummification include the absence of oxygen caused by the double walls of the coffin, or tannins in the coffin’s wood, or the dry air in the tomb (Aufderheide 2011).

The reason this is unusual is that when a church displays a corpse because of its unexplained preservation or mummification it’s sign of holiness not sin. When Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches find that a body is naturally preserved or the process of decomposition has been delayed in they refer to the corpse as incorrupt (Harper 2014). They believe that incorruptibility happens as the result of divine intervention and is proof of the deceased’s holiness. Although these cases of natural preservation are likely due to temperature, moisture levels, and the unique microenvironments of the tombs they are placed in-not the hand of God (Harper 2014). With Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz, incorruptibility became proof of his crimes not godliness.

References:

Aufderheide, A.C. (2011). The scientific study of mummies. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Bullough, V.L. (1991). Jus primae noctis or droit du seigneur. Journal of Sex Research, 28: 163-166.

Harper, E. (2014). The (not really so very) incorrupt corpses. Retrieved from: http://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/really-whats-incorrupt-corpses#.VcZBQUtP3BE

Wettlaufer, J. (2000). The jus primae noctis as a male power display: A review of historic sources with evolutionary interpretation. Evolution and Human Behavior, 21(2), 111-123. http://www.fibri.de/jus/arthbes.htm

The Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819) by Theodore Gericault. Image credit: Wikipedia

The Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819) is an impressive oil painting that is 16 feet by 23 feet by French Romantic master Théodore Géricault (1791-1824).  The painting, which hangs in the Louvre in Paris, portrays the twisted bodies of the dead and dying on a raft built from the shipwreck of the French naval frigate Méduse. To prepare for painting the carnage depicted in his masterpiece, Géricault studied and painted decomposing body parts he obtained from morgues and hospitals.

On June 17, 1816 the Méduse departed from southwest France for the Republic of Senegal in West Africa. The frigate ran aground off the coast of modern-day Mauritania, just north of Senegal, on July 2^nd.  Some of the survivors decided to construct a raft out of the wreckage because there weren’t enough life boats.  After the raft was completed about 150 of shipwreck survivors were set adrift on July 5^th. While they were lost at sea most of the raft’s passengers died, and the rest suffered dehydration, starvation, and practiced cannibalism. When the survivors on the raft were rescued, 12 days later on July 17^th, there only 15 people of the 150 alive (Puchko 2015).

The accounts of the survivors were well publicized and caused a scandal in French politics.   The shipwreck inspired Géricault and he took on the project of recreating the disaster for a painting that he submitted to the Paris Salon in 1819. To prepare for the impressive scale of this work Géricault interviewed survivors, travelled to the coast to study the skies and seascapes, and sketched and painted preparatory paintings (Théodore Géricault, Painter 2000).

In order to understand what the passengers of the Méduse suffered, Géricault developed relationships with the area hospitals and morgues to study what happens to the body right before and after death.  The medical students at the Beaujon Hospital, near his studio just north of Paris, let him observe dissections and the staff let him paint the faces of the dead and dying. (Larson 2014)

Géricault also took advantage of programs at local morgues that let art students check-out human remains like library books for anatomical study (Ebenstein 2012). He took heads and body parts back to his art studio turned “body farm” so that he could watch them decompose. Géricault kept one severed head on the roof of his studio for two weeks and painted it as he watched it decay (Théodore Géricault, Painter 2000). This head, rumored to belong to a thief who died in an asylum, was used in multiple Géricault paintings.

He used these dismembered remains in some preliminary paintings of which only a few exist today: Study of the Heads of Torture Victims (1818), Head of a Guillotined Man (1818), The Head of Drowned Man (1819), and Study for the Raft of the Medusa (Larson 2014 and Ebenstein 2012). After Géricault’s death in 1824 the contents of his studio were sold, in the catalogue for that sale there is a listing for one lot of 10 studies of human body parts (Larson 2014).

Heads of Torture Victims (Study for Raft of the Medusa) (ca. 1818). Image Credit: WikiGallery.

Head of a Guillotined Man by Théodore Géricault (1818) at the Art Institute Chicago. Image credit: Peter Eimon on Flickr.

The Head of Drowned Man by Théodore Géricault (ca. 1819). Image credit: Wikipedia

References:

Théodore Géricault, Painter. (2000). Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/c/christiansen-01victorian.html

Ebenstein, J. (2012). Théodore Géricault’s Morgue-Based Preparatory Paintings for “Raft of the Medusa,” A Guest Post by Paul Koudounaris. Retrieved from: http://morbidanatomy.blogspot.com/2012/02/theodore-gericaults-morgue-based.html

Larson, F. (2014). Severed: A history of heads lost and heads found. New York, NY: Liveright Publishing Corporation.

Puchko, K. (2015). 15 things you should know about ‘The Raft of the Medusa.’ Retrieved from: http://mentalfloss.com/article/66839/15-things-you-should-know-about-raft-medusa

Dining hall construction with “White House” in background, 1936. Image credit: Mgreason via Wikipedia.

The Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys was an infamous reform school in the Florida panhandle opened in 1900. It was closed in 2011 following a Department of Justice investigation into allegations of abuse and murder. Some former students, who were at the school in the 1950s and 1960s, have accused former employees and guards of physical and sexual abuse. Former Dozier inmates from that period call themselves “The White House Boys,” a name referring to the white building where they say the worst abuse happened.

In August of 2013 the Florida Cabinet approved a permit for a team of archaeologists and anthropologists from the University of South Florida to begin excavations at the reform school. The cabinet also approved money to determine the causes of death, identify remains, locate family members, and pay for any re-burials.

From September to December 2013, a team of forensic anthropologists, lead by Erin Kimmerle excavated graves on the Dozier property. Official records indicated only 31 burials at the school, but USF investigators found the remains of 51 individuals in 55 graves during excavations.  Some of the graves were found under roads or trees, far away from the school’s “official” graves at the “Boot Hill” cemetery.  USF investigators said most of the bodies were buried in coffins that were either made at the school or purchased from manufacturers. DNA samples were taken from the bones and families who believed their loved ones were among the skeletal remains. The DNA samples were sent to University of North Texas’s Center for Human Identification for testing.

Because the news updates have been coming in somewhat rapidly, I felt it would be easier to put them all in one post with links to the original articles.

Below is a list of news updates (starting with the most recent) about the excavations, positive identifications, and new details about the abuse suffered by these children.

August 4, 2015 via WFSU: “Sixth Family Reunited With Remains Of Loved One Buried On Dozier Grounds”

USF forensic anthropologist Erin Kimmerle announced that the sixth set of human remains from the Dozier School for Boys were positively identified. This body belonged to Robert Stephens who was sentenced to two years at the reform school in 1936 for breaking and entering. According to school records, about a year into his sentence Stephens was stabbed to death by another inmate and died when he was 15 years old. Robert’s body was identified by matching his DNA with a living nephew with the same name.

This same article reported that the USF research team found additional families from which to obtain DNA samples and that the USF would submit a final report on the project in January of 2016. Read more at WFSU.

March 17, 2015 via WUSF: “UPDATE: FDLE to Conduct Inquiry into USF’s Dozier Findings”

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement announced that they would conduct a “preliminary inquiry” into the findings of the USF report on the Dozier School for Boys that was published in January 2015. Read more at WUSF.

February 7, 2015 via RawStory: “‘Rape dungeon’ allegations emerge in abuse report on Florida’s notorious Dozier School for Boys”

A report written by USF researchers revealed “horrific new allegations” of physical and sexual abuse inflicted on students at the reform school. Particularly disgusting were the details of a “rape dungeon.”

Erin Kimmerle stated in the report (via RawStory), “After three years our focus is more than ever on the present, educating the living about what happened in the past, mourning with families of those who died at Dozier and supporting them as they seek justice.”

“Even in cases where law enforcement and prosecutors are unable to file criminal charges, transparency and acknowledgement of the abuses are important components for reconciling conflict.” Read more at RawStory.

A copy of the USF report can be found here.

February 5, 2015 via WUSF: “Two More Bodies Identified at Dozier School For Boys”

The USF researchers announced that two more sets of human remains were identified, making this the forth and fifth bodies positively ID’d. The skeletal remains belonged to Sam Morgan and Bennett Evans.

Sam was sent to Dozier in 1915 when he was 18 years old. School records state that Sam was used as an indentured servant at local farms and businesses and was never listed by the school as deceased. The body will be repatriated to his family and reburied once his death certificate is issued.

Bennett was an employee who died at the school in 1914 in a dormitory fire.

Forensic investigators also found a small lead ball similar to a shotgun pellet among the skeletal remains of a boy (via WUSF) “(near the left lower abdomen/upper thigh region of the body) was a small lead ball consistent with a projectile.” Unfortunately investigators say there is no way to determine if this projectile was a factor in the boy’s death or if he was injured by it.   Read more at WUSF.

Above is a list of Dozier students and family members. The USF team would like to collect the DNA from surviving family members and match it to the children recovered from the Dozier graves. Image via WUSF.

December 1, 2014 via WUSF: “Family Finally Able to Bury Brother Who Died at Dozier (video)”

WUSF reported that Thomas Varnadoe was buried alongside his brother Hubert during a ceremony at the Hopewell Memorial Gardens in Plant City. Thomas and his brother Hubert were sent to Dozier in 1934 for stealing a typewriter. Hubert returned home after nine months, but 13 year-old Thomas never did. School officials didn’t notify Thomas’ family until a week after his death, after they had already buried him. His body was identified via DNA from samples taken from his living brother. Read more at WUSF.

October 9, 2014 via CNN: “Did Florida boys school officials send family a casket filled with wood?”

Probably the weirdest twist in this story happened on October 7^th, 2014 when a research team from the University of South Florida (USF) exhumed a grave in Philadelphia belonging to Thomas Curry a boy who died under “suspicious circumstances” at the school in 1925. When the USF team reached the casket they found that contained only a pile of wood but no signs of human remains or clothes.  The hardware on the casket was identical to hardware on the caskets exhumed from reform school cemetery in Florida.

If school officials were able to murder and abuse children, it certainly wouldn’t be beneath them to send an empty casket to Thomas’ family in an effort to cover for their crimes. Read more at CNN.

September 24, 2014 via Bay News 9: “Two more sets of remains from Dozier School for Boys identified”

The anthropology team from the University of South Florida (USF) has positively identified two more sets of remains exhumed from graves on the property once belonging to the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys: 13-year-old Thomas Varnadoe and 12-year-old Earl Wilson.

Thomas Varnadoe (pictured here) reportedly died of pneumonia in 1934. He was sent to the school for allegedly stealing a typewriter. Earl Wilson was beaten to death in 1944, supposedly by four other boys while in the “sweat box,” an isolated cottage on the property. The boys accused of Wilson’s murder were convicted in his death.

August 11, 2014 via The Washington Post: “First of 55 bodies buried at Florida reform school identified. Researchers seek more DNA matches.”

On Thursday, August 7^th forensic investigators at USF reported that the first individual of the 51 remains unearthed from Dozier were identified as George Owen Smith.  They said Owen’s DNA matched a sample taken from his now 86-year-old sister, Ovell Krell.

Owen was sent to the reform school at the age of 14 in 1940 for his alleged role in a car theft.  Shortly after arriving to the reform school, Owen wrote his family about an escape attempt and his subsequent punishment.  After that letter his family never heard from him again.

When Owen’s mother wrote the school’s superintendent in December 1940 to ask about her son she got a letter back that said they didn’t know where he was.  In January 1941, officials from the reform school told his family that Owen’s body was found under a house where he died of exposure.  Later, a fellow student, who was allegedly with Owen during a second escape attempt, told Krell her brother was shot at by three men with rifles during the escape.

The USF team said Owen’s body was found in a hastily buried grave wrapped only in a burial shroud, but they couldn’t say how he died.  Read more at The Washington Post.

Red granite sarcophagus of Ramesses III at the Louvre. Image credit: Korribot on Wikipedia.

Forensic analyses of two Egyptian mummies published in the British Medical Journal in 2012 may have answered questions scholars had about the outcome of an ancient conspiracy against Pharaoh Ramesses III and the identity of a contorted mummy believed to be his “murderous son.” A team comprised of egyptologists, geneticists, biologists, and paleoanthropologists conducted a forensic examination on both mummies that included an anthropological examination, CT scans, and DNA tests (Hawass et al., 2012).

Ramesses III (1217 BC – 1155 BC) was the second pharaoh of the Twentieth Dynasty. Considered to the “last great king” of the New Kingdom, he ruled during a difficult time of economic instability and national turmoil caused by drought and war (Al Jazeera 2012). But his rule was cut short by treacherous acts committed by members of his own family and palace staff.

Ramesses III had chosen Ramesses Amonhirkhopshef (Ramesses IV), his son with Queen Tyti, to be his successor. But Queen Tiy, his secondary wife, wanted her son, Pentawer, to inherit the throne. To do this, Queen Tiy and Pentawer enlisted the help of numerous palace administrators and servants. In 1155, the conspirators made their move in what is known as the Harem Conspiracy. Historical records state that when Ramesses III was in his royal harem he was attacked and his throat was cut, but it was not known if Ramesses died or survived the attack-even for a short time (Hawass et al., 2012).

The conspirators were captured and were prosecuted in four trials, which were recorded in the Judicial Papyrus of Turin (Hawass et al., 2012). The Judicial Papyrus of Turin also implies contradictory outcomes for Ramesses III. Parts of the document suggest that he died before or during the trials and other parts indicate that he gave the court “direct instructions (Hawass et al., 2012).” Due to the inconsistent statements of the papyrus regarding Ramesses’ fate, historians debated on whether or not he died immediately, lingered an died a while later, or survived entirely (Hawass et al., 2012).

Mummy of Ramesses III. Image credit: Anton Gutsunaev on Wikipedia.

In 1886 the body of Ramesses III and an unidentified body known as the Screaming Mummy, or Unknown Man E, were discovered. The Screaming Mummy got his morbid nickname because his facial muscles were twisted into an eternal scream. Scholars believed it was possible that unidentified mummy was Pentawer’s body but they had no evidence. To answer questions about Ramesses’ death and the identity of Unknown Man E, the international team examined both mummies (Hawass et al., 2012).

Although the mummified body of Ramesses III was unwrapped when it was discovered in 1886, the linen around his throat was not touched so CT scans were needed for a complete examination (Bossone 2008 and Hawass et al., 2012). The scans revealed a large cut about 2.7 inches wide right below the larynx (Hawass et al., 2012). The wound was so deep that it severed the trachea, esophagus, and arteries hitting fifth through seventh vertebrae. This injury was fatal and likely caused immediate death (Hawass et al., 2012). The team also found an Eye of Horus amulet in the wound. The Eye of Horus was used has a symbol of “royal power, protection, and good health in ancient Egypt (Hawass et al., 2012).

The body of the Screaming Mummy confirmed to be Pentawer. Image credit: Khruner on Wikipedia.

When the Screaming Mummy was found in 1886, the body was found wrapped in a goat skin with his hands and feet tied. The goat skin is unusual, especially for a royal burial, because it was considered “ritually impure (Hawass et al., 2012 and Brier 2006).” CT scans showed that the body belonged to a male between 18 and 20 years old based on the incomplete fusion of the long bones. The research team also found that the brain and organs were still intact, which they interpreted as evidence of a hasty mummification. But they could not find any indication of his cause of death.

Bone samples were taken from both bodies and genetically tested.   Investigators discovered that bodies of Ramesses III and the Screaming Mummy shared the same Y chromosome and half of their DNA, consistent with father son relationship (Hawass et al., 2012 and Roberts 2012).

According to the Judicial Papyrus of Turin, all of those involved in the Harem Conspiracy were tried and found guilty. The main conspirators were given the choice of committing suicide or facing the executioner. Some believe that Pentawer committed suicide by hanging himself, and his body was hastily embalmed so that he would continue to pay for his crimes for eternity (Al Jazeera 2012).

Works Cited

Rameses III ‘assassinated’ in a royal coup. (2012). Retrieved from: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/12/2012121882115867502.html

Bossone, A. (2008). “Screaming Mummy” Is Murderous Son of Ramses III? Retrieved from: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081121-screaming-mummy-ramses-missions.html

Brier, B. (2006). The Mystery of Unknown Man E. Retrieved from: http://archive.archaeology.org/0603/abstracts/mysteryman.html

Hawass, Z., Ismail, S., Selim, A., Saleem, S.N., Fathalla, D., Wasef, S.,…Zink, A.R. (2012). Revisiting the harem conspiracy and death of Ramesses III: anthropological, forensic, radiological, and genetic study. BMJ 2012: 345.

Roberts, M. (2012). King Ramesses III’s throat was slit, analysis reveals. Retrieved from: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-20755264

A tzompantli, illustrated in the 16th-century Aztec manuscript, the Durán Codex. Image credit: CJLL Wright on Wikipedia.

On Thursday, August 20^th archaeologists from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced they unearthed a masonry platform and 35 skulls in the Templo Mayor complex, in what is now Mexico City. They believe the skulls and platform were part of a legendary skull rack known as the Huey Tzompantli.

Tzompantli, an Aztec word that means “skull rack,” were ceremonial structures used by the Aztec people to display the heads of people who were sacrificed. They built skull racks throughout Mesoamerica between the 7^th and 16^th centuries.   To construct a skull rack, the heads of sacrificial victims were severed, holes punctured in their skulls, then wooden poles were pushed through the openings. Rows and rows of these beams were suspended on vertical posts.

One of the skull discovered in the Templo Mayor complex. Photograph: Henry Romero/Reuters via Discovery News. Click here for full size image.

The scariest largest tzompantli was known as the Huey Tzompantli, or Great Skull Rack, and it was built in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. The Huey Tzompantli was seen by the Spanish conquerors in the 16^th century. Witnesses described it as a massive structure constructed on a masonry platform and held anywhere between 80,000 and 136,000 heads. Although, in an article published in the American Anthropologist in 1983, Bernard Ortiz De Montellano calculated that the most the Huey Tzompantli could hold was only 60,000 skulls.

Raul Barrera, an archaeologist with INAH, said in a statement released last week (via Discovery News), “So far we have found 35 skulls, but there must be many more in underlying layers (Lorenzi 2015).”

The skulls and the platform were uncovered on the western side of what was once the Templo Mayor complex of Tenochtitlan (Lorenzi 2015). What was unusual about this tzompantli was that rows of skulls were mortared into the platform in circles. The skulls were plastered so that they faced the center of the circle, although no one knows what was once there (Lorenzi 2015 and The Guardian 2015).

Some of the skulls had holes in both sides indicating they belonged to a tzompantli.  Most of the skulls belonged to adult men, but some belonged to women and children (Lorenzi 2015 and The Guardian 2015).  Archaeologists estimated that the Great Skull Rack was built between 1485 and 1502 was about 112 feet long and 40 feet wide (Lorenzi 2015).

Works Cited

Aztec skull trophy rack discovered at Mexico City’s Templo Mayor ruin site. (2015). Retrieved from: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/21/aztec-skull-trophy-rack-discovered-mexico-citys-templo-mayor-ruin-site

Lorenzi, R. (2015). Massive human skull rack found at Aztec temple. Retrieved from: http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/massive-human-skull-rack-found-at-aztec-temple-150821.htm

Ortiz De Montellano, B.R. (1983). Counting skulls: Comment on the Aztec cannibalism theory of Harner-Harris. American Anthropologist, New Series, 85 (2): 403-406.

Cromwell at Dunbar by 19th century artist Andrew Carrick Gow. Image credit: P. S. Burton on Wikipedia.

Archaeologists overseeing construction at Durham University’s Palace Green Library discovered two mass graves in November of 2013.   Durham University archaeologists didn’t know it at the time but these skeletal remains would solve a mystery that dates back to 1650.

On September 3^rd 1650 a short but bloody battle was fought in Dunbar, Scotland between the English Parliamentarians and the Scottish Royalists during the Third English Civil War (1642-1652). In less than one hour the Parliamentarians commanded by Oliver Cromwell crushed a Scottish army loyal to Charles II (Brown 2015). An estimated 3000 Scottish soldiers perished while the English army lost less than 100 at that Battle of Dunbar.

Cromwell took 5000 men prisoner that day and marched them 100 miles south from Dunbar to Durham, England. 1000 of these men died of hunger, exhaustion, or disease during the grueling journey (Brown 2015). It’s estimated that an additional 1700 prisoners died while jailed at Durham Castle and Cathedral. Those that survived their captivity at Durham were sent to the American colonies to work as indentured servants (Brown 2015).

Historians believed that it was likely that the estimated 1700 prisoners, who died while in captivity at Durham, were buried in the area but scholars didn’t know where until the mass graves were uncovered during the construction at Durham University’s Palace Green Library in 2013, which is part of the city’s UNESCO World Heritage site (Brown 2015).

Partial skull showing pipe facets on one of the adult males unearthed at Durham University. Image credit: Richard Rayner / North News and Pictures

Durham University archaeologists carefully excavated the two mass graves then analyzed and scientifically tested the bones. Results of the scientific tests and morphological examination of the skeletal remains showed that identities of the bodies buried at Durham University were consistent with the prisoners captured by Cromwell at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650.

A physical examination of the bones revealed that the bones belonged to between 17 and 28 individuals, the ages of which were between 13 and 25 years old at the time of death. Archaeologists noted that all of the adult skeletons were male (Durham University 2015).   Isotope analysis of the dental enamel revealed that some of the people were from Scotland or from Northern England (Durham University 2015).

To date the bones researchers used a combination of historical context and radiocarbon dating. Two of the skulls had pipe facets in their teeth these are “crescent-shaped areas of wear and tear” caused by smoking clay pipes (Durham University 2015). Clay pipes were commonly used in Scotland until after 1640. Radiocarbon dating placed the bodies between 1625 and 1660 (Durham University 2015).

Considering the number of Dunbar prisoners who died at Durham, archaeologists believe that there are more mass graves to be found in the area (Miller 2015).

Works Cited 

Scottish Soldiers Project: The Identification. (2015). Retrieved from: https://www.dur.ac.uk/archaeology/research/projects/europe/pg-skeletons/find/

Brown, M. (2015). Skeletons found near Durham cathedral were Oliver Cromwell’s prisoners. Retrieved from: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/02/skeletons-durham-cathedral-oliver-cromwell-prisoner

Miller, B. (2015). Durham skeletons were pipe-smoking young prisoners of war kept in cathedral after Battle of Dunbar. Retrieved from: http://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/archaeology/art535961-durham-skeletons-were-pipe-smoking-young-prisoners-war-kept-cathedral-battle-dunbar

Set of sixty miniature heads used in phrenology produced by William Bally in 1832. Image Credit: Science Museum, London via Wikipedia

The Science Museum of London has a set of 60 eerie little plaster heads that look like miniature death masks. Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832), a well-known 19^th century phrenologist, commissioned these bizarre relics to help his students study phrenology. As phrenology became popular in the early 19^th century, practitioners needed reference collections to aid their research. Doctors and anatomists could easily acquire human skulls, often by robbing graves, for their phrenology collections. But the general public wanted affordable cranial libraries of their own and these tiny plaster busts would have satisfied that demand.

Phrenology, meaning study of the mind, was based on the idea that the brain was an organ of the mind. Practitioners believed that the mind has a set of mental faculties that are controlled by different areas of the brain, called brain organs. These “brain organs” could be large or small depending on an individual’s personality traits or intelligence. Phrenologists believed the shape of the skull would correspond to these organs, forming bumps and depressions. They believed that they could ascertain a person’s character and intellect by measuring these cranial features (Aldersey-Williams 2013).

Johann Gaspar Spurzheim. Image credit: Wikipedia.

Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), a neuroanatomist and psychologist, developed phrenology at the end of the 18^th century. Johann Gaspar Spurzheim was Gall’s lecture assistant and dissectionist until he decided to start his own competing system (Aldersey-Williams 2013). It was Spurzheim who coined the term “phrenology,” added to Gall’s list of brain organs, and organized them into a hierarchical system (“Johann Gaspar Spurzheim,” n.d.). His list of organs included: amativeness (physical love), combativeness, secretiveness, individuality, and imitation.

Phrenology chart attributed to Dr. Spurzheim. Lithograph submitted to the Library of Congress by Pendleton’s Lithography, 1834. Image credit: Wikipedia.

Spurzheim helped to commercialize phrenology by lecturing across Europe and America. As the study of phrenology became trendy, his research was published in several languages and went through numerous editions ((“Johann Gaspar Spurzheim,” n.d.). But phrenologists needed more than books and lectures to learn this fashionable “science,” they also wanted to see three-dimensional examples of cranial features.

It was easy for those in the medical field to acquire collections, but people didn’t typically have access to real human skulls. Spurzheim saw this need, so in 1832 he commissioned artist and phrenologist William Bally, who had worked with him since 1829, to scale down a collection of plaster heads that he felt best-represented phrenological traits (Cliff 2014). Because these little busts were based on casts taken from live and dead subjects, each 3-inch head has individualized features. Each miniature bust was numbered and came with a description that was printed by Spurzheim (Cliff 2014).

In 1832, the Phrenological Journal of Miscellany printed a description of “Bally’s Phrenological Specimens”:

“Mr William Bally, artist, has attended Dr Spurzheim since

1829, and, under his direction, composed sixty miniature busts,

each about three inches high, exhibiting the organs in a great

variety of combinations. Many individuals complain of want of

opportunity of acquiring practical skill in observing develop-

ment, and to such persons these specimens will be found a very

valuable acquisition. A printed description, prepared by Dr

Spurzheim, accompanies them; so that by procuring the set,

every one may study Phrenology in his own library, and exer-

cise his eyes in discriminating differences of size and form. This

exercise is of the greatest advantage in acquiring practical skill

and knowledge, and we recommend it strongly to our readers.

The whole set, with descriptions, are sold for two guineas.

We consider this the most valuable contribution which has been

made to the science for several years.

The following are examples of the descriptions

‘No. 13 – A head with Acquisitiveness very large, with the

organs of Alimentiveness, Combativeness, Self-Esteem, and

Firmness, large, and with those of Cautiousness and Conscien-

tiousness very small, and with the organs of the intellectual fa-

culties small.’

‘No. 27- This is the head of a noble philosophic mind,

with predominant organs of the moral and intellectual faculties,

and with the unusual harmony of the animal and human powers;

in short, a head in whose cerebral organization the Christian law

is written.’

‘No. 28 – This head shews the difference between a supe-

rior retreating forehead on the left side, and an inferior perpen-

dicular forehead on the right side, when measured from Con-

structiveness and Benevolence to Individuality. From the same

line backward, both sides are of the same size and form.

‘No. 29 – A very short miserable forehead, unfit for the

manifestations of superior intellect; with the organs of Acqui-

sitiveness, Cautiousness, Reverence, Marvellousness, and Secre-

tiveness, large, while those of Combativeness, Self-Esteem, Hope, and Benevolence, are small.“

In 1951, the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum acquired the set that is now at the Science Museum in London.  Other sets are in the collections at Johns Hopkins University and the Kulturen Museum in Sweden (Cliff 2014).

Despite it’s popularity, phrenology was still controversial in the scientific community.  The Edinburgh Review published a scathing review in June of 1815 by Gall and Spurzheim, The Physiognomical System of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim (as cited in (“Johann Gaspar Spurzheim,” n.d.):

“The writings of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim have not added one fact to the stock of our knowledge respecting either the structure or the functions of man; but consist of such a mixture of gross errors, extravagant absurdities, downright mis-statements, and unmeaning quotations from Scripture as can leave no doubt, we apprehend, in the minds of honest and intelligent men as to the real ignorance, the real hypocrisy, and the real empiricism of the authors… Such is the trash, the despicable trumpery, which two men, calling themselves scientific inquirers, have the impudence gravely to present to the physiologists of the nineteenth century, as specimens of reasoning and induction.”

Phrenology was eventually debunked and discredited but it did influence early forensic scientists like Cesare Lombroso and Alexandre Lacassagne.

Works Cited

Johann Gaspar Spurzheim. Retrieved on September 6, 2015 from: http://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/exhibits/show/talking-heads/johann-gaspar-spurzheim

Aldersey-Williams, H. (2013). Anatomies: A cultural history of the human body. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

Cliff, A. (2014). Coming home – Bally’s miniature phrenological specimens. Retrieved from: http://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/browse/2014/coming-home/

I used to associate decomposing human remains strapped to metal racks with medieval European torture devices. I guess I underestimated the creative and innovative ways in which modern murderers torture and/or dispose of their victim’s bodies. That changed when I read an extract from Justine Ford’s book Unsolved Australia about Rack Man. “Rack Man” is the nickname given to a John Doe whose body was found strapped to a makeshift metal cross when it was pulled from an Australian river about 20 years ago.

Lady Marion with the metal rack on its deck. Image credit: Supplied via News.com.au. Click for full size image.

A fisherman, trawling the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney, got more than he expected when he pulled in his heavy nets the morning of August 11, 1994.  Rather than a large load of fish or junk from the riverbed, the fisherman had hauled in a decomposing body wrapped in plastic bags and tied to rusted metal bars welded into the shape of a crucifix.

The fisherman called the local police, who had the body examined by members of their “Physical Evidence Section.”   Once they confirmed that the corpse was indeed human, they sent the body and rack to the New South Wales Institute of Forensic Science where it was examined by pathologist Dr. Christopher Lawrence. When Lawrence removed the sheets of black plastic he found that there were clothes, hair, soft tissue, and adipocere attached to the remains. He also noticed that the murderer(s) had used wire and orange rope to bind the body to the metal frame.

The examination of the corpse, including the hair, revealed that the remains belonged to a dark-haired, Caucasian male, possibly of Mediterranean or Central European descent.  Lawrence found that Rack Man was between 21 and 46 years old, and likely stood between 5’2” (160cm) and 5’4” (166cm) tall. Lawrence said that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head, but it was not clear if the John Doe had been tied to the metal frame before or after he was killed.

Forensic odontologist Dr. Chris Griffiths at the University of Sydney analyzed the skull and teeth and found that John Doe’s face may have been somewhat “misshapen” and his first lower right molar had been removed when he was younger.

When Emeritus Professor Donald Anderson, of the School of Biological Sciences, also at the University of Sydney, analyzed the growth of the barnacles on the metal frame, he said the rack was likely submerged for less than a year, but would not “rule out” that it could have been longer.

Because decomposition and water erosion caused the victim’s fingerprints to deteriorate and DNA samples to be “poor quality,” checking fingerprint and DNA databases for possible matches was unproductive. So investigators looked into the clothes the John Doe was wearing: an ‘Everything Australian’ polo shirt in a size medium, and ‘No Sweat’ brand sweat pants. But this was also unsuccessful because these items where sold throughout Australia.

Reconstruction of Rack Man’s face from The Doe Network. Image credit: Doe Network.

Forensic anatomist Meiya Sutisno reconstructed Rack Man’s face from the skull. Then Detective Senior Constable Phil Redman from the Physical Evidence Section created some computer-enhanced images and added a few different hairstyles to the artwork to help with identification. The pictures were published in newspapers and broadcast on Australia’s Most Wanted. This lead to a variety of new leads. Some of the most promising tips were those that suggested that the John Doe might be Joe Biviano or Peter Mitris.

In 1993, a convicted drug dealer named Joe Biviano went missing from a suburb near Sydney. Biviano’s description seemed to fit Rack Man’s profile. Biviano was born in 1963 (about 30 years old at the time of his disappearance), he was about 5’4” (165 cm) tall, and had dark hair. Also Biviano’s facial features were similar to the characteristics seen in the reconstruction. But there was no way to make a positive identification because Biviano had no dental records on file and the DNA sample from one of Biviano’s relatives did not match the sample taken from Rack Man’s remains.

Peter Mitris, a Greek businessman who disappeared from King’s Cross in 1991, reportedly died in an eerily similar fashion to Rack Man. Police received information that Mitris “had been bashed to death and his body dumped in the ocean off Sydney.” However, Mitris was much taller than John Doe at around 5’10” (182 cm) and Mitris’s sister said that his teeth looking nothing like John Doe’s.

Unfortunately, the tips that the police received from publishing the facial reconstruction led nowhere. (More leads at the News.com.au article.)

Twenty years later, the case is now in the hands of Detective Chief Inspector John Lehmann from the New South Wales Unsolved Homicide Team. Lehmann hopes that the unique metal rack will help heat up this cold case.

The steel crucifix was constructed using a piece of flat metal that was about 5’10” (1.82m) long with two cylindrical bars welded to it. The bars were reinforced with rods that were bent into a L shape over the corpse. Investigators believe that the person who constructed the rack had access to these materials and the experience to build the crucifix. This would mean that he or she might either be a welder or a metal worker.

Some questions that I have about this case: Because of the size and weight of the rack, was there more than one person involved in the disposal? Because of the weight of the metal rack and the work needed to carry the body to river, was John Doe murdered close to the water? Did the murderer or accessories to this crime have access to a boat in order to transport the rack to the dump spot in the river?

According to Ford’s excerpt, the remains are still at the morgue in Sydney awaiting an identity and hopefully a family to bury him.

Police are offering a “$100000 reward for information leading to the identification of Rack Man and the arrest and conviction of those responsible for his murder.”

H/T: New.com.au

Doe Network Case File

Antoine Wiertz painting entitled Premature Burial. Image credit: Wikipedia

Taphophobia (taphos meaning grave and phobos meaning fear) is the fear of being buried alive and it permeated Europe and America in the 18^th  and 19th centuries.  It was especially bad during cholera and small pox epidemics because people believed some illnesses could leave them in a state that mimicked death.  Americans and Europeans even purchased safety (or security) coffins and used waiting mortuaries to avoid being buried alive.

Taphophobia was reinforced by fictional stories like Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial” and newspaper articles that were purportedly true.  Even doctors reported that they had exhumed graves of people who had been buried alive because it looked like the bodies had moved in the coffins, but this was before forensic scientists understood what happens to a corpse during decomposition.

Most of the newspaper accounts ended in tragedy, but in some stories people survived premature burial because grave robbers played unwitting heroes – probably one of the few times grave robbers were portrayed in a positive light.  Nearly all of these supposedly factual reports were based on local urban legends and unverifiable rumors from other countries.

Below are some extraordinary “true” stories of people who were buried alive, starting with one of the earliest I could find.

The Pennsylvania Gazette February 24, 1729

A Milkwoman’s Daughter at Endfield was

lately buried alive there: When she was going

to be interred, some People at the Funeral,

thought she looked fresh, and taking a Looking-

glass, and applying it to her Lips, they fancied

they perceived a Dew on it as from Breath;

but the cruel Mother mock’d and reviled them,

and swore she should be buried, and so she was;

but this coming to the Ears of a near Relation,

he got the Grave dug up, and the Coffin open’d,

when she was found with her Knees drawn up,

and the Nosegay in her Hand bitten to pieces,

struggling for Life.  A Surgeon was sent for to

bleed her, but it was then too late.

Newbern Sentinel April 3, 1819

Extraordinary Occurrence.

Extract of a letter from Bavaria

“We have witnessed a superb funeral of

the Baron Hornstein, a Courtier; but the

result is what induces me to mention it in

my letter.  Two days after, the workmen

entered the mausoleum, when they wit-

nessed an object which petrified them!

At the door of the sepulcher lay a body

covered with blood—it was the mortal

remains of this favorite of courts and prin-

ces.  The Baron was buried alive!  On

recovering from his trance he had forced

the lid of the coffin, and endeavoured to

escape from a charnel house—it was im-

possible! and therefore, in a fit of desper-

ation, as it is supposed, he dashed his

brains out against the wall.  The royal

family, and indeed the whole city, are

plunged in grief at the horrid catastro-

phe.”

 

Vermont Phoenix January 27, 1837

Terrible.— A foreign paper gives an

account of a melancholy case of premature

internment, which, we hear, lately took place

in Hermannstadt in Transylvania…

Lieutenant Colonel Elsas-

ser, Auditor General of that city, was attack-

ed with cholera, which apparently proved

fatal, and the body was soon after deposited

in a tomb, without any particular examina-

tion having taken place.   On succeeding to

his estate, his heirs missed from his person-

al effects, a valuable ring, which had been

an heir loom in the family for several gener-

ations, and accused a favorite servant of hav-

ing obtained possession of it.  The servant

denied the theft, and said that his master al-

ways wore it on his finger, and that it was

undoubtedly buried with him.  They there-

fore determined to open the tomb, to assure

themselves of the fact, but their astonishment

and horror may be imagined, when they as-

certained from the strongest evidence that the

Colonel had been buried alive; he having

afterwards turned himself in his coffin, and

had actually devoured the flesh from his

arms, through hunger, before he died a dread-

ful death!

The New Bloomfield, PA Times March 15, 1881     

Buried Alive.

From Bucharist there comes a remarka-

ble story illustrating an assurance which,

it is to be feared is too often the case, and

for which there is no remedy except legis-

lation of a proper character.  A young

lady died of small-pox, and according to

the sanitary laws of Roumania she was

buried at once.  As she had been recently

betrothed the presents of her lover were

buried with her, according to the Rou-

manian custom.  These presents consisted

of jewels and they excited the cupidity of

three robbers, who went to the grave at

night and dug up the coffin.  When it

was opened one of the robbers was afraid

to touch the corpse, whereat his fellows

jeered at him.  At this he gave the head

of the corpse a sound cuffing and let it drop.

At the next instant the dead woman arose

and said, “Don’t kill me, I beg you.”

Naturally the robbers fled and the unfor-

tunate girl arose and, crawling from her

grave, went home and was received with

mingled terror and joy.

The Wichita Beacon January 2, 1904

WAS BURIED ALIVE

Experiences of Man Supposed To Have Died

Independence, Mo. Jan. 2.— George

Hayword, a manufacturing jeweler,

died here recently.  He was 82 years of

age.  Until two weeks ago he was strong

and worked every day at his trade.

Mr. Hayward when a young man in

England was buried alive.

 

This is the story of his startling ex-

perience as told by Mr. Hayward:

 

“It was in Marshville, County of

Gloucester, England, where I was

buried.  While helping to haul straw one

day by accident I was struck in the

head with a pitchfork.  It penetrated

my skull and made me feel faint and

dizzy.  Two doctors were called.  One

of them insisted that my condition

was due to a blow on the head and the

other that I had pleurisy…

two weeks elapsed and my eyes closed

in supposed death…

Yet I was painfully conscious of

every movement going around…

 

As soon as the undertaker arrived I

knew I was to be buried alive…

 

Well the time for the funeral ar-

rived and then the burial.

Suddenly the shoveling ceased and the

silence of the tomb was complete.  I

did not seem to have the fear then that

a person would naturally expect under

such circumstances.  All I remember is

that the grave is a lonely place and the

silence of the tomb was horribly op-

pressive.  A dreamy sensation came

over me and a sense of suffocation be-

came apparent.

 

How long I remained in this condi-

tion I do not know.  The first sense of

returning to life came over me when I

heard scraping of a spade on my

coffin lid.  I felt myself raised and

borne away.  I was taken out of my

coffin, not to my home, but to a phy-

sician’s office.  I beheld the doctors who

had waited upon me at my home, dress-

ed in white aprons.  In their hands

they had knives…Both

approached the table and opened my

mouth, when by superhuman effort, my

eyelids were slightly raised.  The next

thing I hear was, ‘Look out, you fool,

he is alive.’

 

“ ‘He’s dead,’ rejoined the other doc-

tor.

 

“‘ See, he opened his eyes,’ continued

the first doctor.  The other physician

let the knife drop and a short time

after that I commenced to recover rap-

idly.  Instead of cutting me up they

took me home…I owed my

life to the doctors’ dispute as to what

ailed me during my illness.”

San Francisco Chronicle January 1, 1906

GHASTLY FIND IN CEMETERY

Bodies of Soldiers Exhumed at

Old Fort Hayes Indicate That

Men Were Buried Alive

Hayes City (Kas.), December 31.

—From Disclosures made this week

in the old burying ground of old Fort

Hayes it is evident that many soldiers

were buried alive there in a cholera

epidemic.  The bodies were now being

moved to Leavenworth, and the fort

is being abandoned as a military re-

serve.

 

Coffins were dug up that give evi-

dences of the frightful struggles of

the inmates for life.  Some of the

bodies had turned over; others had

the legs drawn up to the neck; others

were grasping the hair.  In the epi-

demic the health laws required thee

immediate burial of victims, and this

ghastly evidence indicates that a large

number of cholera patients were alive

when buried.

The Vampire by Sir Philip Burne-Jones, ca. 1897. Image credit: Wikipedia

According to Paul Barber, author of Vampires, Burial & Death, there are two types of vampires: folkloric and fictional. Fictional vampires are supernatural creatures seen in movies and television with = pale skin and long sharp teeth. The fictional vampire was popularized by Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) but was influenced by the folkloric revenants of Central and Eastern European cultures.

For the Slavic people an upir, or ubir, was an unclean spirit that possessed a decomposing corpse. While the Romanians believed that a strigoi was made when a troubled or mischievous person dies. Both the upir and strigoi returned to drink the blood of relatives and fellow villagers, which eventually caused illness or death. These revenant traditions likely evolved out of a misunderstanding of disease transmission and post-mortem decomposition.

If a village was struck by a disease epidemic, many Europeans believed that the first person to die had become a vampire and was attacking their village causing additional deaths. To confirm a case of vampirism, villagers exhumed the suspected revenant’s grave. If the corpse had a bloated chest, sloughing skin, discoloration of the face, bloody mouth, long fingernails, or was in a state of inexplicable preservation then the diagnosis of vampirism was confirmed.

Forensic scientists now know that during decomposition bodies bloat because of a buildup of gas produced by bacteria, skin slips off, skin discolors because of marbling and livor mortis, dark purge fluid escapes orifices, skin around fingernails retracts making them seem to grow longer, and if a body is buried in the cold ground during winter it will likely take longer to decompose. Almost any corpse would be considered a vampire if it was exhumed at the right time.

At the end of the 19^th century there was a well-documented vampire panic in New England. The folkloric vampire of New England was very similar to its European counterpart, likely because of the immigrants that settled in the area. People in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont believed that their dead relatives were rising from the grave to spread consumption, or tuberculosis, to the living. Sledzik and Bellantoni estimate that there are 12 documented accounts of vampiric attacks in New England, in 11 of those 12 attacks consumption was noted as a cause of death.

Tuberculosis is caused by a bacterium from the genus Mycobaterium, two of which infect humans: M. tuberculosis and M. bovis. M. tuberculosis, also known as consumption, infects the lungs, and is spread via contaminated bodily fluids (i.e. saliva or mucus) that are dispersed during a cough or a sneeze.  Symptoms include chronic cough, coughing up blood and mucus, fever, weakness night sweats, and weight loss. Once in the lungs the infection can spread through the blood stream to other parts of the body, including bones.

Tuberculosis is a disease historically associated with poverty, overcrowding, and malnutrition.  It’s also a disease that would have spread among multi-generational families living under one roof. Tuberculosis was a major cause of death of humans from the 17th to 19th centuries.

The fear that vampires were causing the death of consumptive relatives was so widespread that the president of the Washington Anthropological Society, George R. Stetson, wrote an article titled “The Animistic Vampire in New England” that was published in the 1896 edition of the American Anthropologist.

“In New England the vampire superstition is unknown by its proper name. It is there believed that consumption is not a physical but a spiritual disease, obsession, or visitation; that as long as the body of a dead consumptive relative has blood in its heart it is proof that an occult influence steals from it for death and is at work draining the blood of the living into the heart of the dead and causing his rapid decline.”

These New Englanders believed that the only way to stop these vampiric attacks and the spread of consumption was to dig up the suspected vampire and render it incapable of rising out of its coffin by burning its organs or body or beheading it. The vampire slayings of New England are documented in newspapers and even in the archaeological record.

“The Vampire”, lithograph by R. de Moraine (1864). Image credit: Wikipedia.

In November if 1990 children playing near a gravel mine in Griswold, CT discovered an abandoned cemetery used by the Walton family in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The skeletal remains of 29 people were examined by Paul Sledzik, a forensic anthropologist who worked at the National Museum Health and Medicine in D.C., and Nicholas Bellantoni, an archaeologist with the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History. In their article, published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Sledzik and Bellantoni argue that the bones in burial #4 displayed signs of a vampiric slaying.

The body in burial #4 was interred in a coffin with “JB-55” spelled in brass tacks on the lid. The bones belonged to a male between 50 and 55 years old who died in the early to mid-1800’s. J.B.’s skull and femora had been rearranged in a “skull and crossbones” on top of his ribs. Sledzik and Bellantoni also found lesions in the ribs, consistent with a chronic pulmonary infection like tuberculosis.

The “Jolly Roger” assembly of JB’s bones suggests that there was very little soft tissue left on the corpse when the body was unearthed the first time, which meant that there were no organs to burn to stop vampiric activity. Sledzik and Bellantoni “hypothesize” that the body was beheaded as an alternative to burning the heart.

Vampyr by Edvard Munch (1895) Image credit: Wikipedia.

On May 30, 1854 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported on a “strange superstition” found in the Norwich Courier. Horace Ray of Griswold, CT had three sons. Horace died of consumption around 1846, followed by two of his sons soon after. When the third boy was diagnosed with tuberculosis, friends and family of his two dead brothers broke into their cemetery in Jewett City, exhumed their bodies, and burned their remains.

“The Norwich, Conn., Courier relates a strange and almost incredible tale of superstition recently enacted in Jewett City, in that vicinity. About six years ago, Horace Ray, of Griswold, died of consumption. Since that time two of his children, grown up people, have died of the same disease, that last one dying some years since. Not long ago the same fatal disease seized upon another son, whereupon it was determined to exhume the bodies of the two brothers already dead, and burn them because the dead were supposed to feed upon the living; and so long as the dead body remained in a state of decomposition, either wholly or in part, surviving members of the family must continue to furnish the sustenance on which that dead body fed. Acting under the influence of this strange and blind superstition, the family and friends of the deceased proceeded to the burial ground at Jewett City on the 8^th inst., dug up the dead bodies of the deceased brothers, and burned them on the spot. It seems impossible to believe that such dark ignorance and folly could exist in the middle of the 19^th century, and in a state calling itself enlightened and Christian.”

Grave stone of Mercy Brown. Image credit: Wikipedia.

Mercy Lena Brown lived in a farming community near Exeter, RI. Her mother and sister died of consumption in 1882 and 1883, respectively. Then Mercy died from the same disease when she was 19 years old on January 17, 1892.

Mercy’s brother Edwin had contracted tuberculosis before she passed, but worsened shortly after her death. Friends of Mercy’s family spoke to her father, George, and suggested that one of the deceased Brown women had turned into a vampire and was feeding on Edwin. The locals asked George to exhume the bodies of his wife and two daughters to see if their hearts contained fresh blood, one of the telltale signs of vampirism.

On March 17, 1892 the corpses of the three women were unearthed in front of a reporter from the Providence Journal. The bodies of Mercy’s mother and sister were reduced to bones so they were eliminated as suspects. When Mercy’s body was disinterred, about three months after her death, the villagers discovered that the body was well preserved. When her heart was removed and cut open it was found that it still had “clotted and decomposed blood.”

The villagers were convinced that Mercy’s preserved body and bloody heart (although not fresh) was evidence she was a vampire. So they burned her heart and liver and fed Edwin the ashes in the hopes that the cremated organs would treat his consumption. All of this was for nothing because Edwin died a few weeks later.

After Mercy’s much publicized exhumation, George Stetson went to Rhode Island to inquire about the vampire panic in the area. He used the information from this trip to write his 1896 article.

An artistic impression of mellified man. Image from Wikipedia.

Corpse medicine was a type of remedy produced with the bones, organs, and blood from dead bodies. It is mentioned in ancient medical texts and histories from Greece, China, Mesopotamia, and India. One of the more peculiar accounts of corpse medicine comes from the 16^th century Chinese materia medica, also known as the Bencao gangmu, written by Li-Shih-chen.

In the Bencao gangmu, Li-Shih-chen describes an ancient Arabic recipe to make a medicine called “mellified man.” To make “mellified man,” an elderly man volunteered to mummify himself from the inside out with honey until he died, then his corpse was placed in a coffin filled with honey. After 100 years, his coffin was opened so his remains were harvested for medicine.

“In Arabia there are men 70 to 80 years old who are willing to give their bodies to save others. The subject does not eat food, he only bathes and partakes of honey. After a month he only excretes honey (the urine and feces are entirely honey) and death follows. His fellow men place him in a stone coffin full of honey in which he macerates. The date is put upon the coffin giving the year and month. After a hundred years the seals are removed. A confection is formed which is used for the treatment of broken and wounded limbs. A small amount taken internally will immediately cure the complaint.” (p. 221 as quoted in Stiff my Mary Roach)

Li-Shih-chen states that he does not know if the report of “mellified man” is true, and there is no archaeological proof (that I know of) of the practice. But there is plenty of evidence that corpses were harvested for medicine, honey was used for medicine and embalming, and self-mummification were each practiced separately.

Corpse Medicine

Apothecary containers for axungia hominis (human fat), ca. 17th or 18th century. Image from Wikipedia

For hundreds of years, cultures from all over the world used corpse medicine to treat all kinds of illnesses and injuries including bruises, coughs, palsy, and vertigo.

English physicians treated Henry VIII with medicines made from mummies and the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis of 1618 includes preparations made with mummies. So from the 12^th to the 18^th centuries, mummies were commonly sold in European apothecaries. But the use of mummies in medieval medicine may have been caused by a tragic misinterpretation.

Naturally occurring bitumen, that Persians called mumiya, was used by ancient physicians in medications for all kinds of illnesses. Because Egyptian embalming resins looked similar to bitumen, artificially preserved bodies from Egypt became known as mummies. Historians believe medieval physicians began to use Egyptian mummies in prescriptions because they either mistook the word for naturally occurring bitumen for mummified corpses, or they simply used crushed mummies when naturally occurring bitumen became scarce.

Honey as Medicine and Embalming Fluid

Painting titled The Death of Alexander, by Karl von Piloty 1886. Image from Wikipedia.

Honey makes a great “natural bandage” that prevents the growth of bacteria because it contains a small amount of hydrogen peroxide, can draw moisture out of wounds, and is extremely acidic. Ancient Sumerians and Egyptians used honey to treat skin diseases and protect wounds from infection.

The factors that make honey a good treatment for wounds also make it a good embalming material. In The History, Herodotus described how the ancient Assyrians embalmed their dead with honey.  The body of Alexander the Great (356 B.C.-323 B.C.) was supposedly submerged in a golden sarcophagus filled with honey so that his corpse could be displayed.

Self-Mummification

Luang Phor Daeng Payasilo, the mumified monk, at Wat Khunaram, Ko Samui, southern Thailand. Image from Wikipedia.

Buddhist monks in Japan, Russia, Mongolia, and Thailand practiced ritual self-mummification, known as Sokushinbutsu, from the 11^th-20^th centuries. That monk’s efforts were respected but his body was not revered. The ritual of self-mummification was a way for monks to defeat suffering and achieve enlightenment through meditation and deprivation.

One of the best-known self-mummification rituals was practiced by the Shingon Buddhists of Japan. This ritual involved years of starvation and dehydration to eliminate moisture and kill the bacteria that hasten decomposition. During the first three years, a monk decreased his body fat by eating only nuts, seeds, and berries, while increasing his physical activity. Towards the end of the ritual, the monk only consumed bark, roots, and stones.

Self-mummification was further aided by drinking toxic herbs and tea made from the urushi tree, also known as the Chinese lacquer tree, which eliminated bodily fluids and killed bacteria.

The monk was placed in the lotus position inside a coffin or a tomb when he was close to death. The monk chanted and rang a bell until he died, and when his fellow monks heard silence, they completely sealed the tomb. After several years, monks exhumed the body to see if the self-mummification ritual was successful. If the body was incorrupt then the corpse was placed in a temple and treated like a holy relic.  If the body had decayed, then the corpse was left behind and the tomb was resealed.

H/T: Gizmodo

Comparison of the Venus de Milo (considered an ideal form in the 19th century) and the Victorian women affected by corseting. Image credit: Lucy’s corsetry.

H/T: Dr. Kristina Killgrove’s article “Here’s How Corsets Deformed The Skeletons Of Victorian Women” on Forbes.

For centuries people have deformed their skeletons to mold different parts of their bodies to what is considered an ideal shape in their culture.   Long-term corseting, also called tightlacing, alters the shape of the ribs and vertebrae to produce a tiny wasp-like waist.  This form of extreme body modification was practiced in Europe from the 16th to the early 20th centuries.  It faced some backlash in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries when physicians breathlessly declared that corseting posed a risk to the health of women and could cause death. Rebecca Gibson, an anthropologist at American University, researched the relationship between corsets, skeletal changes, and age at death to see if corseting was really all that deadly.

Eugène Atget, Boulevard de Strasbourg, Corsets, Paris, 1912. Image credit: Paris 16 on Wikipedia.

Corsets of the 16^th century were a two-panel underbodice called a “payre of bodies” that molded the torso into a cylinder. 17th century corsets were designed to give the torso a “cone-like shape” and were made from two pieces of boned fabric.  Victorian Era corsets reached below the waist and were made of steel boning that molded the torso into an exaggerated hourglass shape.  Women wore these confining garments for most of their lives starting when they were girls, some even wore them while they were pregnant.

Two sketches depicting what the anatomical changes and deformities caused by corsets (ca. 1894). Image credit: Haabet on Wikipedia. ({{PD-1923}} – published before 1923 and public domain in the US.)

But many physicians, like Ludovic O’Followell in Le Corset (1908), claimed that corsets caused a slew of health problems like hysteria (my favorite), heart palpitations, internal bleeding, and even death.  While O’Followell advocated for “a less severe design,” others wanted to see tightlacing abolished altogether.

Were these claims true to just a bunch of hot air?

Recently in The Canadian Student Journal of Anthropology, Rebecca Gibson examined corsets and skeletal remains deformed by corsets, to investigate the relationship between long-term corseting and skeletal changes, as well as corseting and life expectancy.

The skeletal remains used for this research came from the Muséum national d’Histoure naturelle in the Musée de l’Homme in Paris and the Centre for Human Bioarchaeology at the Museum of London.  Gibson measured rib cages and vertebrae of individuals with corset deformities, and photographed the skeletal indicators of age of individuals who lived between 1700 and 1900 CE.   To help determine the physical effects of corseting, Gibson examined a sample of corsets from different economic levels of the same period held at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s textile collection.

An example of ribs deformed by corseting. Photograph from Dr. O’Followell’s Le Corset showing a rib cage deformed by a corset (ca. 1908). Image credit: Haabet on Wikipedia.. ({{PD-1923}} – published before 1923 and public domain in the US.)

Gibson examined seven skeletons from the Paris collection and 17 from the London collection and found the following:

• The rib cages were approximately circular
• The ribs were compressed into an “s-shape” with the sternal ends pushed downwards.
• The spinous processes of the vertebrae were pushed away from the centerline of the back.

Gibson states that these bone deformities are “inconsistent with other types of documented damage, such as rickets/osteomalacia, ankylosing spondylitis, osteogenesis imperfecta, and congenital deformities.”

Using corsets from 1700-1900 in the Victoria and Albert Collection, Gibson determined that the average waist of women in the UK during this period was 56.33 cm, or 22 inches.  While the waist size of modern women in the UK, according to a 2001 survey, was 86cm, or about 33 inches,

According to life expectancy data used by Gibson, the life expectancy at birth in France from 1745-1905 was 25-49 years. In England, from 1706-1901 life expectancy at birth was 35-50 years. Gibson states that the skeletal indicators of age showed that these women, despite deformities and an unnaturally small waist lines, met or exceeded life expectancy at birth, and, in some cases, average at death.

However, she is careful to mention that her examination does not speak to the quality of life of these women.  There is no doubt that long-term corseting was super uncomfortable, made it difficult to breath, and moved organs around.

Although there is little proof that corseting was as deadly as 19th century physicians claimed, more research is still necessary to prove tightlacing did not have an effect on the life span of the wearer.   Gibson’s study had a relatively small sample size of 24, and the age estimations for some individuals have a large range.  Also, more precise data on life expectancy at birth and age at death is needed, if it exists for this period.

Gibson states, “We need to piece together what it meant to live in and be changed by a corset, something women did on a daily basis and which impacted every part of their lives, using a multi-disciplinary approach. This approach must use history and anthropology, as well as women’s own words, to draw a clear picture of this important era that so greatly influences the way we speak, act, and think today.”

Read Rebecca Gibson’s paper in its entirety here.

After Saint Nicholas’ bones were looted from his tomb in Turkey about 700 years after he died, cities in Italy and Ireland claimed to have stolen the bones. For centuries there was debate about which city is home to the grave of beloved Old Saint Nick. While the Basilica di San Nicola in Bari, Italy was widely accepted to be home to the relics of Saint Nicholas, there were two other cities that alleged to possess the grave of St. Nicholas: Venice, Italy and Newtown Jerpoint, Ireland.

Saint Nicholas was born around 270 AD to a wealthy family in the village of Patara in modern Turkey. He became well-known for his charitable nature because he gave away his fortune to help the sick and the poor. Nicholas was so famous for his kindness that he eventually became the basis for the Santa Claus legend. He was eventually elected Bishop of Myra, a Roman city in modern day Turkey, despite not being a priest at the time, possibly because his uncle previously held the position.

The original tomb of St. Nicholas in Myra. Image credit: Caricato da Panas on Wikipedia.

In 1087, sailors from Bari, Italy traveled to Myra and visited the tomb of St. Nicholas with an ulterior motive-steal the relics and bring them back to Italy. Some believe the Christian sailors stole the skeletal remains to save them from the invading Muslim Seljuk Turks, while others think they were stolen to bring money from the lucrative pilgrimage industry to Bari.

The tomb of Saint Nicholas in Bari, Italy. Image credit: LooiNL on Wikipedia.

The bones continued to secrete the famous manna in the new tomb in Bari.   Since 1980, the liquid is harvested from the bottom of the tomb on May 9th, the Feast of the Translation of S. Nicholas from Myra to Bari.

In 1957, Luigi Martino, an anatomy professor at the University of Bari, led a team that carefully examined and documented St. Nicholas’ bones in Bari. The skull was in pretty good condition but the rest of the bones were fragmented and fragile. Martino found that these remains belonged to an elderly man between 72 and 80 years old, which fit Nicholas’ age at death of about 75 years old.

But for centuries Venetians claimed that the church of San Nicolò al Lido also possessed the bones of St. Nicholas. They believed that when troops sailed from Venice to fight in the First Crusade in 1099 they stopped off in Myra. During this visit, these sailors visited St. Nicholas Church and robbed the saint’s tomb and stole an urn with an inscription, “Here lies the Great Bishop Nicholas, Glorious on Land and Sea.”

The ships returned to Venice in 1101, after the First Crusade ended, with the some St. Nicholas’ remains. The bones were ultimately interred in a funerary monument at San Nicoló al Lido.

For centuries Bari and Venice had a heated dispute over who really had Nicholas’ bones. So Luigi Martino, the anatomist who examined the bones in Bari in 1957, was allowed to look at the Venetian bones in 1992 to settle the debate.   He discovered that the Venetian bones were broken into “as many as 500” pieces that were brittle and delicate. The bone fragments in Venice were in the same poor condition as the bones in Bari.

Martino found that the skeletal remains in Bari and Venice are likely from the same man because the pieces of bone stored at San Nicoló al Lido were fragments of body parts missing from the body interred at Bari. It’s thought that the Venetian sailors stole the fragmented bones left behind after the Barian theft in 1087. The Venetian bones, however, reportedly don’t secrete manna.

The grave slab of St. Nicholas at Jerpoint Abbey in Ireleand. Image credit: Fiddawn on Wikipedia.

In another story, the de Frainets helped to steal Saint Nicholas’ relics from Myra and brought them to Bari, a time when the town was under the control of French Normans.  When the Normans were pushed out of Bari, the de Frainets moved to Nice, France and took Saint Nicholas’ remains with them. The relics remained in France until the Normans lost power in the area.

Nicholas de Frainet brought the bones to Newtown Jerpoint, a medieval town where his family owned land. Nicholas de Frainet built a Cistercian Abbey at Jerpoint where St Nicholas’s remains were buried in 1200. Although Newtown Jerpoint is deserted, the abbey is stands.

While this theory seems to be a tactic to draw pilgrims to the area, there is a bit of credibility to the Irish claim. At Jerpoint Abbey there is a grave slab that seems to depict the body of St. Nicholas and carvings of the heads of two Knights, Den and de Frainet, who stole the relics from Bari.

The Turkish government seems to believe the Italian claims to possess the elderly bishop’s bones. Since 2009, the Turkish Ministry of Culture has repeatedly petitioned the Italian government and the Vatican for the return of Saint Nicholas’ bones because they were illegally obtained.

Ghost ships are vessels found adrift at sea with its crew either dead or missing under mysterious circumstances. They appear in folklore and historical accounts. Probably the most famous fictional ghost ship is the Flying Dutchman, the legend of which dates to the 18^th century. Phantom vessels like the Mary Celeste, the HMS Resolute, and the SS Orang Medan are also very real occurrences that have been sighted throughout history.   So it’s no surprise that ghost ships have been found in the waters near Japan, what’s shocking is the frequency they have been recovered.

The Japanese Coast Guard has reported 34 ghost ships in 2015, 65 vessels in 2014, and 80 in 2013.

According to CNN, over the past two months more than a dozen ghost ships, carrying the remains of at least 22 people, have been found off the coast of Japan. All of the bodies were male but no documents have been recovered to help identify the remains. Most of the corpses were so badly decomposed it was difficult or impossible to determine the cause of death. One wooden boat, found adrift at the end of November, carried seven bodies that were so decayed that some of the skulls had separated from the bodies.

The Japan Times reported that most of these boats are “primitive-looking motorized” ships with fishing equipment and nets. The heavy wooden boots are about 10 to 12 meters (32 to 39 feet) long and were not equipped with GPS navigation.

A clue for the origins of these macabre ships was found on a vessel discovered off the west coast of Japan on November 20th. This ghost ship, which contained the remains of 10 people, had markings that indicated that it belonged to the Korean People’s Army, North Korea’s military defense force, and pieces of material that looked like a North Korean flag.

Some, like John Nilsson-Wright, head of the Asia program at the Chatham House policy institute, thinks these ships are carrying North Korean defectors who chose to flee via ship “because the traditional routes are being more closely monitored.” (via The Guardian and The Washington Post).

Others believe these ghost ships are the result of orders from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un for increased food production. According to reports, Kim demanded an increased supply of seafood and established incentives for larger hauls, which would either be given to members of the military or exported to China.   But when North Korean fisherman chose to sell their catches to China for more money, North Korean soldiers either decided to catch their own fish or hired civilian fisherman to make more money.

Either way, these North Korean fishermen or soldiers took risks further out to sea in vessels that were not suited for prolonged trips and the crews of these ghost ships likely died of exposure and/or hunger.

The human bone chandelier at the Cabaret du Néant. Image credit: billyjane via Flickr.

Patrons from far and wide came to sip drinks with names like Cholera and Arsenic while sitting at a coffin under a real human bone chandelier in the Cabaret of Death, a peculiar Parisian watering hole that opened in the early 1890’s. The Cabaret of Death was in the eccentric Montmartre neighborhood near the divine Cabaret of the Sky (Cabaret du Ciel), the wicked Cabaret of the Inferno (Cabaret de l’Enfer), and the infamous Moulin Rouge!. The owner eventually changed the name of the tavern to the Cabaret of Nothingness (Cabaret du Néant) to make it palatable for the locals.

The Cabaret du Néant was famous for its macabre decorations and optical illusions. In 1899, Ellsworth Douglass visited the Cabaret du Néant and wrote about the morbid décor and special effects in a review for the Royal Magazine. Below are excerpts from his article entitled “Jesting with Death.”

Entrance, ordering, and all the skeletons

The tavern room at the Cabaret du Néant, ca. 1920’s. Image credit: Casas-Rodríguez Collection via Flickr.

When customers entered the Cabaret du Néant they were greeted by hosts dressed in long black robes who spoke in somber tones. Patrons were ushered into the tavern area where they were asked to choose from drinks named after poisons and diseases. A human bone chandelier was hung in the center of this room, coffins were used as tables, and an articulated skeleton was treated like an honored guest by the customers.

If you are seeing the night sights of Paris, sooner or later you will be taken to a certain cabaret, and the moment you pass its black portals you will hear these startling exclamations. And woe to the visitor who is touchy, thin-skinned, or squeamish, who holds death in awe, or who understands French too well! The proprietor (who may be seen in a monk’s robe) has taken the trouble, by means of public notices on his walls, to beg impressionable people, those with affections of the heart, or having an insufficient groundling in philosophy, to go somewhere else to drink

A low room, shrouded in black, and filled with tarnished, varnished coffins, is what you see first. Gathered about these are groups of Parisian triflers and curious travellers, drinking their consommations from the coffin-tops. You must find a seat by one, and you must order some refreshment, whether you consume it or not. You must also be willing to pass over the jokes and gibes of the proprietor, his attendants, and your neighbors, which they are sure to crack at your expense. If you are asked to fill the glass of the grinning skeleton next to you do it cheerfully, and you may even offer him a light for the cigarette which he has in his other hand, or a bit of tobacco to fill the bowl of the clay pipe he holds between his gibbering teeth!

Before you have been seated long, a waiter, robed and cowled in black, comes to ask you in a lugubrious tones whether you will have arsenic, cholera, the pestilence, or merely some fresh sighs-of-the-dying! When in doubt, order strychnine. And if you are thirsty, drink it! People have been known to take it with pleasure and survive it, for that term is merely local slang for a bock of lager, which costs but sixpence ha’penny. If you prefer vermouth, you order cholera; while pestilence stands for absinthe, and sighs-of-the-dying are harmless sandwiches!

Hidden skeletons in the paintings

The paintings that were hung in the tavern seemed to depict ordinary scenes of Parisian life. But once the proprietor called attention to them, the people in the images were transformed into skeletons.

An attendant has now mounted a stool to call the attention of the company to the queer pictures on the walls of this room. They are all innocent enough to begin with, but the figures have a queer way of dying before your eyes. The first represents Pierrot on a house-top in a serenade to the moon. Young, handsome and gay he is, but by a sudden illumination of electric lights behind the canvas, the colouring laid on thinnest is no longer seen and it has become a Serenade to Death. The hatch in the roof has turned to a tombstone and the chimney tops beyond, to crosses.

The next picture shows the Heights of Montmarte, with the new cathedral in dim outline. In the foreground are editors, bankers, actors, theatre-directors, all in a heated argument or some sort. Then the lights behind melt out all the life from the picture, and leave a group of wildly gesticulating skeletons, while Montmarte has turned to fairies, and we see that old Father Time himself is dead. This picture reminds me of Carlyle’s conceit in “Sartor Resartus,” where he sees pontiffs in their resplendent robes, dignitaries in their stately trappings, ill-clad underlings, judges in wig and gown, pompous bailiffs, and ragged criminals, and points out how clothes make the man. Then suddenly he sees the clothes fall from them, and behold they are all like one another! These pictures have a Rontgenray way about them, which melts not only clothing but also the flesh out of sight.

Whether the designer of the pictures had Carlyle’s “Sartor Resartus” in mind or not, he has at least called upon two great writers to lend their support to the fundamental idea of this café. On one wall is Shakespeare’s celebrated query: “To be, or not to be?” whilst on another is Schopenhauer’s dictum: “Life is a folly which death repairs!” Even Death itself is called upon to give light on the subject, for in the middle of the room is a chandelier made whole of human bones and skulls, as shown in our photograph.

But there is another picture yet to be seen. It represents the gay frivolity of a hall in Montmarte. The acme of contrast is reached when the orchestra, the dancing students, the frolicking girls, and everything in the rowdy picture turns to grinning, capering skeletons. The rosettes around the orchestra stand changed to gaping skulls, and the huge arms of the old mill itself turn to a counterfeit of the human framework.

An 1896 issue of Scientific American discusses this trick and proposed that it was accomplished using a “transparency” in front of a “normal” painting. When the lights behind the paintings are turned on, the “normal” art faded away and the skeletons on the transparency are slowly revealed.

The Room of Disintegration

The Room of Disintegration at the Cabaret du Néant.

When the patrons finished their drinks they were led to the Room of Disintegration. Once seated, a person from the audience was asked to come on stage and stand in a coffin. This person seemed to magically decompose into a skeleton then evaporate into dust.

This is known as a Pepper’s ghost illusion. During a Pepper’s ghost optical trick, objects seem to transform into other things or appear to fade in or out. Simply put, the illusion was accomplished with a strategically placed piece of glass and a hidden room. The glass is placed at an angle on the stage so that it will reflect a view of a hidden room. When the lighting in the hidden room is increased and the lights on the stage are dimmed, the objects in the hidden room are reflected on the glass making them seem to appear like magic.

Having consumed your strychnine, you are now ready to push through the subterranean passages to the Room of Disintegration, where, if you wish, you may test how it feels to have your flesh melt and your bones dry and wither to a skeleton, and then to have your very elementary framework crumble to dust and disappear entirely. If you do not care to undergo this experience personally, you will at least, see it happen to some one else and before your very eyes.

You have been ushered through a narrow, black passage to a second sombre room, where you find a seat on one of the benches. If you wish to see the ghastly illusion at its best, find a seat as near the middle as possible as possible; but if you would avoid it, take the end of a bench and turn your gaze to the side walls. A monk sits in front of a wheezy little organ and commands the attendant, who is dressed as an executioner, to take the top off the ‘domino-box.’  Obeying he uncovers a coffin which stands on end inside a little niche in the wall. Then the monk addresses us:

“Beloved Macabres, you have at last arrived at that point in your careers where you are to leave your souls behind you. While we must require this, yet we are willing that you should be a witness to the process. Is there anyone in the company so sick of existence that he will take his place in the domino-box and undergo immediate disintegration? Have no fear! It is not only perfectly painless, but it is the only real state of happiness.”

Thus exhorted, a young man rises from the benches to try the experiment, and the monk cries out to him:

“Bid your friends an eternal farewell! Compose yourself and think on higher things. Now step into the wooden overcoat, please. It could not fit your better had it been made to measure! Now the shroud please! Cover him with it, all but the face. Are you prepared? Die then!”

The creaky organ begins a creepy funeral march; the light in the room is faint but is strongest on the man in the coffin. It pales a little and his face turns a sickly green.

“He perishes! May he rest in peace!” cries the monk, and the organ groans louder. Some women look away when the man’s teeth begin to show through his lips. Then his jaw bones show through his drawn cheeks and finally his whole skeleton is seen through the white shroud. Little by little the process goes on, as the lights upon him grow dimmer, until finally he has melted away before our eyes and only the grim skeleton remains the box.

But it does not end there. The skeleton itself seems gradually to fade, its gaunt outlines melt and it becomes a mere shadowy suggestion of the human framework; and presently the last vestige of it vanishes, and the coffin, which has been all the time in our full view, is now perfectly empty!

The success of the Cabaret du Néant inspired versions in the U.S.  One of the establishments that I could find pictures of is the Catacombs Nightclub in Ohio, which decorated its walls with plasters skulls and fake mummies.