Wild boy's bones

The British government has taken measures to protect the grave of a famous feral child, "Peter the Wild Boy." He was brought from Germany, where he was found, to live in the court of King George I. When his novelty wore off, Peter was entrusted to the care of farmer James Fenn, and supported by a generous allowance from the Crown. His age was estimated at 72 when he died in 1785. He was buried in St. Mary's, Northchurch In Hertfordshire, and his grave was marked by a stone (photo here) paid for by the locals. More than 200 years later, flowers are regularly placed at the site.

 

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Helen Sclair

Here is Helen Sclair (1st image, a screen grab from a 2008 interview on WTTW Chicago), here (2nd image) is a close-up of her grave marker, and here is the photograph I would have preferred to use. "The Cemetery Lady" (1930-2010) was a hero of the group Loren Rhoads and I belong to - the Association for Gravestone Studies - although I never had the pleasure of meeting her. The well-known cemetery historian held seminars, led tours, and wrote columns to promote the fact that burial grounds are valuable places, rich with art and history. Her fascination with cemeteries dated to her childhood: her Mom died shortly after her birth and she told Studs Terkel that "the first thing my foster family did was take me to visit my mother's grave down in southern Illinois." After a career as a schoolteacher, Helen became known as an advocate of the dead. “People seem to be somewhat afraid of death,” she said, “But if you look closely you'd be amazed at what you'll find in cemeteries. You step back in time and you cross oceans.” Her research at Northeastern Illinois University illuminated Chicago's early years, sharpening knowledge of immigration patterns and leading her to believe that old bones remain buried beneath Lincoln Park. Helen's own cremated remains are interred in Chicago's Bohemian National Cemetery, not far from where she had lived since 2001 in the caretaker's cottage. “It's been wonderful. I live with death on a daily basis.” Like me, she resided in a "museum" of her own making, with coffins in the dining room (one from the 1940s fit for a baby, a wicker model from the 1920s, and a Civil War-era pine casket), a copper-lined burial vault in her living room, and morbid masks on her walls (a death mask from notorious Chicago bank robber John Dillinger and paraphernalia from the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration). The latest issue of the AGS publication Markers details some of her quirks and more of her treasures: a funeral home guestbook stand, casket catalogs, cemetery postcards, memorial cares, a teacup from Princess Charlotte's funeral in 1817, a handkerchief from the 1910 funeral of King Edward VII, and a misspelled cemetery sign. As her obituary writers noted last year, her address remains unchanged. Rest in peace, Helen!

Head of Henri IV

Well-loved King Henri IV of France (1553-1610) narrowly escaped the death suffered by thousands of Protestants who had gathered for his wedding to his 1st wife, Marguerite of Valois (1553-1615) in 1572. The king (1st image) was on his way to the coronation ceremony of his 2nd wife Marie de' Medici (1575-1642) in 1610 when he was killed by an assassin (2nd image). Henri was laid to rest in the Basilica of Saint Denis (3rd image), but during the French Revolution in 1793, the royal graves were desecrated. Revolutionaries chopped off Henri's head before dumping his body in a mass grave with the other kings and queens. His embalmed head was snatched and has remained in private hands ever since. It is now mummified (photos here), with soft tissues and internal structures intact. Although the DNA from the few hairs remaining on his chin was too degraded to analyze, 19 researchers in France have announced that they have identified the head through other means:

• Radiocarbon testing confirms that the head dates from the 17th c.
• A healed bone fracture above the upper left jaw matches a stab wound the king suffered during a 1594 assassination attempt.
• The lobe of the left ear is pierced and he is depicted wearing an earring.
• A dark lesion observed above the right nostril is seen in many of the king's portraits.
• Perfumers on the team used their professionally trained noses to identify specific embalming substances noted in an autopsy report written by the king's surgeon.
• A digital facial reconstruction from all known portraits of Henry IV and his death mask matches CT scans of the skull.

Next year, France will hold a national funeral for Henry IV, after which his head will be replaced in his tomb in Saint Denis.

Ulysses S. Grant, postmortem

The 1st photograph shows American Civil War general and 18th president Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) in the prime of life and the 2nd photograph shows him at the end of his life, penning his memoirs. He had withdrawn to a cottage in Saratoga County, New York, after learning he had throat cancer, and died just days after finishing his well-received autobiography. Here is what happened to his body.... Grant died, medicated against the pain and emaciated by the illness, on a July morning. The sad news began spreading by telegraph within minutes, after which expressions of sympathy began pouring in - including one from President Grover Cleveland - and dense crowds formed around the cottage. The mayor of New York wired an offer of a site in any of the city's parks for a tomb. The doctors in attendance asked his family twice about performing an autopsy, but they refused on both occasions. Sculptor Karl Gerhardt was on hand 20 minutes after Grant's demise to make a death mask. Local undertaker Ebenezer Holmes was summoned and arrived within hours to prepare the body until clergyman and undertaker Rev. Stephen J. Merritt could arrive from New York City. Holmes placed Grant's remains on ice in the corpse cooler that he had patented in 1878. Grant had left explicit instructions before his death that his body should be embalmed, so that it would not decompose in the summer heat before the funeral could be arranged. Holmes therefore carried out the relatively new procedure of arterial embalming over the next two days. The body - said to look very natural by some of the estimated 300 people who viewed it - remained at the cottage, guarded by the military, for 2 weeks, when a local funeral service was held. A polished red cedar coffin had arrived from Rochester on July 29th and in it the remains were transported by train to Albany, where Grant lay in state in the state capitol for 3 days and 2 nights. By then, conflicting accounts described the body as discolored, deteriorating, and somewhat disheveled from the journey. The press criticized Holmes' work, and there Grant was touched up by Merritt. Grant was taken by train to New York City, where he was viewed by some 250,000 people as he lay in state in City Hall. More than a million people attended and 50,000 participated in the day-long funeral parade in New York City on August 8, 1885. A public burial service was held, and Grant's body was deposited in a temporary vault in Manhattan's Riverside Park until it could be transferred to Grant's tomb, which was completed and officially dedicated in 1897.

Roadside memorials

Roadside memorials (descansos, as they are known in the American southwest) are those impromptu shrines that take shape at the site of a sudden unexpected death, usually a car accident, but sometimes in front of a house where a murder has occurred. They are an outlet for the outpouring of grief that family, friends, and concerned citizens experience at the loss. But after they have been rained on, they become a bit of an eyesore - bedraggled stuffed animals, weathered photos, ink-splotched notes. Sometimes the memorials are maintained by redecorating them for the holidays or on special occasions. But the issue of their permanence has been raised in many communities.

By marking the location of an individual's death on a highway, a roadside memorial warns other drivers to take care - but it may also distract them, thus possibly causing an accident it was hoped to prevent. Safety issues posed by the memorials are a big concern in the U.K., which cites the risks to pedestrians who cross major highways and stand in medians to add to the memorials. Some municipalities remove the makeshift shrines and offer other permanent alternatives like erecting a permanent sign or planting a tree. Delaware has established a memorial garden near an exit to try to discourage placing the shrines on the highway. Another issue is the placement of the memorials on private property. In Rusk County, Texas, the family of a boy attacked and killed by dogs was asked by the property-owners to remove a memorial after 4 months. If placed on public land, roadside memorials may be the target of vandals or those who object to the religious symbolism.

Oddly enough, the creation of roadside memorials predates the invention of the car. In America, they sprang up in shop windows after the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865. Roadside crosses originated with the early Hispanic settlers, who placed a cross at each location that pallbearers stopped to rest on the way to the grave. In New Mexico, descansos are not protected by state law, but road crews avoid destroying them out of courtesy. Minnesota implemented a program clearing the memorials from the highways. Washington and Florida allow only state-sanctioned markers. Residents of California and Montana are allowed to place roadside memorials, but only if alcohol was a factor in the crash. New Jersey limits how long memorials may remain in place. Only West Virginia and Alaska encourage memorials. In Colorado, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon, Utah, and Wisconsin, they are banned altogether. While some people are busy tearing them down, others are documenting them in photographs and on websites.

Grave and golem

Today we have a guest post by Loren Rhoads. For 10 years, Loren edited the cult nonfiction magazine Morbid Curiosity. Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues, a collection drawn from the magazine, is due from Scribner on Sept. 29th and can be pre-ordered on Amazon.

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Jews first came to Prague as free traders in the 10th c. They lived peacefully along the trade routes below Vysehrad Castle until Christian crusaders destroyed their settlement at the end of the 11th c. Afraid to lose the money the Jewish settlers generated, the nobility invited them to shift their homes to the city's Old Town, which then became the first ghetto - 3 centuries before the word was coined in Venice. Medieval Christians believed Jews had killed Christ, and continued to use Christian blood in their rituals. The Passover lamb was considered a euphemism for Christ and it was widely imagined that unless the Jews were locked behind ghetto walls at night, Christian infants would end up on Passover plates. As the Middle Ages melted into the Renaissance, interest in the Kabbalah swelled among both the Jews and Christians of Prague. It was in this atmosphere that Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1512-1609) became chief rabbi of the ghetto in 1597. Legends sprang up around Rabbi Loew (pronounced "lurve"), who was said to be one of only four men since Adam to see the Garden of Eden. While there, he was granted the shem - the secret name of God, which can create life. When the ghetto was once again menaced due to Christian bigotry, the Rabbi and two apprentices formed a champion out of the muddy banks of the Vltava River. This artificial man served faithfully, protecting the Jews from slander and worse...until something went wrong one night and Rabbi Loew had to rip the shem - variously a clay tablet or a scrap of paper - from behind the golem's teeth.

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Founded in 1478, the Beth-Haim (Hebrew for "House of Life") served as the only Jewish graveyard in Prague for 3 centuries. Penned in on all sides, the Old Jewish Cemetery could only increase in height and contains 12 layers of graves. Some 12,000 surviving gravestones (see photos above) totter over an estimated 20,000 to 100,00 burials. The most visited of these - a tomb of pink stone guarded by lions - is that of Rabbi Loew. When I visited, pebbles, coins, and scraps of paper covered every flat surface. I've read several explanations of the custom of placing pebbles on graves. The simplest appeared in Mystical Stonescapes by Freema Gottlieb: "Vegetation fades, but stones are as close as matter gets to eternity." In Old Bohemian and Moravian Jewish Cemeteries, the ritual is traced back to the Hebrews wandering in the desert after Moses led them out of Egypt. Those who fell during the 40-year trek were interred along the wayside, and those who passed the grave added a rock as a way of keeping the burial mound inviolable. While the Nazis demolished many Jewish graveyards, this one - and Rabbi Loew's tomb - was spared and was intended to become a museum to the extinct race. Now overseen by the Federation of Jewish Communities of the Czech Republic, the graveyard welcomes 10,000 visitors each year. Most bring pebbles in their pockets for Rabbi Loew.

Scrabble creator

I joined a Scrabble group in the senior community where I am living and I thought I was in trouble when the first person to sit at my table said, "I haven't played this game in 40 years!" But Scrabble is fun, no matter the level of play, and remains my favorite game. It was the ingenious creation of an out-of-work architect named Alfred Mosher Butts (1899-1993) during the Depression. He surveyed the popular pastimes of the day and decided to create a board game of both skill and chance that combined anagrams and crossword puzzles. He analyzed the front page of the New York Times to perfect the frequency of the letters on the tiles - limiting the S so that making plurals would not be too easy.

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Butts sold the rights to James Brunot, who trademarked the game and changed the name from "Criss Cross Words" to "Scrabble." He and his wife converted an abandoned Connecticut schoolhouse into a Scrabble factory, making 2,400 sets - and losing $450 - in 1949. But by 1952, the Brunos could no longer keep up with the demand and licensed the game to Selchow & Righter. Hasbro now owns the trademark in the U.S. and Canada (and also now owns Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley, who had declined to purchase the rights back in the 1940s), and a subsidiary of Mattel owns it in the rest of the world. Today Scrabble sells at a rate of 1-2 million sets per year in North America, and a total of more than 150 million games have been sold worldwide. It can be found in 1 of every 3 American homes and is available in French, Spanish, travel, deluxe turntable, and junior editions. (I got a new Diamond Edition Scrabble for Christmas!)

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There are Scrabble clubs and tournaments that are sanctioned by a national association. The National Scrabble championship is held annually in the U.S. and the World Championship is a biennial event. A look inside the world of competitive Scrabble by Stefan Fatsis makes for interesting reading, and for your listening pleasure, an interview on NPR, which also features a short video of the inventor. As for Alfred Butts, he earned royalties of about 3¢ per game for many years. "One-third went to taxes," he said. "I gave one-third away, and the other third enabled me to have an enjoyable life." He lived to the age of 93 and is buried in Stanfordville, New York. His New York Times obituary reads in part, "Mrs. Butts was better at the game than her inventor spouse. Once she scored 234 for 'quixotic.' He admitted that she 'beat me at my own game,' literally."

Skellies

A few months ago, I was contacted by a researcher named Paul who was heading to Peru. Despite the fact that I was unable to provide any information about the catacombs he hoped to visit, he kindly followed up with the above photographs of a rather unusual tomb he toured while he was in Lampa. He writes, "Honestly, this is the strangest tomb I have ever encountered, and the only instance I know of in which an entire ossuary was constructed to celebrate the tomb of a single individual." Also unusual is the way each full skeleton is topped by two skulls.

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The bones of the tiny foot are part of the adult skeleton of a previously unknown hominid species, Homo floresiensis, excavated in Indonesia. The 2003 discovery of the remains of a single skull and several skeletons - nicknamed "hobbits" because they measured only 3' tall - has prompted debate among evolutionists about their relationship to Homo erectus. Many of the scientists discount the idea that the hobbits were dwarfs, and yet they are unlike any modern pygmies.

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The skeleton in the bottom photo belonged to Harry Eastlack, Jr., (1930-1973) and shows the damage to his bones and connective tissue by the genetic disorder Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva. Eastlack's body began to ossify when he was ten; later, he could move only his lips and survived on a liquid diet. Before he died of pneumonia, he requested that his body be donated to science. His skeleton is displayed at the Mütter Museum, covered in my book, and mentioned in this article.

Five dog stories

In honor of my friend Deb's birthday, my post is about dogs this morning. The top photo is a skye terrier named Bobby, who was acquired as a watch dog by John Gray when he became a night watchman for the Edinburgh Police Department in 1856. The two became inseparable, walking the beat and eating together. Two years later, Gray was diagnosed with tuberculosis and died within weeks. He was buried in Greyfriar's Kirkyard and Bobby accompanied the procession to the grave. The little dog took up position at the spot and refused to be coaxed from it - except for his midday meal - for the next 14 years, until his own death. "Greyfriar's Bobby" was buried just inside the gate of the churchyard, and his loyalty has been celebrated in several films and in the erection of a statue and fountain in his honor.

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The second photo is English artist Francis Barraud (1856-1924) with his dog "Nipper." Barraud's painting of the little dog cocking his head at the phonograph was adapted and registered as a trademark for His Master's Voice, a company still in existence as the HMV Group. The trademark is said to be the best-known in the world, and is also still in use.

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In addition, I have collected 3 dog hero stories: In Titonka, Iowa, in July 2006, the Schutjer family's border collie kept 3-year-old Allie warm overnight in a cornfield after she wandered away from a campfire and went missing. In December of last year, Jaylynn Thorpe was protected from 17-degree weather by his two puppies when he was missing for 21 hours in the woods of Halifax County, Virginia. Last but not least, a chihuahua named "Pebbles" saved owner Beverley Burkitt from hypothermia in March after she strayed into dense woods on a walk in Dolwyddelan, North Wales, and found she had lost her cellphone - a little person saved by a little dog, since Burkitt is a dwarf!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Shakespearean insults

My good friend Deb. reports that my newfound enchantment with the octopus leaves her rather cold. In addition, the thought of my imminent move hit her hard this morning. So I have used this opportunity - taking up an idea that she suggested in January - to both warm her up and cheer her up...

Above is a portrait that is newly believed by some (though not by others) to be William Shakespeare (1564-1616). As we all know, the Bard had a way with words. When I studied his plays, I was charmed by the cleverness of his insults. Listed below are some of my favorites, retrieved from Insults.net:

Vile worm, you were overlooked even in thy birth.~The Merry Wives of Windsor

Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born to signify thou came to bite the world.~Henry VI Part 3

An index and obscure prologue to the history of lust and foul thoughts.~Othello

If you spend word for word with me, I shall make your wit bankrupt.~The Two Gentlemen of Verona

A huge translation of hypocrisy, vilely compiled, profound simplicity.~Love's Labour Lost

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.~Macbeth

He hath out-villiain'd villainy so far that the rarity redeems him.~All's Well that Ends Well

And in his brain which is as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage, he hath strange places.~As You Like It

All that is within him does condemn itself for being there.~Macbeth

Thy bones are hollow, impiety has made a feast of thee.~Measure for Measure

He that depends upon your favours swims with fins of lead, and hews down oaks with rushes.~Coriolanus

Toads, beetles, bats, light on you.~The Tempest

A monster, a very monster in apparel.~The Taming of the Shrew

Where will thou find a cavern dark enough to mask thy monstrous visage.~Julius Caesar

Not shaped for sportive tricks, nor made to court an amorous looking glass.~Richard III

You have such a February face, so full of frost, of storm and cloudiness.~Much Ado About Nothing

I do wish thou were a dog, that I might love thee somthing.~Timon of Athens

And if those tickle you, you may get a laugh by generating a Shakespearean insult on MainStrike.com, Pangloss.com, or webweaving.org.

Finally, note that Shakespeare offers a curse to anyone who disturbs his earthly remains.

Franklin Expedition

I just watched a very interesting program about the ill-fated Franklin Expedition airing on Discovery HD. Sir John Franklin, his two ships, and 128 men disappeared in the 19th c. in search of the Northwest Passage. This documentary brings the story up-to-date, including rumors of cannibalism, the cause of the crew's death, and the numerous archaeological expeditions over the years. I first learned of this Victorian mystery when I bought a copy of Frozen in Time, which features color photographs of three members of the expedition excavated from the permafrost by forensic anthropologist Owen Beattie 138 years after their deaths (which evidence suggests were caused by lead solder from their canned provisions). Neither Franklin's body nor his logbook have ever been found--and some are still looking. Brrrrr.

Sam Pickering update

Pleased to become a part of my Cabinet, Samuel Pickering shared with me an essay he had just finished writing about Karrakatta Cemetery, which he often visited while living in Perth, Western Australia: In part I write about death because I have reached the noose end of my days. More importantly, though, optimism thrives amid the humus of tombs. Sam Pickering also describes the Perth War Cemetery: The grass was green and plush. The stones ran in straight lines, and not a tendril had worked loose from plantings embroidering walkways. The order, of course, masked the turmoil war imposed on families. Back at Karrakatta (where Heath Ledger's family has a plot, I learned when I Googled the above image) Sam has taken a break: After leaving the cafe, I decided to read more tombstones, for epitaphs are often the beginnings, not the endings, of stories, for example, "Our Pop" and "We have lost what heaven has gained / The best little girl the earth contained." In the essay, he wanders the "renewed" and the sandy, blighted old sections of the cemetery, picks up and puts back down a half-buried small oval grave number he considers taking home: "That's the end of it," I thought. But that wasn't the end. Certainly endings in cemeteries are more complex, turning back on themselves and becoming beginnings and middles. I agree with Sam that the older sections of cemeteries are the more appealing. When I went to a meeting of the Association for Gravestone Studies back in 1987, the group toured a local burial site that was being reclaimed from a stand of woods. I had to hurry to get some beautiful photographs of the slate stones before restoration-minded members plucked the ivy off.

Funeral Museums

Among my favorite interests are museums and things morbid, so it is particularly gratifying when I can kill birds with stones (as opposed to "releasing two birds with one gesture," which I was once told was more politically correct). Such is the case at the Museum of Funeral Customs in Springfield, Illinois. I tour it whenever I am in town, admiring the Victorian hairpiece that dwarfs my own , coveting the embalming instruments, and gazing intently at the items associated with the funeral of Abraham Lincoln. It was during the Civil War when embalming began (above left) and almost 50 years earlier when the first museum in the U.S. was established (above right).

Here I am at the funeral museum, which is next to Oak Ridge Cemetery, the location of Lincoln's Tomb (more killing of birds with stones). But if you can't get there physically, you can still visit. The Museum of Funeral Customs and the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston each have a multi-media web presence. You can take a virtual tour of the former, and the latter offers an on-line tour of a turn-of-the-twentieth-century casket factory.