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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from works

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Speaker 1: dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly

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Speaker 1: Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And today's episode is

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Speaker 1: going to be a little bit of a springtime macab

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Speaker 1: It's got all the classics, You've got some unidentified corpses

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Speaker 1: which are exhibiting strange characteristics. There's a little bit of

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Speaker 1: science in there, some modern issues associated with this science.

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Speaker 1: And we're even gonna have a cameo from a famed paleontologist.

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Speaker 1: And we're actually titling the episode The Lady Who Turned

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Speaker 1: to Soap, But we're actually going to talk about a

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Speaker 1: few different corpses that have been found covered in some

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Speaker 1: degree of a substance which is sometimes called grave wax.

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Speaker 1: This story, as we're telling it today, starts in eighteen

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Speaker 1: seventy five, and at that point, a city improvement project

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Speaker 1: in Philadelphia unearthed a unique find. Uh. This project involved

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Speaker 1: the ex nation of a cemetery, and it was a

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Speaker 1: thing that they had to do in order to get

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Speaker 1: the project done. Yeah, and I've read different accounts of

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Speaker 1: what that project may have been. Some say they were

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Speaker 1: trying to build a train platform and it was gonna

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Speaker 1: take up some of they needed some of the space

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Speaker 1: that the cemetery occupied, and others are like no, it

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Speaker 1: was a widening of streets. So I don't have a

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Speaker 1: concrete definitive on what the public works project was, but

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Speaker 1: two of the bodies that were exhumed as they were

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Speaker 1: trying to move this portion of the cemetery exhibited this

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Speaker 1: really distinctive characteristic. They had turned to a substance that

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Speaker 1: appeared very much like soap. A professor of anatomy at

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Speaker 1: the University of Pennsylvania named Joseph Lady was very excited

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Speaker 1: about this discovery and he shared this news with his

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Speaker 1: friend and colleague, William Hunt. In Hunt wrote an article

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Speaker 1: for the Public Ledger which described ladies intense enthusiasm over

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Speaker 1: this specimen, and according to Hunt, Lady told him quote,

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Speaker 1: they have been very for nearly a hundred years, nobody

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Speaker 1: claims them, and they would be rare and instructive additions

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Speaker 1: to our collections. Hunt's account described his visit with Lady

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Speaker 1: to the cemetery to speak to a superintendent in the

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Speaker 1: hopes of acquiring the bodies for the College of Medicine.

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Speaker 1: After making a number of comments about the violation of

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Speaker 1: the grave and appearing to shut this mission mission down.

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Speaker 1: The cemetery superintendent finally told the duo quote, I tell

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Speaker 1: you what I do. I give the bodies up to

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Speaker 1: the order of relatives. And so the pair left the cemetery,

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Speaker 1: and lady had taken the superintendent's comment as a hint,

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Speaker 1: and so he went out and he hired a furniture wagon,

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Speaker 1: and he sent a driver with the furniture wagon with

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Speaker 1: a note that the bodies were the grandparents of the

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Speaker 1: wagon driver's employer, and asked that they be released to

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Speaker 1: the driver. And so that same cemetery worker, who had

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Speaker 1: dropped this hint to lady that relatives could collect bodies,

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Speaker 1: sent the deceased on their way in the furniture wagon.

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Speaker 1: Documents in the Mooder Museum indicate that lady paid seven

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Speaker 1: dollars and fifty cents for each of these bodies. The

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Speaker 1: Mooder Museum, which is part of the College of Medicine,

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Speaker 1: kept the soap lady, but the soapman eventually went to

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Speaker 1: the Smithsonian Institution as part of the National Museum of

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Speaker 1: Natural History. And now, just to acknowledge his cameo, you

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Speaker 1: may recognize the name Lady, so Dr Joseph Lady is

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Speaker 1: usually referred to as the father of American vertebrate paleontology,

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Speaker 1: and in the Cope and Marsh bone wars, which are

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Speaker 1: covered by previous hosts of this podcast. In an episode UH,

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Speaker 1: it was actually Lady who backed up Marsh in his

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Speaker 1: assertion that Cope had placed the head of Elasmosaurus plat

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Speaker 1: urus on the wrong end of the skeleton. This was

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Speaker 1: a particularly painful episode because Lady had actually been Cope's mentor,

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Speaker 1: so for him to be the one that actually validated

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Speaker 1: criticism of him was quite a drama. But it's just

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Speaker 1: in case you're recognizing that name and it's ringing a bell,

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Speaker 1: that was who he was. So you may at this point,

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Speaker 1: in addition to stumbling over the ethics of effectively stealing

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Speaker 1: these bodies, wondering how in the world does the body

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Speaker 1: turn into soap? And these two soap bodies are definitely

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Speaker 1: not the only specimens to exhibit this very weird waxy transformation.

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Speaker 1: In Paris in the late seventeen hundreds bodies of children

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Speaker 1: were exhumed from the Cemetery of Innocence to be moved

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Speaker 1: into a space that would later become the Paris Catacombs.

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Speaker 1: And this is sort of the first point on record

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Speaker 1: where we have people noting this condition. UH. Scientists Antoine

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Speaker 1: for Quax and Michel Tore were on hand to study

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Speaker 1: those bodies during the exhamation. UH. They were there because

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Speaker 1: they had an opportunity to study decomposition, and they noticed

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Speaker 1: that several of them were covered in a waxy substance.

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Speaker 1: And this pair is actually credited with naming this substance

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Speaker 1: at a puss fair and that comes from the Latin

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Speaker 1: root words adepts or you'll hear adipose for fat and sarah,

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Speaker 1: which is wax adipus. There forms a part of decomposition,

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Speaker 1: but it doesn't typically happen. Most bodies don't do this

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Speaker 1: at all. It requires specific conditions, usually a moist alkaline environment,

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Speaker 1: and as the decomposition progresses, the body's fat slowly turns

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Speaker 1: into this soap like substance. The corpse wax is sometimes

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Speaker 1: called starts off soft, kind of like a paste or

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Speaker 1: a petty, but it hardens over time into something more

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Speaker 1: like hard wax or damp mortar. And this process is

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Speaker 1: called supontification, and it actually stops the decay process is

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Speaker 1: It slowly encases the body with wax and shuts out

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Speaker 1: the oxygen that's needed for normal decomposition. It happens most

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Speaker 1: successfully when a corpse's body fat is exposed to anaerobic bacteria.

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Speaker 1: It can happen in damp soil or water, so long

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Speaker 1: as the environment is low on oxygen. One are the

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Speaker 1: really fascinating things about suppontification is that it can happen

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Speaker 1: pretty rapidly in terms of a body. It's been documented

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Speaker 1: in observed research settings is happening even within a few days,

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Speaker 1: although it can stretch into more than a year. In

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Speaker 1: some testing that was done with pig davers, the process

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Speaker 1: actually started within hours. Warm water seems to hasten the process,

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Speaker 1: and while it does continue in cold water, it just

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Speaker 1: does so at a slower pace. For a body to

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Speaker 1: be completely transformed by the process rather than just the

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Speaker 1: fatty tissues takes about two years, and in some cases

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Speaker 1: adoposs air formation has been found in dry environments, but

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Speaker 1: that definitely appears to be the exception rather than the rule.

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Speaker 1: And then those cases it's the moisture of the body

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Speaker 1: itself that kind of provides the ideal conditions for these

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Speaker 1: anaerobic bacteria, and it's been documented in bodies that have

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Speaker 1: been embalmed as well as those that have not. UH.

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Speaker 1: It is most common in cases of people with high

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Speaker 1: body fat, which sort of makes sense UH, and within

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Speaker 1: a given corpse, it tends to form. Again, this is

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Speaker 1: pretty logical, most commonly in areas where the body fat

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Speaker 1: is concentrated. So if someone carries a lot of their

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Speaker 1: body fat in their abdomen, that's where it's going to

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Speaker 1: be versus if someone carries it in their hips, that's

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Speaker 1: where it will really start forming in the largest proportion.

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Speaker 1: One of the major problems of adipos there is that

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Speaker 1: it preserves bodies and slows normal decomposition, which makes it

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Speaker 1: hard to determine just how long the corpse has been dead.

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Speaker 1: And because it tends to persist once it's formed, the

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Speaker 1: adapas there can just preserve a cadaver almost indefinitely. And

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Speaker 1: in the case of soap Lady and her companion Soapman,

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Speaker 1: although it does not appear that they were actual companions,

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Speaker 1: just that they were found in the same graveyard, their

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Speaker 1: caskets had allowed water to seep in and sort of

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Speaker 1: work its way in and provide the perfect environment for

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Speaker 1: this process to take place, and as we just mentioned,

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Speaker 1: this also made it really tricky for researchers to identify

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Speaker 1: when each of them had passed before we kind of

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Speaker 1: get into some of the research and study that's been

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Speaker 1: done there. Do you want to pause for a brief

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Speaker 1: word from a sponsor, Let's do that. So the early

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Speaker 1: story on Soap Lady was that she had been an

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Speaker 1: elderly uh potentially obese woman who had died in sevent

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Speaker 1: from yellow fever. There was a big outbreak of yellow

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Speaker 1: fever in the area during that year. The story persisted

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Speaker 1: actually for a long time until around the nineteen eighties,

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Speaker 1: and at that point a team of researchers, which included

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Speaker 1: Gerald J. Conlogue, who was a radiographer at the time.

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Speaker 1: He is now a professor of diagnostic Imaging at UH

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Speaker 1: Canipiac University and his two student assistants came and they

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Speaker 1: did some interesting study of the body. They took X

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Speaker 1: rays and that really changed the Soap Ladies story significantly.

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Speaker 1: The images revealed that she was definitely not elderly when

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Speaker 1: she died, she was younger than forty UH and they

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Speaker 1: were also able to determine that she had been in

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Speaker 1: fact a solid, diminutive woman. She was short. Her skeleton,

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Speaker 1: though appeared healthy uh and it did appear that she

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Speaker 1: had a kidney stone or a gall stone because they

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Speaker 1: noticed some calcification points in the abdomen. Additionally, they discovered

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Speaker 1: a number of straight pins and two copper alloy buttons

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Speaker 1: on her body. These discoveries really shifted the time of

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Speaker 1: her death much later. Two have the straight pins which

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Speaker 1: were found at her head were believed to have held

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Speaker 1: a chin strap so that her mouth didn't droop open

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Speaker 1: before she was buried, and several other straight pins were

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Speaker 1: found lower on her body and they're believed to have

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Speaker 1: held a shroud in place. And these pins that the

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Speaker 1: team found were the same as those that were manufactured

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Speaker 1: in England in the eighteen twenties. I also read that

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Speaker 1: they started being manufactured in the US in the eighteen thirties,

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Speaker 1: so Soap Lady could not have died in the seventeen

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Speaker 1: hundreds at this point. Her cause of death, however, remains

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Speaker 1: a mystery. The two buttons were also a type that

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Speaker 1: was commonly used in the eighteen hundreds, and they were

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Speaker 1: positioned in such a way that they were probably closing

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Speaker 1: the sleeves on her clothing at the wrist. These pieces

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Speaker 1: of evidence really helped the researchers estimate her death as

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Speaker 1: being sometime in the eighteen thirties and then uh in

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Speaker 1: two thousand eight, so fairly recently, the Mooder Museum hosted

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Speaker 1: forensic experts and radiographers to study the Soap Lady once again,

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Speaker 1: and in fact, that original team that had studied her

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Speaker 1: in the eighties came back and were part of this.

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Speaker 1: So at this point she was removed from her plexiglass

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Speaker 1: display and casement and she was examined. I read one

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Speaker 1: newspaper report that said she's getting her physical like they

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Speaker 1: said it kind of glibly. X rays were carefully taken,

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Speaker 1: they did like polaroid X rays, and they assembled them

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Speaker 1: right there on the spot so that researchers could look

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Speaker 1: at her skeleton and its entirety next to the actual body.

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Speaker 1: They also took digital X rays for later development, and

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Speaker 1: they removed some hair so they could perform toxicology tests.

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Speaker 1: And analysis of the work that was done with Soap

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Speaker 1: Lady in the two thousands has led to the conclusion

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Speaker 1: that she may have been even younger than was previously

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Speaker 1: s aimated she could have even been as young as

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Speaker 1: in her twenties. They're guessing late twenties, but she's still Oh.

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Speaker 1: We don't have all the details on her story. We're

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Speaker 1: still figuring it out. So Man has also been studied

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Speaker 1: by scientists at his home in the Smithsonian collection since

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Speaker 1: he was acquired in nineteen fifty eight. It's believed that

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Speaker 1: he was in his forties when he died, which is

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Speaker 1: estimated to have been sometime between eighteen hundred and eighteen ten,

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Speaker 1: and Soap Man is about five foot nine. He's still

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Speaker 1: wearing his stockings, which always seems to come up in

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Speaker 1: descriptions of him, which is kind of charming. Uh and

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Speaker 1: much like Soap Lady. He was originally believed to have

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Speaker 1: been buried in the seventeen hundreds, and they similarly had

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Speaker 1: some confusion about his age gu estimate. It was estimated

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Speaker 1: that he was about sixty three at that point, prior

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Speaker 1: to the additional research that put him more in his forties,

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Speaker 1: and while he may have died of yellow fever, they're

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Speaker 1: not positive. They do not think it happened during the

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Speaker 1: sevent epidemic that they had attributed both of their deaths to. Initially,

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Speaker 1: Uh now we're going to move on to some other

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Speaker 1: similar bodies. In a soap mummy was found decapitated and

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Speaker 1: fully covered by adapas air, and this was floating in

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Speaker 1: Lake Brian's in Switzerland. The body was nicknamed brand Z

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Speaker 1: and it was really a mystery for fifteen years. While

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Speaker 1: some of the body had decomposed, most of the trunk

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Speaker 1: tissues of his heart, stomach, and intestinal tract were all

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Speaker 1: really well preserved, and in eleven researchers from the University

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Speaker 1: of Zurich finally determined, based on algae findings in his

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Speaker 1: bone marrow, that Brands had drowned in the lake in

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Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds and that he had slowly turned to

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Speaker 1: soap after he settled into sort of a sediment grave

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Speaker 1: just sat there quietly. You know, the sediment had compacted

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Speaker 1: so much that oxygen wasn't getting in. But an earthquake

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Speaker 1: in nine forty A pretty grisly suppontification discovery was made

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Speaker 1: in Washington State, an Olympic National Park. A woman's body

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Speaker 1: body had clearly been dumped. The woman had been rolled

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Speaker 1: her face had decomposed to the point that it couldn't

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Speaker 1: be identified, but the rest of her body had turned

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Speaker 1: to this waxy substance, and a medical student that had

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Speaker 1: had described it as being very similar to ivory soap.

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Speaker 1: The body was eventually ideate as Hallie Illingworth, who had

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Speaker 1: gone missing three years earlier, and ultimately Hallie's husband, Monty Illingworth,

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Speaker 1: was found guilty of her murder. Yeah, And that one's

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Speaker 1: kind of interesting because it does point out sort of uh.

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Speaker 1: I know, when I started researching this, I was thinking,

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Speaker 1: this must be a process that takes a really long time.

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Speaker 1: But she had vanished in seven and was found just

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Speaker 1: three is later completely encased. So uh. In addition to

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Speaker 1: the scientific research done, that's kind of an easy case

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Speaker 1: study that shows, you know, in natural non lab conditions,

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Speaker 1: three years can completely in case the whole whole corps. Uh.

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Speaker 1: In the body of a young boy was found in

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Speaker 1: a sarcophagus from the late Roman era in the city

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Speaker 1: of Man's, Germany, and this had a coding of what

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Speaker 1: scientists have described as quote a puff pastry like substance

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Speaker 1: assumed to be adapas air. And this particular cadaver is

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Speaker 1: unique in that it was in an area with fluctuating

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Speaker 1: groundwater levels. So this means that in some periods of

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Speaker 1: time conditions were conducive to adipos air development, and in

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Speaker 1: other periods of time, Uh, they were not, and they

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Speaker 1: enabled the boy's corpse to actually decay. But scientists point

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Speaker 1: to this find as significant because even with these fluctuating

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Speaker 1: environmental factors, the adipos air has persisted for roughly sixteen

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Speaker 1: hundred years. Before we get to a very modern problem,

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Speaker 1: uh about adapass air. You want to pause and have

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Speaker 1: a word from a sponsor. Let's do that. So I

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Speaker 1: mentioned this before our sponsor break that there are many,

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Speaker 1: many instances of adapasser appearing on corpses. Some are famous,

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Speaker 1: some are not. But it is a very modern issue

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Speaker 1: and it's actually causing a very real problem in Germany.

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Speaker 1: Some cemeteries actually recycle their space but adapass their formation

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Speaker 1: is creating a real challenge when it comes to that practice. Normally,

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Speaker 1: plots and cemeteries that practice recycling are exhumed for reuse

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Speaker 1: after fifteen to twenty five years, long enough in good

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Speaker 1: conditions for the full decomposition process to have taken place,

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Speaker 1: leaving only skeletal remains. In Germany isn't the only place

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Speaker 1: that's done this, but there have been a lot of

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Speaker 1: studies done around that. So it's one of those cultural

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Speaker 1: things where I when I have told people about this,

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Speaker 1: they get really weird and it's like, well, we have

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Speaker 1: finite space on the Earth and seemingly infinite people happening,

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Speaker 1: So something has to be done to kind of manage

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Speaker 1: this um. But because of damp conditions and high clay

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Speaker 1: content of many of the burial sites, like a lot

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Speaker 1: of these cemeteries were just not placed on ideal ground,

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Speaker 1: bodies are not decomposing properly, and that means that graves

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Speaker 1: can't be recycled, and there's sort of this whole research

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Speaker 1: effort happening trying to fix this problem. Swiss scientists began

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Speaker 1: a project in two thousand eight to try to solve

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Speaker 1: the problem by introducing a reconditioning system into the soil.

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Speaker 1: But the problematic element to that solution is that there

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Speaker 1: has to be a place where they can create auxiliary

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Speaker 1: graves to be dug for these corpses that are covered

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Speaker 1: with adapas are like they can't They can recondition the soil,

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Speaker 1: but they still have to put these bodies somewhere. Some

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Speaker 1: cities opted instead to purchase water tight burial chambers, and

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Speaker 1: in some cases private citizens have purchased their own. These

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Speaker 1: tombs offer up environments where decomposition can happen the way

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Speaker 1: it normally should, without the conditions that provoked that promote

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Speaker 1: the development of adapastair. However, and an initial examination of

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Speaker 1: some of these chambers actually revealed a different problem. The

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Speaker 1: absolute absence of moisture has led to corpse is mommifying

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Speaker 1: rather than decomposing, So filters have been added to some

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Speaker 1: of the crypt models in the hope of creating a

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Speaker 1: more perfect afterlife environment to promote proper decay. Another solution

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Speaker 1: that is also a Swiss brainchild is a fungal product

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Speaker 1: that is intended to accelerate decomposition of wooden coffins. And

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Speaker 1: i UH read about this in an article in Spiegel online.

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Speaker 1: And this was in two thousand and eight, and I

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Speaker 1: did not really find later information on how successful that

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Speaker 1: is or is not, So we don't really know if

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Speaker 1: that's worked yet. It's still only, you know, seven years

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Speaker 1: after the fact. It may be hard to tell. Um.

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Speaker 1: Other approaches to kind of advancing the science of decomposing

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Speaker 1: bodies are being explored. Uh. There are companies cropping up

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Speaker 1: that offer woodland bury like under a tree, or their

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Speaker 1: luxury cemeteries that are designed to feel more like park spaces.

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Speaker 1: And in those cases, at least the ones that I

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Speaker 1: read about in Germany, there is an option to have

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Speaker 1: a not recycled grave so that if the family wishes,

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Speaker 1: they can keep you in that plot forever. I think

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Speaker 1: they have to pay like an annual fee. I'm not

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Speaker 1: entirely clear on the economics of it, but it's an

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Speaker 1: option now to kind of skip over this whole recycling issue. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And and that's soap people. It's probably fascinating. It is

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Speaker 1: strange and fascinating. It is probably no uh surprise to

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Speaker 1: people who have maybe watched Fight Club or read other

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Speaker 1: things that you know, fat and soap are connected. One

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Speaker 1: of my friends that I was talking to, So it

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Speaker 1: didn't isn't this how they discovered that body fat could

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Speaker 1: be used as a cleaning agent? And I was like,

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Speaker 1: not this specifically. It's sort of like the difference between

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Speaker 1: using a wheat based flour to bake a cake that

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Speaker 1: cake spontaneously forming in a field of wheat. You can

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Speaker 1: you can use fat in the soap making process, but

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Speaker 1: for soap to just form on its own is a

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Speaker 1: full other thing that requires a lot of very specific

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Speaker 1: scenarios and conditions. Well, and the possibly apocryphal story of

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Speaker 1: how soap was discovered was people doing their laundry downstream

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Speaker 1: from a place where bodies were being burned for sacrifice,

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Speaker 1: and so correct the ash and the the fat and

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Speaker 1: all of that we're mixing together and flowing into the water.

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Speaker 1: It's possibly apocryphal, but more believable than it being from

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Speaker 1: adapas there. Right, So yeah, it's they're they're connected in

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Speaker 1: terms of chemistry, but it's not quite the same situation. Uh,

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Speaker 1: this completely fascinates me. Admittedly I have a taste for

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Speaker 1: the macab especially when it involves science, but yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: very fascinating. This the idea that you could turn soap. Uh.

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Speaker 1: I also have listener mail has nothing to do with

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Speaker 1: dead bodies. Uh. It is actually about our carousel episode,

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Speaker 1: and it is from our listener, Emmy. She says, I'm

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Speaker 1: a longtime listener and lurker, and I had to write

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Speaker 1: you as soon as I saw the title of today's

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Speaker 1: podcast because I am all about carousels. I have actually

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Speaker 1: even been on a velocipede carousel as one summer there

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Speaker 1: was an event on Governor's Island with a bunch of

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Speaker 1: hundred year old French carnival rides. They are indeed fun,

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Speaker 1: but do not ride in a short skirt. That sounds

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Speaker 1: like an amazing experience. By the way, if you want

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Speaker 1: to write us more about that, Emmy, feel free to

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Speaker 1: do so. When you mentioned the carousel with the civil

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Speaker 1: rights connection, I thought of my first. I thought first

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Speaker 1: of my childhood carousel in Glen Echo, Maryland. During the

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Speaker 1: Civil Rights movement, Glen Echo was still a working amusement

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Speaker 1: park and it was closed to black people. Students from

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Speaker 1: Howard University stage to sit in on the carousel in

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Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen sixty, which kicked off a chain

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Speaker 1: of events that led to the park's eventual integration the

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Speaker 1: following year. But this was long before my time, so

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Speaker 1: when I eventually learned about it while growing up in

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Speaker 1: the DC area, I was astounded that anybody wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: allowed to ride the carousel that has always been my

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Speaker 1: favorite place in the world. I love this. The lead

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Speaker 1: horse on the Glennaco carousel, which has a black naim

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Speaker 1: and roses around her neck, is my horse, Penny. I

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Speaker 1: named her when I was eight and now I'm thirty.

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Speaker 1: But I still come back every summer to visit, and

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Speaker 1: my very patient husband waves to me as I ride. Oh,

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Speaker 1: that's so much. It's the sweetest thing. So um and

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Speaker 1: Emmy thinks she is keeping the New York carousel scene

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Speaker 1: in business by buying tickets and making friends with wooden horses.

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Speaker 1: I love it so much. That's such a sweet story.

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Speaker 1: I have a carousel horse that I named at a

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Speaker 1: carousel I visit a lot. It is named Kobaud, So

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Speaker 1: I fully appreciate that. Emmy. I think it's awesome. If

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Speaker 1: you would like to write to us and share your

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Speaker 1: carousel horse story or anything else, you can do so

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Speaker 1: at History Podcast at houseto Works dot com. You can

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Speaker 1: visit us at Facebook dot com slash minst in history

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Speaker 1: at misst in history. On Twitter at miston history dot

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00:22:04,000 --> 00:22:07,560
Speaker 1: tumbler dot com, on pinterest dot com slash missed in history.

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Speaker 1: They're gonna be some good soap body pictures going up

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Speaker 1: on Pinterest, and you can visit us at miss in

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Speaker 1: history dot spreadshirt dot com. If you would like to

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Speaker 1: buy some misst in history goodies for yourself or your

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Speaker 1: friends and loved ones. Uh. If you would like to

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Speaker 1: research a little bit more about what we talked about today,

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Speaker 1: you can go to our parents site, how stuff Works.

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Speaker 1: Type in the word decomposition in the search bar and

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Speaker 1: you will churn up. I think it's about third down,

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Speaker 1: usually an article called how body farms work. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: those are fascinating places where bodies are buried and then

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Speaker 1: studied to see how they decompose in various conditions. UH.

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Speaker 1: If you would like to visit us on the web,

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Speaker 1: you can do that at miss in history dot com.

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Speaker 1: We have an archive of all of our episodes, show

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Speaker 1: notes for all of the episodes that have aired since

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Speaker 1: Tracy and I became hosts, and an assortment of other goodies.

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Speaker 1: You should absolutely visit us there at misston history dot com.

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Speaker 1: And our parents site how Stuff Works dot com for

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Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it

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Speaker 1: has to have workstop cor