WEBVTT - How Death Masks Work 0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:03.199 Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Camry. 0:00:04.519 --> 0:00:07.960 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works 0:00:07.960 --> 0:00:17.240 dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:21.840 There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. This is a very plaster 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:25.440 horrific episode of Stuff You Should Know. Did you ever 0:00:25.440 --> 0:00:28.680 work a plaster when you were a kid art class? 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:35.559 That's a no, I did work. I had one of 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:40.159 those little uh pottery wheels. Oh yeah, like the the 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:43.360 toy ish version of it. Oh cool? And uh there's 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:47.640 something like clay wet clay in your hands is really 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:50.199 a neat feeling. Hey, just tell them any more of that? 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:53.880 Yeah you know, Yeah, I made for one sexy scene. 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:59.840 Male nipples made an appearance in that scene. Swayzy shirtless. Yeah, okay, 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:04.640 I believe so he was always shirtless? Yeah I think 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:07.480 he was. He was shirtless for most of his career. 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:11.520 Have you ever seen that Dirty Dancing You know at 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:13.319 the end of that movie when like they do the 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:18.759 whole dance showdown things that somebody put iron Man in 0:01:19.200 --> 0:01:24.360 over Patrick No, over, um, Jennifer Gray, So like it's 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:27.760 the whole scene, but it's Iron Man dancing with Patrick 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:31.600 so ezy and it's really neat and hilarious. For the song, 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:34.520 iron Man is used instead of Nope, iron Man the 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:41.080 cartoon superhero, the comic book hero is dancing with Patrick's 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:43.600 wazy at the for some reason. At the end of this, 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:45.800 I gotta see that now. You know what that looks like. 0:01:45.800 --> 0:01:48.600 You should check it out. I cannot visualize it well, 0:01:48.680 --> 0:01:58.480 visualize this pal. July twenty Chicago's hot, real hot. Thirty 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:03.840 something people, thirty two people, maybe thirty three died from 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:06.720 the heat that day. That's how hot it was in Chicago. 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:11.000 We should we should say Chuck and I. Um. Because 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:15.520 of our work schedules. Um, we are frequently sequestered away 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:19.040 from everybody else while they do fun things like hilarious 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:22.080 book exchanges is a good current example. Yeah, if you 0:02:22.120 --> 0:02:24.359 hear people laughing in the deep background, which is something 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:27.000 you've never heard before on our show, that that's because 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:30.200 our departments having a party without us. It's really sad, 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:34.800 all right, So back to it, back to July twenty, 0:02:36.000 --> 0:02:39.200 there was a heat. Yeah, there was a movie, a 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:41.840 Clark Gable movie that a guy named John Dillinger wanted 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:45.320 to go see. Famous gangster John Dillinger. He was a 0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:48.720 famous bank robber. He uh. He was an Indiana man 0:02:49.400 --> 0:02:51.560 and over the course of a year he robbed a 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:55.600 ton of banks. He apparently robbed a police station or two, 0:02:56.040 --> 0:02:59.480 killed at least one cop. And on his birthday, a 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:01.960 couple of months prior, I think it may he had 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:05.160 been made Public Enemy number one by Jager Hoover's FBI. 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:10.600 On this night July, he would be betrayed by a 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:14.880 woman in Red Madam as a matter of fact, and 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:18.600 a sage and a sage that's right. Uh. And he 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:20.840 went with his girlfriend and Anna's age, who was his 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:24.240 girlfriend's landlady, to see this movie. And after they came out, 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:27.320 the FBI was waiting for him. He takes off running, 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:30.480 pulls out his gun, really does, and they just kill 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:32.240 him with a hail of bullets. One of them gets 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:33.560 him in the back of the neck and it goes 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:36.320 out his eye. And that did it for John Dillinger, 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:39.960 a k public Enemy number one and sold out by 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:42.840 Anna's age as it turns out, who was then deported 0:03:42.880 --> 0:03:46.600 back to Romania, I think for her troubles. Yeah, thanks 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:49.040 for the help. Now here's your one way ticket on 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:54.840 this disease. Ridden ship exactly. Uh so he uh, he dies, 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:57.560 but that's not the end of the story. He was 0:03:57.880 --> 0:04:01.160 basically put on public display. Either he was put on 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:04.440 public display or the public said, uh, we're gonna need 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:06.160 to see this guy. Yeah, that was sort of a 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:09.000 thing though, Like I remember when I remember when Jesse 0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:13.600 James was killed, same deal though. Uh, Like these notorious 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:17.159 UM criminals sometimes when they were caught, it would be 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:19.240 like a big thing, like in like back back in 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:20.560 the old day. They would put him like out in 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:23.760 the town squear, like in the pine box, come by 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:26.600 and look at him. This was I mean Chicago in 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:29.560 the thirties was not that far removed from that. You know, 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:31.720 wild West, I get your picture taken next to the 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:34.840 body of Jesse James. So that's kind of what they 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:38.520 do with Dillinger UM. And at least two different groups 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:44.120 actually three, but only one was authorized made casts of 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:48.440 his face after he was dead, and we call those 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:51.400 death masks. What those guys were doing was carrying on 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:54.200 a centuries old tradition, millennia old. Really, if you want 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:58.960 to get technical of basically making a negative image of 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:03.800 a dead person and his face so you can make um, 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:06.880 I guess masks from it later on, yeah, or you know, 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:11.599 a full statute head um bust if you will, or 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:13.599 bust or full statue if you really want to go 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:16.719 all the way. But um, curiously, and I find this 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:18.640 to be one of the facts of the show. They 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:23.560 did make a positive of Dillinger's face, and j Edgar 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:26.600 Hoover had one in his office as I guess, uh, 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:29.760 sort of a trophy of swords he did. I thought 0:05:29.760 --> 0:05:32.120 that was pretty cool. I never knew that, Yeah, that 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:34.480 would be cool. And not only have a death mask 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:37.200 of John Dillinger, but the one that was in Jedger 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:43.560 Hoover's office, that's just specific. Um. So I said that 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:47.279 this is a very old thing and it goes back 0:05:47.400 --> 0:05:50.440 at least to the Egyptians. But they're the first ones 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:56.440 who we know made some sort of funerary mask of 0:05:56.480 --> 0:05:59.280 the deceased. They had a very good reason, and there's 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:02.640 was that if the soul, if you didn't make a 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.440 mask of the deceased, the soul couldn't find the body 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:09.000 any longer. It wouldn't have a face in the afterlife. Yeah, 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:11.919 because as you learned in our mummification cast, you the 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:14.440 face is wrapped up right, so there is no face 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:17.680 any longer. So there you have it. You got like 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:20.360 a King Tut and it's not like the regular death mass. 0:06:20.360 --> 0:06:24.320 It didn't look like them, right or Nate. Uh, Yeah, 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:29.880 I think King Tuts was actually like that's his face. Yeah, 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:31.920 that they went to that level of trouble. I mean, 0:06:31.920 --> 0:06:33.320 I knew they tried to make it look like him, 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:36.880 but was it actually a mold of it? Yeah. The 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:40.080 Egyptians weren't the only ancient group to uh to do 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:44.880 this either, Chuck. The Mycenaeans, who were whose civilization was 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:51.520 discovered by Heinrich Schliemer. Yeah. Um, he found some death 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:55.159 masks and they're really rough and weird looking, but they are. 0:06:56.600 --> 0:06:59.320 They took gold sheets that were pliable enough so that 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:01.880 they laid over a people's faces and they made like 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:06.880 a again, a funerary mask. Yeah. So if you didn't have, um, 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:10.840 if you weren't super famous or nobleman or um have 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:13.000 a lot of money, you could still get the old 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:15.640 death mask. It was probably made of linen and painted 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:19.120 gold or papyrus maybe, um, but you you could still 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:23.520 get your death mask even if you weren't king died. Sure. Um. 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:25.920 The Romans did a lot of this too, and the 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:29.440 Romans actually had I thought I knew everything about ancient 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:33.200 Rome but um, it turns out that they made death masks, 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:37.160 and there at the funeral, a person who kind of 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:41.320 looked like the deceased would wear their death mask, and 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:45.880 then other people would wear that person's ancestors their dead 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:48.680 relatives death masks, and basically you just have like a 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:51.840 dead family reunion at the person's funeral. Then after the 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:55.880 funeral that that recently deceased person's death mask was put 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:58.680 together with all of his relatives or her relatives just 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:00.800 wait for the next person that and then he would 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:04.360 come out with everybody else to bring the new person 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:06.800 into the circle, which is kind of neat. I didn't 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.720 realize that they did that. It's very odd, but and 0:08:09.760 --> 0:08:12.960 I wonder if they would do impressions of them like, oh, 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:18.120 I'm uncle Slaviast, look at me, I love wine, Come 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:21.960 here and sit on my lap. Yeah. Uh so, um, 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:25.440 you mentioned the ancient Romans. Um Caesar Julius Caesar actually 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:29.160 had a full wax cast of his entire body after 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:32.520 his death, stab wounds and everything. And Mark Anthony was 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:35.599 I guess dumb enough to go show it off to 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:39.160 a crowd, and they rioted and burned down the Senate building. 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:41.920 So I don't know what reaction he was looking for. 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:46.040 That probably wasn't it. And they're like, we love your records, 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:52.080 not that Mark Anthony. So um, I guess with the 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:56.800 Romans too, with the Gypsians. Basically throughout history, if you 0:08:56.840 --> 0:09:00.640 weren't wealthy, you, um probably weren't going to have a 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:02.600 death mask made of you. If you weren't wealthier, you 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:06.360 weren't like the king. Yeah. And one reason is because 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:10.920 a lot of times these were artists before photography, artists 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:14.440 and painters and sculptors. As soon as someone died of note, 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:17.839 they would get their death mask made so they could 0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:21.360 then paint them and sculpt them and have a reference 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:23.199 for what they look like. Yeah, and the same thing. 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:26.120 I mean, artists didn't paint nobody's you know what I'm saying, 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:28.720 So you didn't need to have a death mask made 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:32.520 of you. Um. And this is this is pretty much 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:35.880 the way it was for Europe, in Europe for most 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:40.199 of history except in Italy. Italy pretty early on said 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:45.640 if you if you, if you achieve something notable, probably 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:48.480 make a death mask of you. So if you see yeah, 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:53.720 early inventors and artists and those kind of like poets. 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:56.880 If you're in Italy, you probably have a death mask made. 0:09:56.880 --> 0:10:00.480 If you're a notable personality like Da Vinci, sure he's 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:04.679 probably a death mask. Um. But elsewhere England, France, all that, 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:08.320 it wasn't until late modern history that um, he started 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:12.320 to see death masks of non noble people coming out. 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:15.920 And as a matter of fact, it was Madame Tussoed, 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:20.320 the lady behind the wax museums, who who kind of 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:24.599 brought um death masks to the masses during the French Revolution. 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:29.120 She and her uncle, uh Philippe Courteous, They were just 0:10:29.240 --> 0:10:33.400 masters of wax and they worked a lot. Um. There 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:39.040 was one of Louis the sixteenth Mistresses, was went underwent 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:43.600 the guillotine, and um, she apparently had a terrible grimace 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:45.720 on her face when she died. People could have seen 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:49.120 you also curled up your hand for some reason. Yeah, 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.719 I don't think she didn't too, um and uh so 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:57.240 her Philippe Curtis, uh he basically pinched her face back 0:10:57.280 --> 0:11:01.079 into pinch the decapitated heads face back into a nice 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:04.439 position and then rolled her in some whacks that he 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:07.640 laid out next to the grave. Wow, yeah, that's that's 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:10.960 they They were operating on this higher death mask level 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:13.600 like no one ever has. But the Madam two sold 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:16.320 Wax museum that you enjoyed today grew out of a 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:19.440 death mask operation. Interesting and it seems like a very 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:25.000 macab thing to do. But um, if you it's different 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:29.240 now these days we like to remember our deceased ones 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:32.640 as living and look at photographs of them doing things 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:36.400 where they're alive and lively and go die over there 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:39.320 where we don't have to think about the close casket funeral. 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:41.720 But um, it wasn't the same back then. They would 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:45.800 have they would royal and wealthy families would display these 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:49.200 death mask of their relatives in like you know, the 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:51.439 parlor room or the drawing room or here in the 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:54.640 main hallway, and it was you know, it was the 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:57.959 point of pride. It wasn't like macawbre weird or And 0:11:57.960 --> 0:12:04.000 then eventually it became pseudo scientific with the advent of phrenology. Phrenology, 0:12:04.000 --> 0:12:05.679 we I wish we had a good article on that. 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:08.880 We don't. I haven't seen one. It's pretty interesting, like 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:10.920 the early days of that stuff. Maybe we'll pulling together. 0:12:10.960 --> 0:12:12.760 It's like when people were just starting to figure out 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:16.400 the brain and not really having any idea what they 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:19.439 were doing, really missing the mark a lot of times. Yeah. Yeah. 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:23.320 So phrenology basically was the idea that you could predict 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:29.360 a person's personality behavior, whether someone was a criminal or not, um, 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:31.760 how intelligent they would grow up to be by like 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:33.840 the shape of their face, the shape of their skull, 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:38.160 the bumps on their skull, um. And so phrenologists, as 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:41.760 as this field grew in the nineteenth century, kind of 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:46.120 increased the demand for um death masks because they wanted 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:49.880 to compare people side by side. So you've gotten some 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:54.240 pretty cool death masks of say like um, John Joseph Merrick, 0:12:54.960 --> 0:12:59.160 Oh really yeah, um or uh, he's I think there's 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:02.520 like full body asks of him, um or you know, 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:06.000 a criminal or a genius or whatever, and these phrenologist 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:07.920 would keep him side by side and try to compare 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:12.240 and figure out. It's God, there's got to be a 0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:16.040 key there somewhere, and they have themselves convinced, but they 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:18.600 were all wrong. Was there something There had to be 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:20.960 something to some of that research, right, I think there 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:24.960 was a lot of consensus among scientists, and they're all wrong. 0:13:27.240 --> 0:13:30.920 Let's disappointing. Um. One cool thing is that later on, 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:33.880 in today's world, you can look back at some of 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:38.280 these death masks and gain a little bit of insight diagnostically, 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:41.280 speaking on how someone might have died. UM. In this 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:44.800 article they mentioned Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott. They think 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:47.400 now he died of a stroke because his death mask 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:50.880 he has the telltale signs of, like the droopy face 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:54.320 on one side. And Abraham Lincoln they think might have 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:57.640 had a wasting disease because he had life masks made, 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:01.720 which is the same thing except alive. Before he died, 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:04.800 had a couple of them made, and that they look 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:06.480 at these now and say, you know what Abraham Lincoln 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:10.160 might have been dying of, like tuberculosis or something? Maybe? Right? 0:14:10.360 --> 0:14:12.079 Is that what they just said, a wasting disease. I 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:14.520 didn't even know what. I think that's a disease. Yeah, 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:17.319 that makes sense, consumption. But then, of course Booth took 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:20.200 care of that in a more hasty manner. Yes, I 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:22.080 don't want to give a spoiler away for the movie, 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:26.440 but I'm pretty surely can get shot. Um. There was 0:14:26.520 --> 0:14:29.480 a speaking of Booth. His brother Edwin had a UM. 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:32.360 He was like one of the most famous actors at 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:34.080 least in the country, if not the world when he 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:37.640 was working, and he had a death mask made and 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:44.920 it was collected by a man named Lawrence of Arabia. No, 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:50.760 his name was Lawrence Hutton, and Lawrence Hutton was a 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:54.960 literary um editor for Harper's Magazine, which is still around today. 0:14:55.400 --> 0:14:58.880 Very good UM. And he was in a junk store 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:01.520 in New York one time and ran across the death 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:04.160 mask and it just was immediately smitten with the idea 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:07.720 of collecting these things. So he spent the rest of 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:11.760 his life traveling the world finding death masks, buying him 0:15:11.880 --> 0:15:14.240 having am made of people. In some cases he had 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:17.920 one of Edwin Booth. And he amassed this incredibly large collection, 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:23.160 the world's largest individual collection of death masks UM. And 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:26.160 when he died, he bequeathed it to Yale. No, Princeton, 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:30.360 I'm sorry. So Princeton has this museum of death masks 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:34.000 now and see that. Well, lucky for you, buddy, they 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:40.120 digitized it. Yep. They have like this really nice website, UM, 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:45.160 the Lawrence Hutton death Mask Museum website and it's got 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:47.520 all of them on there. It's really really interesting. Some 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:50.800 are very very old and like poorly done. There's one 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:54.360 of Lincoln that it's just like looking at Lincoln's face 0:15:54.800 --> 0:15:59.200 because he's so recognizable, but to see the details. Daniel 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:02.000 dey lewis right there all right, and you can't hear 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:05.440 his weird voice, but you can almost you can almost 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:07.720 hear it's just looking at it. But the it's it's 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:10.080 the details. That's the thing about death masks that are 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:14.680 so I think um alluring to some people is it's 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:18.080 it's not only the detail of like you know, they're 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:21.760 the age and face and what life did to them, 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:25.160 but it's also the detail of the absence of life, 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:28.040 like that it's a death mask, you know, like the 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:32.560 hollow eyes or in the case of Dillinger, the bullet hole. Um. 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:36.120 Apparently that his death mask was so detailed. They did 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:37.760 such a good job with it that you could see 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:39.520 the abrasions on his face from where he hit the 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:41.840 pavement when he fell down dead. You're looking at some 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:45.440 of these up close, like the details remarkable, it's pretty eerie. Um. 0:16:45.520 --> 0:16:46.920 So if you can't make it the Princeton, you can 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:49.600 check out the Lawrence Hutton. Just type in Lawrence Hutton 0:16:49.920 --> 0:16:52.680 Princeton and we'll bring that up. It's pretty cool little 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:54.600 website you can spend some time on. Yeah, and if 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:56.120 you do go to Princeton. They got a great little 0:16:56.120 --> 0:16:58.560 brup pub. You should go to see the death mask, 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:01.080 go have some beer. What a pub? Yeah, I mean 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:03.160 I can't remember. I mean I assume it's still there. 0:17:03.200 --> 0:17:04.920 It opened new when I was living there in the 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:09.000 mid nineties. Um, I bet it's still there, but it 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:10.040 was kind of a new at the time. It was 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:14.240 like with brew pub. Yeah, this is crazy. It's crazy, alright, 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:18.080 So let's talk about how you do this, shall we Yes, 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:21.160 you need to do it really soon after the person dies, 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:25.119 because you don't want the bloat to set in. Um, 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:28.080 you can distort the face and they want like the 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:34.640 death face after right, exactly, So they would apply grease 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:38.280 to the face, especially on facial hair because, uh, it 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:40.119 made it easier to take the bandages off and they 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:42.680 didn't want to like rip out your eyebrows. Yeah, because 0:17:42.760 --> 0:17:45.600 you still had a funeral of the hold exactly. Uh, 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:48.480 do you want to look like Sergeant Mauser from police Academy? 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:51.320 Do you remember? Yeah, he got his eyebrows blowing off. 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:54.440 That is. Have you ever seen anyone with no eyebrows? 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:57.680 I saw Mouser. It's just weird because sometimes you can't 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:00.240 pinpoint why they look so freaky. I remember guy in 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:03.399 high school shaved his eyebrows. One of the you know, 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:06.639 one of the bad kids, came in one day with this. 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:08.800 That's how he was rebelling. I don't know, he was 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:11.240 just one of those bad kids. Like I didn't associate 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:12.800 with him because I was a good boy. But he 0:18:12.840 --> 0:18:14.680 came in one day in my industrial large class. He 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:18.400 has eyebrows shaved, and it freaked me out. Oh yeah, 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:20.680 Like I definitely didn't have anything to do it after that. 0:18:21.160 --> 0:18:24.200 It was really strange looking he saved his eyebrows. Yeah, 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:28.160 I think it was probably a pink floid thing. So, um, 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:33.720 then you applied the plaster bandages. Um you. It's interesting 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:35.800 is the first layers where you get all your detail, 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:38.360 that's really what the death mask is, and then all 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:40.720 the other layers just reinforced that first layer. Right. It 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:44.960 telegraphs that anybody who's ever hung dry wall knows that 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:48.480 if you don't get that thing smooth when you tape it, 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:52.200 it just it's broadcast throughout the whole the whole wall. 0:18:52.440 --> 0:18:54.639 It's that it's just ruined. Yeah, I just set the 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:58.960 high I was just putting the house down. My guest bedroom. Yeah, 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:01.479 that's just very bad job in there. Uh. And it's 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:05.080 funny when contractors have come by since then, they've gone 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:06.720 in that room and I've been like, yeah, boy, I 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:11.720 don't know who did this. It sucks. Um. All right, 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:13.840 So the plaster sets Back in the day, it took 0:19:13.880 --> 0:19:16.760 about an hour. These days, um, it'll set in just 0:19:16.800 --> 0:19:20.280 a few minutes, and then you carefully remove the mold. 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:22.840 You've got your negative, and then it's up to you. 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:25.680 You can do a wax positive, you can do bronze, 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:29.760 um what else. However, but you want to charge people, Yeah, 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:32.040 I guess so marble. There's one in Napoleon that they 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:34.679 made out of marble. Really Yeah. Yeah, he's not very 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:38.400 intimidating when you see his death mask, but I mean 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:43.960 they broke his spirit pretty good. Yeah. Sure, exile to 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:48.040 an island. It's just you and some other jerks. It 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:50.439 might have been nice. Yeah, I don't think he liked it. 0:19:50.520 --> 0:19:52.359 He was too bent on taking over the world. The 0:19:52.359 --> 0:19:55.080 stick came on an island was like the greatest insult 0:19:55.440 --> 0:19:59.600 is what you control now, Napoleon and this little tiny space. 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:03.919 Um you said that, Uh that these days plaster drives 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:09.119 in a few minutes. Um. And actually there were death masks. 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:12.560 I'm sure somebody somewhere still making a death mask here there, 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:15.560 but um, George Bernard Shaw had one made when he 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:19.040 died in the nineteen fifties, so it's still some something 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:21.920 of a modern event. Um, I'm totally gonna get one made, 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:25.240 are you Yeah? Why not? All right? Uh? Nicola Tesla 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:28.320 had one made. Yeah, his is Have you ever seen his? 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:32.600 Is interesting because I've only seen the one picture that one. Yeah, 0:20:32.640 --> 0:20:36.000 as a younger man, so he got older. He's just 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:37.600 I don't know, you know, the ears are huge, and 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:40.480 his nose was really large. It doesn't look that large 0:20:40.480 --> 0:20:43.320 in this picture, and I guess I've never seen it 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:47.600 at profile. But yeah, he looks sort of like David Bowie. No, 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:50.360 it was a guy, the old old guy who took 0:20:50.400 --> 0:20:56.080 all the drugs Walter Math, not Burrows, but Timothy Learry 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:58.080 sort of looked like a Timothy Larry before he died, 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:02.960 like just old virt Timothy Leary died on webcam, right, 0:21:03.640 --> 0:21:06.879 didn't he like live stream his death? Like even before 0:21:06.880 --> 0:21:09.720 anyone knew how to live stream, he figured it out somewhere. 0:21:09.800 --> 0:21:11.960 I had no idea. I believe you did. That's sad. 0:21:12.600 --> 0:21:15.520 I'm sure it's up on the web all right. Shall 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:19.080 we tell her awesome kind of fact of the podcast 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:23.680 story of the Unknown Woman of the Scene a k a. 0:21:24.119 --> 0:21:29.960 The Lincoln You list scene, nineteenth century Paris, Josh, here's 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:35.440 the story. An anonymous woman, UH moved to Paris from 0:21:35.440 --> 0:21:38.600 the country, falls in love with a young man and 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:43.200 gets her heart broke in two by this French jerk. 0:21:43.880 --> 0:21:48.399 She is distraught. She cast herself into the river and 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:53.040 uh the river scene? Is it scene? I believe and 0:21:54.240 --> 0:21:58.960 sin and nobody claimed the body ever, and the mortician 0:21:59.040 --> 0:22:02.080 was was taken her beauty and the he said, oh, 0:22:02.160 --> 0:22:06.159 this dead lady is so hot. Maybe, but um he 0:22:06.200 --> 0:22:09.560 was taken with her beauty and her calm, almost peaceful 0:22:09.600 --> 0:22:12.159 expression on her face. No one ever claimed her. He 0:22:12.200 --> 0:22:15.480 did a death mask and said, now she is known 0:22:15.520 --> 0:22:18.560 as the unknown Women of the Scene or the sink 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:24.080 the Lincoln. And they a lot of people ended up 0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:27.240 having uh copies of this death mask in their house 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:30.520 as I guess art or something. Yeah, this is kind 0:22:30.520 --> 0:22:33.359 of weird. Yeah, but I mean this is this is 0:22:33.440 --> 0:22:37.520 before collector's plates had come along, maybe and it was 0:22:37.560 --> 0:22:41.640 like spoons from St. Louis or this lady's death mask. Right. Um, 0:22:41.880 --> 0:22:44.480 so the the author of this article poke some holes 0:22:44.520 --> 0:22:47.120 in that story. Yeah. The truth is that the this 0:22:47.240 --> 0:22:50.760 death mask was in wide circulation, right, but the it 0:22:50.840 --> 0:22:54.400 probably wasn't from a woman who drowned, because her features 0:22:54.400 --> 0:22:56.880 would have become bloated and distorted by the time she 0:22:56.880 --> 0:23:01.280 started to float to the surface. Um. And she also 0:23:01.520 --> 0:23:05.000 looks kind of peaceful. Yeah, so they think that's probably 0:23:05.080 --> 0:23:08.919 a life mask posed for by a live model, but 0:23:09.520 --> 0:23:12.720 they never recorded who it was. But the mystery around it, 0:23:12.760 --> 0:23:14.840 I think probably helped sell some of the death masks, 0:23:15.200 --> 0:23:17.800 so they kept it going. And then that's the end 0:23:17.800 --> 0:23:20.200 of the story. You think, here's where it gets really 0:23:20.200 --> 0:23:26.160