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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. Today we are going back to an

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Speaker 1: episode that did not come out in October, but it

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Speaker 1: definitely could have. It's our apisode about the soap Lady,

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Speaker 1: who is part of the Mooder Museum collection, as well

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Speaker 1: as other famous corpses that suppotified as they decomposed. And

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Speaker 1: it is also connected to an episode that is coming

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Speaker 1: out in a few days, but we're going to keep

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Speaker 1: the exact topic of that one a surprise. So enjoyed

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Speaker 1: this and we'll see you back here in a couple

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Speaker 1: of days. I feel free to send us guesses if

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Speaker 1: you want, and in the meantime, enjoy Welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart

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Speaker 1: Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy View Wilson. And today's

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Speaker 1: episode is going to be a little bit of a

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Speaker 1: springtime macob. It's got all the classics, you've got some

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Speaker 1: unidentified corpses which are being strange characteristics. There's a little

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Speaker 1: bit of science in there, some modern issues associated with

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Speaker 1: this science. And we're even gonna have a cameo from

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Speaker 1: a famed paleontologist and we're actually titling the episode The

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Speaker 1: Lady Who Turned to Soap, but we're actually going to

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Speaker 1: talk about a few different corpses that have been found

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Speaker 1: covered in some degree of a substance, which is sometimes

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Speaker 1: called grave wax. This story, as we're telling it today,

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Speaker 1: starts in eighteen seventy five, and at that point a

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Speaker 1: city improvement project in Philadelphia unearthed a unique find. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This project involved the exhumation of a cemetery, and it

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Speaker 1: was the thing that they had to do in order

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Speaker 1: to get the project done. Yeah, and I've read different

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Speaker 1: accounts of what that project may have been. Some say

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Speaker 1: they were trying to build a train platform and it

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Speaker 1: was gonna take up some of they needed some of

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

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

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Speaker 1: a concrete definitive on what the public works project was.

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: excited about this discovery, and he shared this news with

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: they have been buried 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 semi terry superintendent finally told the duo quote, I

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

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

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Speaker 1: the cemetery and Lady had taken the superintendent's comment as

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Speaker 1: a hint, and so he went out and he hired

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

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Speaker 1: furniture wagon with a note that the bodies were the

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Speaker 1: grandparents of the wagon driver's employer and asked that they

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Speaker 1: be released to the driver. And so that same cemetery

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Speaker 1: worker who had dropped this hint to Lady that relatives

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Speaker 1: could collect bodies, sent the deceased on their way in

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Speaker 1: the furniture wagon. Documents in the Mooder Museum indicate that

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Speaker 1: Lady paid seven dollars and fifty cents for each of

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Speaker 1: these bodies. The Mooder Museum, which is part of the

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Speaker 1: College of Medicine, kept the soap Lady, but the Soapman

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Speaker 1: eventually went to the Smithsonian Institution as part of the

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Speaker 1: National Museum of Natural History. And now, just to acknowledge

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Speaker 1: his MEO, you may recognize the name Lady. So Dr

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Speaker 1: Joseph Lady is usually referred to as the father of

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Speaker 1: American vertebrate paleontology, and in the Cope and Marsh bone wars,

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Speaker 1: which are covered by previous hosts of this podcast. In

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Speaker 1: an episode UH, it was actually Lady who backed up

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Speaker 1: Marsh in his assertion that Cope had placed the head

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Speaker 1: of Elasmosaurus plate us on the wrong end of the skeleton.

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Speaker 1: This was a particularly painful episode because Lady had actually

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Speaker 1: been Cope's mentor, so for him to be the one

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Speaker 1: that actually validated criticism of him was quite a drama.

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Speaker 1: But that's just in case you're recognizing that name and

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Speaker 1: it's ringing a bell, that was who he was. So

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Speaker 1: you may at this point, in addition to stumbling over

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Speaker 1: the ethics of effectively stealing these bodies, wondering how in

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Speaker 1: the world does the body turn into soap? And these

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Speaker 1: two soap bodies are definitely not the only specimens to

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Speaker 1: exhibit this very weird waxy transformation. In Paris, in the

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Speaker 1: late seven hundreds, bodies of children were exhumed from the

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Speaker 1: Cemetery of Innocence to be moved into a space that

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Speaker 1: would later become the Paris Catacombs. And this is sort

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Speaker 1: of the first point on record where we have people

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Speaker 1: noting this condition. Uh. Scientists Antoine for Quax and Michel

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Speaker 1: Tourre were on hand to study those bodies during the exhamation. Uh.

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Speaker 1: They were there because they had an opportunity to study decomposition,

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Speaker 1: and they noticed that several of them were covered in

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Speaker 1: a waxy substance. And this pair is actually credited with

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Speaker 1: naming this substance at a puss air, and that comes

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Speaker 1: from the Latin root words adepts, or you'll hear at

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Speaker 1: a pose for fat and sarah, which is wax adipus

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Speaker 1: their forms as part of decomposition, but it doesn't typically happen.

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Speaker 1: Most bodies don't do this at all. It requires specific conditions,

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Speaker 1: usually a moist alkaline environment, and as the decomposition progresses,

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Speaker 1: the body's fat slowly turns into this soap like substance.

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Speaker 1: The corpse wax is sometimes called starts off soft, kind

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Speaker 1: of like a paste or a petty, but it hardens

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Speaker 1: over time into something more like hard wax or damp mortar.

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Speaker 1: And this process is called suppontification, and it actually stops

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Speaker 1: the decay process. Is it slowly encases the body with

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Speaker 1: wax and shuts out the oxygen that's needed for normal decomposition.

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Speaker 1: It happens most successfully when a corpse's body fat is

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Speaker 1: exposed to anaerobic bacteria. It can happen in damp soil

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Speaker 1: or water, so long as the environment is low on oxygen.

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Speaker 1: One of the really fascinating things about suppontification is that

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Speaker 1: it can happen pretty rapidly in terms of a body.

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Speaker 1: It's been documented in observed research settings that's happening even

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Speaker 1: within a few days, although it can stretch into more

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Speaker 1: than a year. In some testing that was done with

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Speaker 1: pig cadavers, the process actually started within hours. Warm water

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Speaker 1: seems to hasten the process, and while it does continue

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Speaker 1: in cold water, it just does so at a slower pace.

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Speaker 1: For a body to be completely transformed by the process

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Speaker 1: rather than just the fatty tissues takes about two years,

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Speaker 1: and in some cases adapos air formation has been found

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Speaker 1: in dry environments, but that definitely appears to be the

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Speaker 1: exception rather than the rule, and in those cases, it's

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Speaker 1: the moisture of the body itself that kind of provides

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Speaker 1: the ideal conditions for these anaerobic bacteria, and it's been

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Speaker 1: documented in bodies that have been embalmed as well as

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Speaker 1: those that have not. Uh. It is most common in

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Speaker 1: cases of people with high body fat, which sort of

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Speaker 1: makes sense, and within a given corpse, it tends to form. Again,

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Speaker 1: this is pretty logical, most commonly in areas where the

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Speaker 1: body fat is concentrated, So if someone carries a lot

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

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Speaker 1: going to be, Versus if someone carries it in their hips,

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

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Speaker 1: One of the major problems of adiposser is that it

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

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Speaker 1: 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: adapassir can just preserve a canaver almost indefinitely. And in

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Speaker 1: the case of Soap Lady and her companion Soapman, although

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: process to take place. And as we've just mentioned, this

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

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Speaker 1: each of them had passed. And 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 elderly,

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Speaker 1: uh potentially obese woman who had died in seven in

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

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

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Speaker 1: persisted 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. Con Looge, 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 discovery has really shifted the time

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Speaker 1: of her death much later to have the straight pins,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: that they started being manufactured in the US in the

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Speaker 1: eighteen thirties, so Soap Lady could not have died in

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, so fairly recently, the Moodor

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Speaker 1: Museum hosted forensic experts and radiographers to study the Soap

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Speaker 1: Lady once again, and in fact, that original team that

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Speaker 1: had studied her in the eighties came back and were

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Speaker 1: part of this. So at this point she was removed

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Speaker 1: from her plexiglass display and casement, and she was examined.

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Speaker 1: I read one newspaper report that said she's getting her

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Speaker 1: physical like they said it kind of glibly. X rays

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Speaker 1: were carefully taken, they did like polaroid X rays, and

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Speaker 1: they assembled them right there on the spot so that

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Speaker 1: researchers could look at her skeleton and its entirety next

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Speaker 1: to the actual body. They also took digital X rays

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Speaker 1: for later development, and they removed some hair so they

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Speaker 1: could perform toxicology tests. And analysis of the work that

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Speaker 1: was done with Soap Lady in the two thousands has

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Speaker 1: led to the conclusion that she may have been even

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Speaker 1: younger than was previously estimated. She could have even been

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Speaker 1: as young as in her twenties. They're guessing late twenties.

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Speaker 1: But she's still Oh, we don't have all the details

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Speaker 1: on her story. We're still figuring it out. So Man

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Speaker 1: has also been studied by scientists at his home in

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Speaker 1: the Smithsonian collection since he was acquired and inteen fifty eight.

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Speaker 1: It's believed that he was in his forties when he died,

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Speaker 1: which is estimated to have been sometime between eighteen hundred

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Speaker 1: and eighteen ten, and Soapman is about five ft nine.

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Speaker 1: He's still wearing his stockings, which always seems to come

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Speaker 1: up in descriptions of him, which is kind of charming, uh,

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

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

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Speaker 1: had some confusion about his age guestimate. 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: sev epidemic that they had attributed both of their deaths

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Speaker 1: to initially. Now we're going to move on to some

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Speaker 1: other similar bodies. In nine six a soap mummy was

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Speaker 1: found decapitated and fully covered by adapasair, and this was

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Speaker 1: floating in Lake Brien's in Switzerland. The body was nicknamed

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

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

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Speaker 1: trunk was sealed up in adapass air, and consequently the

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Speaker 1: soft tissues of his heart's, stomach, and intestinal tract were

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Speaker 1: all really well preserved. And in twleven researchers from the

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

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Speaker 1: his bone marrow, that brin Z had drowned in the

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Speaker 1: lake in the seventeen hundreds and that he had slowly

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Speaker 1: turned to soap after he settled into sort of a

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Speaker 1: sediment grave on the bottom of this body of water,

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Speaker 1: and he just sat there quietly. You know, the sediment

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Speaker 1: had compacted so much that oxygen wasn't getting in. But

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Speaker 1: an earthquake eventually dislodged him from the lake bed, and

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Speaker 1: that is how he came to the surface where he

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Speaker 1: was discovered. In nine forty a pretty grisly it suppontification

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Speaker 1: discovery was made in Washington State, an Olympic National Park,

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Speaker 1: a woman's body was found on Lake Crescent, and in

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Speaker 1: this case, the body had clearly been dumped. The woman

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Speaker 1: had been rolled up in blankets and then tied with

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Speaker 1: a rope, and her face had decomposed to the point

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Speaker 1: that it couldn't be identified, but the rest of her

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Speaker 1: body had turned to this waxy substance, and a medical

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Speaker 1: student that had examined the body once it was taken

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Speaker 1: to Poor Angelus had described it as being very similar

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Speaker 1: to ivory soap. The body was eventually idd as Hallie Illingworth,

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Speaker 1: who had gone missing three years earlier, and ultimately Hallie's husband,

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Speaker 1: Monty Illingworth, was found guilty of her murder. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: that one's kind of interesting because it does point out

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Speaker 1: sort of I know, when I started researching this, I

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Speaker 1: was thinking, this must be a process that takes a

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Speaker 1: really long time. But she had vanished in seven and

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Speaker 1: was found just three years later completely encased. So uh,

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Speaker 1: in addition to the scientific research done, that's kind of

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Speaker 1: an easy case study that shows, you know, in natural

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Speaker 1: non lab conditions, three years can completely in case the

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Speaker 1: whole whole corpse. In eight, the body of a young

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Speaker 1: boy was found in a sarcophagus from the late Roman

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Speaker 1: era in the city of Man's, Germany, and this had

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Speaker 1: a coding of what scientists have described as quote a

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Speaker 1: puff pastry like substance assumed to be adapas air. And

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Speaker 1: this particular cadaver is unique in that it was in

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Speaker 1: an area with fluctuating groundwater levels. So this means that

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Speaker 1: in some periods of time, conditions were conducive to adapass

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Speaker 1: air development and in other periods of time. Uh, they

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Speaker 1: were not, and they enabled the boy's corpse to actually decay.

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Speaker 1: But scientists point to this find as significant because even

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Speaker 1: with these fluctuating environmental factors, the adipos air has persisted

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Speaker 1: for roughly sixteen hundred years. Before we get to a

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Speaker 1: very modern problem, Uh about adipus air. Do you want

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Speaker 1: to pause and have a word from a sponsor. Let's

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Speaker 1: do that. So I mentioned this for our sponsor break

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Speaker 1: that there are many, many instances of adapasa appearing on corpses.

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Speaker 1: Some are famous, some are not. But it is a

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Speaker 1: very modern issue and it's actually causing a very real

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Speaker 1: problem in Germany. Some cemeteries actually recycle their space, but

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Speaker 1: adapas air formation is creating a real challenge when it

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Speaker 1: comes to that practice. Normally, plots and cemeteries that practice

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Speaker 1: recycling are exhumed for reuse after fifteen to twenty five years,

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Speaker 1: long enough in good conditions for the full decomposition process

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Speaker 1: to have taken place, leaving only skeletal remains. In Germany

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Speaker 1: isn't the only place that's done this, but there have

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Speaker 1: been a lot of studies done around that. So it's

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Speaker 1: one of those cultural things where I When I have

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Speaker 1: told people about this, they get really weird and it's like, well,

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Speaker 1: we have finite space on the Earth and seemingly infinite

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Speaker 1: people happening, So something has to be done to kind

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

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Speaker 1: high clay content of many of the very sites, like

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Speaker 1: a lot of these cemeteries were just not placed on

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

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Speaker 1: that graves can't be recycled, and there's sort of this

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Speaker 1: whole research effort happening trying to fix this problem. Swiss

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Speaker 1: scientists began a project in two thousand eight to try

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Speaker 1: to solve the problem by introducing a reconditioning system into

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Speaker 1: the soil. But the problematic element to that solution is

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Speaker 1: that there has to be a place where they can

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Speaker 1: create auxiliary graves to be dug for these corpses that

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Speaker 1: are covered with adapas are like, they can't They can

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Speaker 1: recondition the soil, but they still have to put these

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Speaker 1: bodies somewhere. Some cities opted instead to purchase water tight

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Speaker 1: burial chambers, and in some cases private citizens have purchased

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Speaker 1: their own these tombs offer up environments where decomposition can

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Speaker 1: happen the way it normally should without the conditions that

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Speaker 1: promote that promote the development of adapas air. However, and

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Speaker 1: an initial examination of some of these chambers actually revealed

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Speaker 1: a different problem. The absolute absence of moisture has led

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Speaker 1: to corpse is mommifying rather than decomposing. So filters have

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Speaker 1: been added to some of the crypt models in the

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Speaker 1: hope of creating a more perfect afterlife environment to promote

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Speaker 1: proper decay. Another solution that is also a Swiss brainchild

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Speaker 1: is a fungal product that is intended to accelerate decomposition

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Speaker 1: of wooden coffins. And I uh read about this in

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Speaker 1: an article in Spiegel online, and this was in two

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Speaker 1: thousand and eight, and I did not really find later

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Speaker 1: information on how successful that is or is not, So

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Speaker 1: we don't really know if that's worked yet. It's still only,

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Speaker 1: you know, seven years after the fact. It may be

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Speaker 1: hard to tell. Um. Other approaches to kind of advancing

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Speaker 1: the science of decomposing bodies are being explored. H There

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Speaker 1: are companies cropping up that offer woodland burials like under

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Speaker 1: a tree or their luxury cemeteries that are designed to

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Speaker 1: feel more like park spaces, and in those cases, uh,

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Speaker 1: the ones that I read about in Germany, there is

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Speaker 1: an option to have a not recycled grave so that

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Speaker 1: if the family wishes, they can keep you in that

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Speaker 1: plot forever. I think they have to pay like an

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Speaker 1: annual fee. I'm not entirely clear on the economics of it,

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Speaker 1: but it's an option now to kind of skip over

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Speaker 1: this whole recycling issue. And and that's soap people. It's

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Speaker 1: probably fascinating. It is strange and fascinating. It is probably

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Speaker 1: no uh surprise to people who have maybe watched Fight

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Speaker 1: Club or read other things that you know, fat and

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Speaker 1: soap are connected. One of my friends that I was

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Speaker 1: talking to so didn't isn't this how they discovered that

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Speaker 1: body fat could be used as a cleaning agent? And

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Speaker 1: I was like, not this specifically. It's sort of like

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Speaker 1: the difference between using a wheat based flour to bake

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Speaker 1: a cake and a cake spontaneously forming in a field

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Speaker 1: of wheat. You can you can use fat in the

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Speaker 1: soap making process, but for soap to just form on

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Speaker 1: its own is a full other thing that requires all

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Speaker 1: lot of very specific scenarios and conditions well, and the

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Speaker 1: possibly apocryphal story of how soap was discovered was people

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Speaker 1: doing their laundry downstream from a place where bodies are

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Speaker 1: being burned for sacrifice, and so correct the ash and

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Speaker 1: the the fat and all of that we're mixing together

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Speaker 1: and flowing into the water. It's possibly apocryphal, but more

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Speaker 1: believable than it being from adapas there right, So, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's they're they're connected in terms of chemistry, but it's

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Speaker 1: not quite the same situation. Uh, this completely fascinates me.

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Speaker 1: Admittedly I have a taste for the macab especially when

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Speaker 1: it involves science. But yeah, it's very fascinating, does the

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Speaker 1: idea that you could turn to soap. Thank you so

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Speaker 1: much for joining us on this Saturday. If you have

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Speaker 1: heard an email at or U or a Facebook you

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Speaker 1: are l or something similar over the course of today's episode,

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Speaker 1: since it is from the archive that might be out

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Speaker 1: of date now, you can email us at History podcast

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Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com, and you can find

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Speaker 1: us all over social media at missed in History. And

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