Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our
Speaker 1: Coffin to Go Go fest here on Invention. It's October,
Speaker 1: of course, so we thought we'd bring you plenty of
Speaker 1: reprehensible material. Uh. Today, we're going to be continuing the
Speaker 1: coffin journey. Now, last time, what did we look at.
Speaker 1: I think it was mostly about people who were afraid
Speaker 1: they'd be buried alive and inventions on how to get
Speaker 1: around this problem. Yeah. Yeah, that was the primary anxiety
Speaker 1: that those inventions were dealing with. That was the the
Speaker 1: main necessity. That was the mother of those inventions. However,
Speaker 1: one of the key things we're gonna talking about here
Speaker 1: concerns a different threat, a threat that emerged during the
Speaker 1: eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in England, well, particularly in
Speaker 1: the UK and also in the US. Yes, but but
Speaker 1: I think generally speaking most people associated with with the
Speaker 1: UK and that is a fear of the resurrectionists. Right,
Speaker 1: So the last episode was all about the problem of
Speaker 1: you being stuck in a coffin when you want to
Speaker 1: get out. Today's episode is going to be more about
Speaker 1: you being taken out of a coffin when you want
Speaker 1: to be left in. Yeah, we're talking about grave robbing here.
Speaker 1: And grave robbing, of course, was not a new thing
Speaker 1: in the in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Grave robbing
Speaker 1: has pretty much always been around as long as we've
Speaker 1: had graves, uh, somebody or something has been willing to
Speaker 1: dig those graves up. Some of the ore oldest tombs,
Speaker 1: for instance, the tombs from the ancient world, Egyptian tombs,
Speaker 1: for example, many of these were robbed, uh, you know
Speaker 1: during their time, you know, in these centuries, to immediately
Speaker 1: follow almost immediately after they were sealed. Often I think
Speaker 1: sometimes the implication is that maybe people who were involved
Speaker 1: in the burial of ancient Egyptian rich people and pharaoh's
Speaker 1: or were maybe involved in the creation of these tombs,
Speaker 1: were also involved in opening the tombs back up to
Speaker 1: get the goodies out. Yeah. I mean, it's a good
Speaker 1: side hustle. If if you're if you're involved in the
Speaker 1: secreting away of the dead kings, you know, golden treasures,
Speaker 1: you can also make a nice and make a pretty
Speaker 1: penny resurrecting that material bringing it back out. But we
Speaker 1: could make a very important distinction here between removing the
Speaker 1: body from a tomb and just removing all the goodies
Speaker 1: from a tomb, right yeah, I mean primarily, when we're
Speaker 1: talking about grave robbing in the ancient sense, we are
Speaker 1: talking about stealing badge of valuables that were interred with
Speaker 1: the dead things that we discussed this little in the
Speaker 1: last episode. You know, valuables that they were going to
Speaker 1: either they were so important to them that they were
Speaker 1: a part of them and should therefore remain with their bodies,
Speaker 1: or perhaps something of value that would be needed in
Speaker 1: the presumed afterlife in the next world, weapons or you know,
Speaker 1: magical items, things that would aid them. But here we're
Speaker 1: talking about the body itself, and now generally speaking, you know,
Speaker 1: if we're dealing with something stealing the body itself, generally
Speaker 1: we're thinking more about animals in the ancient sense, right,
Speaker 1: He didn't dig your grave deep enough, and so of
Speaker 1: course some scavenging animals sniffed it out, dragged it to
Speaker 1: the surface and consumed all the tasty bits, or of course, uh,
Speaker 1: mythical ghoules, right, the graveyard lurking creatures that would eat
Speaker 1: corpse flesh. Yeah, and uh, it is interesting how I
Speaker 1: think there. You can look to some tales of the ghoules,
Speaker 1: and I think there is especially more modern tales and
Speaker 1: tales have emerged. Uh, you know post eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Speaker 1: The fears of the fears of resurrectionists are kind of
Speaker 1: combined with fears of the Googles, and and I think
Speaker 1: all of that will make more sense as we proceed here.
Speaker 1: But these resurrectionists were not hungry. They weren't looking for
Speaker 1: a midnight snack. So what were they looking for? Well,
Speaker 1: they were working on behalf of science, or more specifically,
Speaker 1: they worked in the employ of an atom who needed
Speaker 1: human cadavers, especially for hospitals and for teaching centers. So
Speaker 1: medical science was advancing at a blistering pace, but they
Speaker 1: needed bodies to chart their way into the medical future.
Speaker 1: They already had access to executed criminals, and the dissection
Speaker 1: of the criminals corpse was considered a vile fate indeed. Uh,
Speaker 1: But but this wasn't enough. This was not enough to
Speaker 1: meet the demand, right, because you had multiple demands, Like,
Speaker 1: for one thing, you would need fresh corpses to dissect
Speaker 1: for primary research on the human body. But also a
Speaker 1: lot of it was just for education. It was for like,
Speaker 1: you know, teaching for surgical colleges and that kind of
Speaker 1: thing exactly. But and and so here's here's the lucky
Speaker 1: thing for these enterprising resurrectionists. Corpses at the time belonged
Speaker 1: to no one. There's a big gray area here because
Speaker 1: again generally speaking through out throughout most of human history,
Speaker 1: if someone was going to dig up a gray they
Speaker 1: were digging it up for property. They weren't digging it
Speaker 1: up for the body itself. So roaming drunken resurrectionist ruled
Speaker 1: that came to rule the night, digging up fresh bodies,
Speaker 1: delivering them to the anatomus, earning their pay. And they
Speaker 1: even operated in gangs acting on tips. Again coming back
Speaker 1: to that idea that at times that those involved in
Speaker 1: the burial of the dead or sometimes involved in the
Speaker 1: in the breaking of the tomb, because who better who
Speaker 1: has the knowledge? Right, Um, Sometimes these gangs would even
Speaker 1: use fake mourners, and uh, they would war against each
Speaker 1: other for the you know, for the decaying goal that was,
Speaker 1: you know, the freshly dead flesh. Like sometimes they would
Speaker 1: I was reading, they would like desecrate another graveyard that
Speaker 1: that bear gang wasn't actually dealing with, but was the
Speaker 1: sort of the domain of another gang to try and
Speaker 1: get that gang cleared out to throw the scent off. Yeah. Yeah, so, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, having when I'd read about resurrectionist in the past,
Speaker 1: I kind of just thought of like, okay, you know,
Speaker 1: just bumbling drunken criminals, uh, sort of lonely man doing
Speaker 1: the lonely work of graveyard scavenging. But at times it
Speaker 1: was it was like a full blown kind of criminal organization. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But also I think the criminality of it is sort
Speaker 1: of a gray area sometimes, and there there are different
Speaker 1: gradations of respectability that seemed to be involved with different
Speaker 1: types of grave robbing or grave opening. Like. So, first
Speaker 1: of all, I was reading that it seems to me
Speaker 1: around the seventeenth and eighteenth century in the UK especially,
Speaker 1: there were several different trends that all sort of combined
Speaker 1: to make body snatching and especially lucrative trade. So one
Speaker 1: of them, of course you already mentioned, is the need
Speaker 1: from medical colleges and anatomists there's an increase in demand.
Speaker 1: The other thing is criminal justice reforms leading to fewer
Speaker 1: executed criminals. So that's a decrease in the traditional supply
Speaker 1: of bodies that these, uh, these colleges can have. And
Speaker 1: then the third thing is sort of a a sort
Speaker 1: of permissive atmosphere, like penalties were sometimes relatively minor if
Speaker 1: you were caught stealing a body as opposed to stealing
Speaker 1: grave goods, and authorities just often turned a blind eye
Speaker 1: to what was going on. I think also a lot
Speaker 1: of times the anatomists getting these bodies maybe didn't ask
Speaker 1: a lot of questions about where they came from. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's sort of you know, you know, plausible denied idility,
Speaker 1: like like, I'm a professional, I don't have time to
Speaker 1: worry where the bodies come from. I have important work
Speaker 1: to do. Uh. If if a body comes, I'm just
Speaker 1: going to pay the standard rate for it. Uh, And
Speaker 1: I'll just leave. I'll leave law enforcement to figure out
Speaker 1: the rest. Right. But so a quick note on the
Speaker 1: relative respectability and legality when comparing body stealing versus grave robbing.
Speaker 1: Many or most resurrection men would actually remove the body
Speaker 1: but leave the grave goods if they're were any even
Speaker 1: often I've read that they would take the clothes off
Speaker 1: of the dead person and put the clothes back in
Speaker 1: the grave, uh, and this sort of distinguish them from
Speaker 1: common thieves. But while that distinction might have been important
Speaker 1: to a judge, say if you got caught, or to
Speaker 1: an anatomist, it was not a very good defense to
Speaker 1: the common people to like to say, look, I only
Speaker 1: stole the naked body. I left the clothes in there.
Speaker 1: I didn't steal the you know, gold trinket you left
Speaker 1: with him. So many regular people, of course, were furious
Speaker 1: and horrified at the idea that their body or the
Speaker 1: body of a relative might be stolen for medical education
Speaker 1: or research, even if the people stealing the bodies were like,
Speaker 1: I'm not stealing any of the valuable stuff from the graves. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this too in terms of the
Speaker 1: resurrection of the body, bodily resurrection, that that some Christians
Speaker 1: believe in the idea that it is important for the body, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to remain intact because that's the body you're
Speaker 1: going to be in well when Christ returns. Yes, that's
Speaker 1: a really interesting way that changes in religious beliefs over
Speaker 1: time I think have may have changed the demand for
Speaker 1: certain technologies, Like I think most Christians today who believe
Speaker 1: in a resurrection or afterlife believe in the resurrection of
Speaker 1: an immage, her real soul, rather than the physical resurrection
Speaker 1: of the body, though I think you can quite plausibly
Speaker 1: argue that the latter is more directly what is described,
Speaker 1: for instance, in the epistles Paul in the New Testament. Uh.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think it used to be a more
Speaker 1: common belief that like, I need my dead body, I
Speaker 1: need those bones. Those are what's going to come back
Speaker 1: to life. Yeah, exactly. And you know another thing I
Speaker 1: thought about two is okay, so if the primary one
Speaker 1: of the primary fears here is just kind of like
Speaker 1: the the the appalling notion that the body of of
Speaker 1: of a deceased loved one, perhaps someone of status, would
Speaker 1: be dragged out and stripped of its of its belongings
Speaker 1: and dragged away in the night. You also have to
Speaker 1: think about this in the in the within the legacy
Speaker 1: of the disinterment of the former Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell
Speaker 1: and the subsequent public execution of his corpse and the
Speaker 1: long running display of his head or at least you know,
Speaker 1: some people some people wonder if that was actually the
Speaker 1: skull of Cromwell have been replaced. But anyway, there was
Speaker 1: this legacy already um in England, of of desecrating the
Speaker 1: body and and and and and you know, essentially desecrating
Speaker 1: the individual through the act. Was this after the monarchy
Speaker 1: came back to power that took Cromwell's body out of
Speaker 1: the ground, and they said, well, he escaped punishment in life,
Speaker 1: but we'll punish his body. Yeah, I mean, and it's
Speaker 1: not I mean, it seems comical now, right, And of
Speaker 1: course it's not just the English that this there there
Speaker 1: are other examples from other cultures where yeah, the body
Speaker 1: of the king of the king is he is later
Speaker 1: dragged back out and and and treated in some manner
Speaker 1: that disrespects it. Yeah. Okay, Well, let's say that you
Speaker 1: die somewhere around Edinburgh and the you know, early eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and you're incredibly concerned that your body is going to
Speaker 1: be yanked out of the grave and take into some
Speaker 1: good for nothing medical college to be dissected in front
Speaker 1: of a bunch of students. What can you do to
Speaker 1: prevent this? Well, I mean, the first thing, of course,
Speaker 1: you could do is just the whole fan only hangs
Speaker 1: out with pitchforks and protects the grave. But I think
Speaker 1: most of us can agree that would mess with your
Speaker 1: grieving process a little bit, but people did do things
Speaker 1: that sometimes. Yeah, I mean I guess in a way
Speaker 1: it would give you something to do and something where
Speaker 1: to like focus your emotions. Of course, if you had
Speaker 1: the money to do so, you could also hire individuals
Speaker 1: to stand guard at your grave. Now, one thing is
Speaker 1: that if you are just worried about having your body stolen,
Speaker 1: as opposed to the theft of valuable grave goods, you
Speaker 1: didn't have to hire a guard for forever until the
Speaker 1: end of time. If you hire a guard like the
Speaker 1: Scottish medical colleges and the anatomis and all these people,
Speaker 1: they're not going to be interested in a rotten, multi
Speaker 1: year old corpse. They want a fresh body with organs
Speaker 1: and living anatomy still intact, so that they can dissect
Speaker 1: it to learn things about the body or show things
Speaker 1: about the body. So you only need to guard the
Speaker 1: body for as long as the body would be fresh. Basically,
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what counts is fresh, but it
Speaker 1: often seems that this may consisted of you know, this
Speaker 1: may have only been a window of a few weeks
Speaker 1: or something. I mean, ultimately, it's whatever the market will bear.
Speaker 1: It's whatever they can then turn around and sell to
Speaker 1: an anatomist. Yeah. The other thing to keep in mind
Speaker 1: too is, okay, what sort of you know, Not to
Speaker 1: be too judgmental, but what sort of individual or you're
Speaker 1: likely to hire to stand guard day and night in
Speaker 1: the cemetery watching over the grave of your loved one.
Speaker 1: There's a very strong possibility that this sort of individual
Speaker 1: is the very sort of person who would be eager
Speaker 1: to accept a bribe from the resurrectionist gangs themselves. Yes,
Speaker 1: or maybe your grave guard just has a side hustle
Speaker 1: as a resurrectionist. I mean who Yeah, who better to
Speaker 1: get the tips from and stuff like? If you've got
Speaker 1: a guard on your payroll, you don't even have to
Speaker 1: stake out a fake mourner at the funeral to see
Speaker 1: where the bodies are going in fresh You can just
Speaker 1: hear from the guard. Now. Another solution would be cemmetary
Speaker 1: wide security, right, so you get fences, walls, locked gates.
Speaker 1: But these options, of course, wouldn't work all the time
Speaker 1: and wouldn't be available to everybody. If you were rich,
Speaker 1: you could lock your families bodies inside a secured crypt
Speaker 1: or vault. But I think most people, you know, they
Speaker 1: couldn't afford that. Uh. So we're gonna talk about inventions
Speaker 1: for individual burials, specifically to prevent the theft of corpses
Speaker 1: and the theft of grave goods. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break. All right, we're back. So, yes,
Speaker 1: we've discussed the threat the resurrectionists maybe coming to steal
Speaker 1: our freshly dead bodies away so that they can sell
Speaker 1: them to anatomus. What do we do to protect them?
Speaker 1: We've already discussed the possibility of posting guards. Now we're
Speaker 1: going to get more into the hardware. Right, So have
Speaker 1: you ever walked through an old cemetery and come across
Speaker 1: what looks like grotesque wrought iron animal cages, half buried
Speaker 1: protruding from the earth They or if you haven't, you
Speaker 1: should at least look up pictures of these, because what
Speaker 1: they remind me of the most are the cages that
Speaker 1: are often put over air conditioning units in our contemporary
Speaker 1: world for the very same purpose we're discussing here, to
Speaker 1: prevent someone from walking off with said air conditioning unit.
Speaker 1: Uh These are known as mort safes, and this is
Speaker 1: one of the main interventions that was invented to protect
Speaker 1: bodies from being stolen by the resurrection men or the resurrectionists.
Speaker 1: They're not vampire traps. Despite the appearance. They're not made
Speaker 1: to trap the dead down in the earth. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of urban legends about this, apparently, especially in
Speaker 1: places where mort Safes are common. They were invented in
Speaker 1: the early eighteen hundreds, and the design is pretty simple.
Speaker 1: They're essentially just a metal cage. The purposes to prevent
Speaker 1: human bodies from being disinterred, and so they're partially buried
Speaker 1: wrought iron cages that fit over top of the coffin,
Speaker 1: preventing anybody from digging it up. Um. Now another thing
Speaker 1: about mort said Now, of course they came in multiple shapes, right.
Speaker 1: You could have bigger mort safes that are sort of
Speaker 1: like a big boxy cage that is partially buried in
Speaker 1: the ground. Found uh, prevents you from digging down to
Speaker 1: the coffin. You could have other ones that are just
Speaker 1: pretty small and snug and fit over top of the coffin,
Speaker 1: but it prevents you from just breaking the coffin open
Speaker 1: because you've got iron bars in the way. Now with
Speaker 1: some of these more it's safe again. You benefit from
Speaker 1: the fact that what the anatomists are looking for are
Speaker 1: fresh corpses. So again, the mort safes would not necessarily
Speaker 1: have to be bought and kept in place in perpetuity.
Speaker 1: You really only needed it as long as it took
Speaker 1: for the corpse to become unappetizing. Too. It's it's buyer,
Speaker 1: So you could put a more safe in place until
Speaker 1: you're good and putrid, and then you dig it up
Speaker 1: or dismantle it with the tackle system, and then it
Speaker 1: can be reused on another grave. Now I've read in
Speaker 1: multiple sources that mort safes are mostly found in Scotland,
Speaker 1: and of course that would line up with a lot
Speaker 1: of other stuff we were reading about body snatching being
Speaker 1: a particular historical problem in eighteenth and nineteenth century Scotland.
Speaker 1: I think, especially like around Edinburgh or there. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of medical college stuff going on there.
Speaker 1: But I know I have seen these in the United States.
Speaker 1: I like to walk around old cemeteries, and while I
Speaker 1: can't say for sure, I'm almost positive i've seen them
Speaker 1: in old southern cities, like in Savannah, Georgia, or in Charleston,
Speaker 1: South Carolina. Yeah, that's interest. I don't believe I have
Speaker 1: seen one in Atlanta, and I've I've walked around Atlantis
Speaker 1: cemeteries a fair amount. It's possible I've missed it. But
Speaker 1: it does make sense. I mean, you again, you would
Speaker 1: need to You would be most concerned about grave sites
Speaker 1: that are located in large enough areas that there would
Speaker 1: be an atomist present, right. So I've read that these
Speaker 1: are most common like around Edinburgh, around London, around Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: places where there would be learning taking place, uh that
Speaker 1: where where a dead body might come in useful. I
Speaker 1: wonder to what extent to this is? Like ultimately it's
Speaker 1: a calm. It's a clash of cultures, you know, the
Speaker 1: this this new the new science, the new anatomy, versus
Speaker 1: the more supernatural ideas of what our body is for,
Speaker 1: you know, and this is kind of the conflict that
Speaker 1: emerges where those two worlds meet. Because totally yeah. Because
Speaker 1: one thing that also comes to mind is like if
Speaker 1: I if I was if I really didn't care about
Speaker 1: the state of my body, Like one way to to
Speaker 1: try and keep this from happening is to say, look, um,
Speaker 1: my body, I'm gonna let it make sure it's plenty
Speaker 1: rotted before it's buried. You know, or or I'm going
Speaker 1: to make sure my body is mangled in such a
Speaker 1: way that it will be a little used to the
Speaker 1: anatomus um. But obviously, the people burying the dead, you know,
Speaker 1: they still were very concerned with the idea of getting
Speaker 1: the body in the grave before it decomposed, before the
Speaker 1: you know, the signs of death were really apparent and
Speaker 1: and certainly not you know, predsecrating it in anyway. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: you could leave instructions like Frederick Chapan in the last episode,
Speaker 1: who is like, make sure they cut my heart out
Speaker 1: so I don't get buried alive. Yes, but he wanted
Speaker 1: to be dissected actually to prevent being buried alive. Here
Speaker 1: you could come out from the other hand and say,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be dissected, so instead cut me
Speaker 1: up into little pieces so I will be of no
Speaker 1: use to the anatomists. But then again, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that's always true, because I've also read accounts of sometimes
Speaker 1: people working in mortuary services at the time being able
Speaker 1: to just say, snip off certain extremities from dead bodies
Speaker 1: that would be obviously obviously of lesser value to an
Speaker 1: anonomous than a full dead body, but still maybe of
Speaker 1: some value, right, you know, and we see some of this, uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly today we live in a time when
Speaker 1: plenty of people will will donate their body to science
Speaker 1: when they die or they're you know, they certainly make
Speaker 1: sure that their organ donors, like people realize to varying
Speaker 1: degrees that they will not need a body once they
Speaker 1: are dead, and if they're things that can be gained, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, certainly for the for the medical world or
Speaker 1: other people's lives and livelihoods, then those organs should be
Speaker 1: taken out, or even the whole body should be utilized
Speaker 1: for that purpose. But this was this would have been
Speaker 1: an extremely radical idea at the time. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it reflects a a sea change in cul tural attitudes
Speaker 1: towards uh, anatomy and medical science and medical education and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, because that would obviously be
Speaker 1: another way to cut out the resurrectionist man, is to
Speaker 1: deal directly with the anatomis um and and then some
Speaker 1: individuals likely did that, I'm guessing, but they would have
Speaker 1: certainly been the exception to the rule, yes, uh. And
Speaker 1: there there would be other advantages to dealing directly with
Speaker 1: the anatomists, such as avoiding what I'm about to talk about.
Speaker 1: Uh So, the trade and dead bodies at this time
Speaker 1: also sometimes took ludicrous and horrific turns. In the late
Speaker 1: eighteen twenties, there was one famously awful incident that resulted
Speaker 1: in uh well, you could say it came basically from
Speaker 1: the direct pressures of the dead body economy. So at
Speaker 1: this stage, due to legal and technological restraints like the
Speaker 1: introduction of mort safes in the early eighteen hundreds, legally
Speaker 1: dessectible bodies are in very short supply. But Edinburgh and
Speaker 1: the medical colleges and the anatomist still need bodies for science.
Speaker 1: And one such anatomist was the Scottish physician and scholar
Speaker 1: Robert Knox, who was an esteemed member of the Royal
Speaker 1: College of Surgeons in Edinburgh. And Knox, like his peers,
Speaker 1: would arrange payments to have bodies brought to his dissecting room.
Speaker 1: And it seems like many of his other peers, he
Speaker 1: again didn't ask a whole lot of questions about where
Speaker 1: they came from. You know, let's just assume that the
Speaker 1: cadavers are legit. So here into the story come two
Speaker 1: dudes named William Burke and William Hair. Both were born
Speaker 1: in Ireland, but by the eighteen twenties they both immigrated
Speaker 1: to Edinburgh and Scotland, and in eighteen seven Hair was
Speaker 1: working as the keeper of a public lodging house. So
Speaker 1: that year Burke also showed up in the house. I
Speaker 1: believe he was originally a lodger there, but they sort
Speaker 1: of got together and started collaborating, and in November of
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty seven, Hair became annoyed because one of the
Speaker 1: people living in the house that where he was renting
Speaker 1: out the rooms died while owing him four pounds in rent,
Speaker 1: and in order to recuperate the back owed rent, Burke
Speaker 1: and Hair came up with a plan to sell the
Speaker 1: body of the dead tenant to local anatomist Robert Knox.
Speaker 1: Again the the anatomist I just mentioned a minute ago.
Speaker 1: So they got seven pounds for the body. That's a
Speaker 1: nice profit. They were owed four they got seven for it,
Speaker 1: or they got more than seven, I think seven pounds
Speaker 1: and tenpence or so. You can see how one might
Speaker 1: begin to get ideas. It's almost kind of like the
Speaker 1: Cobra problem the economics that we've talked about on stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind before you put a price tag
Speaker 1: on on cobras, it's going to it's going to change
Speaker 1: the way people interact with cobras. It's going to change
Speaker 1: the value of Cobra's right, it's not actually an incentive
Speaker 1: to get rid of all the cobras from the city.
Speaker 1: It's just an incentive for people to bring you cobra,
Speaker 1: to raise cobras, etcetera. Right, So, an incentive paying people
Speaker 1: for dead bodies might not necessarily mean bring us already
Speaker 1: dead bodies. It can just mean you need to show
Speaker 1: up here with a dead body. How it got dead.
Speaker 1: I don't know that. Yeah, I mean, especially if there's
Speaker 1: a premium on freshness, which you know there is exactly so.
Speaker 1: Over the next year, Burke and Hair, with some assistance
Speaker 1: from their wives, apparently murdered fifteen other people by luring
Speaker 1: them into the lodging house and then suffocating them and
Speaker 1: selling their fresh bodies to Robert Knox. Uh. The scheme
Speaker 1: was uncovered and they were caught I think on Halloween
Speaker 1: eighty eight. Apparently Hair turned State's evidency. He testified against Burke,
Speaker 1: and Hair was released for testifying against his accomplice, and
Speaker 1: Burke was hanged, and of course that that means that
Speaker 1: Burke's body was likely than used by anatomis. Oh, I
Speaker 1: bet it probably was. I don't know that detail, but
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that irony did not happen. Uh, And
Speaker 1: Burke said in his confession, so he was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: Knox was innocent. He didn't know anything about this. He
Speaker 1: was not involved in the murdering of these people. But
Speaker 1: it's still essentially ruined Knox's reputation. And evidence of this
Speaker 1: is captured in an often quoted children's rhyme from the time.
Speaker 1: Have you heard this before, Robert? I'm not sure, let's
Speaker 1: hear it. Okay, up the clothes and doing the stair
Speaker 1: ben the hoose with Burke and Hair. Burke's the butcher,
Speaker 1: Hair's the thief knocks the boy who buys the beef.
Speaker 1: Oh that's good. That's the whole story encapsulated right there.
Speaker 1: But less we unfairly single them out alone. Burke and
Speaker 1: Hair were not the only people to figure out this scheme.
Speaker 1: If you need a fresh dead body, you know, you
Speaker 1: save yourself the digging and you just murder people. Similar
Speaker 1: murders for the anatomous body trade happened over the years
Speaker 1: in Britain and in the United States, apparently from the
Speaker 1: name William Burke, one of the two murderers here. Uh,
Speaker 1: a person who was murdered so that their corpse could
Speaker 1: be sold to a dissection room was said to have
Speaker 1: been burked. Oh wow, such a grizzly in episode from history. Uh. Now, well,
Speaker 1: one thing I think we might have skipped over was,
Speaker 1: you know we mentioned Burke having been hanged, his body
Speaker 1: would have likely gone to the anatomus as well. That was,
Speaker 1: of course a pre existing place that you would actually
Speaker 1: obtain the bodies that were being used for the anatomist.
Speaker 1: Oh do we not mention that at the top? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That was like the original legitimate route to get fresh
Speaker 1: dead bodies was from the bodies of condemned criminals, right
Speaker 1: and then but then what happens if you're not hanging
Speaker 1: as many of your criminals, right, Yeah, that's that's going
Speaker 1: to reduce the uh, the number of legit corpses, and
Speaker 1: that is just going to grow the demand for illicit
Speaker 1: corpses brought up by the resurrectionists. Now, I want to
Speaker 1: briefly turn to resurrectionist techniques physically, techniques, like what do
Speaker 1: they do to get the bodies out. You. Often if
Speaker 1: you see a scene like this in a movie or something,
Speaker 1: you will see the resurrectionists digging all the way down,
Speaker 1: like digging a grave sized toll and then prying open
Speaker 1: the lid of the coffin. Right, that is not usually
Speaker 1: what happened, And if you think about it, that doesn't
Speaker 1: really make a lot of sense. Like that introduces all
Speaker 1: kinds of unnecessary difficulties into your body extraction routine. Uh so,
Speaker 1: like digging a grave, digging a fresh grave is is
Speaker 1: in some intense work. And then even redigging a grave
Speaker 1: where the at least the soil has been loosened for you,
Speaker 1: that's still quite an endeavor. Oh yeah. I mean. One
Speaker 1: thing is that sometimes there could be structural defenses in
Speaker 1: the ground. This is something people occasionally thought of. Put
Speaker 1: a heavy stone slab on top of the ground. That's
Speaker 1: one simple This is old school grave defense against a
Speaker 1: scavenging predators. Right, if if the family could afford it,
Speaker 1: maybe a mort safe if you could afford it. But
Speaker 1: even if you couldn't think about it, even if you
Speaker 1: have a relatively limited means, you can think of ways
Speaker 1: to make digging up a coffin extremely difficult about throwing
Speaker 1: tree branches into the ground as you as you filled
Speaker 1: the earth back in and right, this would make it
Speaker 1: like trying to dig through roots, the digging would be
Speaker 1: extremely difficult. Or throwing in big stones as you fill
Speaker 1: the grave back in. This makes the digging up very hard.
Speaker 1: So there were a lot of things you could do.
Speaker 1: And then if you think about it, even if they
Speaker 1: haven't done that, and it's just normal earth fill beck
Speaker 1: and you'd have to dig out a lot of space,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, to get the lid open. So instead
Speaker 1: resurrectionists had a method where they would break open an
Speaker 1: aperture somewhere at the head of the coffin. They'd either
Speaker 1: dig down a narrow tunnel near the head of the
Speaker 1: coffin and they would break open through the through the
Speaker 1: roof of the coffin or the lid of the coffin,
Speaker 1: and then throw a rope around the neck and haul
Speaker 1: the body out either through a hole in the coffin lid,
Speaker 1: or sometimes they would do a thing where they would
Speaker 1: dig a tunnel down nearby and then dig a horizontal
Speaker 1: tunnel into the side of the head of the coffin,
Speaker 1: break a hole in the side and pull the body
Speaker 1: out laterally either way that this common method was a
Speaker 1: rope or a hook around the neck and then pull
Speaker 1: the body out leave the coffin in place. And there
Speaker 1: was a further invention that was an insurance policy against
Speaker 1: exactly this kind of removal. The solution is kind of ingenious.
Speaker 1: I think it's called a coffin collar. I was looking
Speaker 1: at one example in the collection of the National Museum Scotland.
Speaker 1: It's from around eighteen twenty from a village called King's
Speaker 1: Kettle in Fife, and it's basically a huge block of
Speaker 1: wood with an iron horseshoe shape bolted onto it, and
Speaker 1: this iron horseshoe would fit around the neck of the cadaver,
Speaker 1: locking it in place inside the coffin. So if a
Speaker 1: resurrectionist loops a rope around your neck and tries to
Speaker 1: pull you out, you just stay firmly stuck in place
Speaker 1: because of the iron collar, unless your head comes off.
Speaker 1: This is one of those situations though, where if if
Speaker 1: they get that far, like they've essentially already desecrated your grave,
Speaker 1: you're just essentially putting in a safeguard to keep them
Speaker 1: from profiting from the desecration, or just taking off of
Speaker 1: your entire body. Yeah, I mean, maybe you wouldn't care
Speaker 1: if somebody has already dug down and desecrated your grave
Speaker 1: as long as your body stays put. Uh. Now, maybe
Speaker 1: we should take a quick break and then when we
Speaker 1: come back we can discuss a really interesting invention that
Speaker 1: has many supposed benefits, one of which is the supposed
Speaker 1: ability to thwart grave robbers. But but how a lot
Speaker 1: of cool features too. Alright, we're back. Are you ready
Speaker 1: to talk about the fisk? Yeah, let's talk about the fisk.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed this one. Um fisk. So humans are
Speaker 1: are really hard to please when it comes to the
Speaker 1: state of their corps. Right. On one hand, we're squeamish
Speaker 1: about the prospect of decay, we're squeamish about things being
Speaker 1: done to our body after we die. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, present them with a cast iron Victorian Mecca
Speaker 1: suit that contains your body and an anaerobic environment and
Speaker 1: allows visitors to gaze at your uncorrupted face through a
Speaker 1: glass face plate for all eternity, and they get a
Speaker 1: little creeped out. Yeah it sounds creepy. Yeah, maybe that's
Speaker 1: just me. Well, I I feel like I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: really leaning into the creepiness here, but a lot of
Speaker 1: people did not think this was creepy as well discussed.
Speaker 1: But some people did think it was creepy, even at
Speaker 1: the time that wrote about it. Yeah, this was the
Speaker 1: case of Almond Fisk eight Patton for the Fisk air
Speaker 1: tight coffin of cast or raised metal a k a.
Speaker 1: The Fisk money so good. Uh. We should say, by
Speaker 1: the way, the inventor's full name, not just Almond Fisk,
Speaker 1: Almond Dunbar Fisk, so good. If that name hasn't been
Speaker 1: pilfered for fictional purposes of some kind, you're really missing
Speaker 1: out now. I should note that Almond Fisk did not
Speaker 1: invent the iron casket. There were already iron caskets and
Speaker 1: used going back as far as eighteen thirty six by others.
Speaker 1: But he really, like he really presented a new concept
Speaker 1: on the iron casket, and certainly was able to to
Speaker 1: market it and sell it to a great number of individuals.
Speaker 1: I tried to find some sort of ballpark estimate for
Speaker 1: how many were sold, and I was not able to
Speaker 1: find it. But but and of course, once they're sold,
Speaker 1: they're under the ground usually unless they're accidentally unearthed later
Speaker 1: as some have been. But it is right like it
Speaker 1: was a successful product. So like, what's the main selling
Speaker 1: point of this product? What are they advertise? Well, from
Speaker 1: the patent itself, fisk rights from a coffin of this description,
Speaker 1: the air may be exhausted so completely as entirely to
Speaker 1: prevent the decay of the contained body on principles well understood,
Speaker 1: or if preferred, the coffin may be filled with any
Speaker 1: gas or fluid having the property of preventing putrification. So wow,
Speaker 1: So you stave off the you stave off rotting by
Speaker 1: either sucking all the gas out of this cast iron
Speaker 1: jar that you're in, or you can fill it with
Speaker 1: what pickling fluid or something you can brine your body
Speaker 1: And and and I do want to stress like two
Speaker 1: more things than this. First of all, there is a
Speaker 1: glass face plate. Uh there's there's a lid to it,
Speaker 1: but you pull back the lid and you can see
Speaker 1: the face of the corpse. That was key. That was
Speaker 1: like a freshness guarantee. You can look in and see
Speaker 1: the face and see that it is not decayed. And
Speaker 1: then likewise, when we talk about it being looking like
Speaker 1: a mummy, looking like as a sarcophagus and being a
Speaker 1: little alien looking. We are not, you know, we're not
Speaker 1: elaborating too much here, Like you can you can look
Speaker 1: up images of this. It does have a strong Egyptian
Speaker 1: air to it. Oh yeah, I was reading in a
Speaker 1: book by Marcella Sorg and William Haglind called Forensic Taffonomy
Speaker 1: The post Born and Fate of Human Remains from CRC
Speaker 1: Press nine, and the authors here really emphasized the parallels
Speaker 1: with the mummy tradition. The coffins were mummy shaped. You'd
Speaker 1: imagine like if you've seen a mummy wrapped, it's the
Speaker 1: same same type of shape, but the arms folded over
Speaker 1: the chest, the wider at the chest, the figure narrowing
Speaker 1: as it approaches the ankles with the bulge, and the
Speaker 1: feet poking up also fisks. Early designs included decorative shaping
Speaker 1: of the outer metal with patterns that quote simulated the
Speaker 1: folds of drapery and ornamental scrolls and flowers. Again all
Speaker 1: iron or cast metal on the outside. Yeah. When I
Speaker 1: look at them, it looks like something that that a
Speaker 1: warhammer for space marine, maybe a necromonger would be buried in.
Speaker 1: You know, it has that kind of like Gothic, uh,
Speaker 1: but also semi Egypt shouldn't feel to it. But so
Speaker 1: there's some kind of like preservation impulse here, kind of
Speaker 1: like with mummification going on. Yeah. Yeah. The the primary
Speaker 1: idea here, like the primary selling point was that this
Speaker 1: would protect the body from swift decay, from seepage from
Speaker 1: from vermin that might get in and uh and start
Speaker 1: messing with the body, and more importantly, allow the body
Speaker 1: body to be transported a greater distance, which indeed was
Speaker 1: you know, one of the reasons for the rise of
Speaker 1: modern embalming practices in the US as well. But I've
Speaker 1: seen it to you know, commented on that, like one
Speaker 1: of the cool things here is that essentially you have this,
Speaker 1: you have this cast iron casket, you have this steam
Speaker 1: punk casket, and indeed this is the age of steam
Speaker 1: and iron. Uh. Steam and iron have enabled people, certainly
Speaker 1: in the United States at the time, to travel vast distances.
Speaker 1: But the thing about traveling vast distances away from home,
Speaker 1: away from the place that you would prefer to be buried,
Speaker 1: is that your corpse may not survive the trip back
Speaker 1: if it is not somehow uh, you know, preserved or
Speaker 1: in this case contained within a special vessel, and this
Speaker 1: was you know, this was a major thing for people.
Speaker 1: You know, you're dealing in again, increased means of travel
Speaker 1: inventions haven't enabled people to travel greater distances, live the
Speaker 1: greater distances, and then your body dies when it's across
Speaker 1: the continent there just may know, there just maybe no
Speaker 1: bringing at home. It may have to be buried, uh
Speaker 1: there in California and not make the return trip to say,
Speaker 1: you know that the Carolina's well. Another thing I would
Speaker 1: wonder about is if you're transporting dead bodies across long
Speaker 1: distances now that you've got trains and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: wouldn't there also be hygiene concerns and stuff, Yeah, exactly
Speaker 1: getting into the seepage in the vermin. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's one thing to transport the body, but then
Speaker 1: you know to who's going to ship it if you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to deal with all this foulness. And this
Speaker 1: is all even more important if the individual died of
Speaker 1: an illness such as cholera. Right, So the cholera is
Speaker 1: not like dripping out on whatever exact train car you've
Speaker 1: got the body on. It's like trapped in there in
Speaker 1: the sealed iron casket. One of the really interesting things
Speaker 1: about this is that there are a number of these
Speaker 1: that apparently were used in the American South. Um For instance,
Speaker 1: there's one there's an actual specimen of the fisc casket.
Speaker 1: It can be seen at the Pink Palace in Memphis, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: which is a kind of a I think I went
Speaker 1: to it when I was a small child, so I
Speaker 1: have no memory of it. But it's like a museum
Speaker 1: of sort of a museum of bodities, like they had
Speaker 1: like a lot of stuffed and mounted heads in All
Speaker 1: Tennessee version of the Museum of Jurassic Technology and sort
Speaker 1: of I guess. But but it was a case where
Speaker 1: somebody was like working a field and they hit something
Speaker 1: in the field and then upcomes this casket. And according
Speaker 1: to an article at Atlas Obscura which highlights places where
Speaker 1: you can go and actually see one of these casts,
Speaker 1: it's there's another one in Tennessee at the Museum of
Speaker 1: Appalachia in Clinton, Tennessee, marking that for a road trip. Now,
Speaker 1: of course this was this was a more expensive option
Speaker 1: for your burial purposes. According to that Atlas Obscure article,
Speaker 1: which was written by Alison Meyer. You're your standard. You know,
Speaker 1: casket was just going to run you a couple of bucks.
Speaker 1: This one would have run you between seven and forty bucks.
Speaker 1: You get a lot for bucks back then, though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so it was expensive to some. It was a
Speaker 1: little disturbing, and in eighteen forty nine FISTS workshop and
Speaker 1: showroom burned down and Fisk himself was severely injured and
Speaker 1: died the following year. Um but you know, as well
Speaker 1: discussed that doesn't mean that the casket wasn't a hit like.
Speaker 1: The company continued to sell them after his death. However,
Speaker 1: as reported in eighteen fifty eight by the Chicago Press,
Speaker 1: there was an accusation that these air tight caskets could
Speaker 1: explode due to the breakdown of the body inside, but
Speaker 1: apparently the f company denied this, stating that thousands of
Speaker 1: their product had been deployed without explosions and that none
Speaker 1: had been deployed in Chicago. Now, now we do that
Speaker 1: is a mention of like thousands of of the product,
Speaker 1: But I don't know to what extent we can, you know,
Speaker 1: trust the marketing. How would they know for sure? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean well, I mean they potentially know for sure
Speaker 1: but would you know you might want to inflate that
Speaker 1: number when you're mentioning in the press, I guess. But also,
Speaker 1: I mean I can see that there might be something
Speaker 1: to this. The idea of sealing something shut when there
Speaker 1: is a thing decomposing inside. This is this is a
Speaker 1: problem today with modern lock in the freshness coffins. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: In fact, I was I was looking around about this,
Speaker 1: and I was reading the U. S. Department of Health
Speaker 1: and Human Services Radiation Emergency Medical Management website. They have
Speaker 1: an article on management of the Deceased and radiation emergencies, uh,
Speaker 1: and it I noticed that it it touched on what
Speaker 1: seemed to be a standard fact of sealed metal caskets,
Speaker 1: which are by the way, far preferred to would in
Speaker 1: k is of radioactive remains. Metal caskets and coffins should
Speaker 1: have a quote seal that releases pressure from inside the
Speaker 1: casket and retards the entry of groundwater. Well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you'd want it to have some kind of if
Speaker 1: you must have a sealed casket. I mean, again, the
Speaker 1: reasons for having that are not necessarily super clear, but
Speaker 1: but it should be able to burp, right, because they're
Speaker 1: going to be gases released from decomposition. And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I can totally see the possibility that a sealed cast
Speaker 1: iron casket would explode. Now, one thing you're probably wondering though,
Speaker 1: is is, ultimately did this casket work, assuming it didn't explode,
Speaker 1: like the manufacturer stated, does it actually preserve the body
Speaker 1: right now? On one hand, it doesn't have to preserve
Speaker 1: the body very long because these were designed to go
Speaker 1: in the ground um once they made it back home.
Speaker 1: So it just needs to last long enough that the
Speaker 1: customer can be satisfied that that's their leved one inside
Speaker 1: the casket, they can perhaps be identified, and then you
Speaker 1: can just have a you know, a normal funeral for
Speaker 1: the individual. But like I said, some of these end
Speaker 1: up popping back up again. They end up being exhumed,
Speaker 1: you know, due to farm work, construction, et cetera. And
Speaker 1: I was looking around and according to a two thousand
Speaker 1: and six Fined chronicle in the two thousand tin article,
Speaker 1: a Fisk patent metallic burial case from Western Missouri. Uh,
Speaker 1: here's how it all broke down. Basically, this is an
Speaker 1: example where farm equipment hit it and they had to
Speaker 1: bring it up, and they went ahead and just examined it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's a historical curiosity also an anatomical curiosity.
Speaker 1: So they point out that the glass viewing window was
Speaker 1: still intact, but it was no longer transparent, so you
Speaker 1: couldn't actually see through it anymore. The casket was damaged
Speaker 1: when it was unearthed again by accidents, so uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they that alone had ruptured the container. But they also said, quote,
Speaker 1: the coffin contained a moderately well preserved skeleton in anatomical position.
Speaker 1: The majority soft tissue had decomposed, but head and pubic hair,
Speaker 1: along with many of the fingers and toenails, were discovered
Speaker 1: in their proper anatomical location. While the coffin seal had
Speaker 1: been compromised allowing water into the case, it does not
Speaker 1: appear to have caused any significant movement of the bones
Speaker 1: or artifacts. Is it common to note whether the pubic
Speaker 1: hair is in the right place? Well, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's just a you know, a statement on what's there
Speaker 1: and what is what is, what is rotted away, etcetera. Um.
Speaker 1: But but I was interesting to the authors end up
Speaker 1: kind of going through the history of the fist casket
Speaker 1: and all, and they point out that, you know, this
Speaker 1: was a successful product, quote fulfilling the practical, aesthetic, and
Speaker 1: emotional needs of mid nineteenth century Americans, as well as
Speaker 1: the recent technological advancements allowing for the standardization, mass production,
Speaker 1: and large scale distribution in the Eastern United States. And
Speaker 1: even after Fisk's death and and also after his presumed
Speaker 1: burial within one of these, the company continued to operate
Speaker 1: and sell their product. Avenge really with the Egyptian elements
Speaker 1: the more alien elements of the design somewhat relaxed, especially
Speaker 1: when the company was sold to Crane, Breed and Company
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty three. A fun fact, former US Vice
Speaker 1: President and Secretary of State John C. Calhoun was buried
Speaker 1: in one of these. May his passionate defenses of slavery
Speaker 1: Forever suffocate in that petred iron jar. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: reading there were some other like notable members of the
Speaker 1: Confederacy that Jefferson into these, or he was into I
Speaker 1: don't think he ever, I don't. I did not read
Speaker 1: anything to indicate it that he ended up in one,
Speaker 1: but he liked the idea of them. Also, former First
Speaker 1: Lady Dolly Madison was also laid to rest in a
Speaker 1: fist casket, and this Yeah, and this seemingly may have
Speaker 1: actually helped make the choice more popular, which is a
Speaker 1: trend setter. But eventually the market moved on to a
Speaker 1: different type of metal casket, to the sheet metal casket,
Speaker 1: which still remains in use today. And I think that's
Speaker 1: important to drive home, especially if if through most of
Speaker 1: this discussion you've been thinking, oh, stron casket, that's weird,
Speaker 1: you know, when most of the caskets that are used
Speaker 1: today in the United States are still sheet metal caskets.
Speaker 1: They're still they have evolved from this basic trend. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think today they look less like space sarcophag guy
Speaker 1: and more like they're kind of polished. Sometimes were made
Speaker 1: to look like wood or some of their ambiguous material. Um.
Speaker 1: According to Sorgan Haglin's book, which I mentioned earlier, the
Speaker 1: sealed cast iron coffin was mainly used uh in a
Speaker 1: window of time from about eighteen fifty to eighteen eighty,
Speaker 1: and the eighteen eighties were when embalming became very popular,
Speaker 1: So you can see that as sort of like a
Speaker 1: tradeoff technology. Uh. And they write that this, uh, this
Speaker 1: accompanied a shift in funerary culture. Changing emphasis from quote
Speaker 1: encasement of a body for immediate burial to its presentation
Speaker 1: and display. And also with the change in caskets, it
Speaker 1: led to greater attention to the interior furnishings of a
Speaker 1: casket rather than the exterior decoration. And I think this
Speaker 1: is because of the idea of like open casket funerals.
Speaker 1: Of course, not everybody today is stuck, you know, even
Speaker 1: if you're going to be buried stuck with the plane,
Speaker 1: metal or wooden caskets that are most common in the West,
Speaker 1: there there are still I think some really creative and
Speaker 1: beautiful and unique funerary art cultures in the world. That's right.
Speaker 1: The Ga people of Ghana are known for their beautiful
Speaker 1: and and often and often very modern looking fantasy coffins.
Speaker 1: So if I imagine a lot of people have seen
Speaker 1: images of these. But if you if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: a picture just in passing of say a casket or
Speaker 1: coffin that looks like a fancy shoe or perhaps uh
Speaker 1: it looks like a shell, I mean it looks like, yeah,
Speaker 1: a boat. Uh. They're beautiful to behold. They take the
Speaker 1: ships of you know, all these things, buildings, animals, especially, um,
Speaker 1: some item that might be a part of an individual's
Speaker 1: trade or craft. H The idea here is to bury
Speaker 1: the individual in a vest so that resembles something that
Speaker 1: meants something to them when they were alive, so that
Speaker 1: they can remember it in the next life. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like a more abstract version of the grave goods concept.
Speaker 1: So like you could bury somebody with the tools or
Speaker 1: things that they love to use in their life, or
Speaker 1: you could bury them within a representation of the things
Speaker 1: they loved. Yeah. Yeah, and and again these they're really
Speaker 1: splendid um. You should definitely do yourself a favor and
Speaker 1: look up, look up some images of these local clients
Speaker 1: will pay something like a thousand dollars or their their
Speaker 1: their coffins in these cases. And again it's because there's
Speaker 1: a big emphasis placed on them, but also their international
Speaker 1: clients that might pay between five and fifteen k uh this,
Speaker 1: you know, due to the higher quality materials that may
Speaker 1: be used in these cases, but also the international standards
Speaker 1: that have to be met, you know, for wherever this
Speaker 1: this casket is going. But but I love the idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if this is what I
Speaker 1: want from me, but I think it's uh, I think
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful concept. Like so especially in the United States,
Speaker 1: we have this very grim and dour view of the funeral,
Speaker 1: and certainly a funeral can be just that. But the
Speaker 1: idea that it might be a little more flashy, that
Speaker 1: it might that you might be buried in it as
Speaker 1: in an image of something that defines you, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: something that you loved. I think that's a beautiful idea. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What I found really striking about these caskets is the
Speaker 1: idea that they are artistic and very expressive and colorful
Speaker 1: and personalized, as opposed to the most common like funerary
Speaker 1: customs I can think of in the United States, where
Speaker 1: all of the hardware is extremely kind of like serious
Speaker 1: and muted and uh and standardized. You know, it's almost
Speaker 1: like it wants to be elegant without being flashy or something. Uh.
Speaker 1: But like I love the idea of like individually artistically
Speaker 1: created vessels for burial. I can only hope Nicolas Cage
Speaker 1: has one of these picked out, that he's one of
Speaker 1: the international clients, because we've discussed before, you know, he's
Speaker 1: he's he seems to think a little outside the box
Speaker 1: when it comes to his own his own funeral, his
Speaker 1: own you know, his own resting place. He has that
Speaker 1: beautiful pyramid. Uh stiful. It is beautiful, beautiful pyramid set
Speaker 1: aside in New Orleans for his burial. Um. I've seen it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've I've been to it as well. I've touched it.
Speaker 1: It's nice. I felt the power radiating off of it,
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly. One important thing to stay is
Speaker 1: he's not He's not the first individual in New Orleans
Speaker 1: to have a pyramid um grave. So it's not like
Speaker 1: he's coming in with some sort of whackadoodle idea that
Speaker 1: doesn't line up with tradition at all. He's not the
Speaker 1: first Louisiana pharaoh, right, But yeah, I would hope that
Speaker 1: that he would also be buried within uh you know
Speaker 1: the form of something that Nicolas Cage loves in life.
Speaker 1: He goes around saying, did you know that this here
Speaker 1: pyramids symbolizes my individuality and belief in personal freedom? Well,
Speaker 1: one one can only hope at any rate, Um that
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to close it out there. We're gonna
Speaker 1: come back with another episode on inventions that that revolve
Speaker 1: around of funeral rites, around caskets, around protecting the body
Speaker 1: of the deceased. But again, we're just gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: close this one out right here. Uh. Certainly we want
Speaker 1: to hear from everybody. If you have, if you've gotten
Speaker 1: to see any of these examples of these different devices
Speaker 1: and inventions in your travels, let us know we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Uh. If you want to check
Speaker 1: out the show itself invention pod dot com. That's where
Speaker 1: you'll find it. You'll also find it wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts and wherever that might be. We just ask
Speaker 1: you to subscribe and rate and review. That really helps
Speaker 1: us out huge thanks as always to our excellent audio
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
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