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 three of our
Speaker 1: exploration of coffin tech. It's death Tech month at at
Speaker 1: Invention here. In the last couple episodes we talked about
Speaker 1: like special types of coffins. Originally, in the first episode,
Speaker 1: I think we focus mainly on coffins that we're designed
Speaker 1: to keep you from being prematurely buried and uh and
Speaker 1: thrashing about inside your your grave sealed for doom forever. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in the last episode we focused mainly on well,
Speaker 1: we we looked at length of the fist coffin the
Speaker 1: f I s K. How can you say fisk coffin.
Speaker 1: That's almost impossible. Yeah, I'm surprised that it sold so
Speaker 1: well with a name like that, which was a strange
Speaker 1: and elegant invention. And it's all right, But a lot
Speaker 1: of what we talked about was stuff to prevent people
Speaker 1: from having their bodies stolen by resurrection men or resurrectionists
Speaker 1: who took bodies from graves in order to sell them
Speaker 1: to medical colleges and dissection rooms and anatomists. Yeah so
Speaker 1: so yeah, we talked about ways to to safeguard the
Speaker 1: the the casket, the burial ground, putting cages over them,
Speaker 1: having specially designed caskets to keep people out, weird gadgets
Speaker 1: to go around your neck, etcetera. But now we're going
Speaker 1: to get into Uh, I guess what we would call
Speaker 1: active measures? Right? A casket or a coffin that fights back. Right,
Speaker 1: So what if all the last solutions we are, all
Speaker 1: the previous solutions we talked about were just too wimpy.
Speaker 1: Here is a possible solution. If you want to keep
Speaker 1: people from stealing your corpse, turn them into a corpse
Speaker 1: and then they'll have their own and they won't need yours. Uh,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a casket that kills. Like if it
Speaker 1: were like a seventies or eighties horror film, it would
Speaker 1: be instead of being death Spa or deathback the beat
Speaker 1: it kills, it would be death casket, the casket that killed.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's too close, are it is too on the nose?
Speaker 1: So you know, one thing I was thinking about is
Speaker 1: if you go by Indiana Jones as your main source,
Speaker 1: you would think that the booby trapping of tombs with
Speaker 1: deadly mechanisms for crushing, impaling, fatally desiccating, plucking out the
Speaker 1: eyeballs of grave robbers was sort of a time honored tradition,
Speaker 1: right that this goes back into the ancient world. Lots
Speaker 1: of tombs are like this. But the sad fact is
Speaker 1: that I can find almost no real evidence of booby
Speaker 1: trapped tombs from the ancient world, with essentially one possible exception,
Speaker 1: and that only exception is rumors about the unexcavated tomb
Speaker 1: of the ancient Chinese emperor Chin chi Huang, which we
Speaker 1: already did an episode of our other podcast, Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your mind about, So if you want a whole
Speaker 1: episode on that subject, you should look up our Chin
Speaker 1: chi Huang episode. But the short version is some ancient
Speaker 1: accounts claim that the tomb of Chin chi Huong is
Speaker 1: rigged with weapons and poisons to slaughter any potential looters.
Speaker 1: And I've got a description of the tomb here from
Speaker 1: the first century b c. Chinese historian uh Sima Cuyon,
Speaker 1: and it's translated by Burton Watson. Uh So it goes
Speaker 1: like this. It says they dug down to the third
Speaker 1: layer of underground springs and poured in bronze to make
Speaker 1: the outer coffin. Replicas of palaces, scenic towers, and the
Speaker 1: Hundred Officials, as well as rare utensils and wondrous objects
Speaker 1: were brought in to fill the tomb. Craftsmen were ordered
Speaker 1: to set up crossbows and arrows rigged so that they
Speaker 1: would immediately shoot down anyone attempting to break in. Mercury
Speaker 1: was used to fashion imitations of the Hundred Rivers, the
Speaker 1: Yellow River, and the Young Sea, and the seas, constructed
Speaker 1: in such a way that they seemed to flow above
Speaker 1: or representations of all the heavenly bodies below the features
Speaker 1: of the earth. Whale oil was used for lamps, which
Speaker 1: were calculated to burn for a long time without going out.
Speaker 1: That is nice. They're like, this is really top shelf
Speaker 1: when it comes to tombs. Yeah, and tomb technology. I mean,
Speaker 1: you got your mercury, you got your automatic crossbows. Uh,
Speaker 1: you'd assume maybe the mercury works kind of like a
Speaker 1: toxic poison to fill the room with fumes. Very interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: But of course the tomb remains unopened, to which on
Speaker 1: one level means I mean, granted, it's unopened for a
Speaker 1: variety of reasons. But you could say that, hey, just
Speaker 1: just the idea that there are crossbows in there there
Speaker 1: in there, that they are deadly traps in there, could
Speaker 1: have contributed to its protection over the centuries. That's a
Speaker 1: very good point that it could could be like a
Speaker 1: mimetic protection um. And of course the thing is, we
Speaker 1: don't know if there's anything to these stories, and even
Speaker 1: if it was true when the tomb was crafted, I
Speaker 1: strongly doubt that like crossbow mechanisms from two thousand years
Speaker 1: plus ago would still work today right now. It will
Speaker 1: be interesting though, because, as we discussed in that episode
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow your Mind, we may have actually
Speaker 1: we find out what what is going on in that tomb.
Speaker 1: There's been talk of of actually entering it or sending
Speaker 1: in you know, the drones to explore it a little bit, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, as much as exploration, but also to to
Speaker 1: make sure that the area is protected, that that the
Speaker 1: the artifacts inside are not destroyed in due course due
Speaker 1: to say seismic events or something like that. Right, but
Speaker 1: maybe we'll send that first drone in and it'll get
Speaker 1: hit by a crossbow bowls, you never know. That would
Speaker 1: be very cool. But like I said, the kind of
Speaker 1: strange and disappointing thing is this seems to be the
Speaker 1: only case I can find of a booby trapped tomb
Speaker 1: from the ancient world. But I would say, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, the general lack of Indiana Jones style traps
Speaker 1: does not mean that ancient people's weren't very keen on
Speaker 1: keeping their graves undisturbed. Of course, one thing is just
Speaker 1: standard type security features like you would find on the
Speaker 1: tombs we've already talked about in the previous episodes, you know, seals, gates,
Speaker 1: things being filled in, or having huge slabs placed on
Speaker 1: top of or in front of them, that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: just to keep people out. But the other thing I
Speaker 1: would say, picking up on the idea of mimetic security
Speaker 1: is like the idea of the mythical curse of the Pharaohs. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, that is more or less a twentieth century
Speaker 1: mythical invention, but it does take slight inspiration from reality
Speaker 1: in that some ancient tombs are marked with like curses
Speaker 1: or warnings against people who might disturb them. I was
Speaker 1: reading a really interesting thing about tomb curses on the
Speaker 1: National Museum Scotland blog and a post by assistant curator
Speaker 1: Dr Dan Potter with a translation that I'll get to
Speaker 1: in a second. Uh. Now, when I imagine ancient tomb
Speaker 1: curses and warnings and stuff, I often imagine really vividly
Speaker 1: violent threats, the like may your teeth turn into bees
Speaker 1: kind of thing, or may rot erect, you know, the
Speaker 1: the poe poe kind of direction. But as an example
Speaker 1: of the kind of two mornings, you're more likely to
Speaker 1: actually find an ancient Egypt. Potter translates a stone with
Speaker 1: an inscription from roughly between twelve to ten sixty nine
Speaker 1: b C. And it's from the necropolis of sheik Abbot Alcerna,
Speaker 1: which is in where ancient Thebes would have been. And
Speaker 1: this is Potter's translation. It is to you that I
Speaker 1: speak all people who will find this tomb passage. Watch
Speaker 1: out not to take even a pebble from within it outside.
Speaker 1: If you find this stone, you shall not transgress against it. Indeed,
Speaker 1: the gods since the time of pre who rest in
Speaker 1: the midst of the mountains, gained strength every day even
Speaker 1: though their pebbles are dragged away. Look for a place
Speaker 1: worthy of yourselves and rest in it, And do not
Speaker 1: constrict gods in their own houses. As every man is
Speaker 1: happy in his place, and every man is glad in
Speaker 1: his house. As for he who will be sound, beware
Speaker 1: of forcefully removing this stone from its place. As for
Speaker 1: he who covers it in its place, great lords of
Speaker 1: the West will reproach him very very very very very
Speaker 1: very very very much. That is a stern tongue lashing.
Speaker 1: I really like that. At the end though, it's kind
Speaker 1: of quaint and polite. It's like, don't mess with my tomb.
Speaker 1: I'm dead, I'm a god. Now you go find your
Speaker 1: own tomb, become a god in your own way, and please, please, please, please,
Speaker 1: please please please don't mess with it. I love this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the excessive use of the very here, because that would
Speaker 1: not be considered you know, proper in English, modern English
Speaker 1: anyway to to use that. But but really it gets
Speaker 1: the point across. The more varies, the better it reminds me.
Speaker 1: I had a professor once of I believe it was
Speaker 1: a uh, you know, Canterbury Tales classes that I was taking.
Speaker 1: He was the professor, and he he liked to stress
Speaker 1: that while we're not fond of double negatives now, uh,
Speaker 1: there was a time when you would just quote Negate
Speaker 1: the hell out of something if you wanted to to
Speaker 1: make sure it was negated. They're great old instances of
Speaker 1: word repetition in in older languages, especially like from the
Speaker 1: ancient world. I think about the idea of holy, holy holy.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just saying like, you don't say extremely holy,
Speaker 1: you say holy, holy holy. You keep repeating the word
Speaker 1: to emphasize the superlativeness of work. But yeah, I like
Speaker 1: this idea of thinking about the mythology that surrounds two
Speaker 1: warnings is a kind of meme based security invention. And
Speaker 1: you could think of that in a religious context as
Speaker 1: it's invoked here, like you're gonna upset the gods. Things
Speaker 1: are going to be very bad for you if you
Speaker 1: disturb this tomb, or you could think about it in
Speaker 1: a chin chi huang kind of context where you could
Speaker 1: seed stories out with the historians, or you know, just
Speaker 1: throughout the culture that there's some mega like killer robots
Speaker 1: in this tomb you don't want to go inside. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing I was thinking about is if you just
Speaker 1: have the the curse posted, it depends on literacy for
Speaker 1: what to really convey its meaning. Uh. Not everyone may
Speaker 1: be able to read, but everyone speaks the language crossbow. Um.
Speaker 1: But then again, if you're if it's not just about
Speaker 1: making sure that you have a sign posted, but to
Speaker 1: spread the word of it, to make sure that the
Speaker 1: curse is known, that's a different thing altogether. Well, should
Speaker 1: we take a quick break and then come back to
Speaker 1: discuss some gorrier, more modern versions of active measures protecting
Speaker 1: it to him? Let's do it. Alright, we're back, so
Speaker 1: let's let's get into the gory details. Right. So we
Speaker 1: were discussing previously that even when ancient tombs have curses,
Speaker 1: it seems like they're often less gruesome than you would expect.
Speaker 1: But leave it to modern Americans and Europeans to take
Speaker 1: tomb security to ridiculously nasty, violent places. As exhibit A,
Speaker 1: I would like to read a report from the Stark
Speaker 1: County Democrat, which was a Canton, Ohio newspaper, the addition
Speaker 1: of January one. This is this article is called a
Speaker 1: torpedo blows them up. This is wonderful days pleasuated this
Speaker 1: in its entirety Mount vernon January nineteen, So you got
Speaker 1: your dateline. A report reaches here that on Monday night,
Speaker 1: three body snatchers, while attempting to rob a grave of
Speaker 1: near Gan this county met with a fatal accident. The
Speaker 1: story goes that while excavating the grave, the Picks came
Speaker 1: in contact with a torpedo, which exploded, killing one of
Speaker 1: the ghouls named Dipper, and mangling the leg of another
Speaker 1: whose name could not be learned. The third part, the
Speaker 1: third party was occupying a sleigh as a lookout and
Speaker 1: after the accident, succeeded in getting his disabled companion in
Speaker 1: the sleigh and driving off. This is one of This
Speaker 1: is like a page from you know, Coran McCarthy book
Speaker 1: that we can only find the Library of Babble. Yeah, Dipper,
Speaker 1: they only know one of their names. And again I
Speaker 1: love the description as ghouls because I think we mentioned
Speaker 1: this in the last episode. But Google's, of course, are
Speaker 1: aditionally monsters of a necrophageous persuasion. They lurk in graveyards
Speaker 1: and they scavenge the flesh of the dead. But let's
Speaker 1: come back to that other detail that I meagined. A
Speaker 1: lot of people latched onto, uh the idea that a
Speaker 1: torpedo exploded, right, Yeah, a torpedo blows them up. So
Speaker 1: I'm thinking like a torpedo on a submarine, Like did
Speaker 1: somebody bury an explosive charge among their great uncle's grave goods,
Speaker 1: which exploded when the ghoul's broke in. No, this was
Speaker 1: not an accidental explosion of something that happened to be
Speaker 1: down there. This apparently was a specific technology designed to
Speaker 1: protect graves by maiming and murdering resurrection men and grave robbers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that the coffin torpedo. I ran across this as well.
Speaker 1: I was not familiar with it previously, and when I
Speaker 1: read it, of course, the thing that entered my mind
Speaker 1: is the idea that you have a casket that is
Speaker 1: fired out of a torpedo tube on a submarine. I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's what it is. How weird that I've run across
Speaker 1: such an invention. But no, it's even weirder. Yes, So
Speaker 1: I've come across two major records of booby trap coffin inventions.
Speaker 1: Uh so. One is that on October eight eight, an
Speaker 1: Ohio inventor named Philip K. Clover received a patent for
Speaker 1: what he called a coffin torpedo. It was designed to
Speaker 1: quote prevent the unauthorized resurrection of dead bodies. To presume
Speaker 1: the authorized one would be the end times one, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would need to be Jesus or you know, an
Speaker 1: accepted uh spokesperson for Jesus, or a sufficiently powerful necromancer. Uh.
Speaker 1: The torpedo would be loaded with a shotgun style spray
Speaker 1: of lead balls, and then we would be buried facing
Speaker 1: up inside the lid of the coffin, and if triggered,
Speaker 1: the Coffin torpedo would of course blast the thief and
Speaker 1: possibly killed them. Okay, so in a way it gets
Speaker 1: even grizzlier because what we're talking about he is really
Speaker 1: more comparable with a land mine or or a shotgun trap.
Speaker 1: The probably a landmine is the more accepted comparison here. Yes,
Speaker 1: actually one person I'm going to sit in a minute
Speaker 1: makes exactly that comparison. So another coffin torpedo came out
Speaker 1: a few years later. This one was patented by a
Speaker 1: guy named Thomas In Howell, also of Ohio. So it
Speaker 1: seems like maybe Grave like unauthorized resurrection was happening a
Speaker 1: lot in Ohio at the time. Howell says in his
Speaker 1: patent that other Grave torpedoes already exist, but that he's
Speaker 1: improved the Grave torpedo design by including quote exterior nipples
Speaker 1: on the shell and quote pivoted swinging hammers combined with
Speaker 1: a rotary disc or collar for engaging the hammers and
Speaker 1: by its rotary movement, release the hammers, which constitute the
Speaker 1: essential and important feature of my invention. So he's all
Speaker 1: about nipples and hammers. Yeah, I don't really have a
Speaker 1: clear vision of what these hammers are accomplishing. You can
Speaker 1: look up a diagram on the I've got a link
Speaker 1: here to the to the patent for you. But basically
Speaker 1: it ends up working sort of the same. It's like
Speaker 1: a landmine thing. In fact, I was reading a blog
Speaker 1: post about this invention by an anthropologist named Katie Myers Emery,
Speaker 1: who has written a lot on like a Burial of
Speaker 1: the Dead, traditions and stuff, in which she says that
Speaker 1: Howell's model was really more like a landmine than a gun.
Speaker 1: But she also quotes a contemporary advertisement for one of
Speaker 1: these grave torpedoes. I think it's for Howell's model, which
Speaker 1: reads sleep well, sweet angel, Let no fears of ghouls
Speaker 1: disturb thy rest. For above thy shrouded form lies a
Speaker 1: torpedo ready to make minced meat. If anyone who attempts
Speaker 1: to convey you to the pickling vat I think it's
Speaker 1: really also drives home that the use of the word
Speaker 1: torpedo has has shifted some in our in our usage.
Speaker 1: I think so too, because I think of essentially an
Speaker 1: underwater missile, like a run for Red October or something.
Speaker 1: But I love this this pitch here, sleep well, sweet angel,
Speaker 1: let no fears of ghouls disturb thy rest. It's it's
Speaker 1: good copy, but it's also not catchy. I mean, I
Speaker 1: feel like the Howell's model needs a catch your jingle,
Speaker 1: Like they won't use me for science. I'd rather stay
Speaker 1: here and rot. You know. The other thing I'm thinking
Speaker 1: is that at this point in our history, like an
Speaker 1: undisturbed grave is so normal, you know. I feel like
Speaker 1: I almost I want to attract the ghoules, like it
Speaker 1: would kind of make my death more of a celebration.
Speaker 1: But it's just just a thought. Yeah, why not have
Speaker 1: another boring burial like everybody else, you know, why not
Speaker 1: get things of popping around your grave? Uh So. In fact,
Speaker 1: the strangest thing of the story is that this torpedo
Speaker 1: was not even the first lethal trap for grave robbers
Speaker 1: of the Resurrectionist age. It seems that since the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: there had been what are known as cemetery guns. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's not a trick name. That just means guns used
Speaker 1: for cemeteries. So I found a link to one in
Speaker 1: particular being auctioned at Southeby's in January of sixteen. It
Speaker 1: is an eighteenth or early nineteenth century flintlock gun, originally
Speaker 1: made out of ash would steel and wrought iron by
Speaker 1: the Jurgenson Machine Company of New York. I've got a
Speaker 1: picture of it for you here, Robert. I think this
Speaker 1: gun being sold at auction is one of the same
Speaker 1: ones I've read about elsewhere, being displayed at a museum
Speaker 1: called the Museum of Mourning Art at Arlington Cemetery in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: And so this gun would have been positioned on a
Speaker 1: swivel mount and then it would be mounted at the
Speaker 1: site of the grave that needed to be protected, and
Speaker 1: then it would be fired by trip wires. So you'd
Speaker 1: place trip wires that linked to the triggering mechanism, and
Speaker 1: if somebody pulls the trip wire, if the tension you know,
Speaker 1: goes up on the wire, it triggers the gun and
Speaker 1: the shot or the ball I guess, goes out at
Speaker 1: in the direction of the grave. This seems excessive yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd have to imagine that if these were ever deployed
Speaker 1: at any kind of scale, they would kill innocent people. Right.
Speaker 1: And if people just happened to be going through the
Speaker 1: graveyard and they you know, trip over the trip, are
Speaker 1: they you know, kicked the wrong thing? Oh? Yes, her
Speaker 1: squirrels would set them off birds, I mean small children.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, this is this is this is ridiculous. Well,
Speaker 1: now you might wonder if like, okay, this sounds excessive.
Speaker 1: So maybe things like this were made but never actually used.
Speaker 1: But there are accounts of them being used. I found
Speaker 1: a couple in a book by an author named Susie Lennox.
Speaker 1: The book is called Body Snatchers, Digging Up the Untold
Speaker 1: Stories of Britain's Resurrection Men from Pin and Sword, which
Speaker 1: is a history press published in and So Lennox says, uh,
Speaker 1: this following account was reported in The Times, I mean
Speaker 1: the Times of London in eighteen seventeen. So apparently there
Speaker 1: was a really tall guy. There was a British grenadier
Speaker 1: who was seven feet tall, and he passed away and
Speaker 1: for some reason, his very tall body was highly coveted
Speaker 1: by an atomis. Maybe they just I don't know, they
Speaker 1: wanted to see what made him so taller, and there
Speaker 1: was a standard fee increase were for you know, excessively
Speaker 1: tall or excessively short specimens. Maybe, oh, maybe in the
Speaker 1: medical college it's easier to see a larger specimen from
Speaker 1: the sitting up in the gallery. Or maybe they saw
Speaker 1: him in half and sell him as too. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but for some reason, yeah, his very tall body was
Speaker 1: highly desired by the resurrection men. So his body was
Speaker 1: buried in the cemetery of St Martin in the Fields,
Speaker 1: which is this Anglican church in Westminster's in London. And
Speaker 1: because the seven foot corps was known to be of
Speaker 1: great value to the body snatchers, the sexton of the
Speaker 1: church quote put together a number of gun barrels so
Speaker 1: as to form a magazine that they might all be
Speaker 1: discharged together. So he set up a bunch of grave guns,
Speaker 1: all aimed at this grave. And apparently the trip wire
Speaker 1: that pulled the trigger on the gun battery was attached
Speaker 1: to a piece of wood, and then the wood was
Speaker 1: buried just under the surface of the grave. So if
Speaker 1: you start digging down to access the coffin, you would
Speaker 1: hit the wood and you'd have to remove it, so
Speaker 1: in removing it you would pull on the wood. This
Speaker 1: would pull the triggers of the gun battery and the
Speaker 1: person standing over the grave would get hit by a
Speaker 1: volley of bullets. And according to this Times report, one
Speaker 1: night after the burial, at about four thirty am, the
Speaker 1: sexton of the church heard a tremendous report. So he
Speaker 1: goes out to the churchyard and the sexton finds a
Speaker 1: bunch of picks and shovels lying around on the ground,
Speaker 1: and to quote from the Lennox's retelling here quote, he
Speaker 1: also found a man's hat with a bullet hole in
Speaker 1: one side of it. As there was no exit hole.
Speaker 1: The sexton concluded that it must have lodged in the
Speaker 1: head of one of the body snatchers, killing him instantly,
Speaker 1: with his friends taking his lifeless body away with them.
Speaker 1: So immediately I was wondering, wait a second, now, if
Speaker 1: you are a group of resurrection men, you're trying to
Speaker 1: dig up a body and one of your buddies gets killed,
Speaker 1: I mean for the other ones, isn't that just as good?
Speaker 1: Like you just run off and you sell this fresh
Speaker 1: dead body. Now, yeah, I wonder if new racket was
Speaker 1: born that night they're like, hey, we just keep we
Speaker 1: just need to keep hiring new guys into our gang,
Speaker 1: and we'll just kill them and sell their bodies. Yeah, hey, Jeff,
Speaker 1: you move the wood. Yeah, well better yet, we don't
Speaker 1: even have to kill them ourselves. We just bring them
Speaker 1: to the cemetery. We have this crazy gun that shoots people. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: You always get the new guy to move the wood
Speaker 1: and pull the string, and you get a fresh body
Speaker 1: every night. Now, needless to say, this would be quite
Speaker 1: illegal if you were to sit try and set something
Speaker 1: like this up today. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the risk that these guns posed too obviously
Speaker 1: innocent people would be a clear thing that would make
Speaker 1: them illegal over time. But even so, I mean, even
Speaker 1: if you're aiming them at criminals, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it seems right to just like shoot
Speaker 1: people when they're trying to do something in the kind
Speaker 1: of gray area space of digging up dead bodies at
Speaker 1: the time. Now, on the other hand, of course, the
Speaker 1: guns didn't always work. Lennox also recounts the story from
Speaker 1: Camden Town in eighty three, where body snatchers succeeded in
Speaker 1: breaching a gun protected grave just by dismantling the trip wire.
Speaker 1: So they saw what was going on there and they
Speaker 1: just took the system apart. So maybe we should take
Speaker 1: a quick break and then when we come back we
Speaker 1: can discuss something like the end of the resurrection Men period. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, So yeah, obviously this threat comes to an
Speaker 1: end because I mean, imagine, like most people out there,
Speaker 1: if you've ever been to a funeral or helps to
Speaker 1: put one together, the resurrectionist men did not come up.
Speaker 1: None of these features were offered to you at your
Speaker 1: local funeral home. Nobody was telling you about how you
Speaker 1: might need to invest in a torpedo for that expensive
Speaker 1: new casket. Right, So I think there were multiple things
Speaker 1: that brought about the end of this phenomenon, and of
Speaker 1: course the phenomenon came in different waves of different places,
Speaker 1: different times. Uh, it would be against subject to kind
Speaker 1: of economic demands like where and when are there anatomists
Speaker 1: that need these bodies? Is where and when can they
Speaker 1: not get bodies through other legitimate means? But one blow
Speaker 1: to the trade and dead bodies like this came with
Speaker 1: changes not in technology but in social norms and laws.
Speaker 1: And this this first shift, I think would be in
Speaker 1: the UK occurring around eighteen thirty two when Parliament passed
Speaker 1: the Anatomy Act, and this acted several things, but one
Speaker 1: of them was that it expanded the range of categories
Speaker 1: of unclaimed bodies that could be used legally for medical
Speaker 1: education and research. So now it's not just like executed criminals,
Speaker 1: but lots of different kinds of bodies can be used.
Speaker 1: And similar laws were passed in the United States later on,
Speaker 1: so that was one change, but it obviously didn't completely
Speaker 1: do away with this fear because again, some of the
Speaker 1: stories we were just looking at were people in the
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties in Ohio who were afraid of getting their
Speaker 1: bodies stolen and and and there seemed to be people
Speaker 1: out to steal the bodies. Yes, absolutely, uh so, so
Speaker 1: that doesn't fully do away with it, but that's that's
Speaker 1: one dent I would say in another big thing is
Speaker 1: actually a further round of technological changes, and I think
Speaker 1: specifically it's the most important thing is when body preservation
Speaker 1: technology changed, so you'd get embalming, which became common in
Speaker 1: the second half of the nineteenth century. I think it
Speaker 1: became common in the United States around like the eighteen eighties.
Speaker 1: I've read that it was in a large part kind
Speaker 1: of a post civil war thing too, because this is
Speaker 1: certainly a situation where he had a lot of of
Speaker 1: of dead young people who needed to then be shipped
Speaker 1: back home. Right. But another big thing, of course, coming
Speaker 1: soon after that in the in the nineteen hundreds would
Speaker 1: be chemical refrigeration and body freezers, and back to a
Speaker 1: previous invention that we've touched on exactly, yeah, air conditioning
Speaker 1: for the dead. So when human bodies could be stored
Speaker 1: and protected against decay for a long time or even indefinitely,
Speaker 1: I think much of the body supply problem went away,
Speaker 1: but you could probably also say that there might be
Speaker 1: a I don't know exactly how demand changed over time.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously human dissections still occur, and you know
Speaker 1: that that still can be a part of medical research
Speaker 1: and education, but it might not be as prevalent a
Speaker 1: necessity as it once was. But certainly the supply issue
Speaker 1: has been changed by technology, because now you can just
Speaker 1: have frozen bodies on hand, right, And again the culture
Speaker 1: has changed to like more people, it's it's not this, uh,
Speaker 1: this taboo thing for the anatomist to eventually have your
Speaker 1: body and make use of it. And yet at the
Speaker 1: same time, you know, obviously graves are still robbed from
Speaker 1: time to time, grave desecrations do still occur. They just
Speaker 1: they don't have the the economic factor behind them. It's
Speaker 1: got just it's left going to be left to the
Speaker 1: domain of just pure uh pure ghouls uh pure you know,
Speaker 1: necromantics and so forth, individuals who are probably doing this
Speaker 1: as a passion, as a hobby, but not as you know,
Speaker 1: their primary means of earning a living. Now, one thought
Speaker 1: that comes to mind is there was an old Clark
Speaker 1: Ashton Smith short story I read. It took place in
Speaker 1: kind of like a you know, a dark, darkly fantastic kingdom.
Speaker 1: And in this kingdom, if I remember correctly, you have
Speaker 1: the ghouls, the supernatural ghouls, the creatures that feast on
Speaker 1: the dead, and you know, inevitably worship some dark uh
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, necromatic deity underneath the city.
Speaker 1: And then you have humans living in the city above.
Speaker 1: And they've simply established a funerary practice where the dead
Speaker 1: are handed over to the ghouls and uh and I've
Speaker 1: made arrangements. They made arrangements and and it works. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think that in the story, if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: the intrigue is because you have some outsiders who show
Speaker 1: up and they don't know what's going on, and then
Speaker 1: they inevitably, you know, run a foul with the ghouls.
Speaker 1: But I was I think that's a clever solution here,
Speaker 1: Like the the ghouls need the bodies, the living no
Speaker 1: longer need them. And here the ghouls and the mortals
Speaker 1: have worked out a deal. They've worked out an arrangement
Speaker 1: and it works for everyone. But that's essentially that is
Speaker 1: essentially the original arrangement, that is the original arrangement between
Speaker 1: the living, living beings and the natural world as well.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that's right. Like if your when your body
Speaker 1: is is finished, when life leaves it, uh, there is
Speaker 1: a process that will take care of it, that will
Speaker 1: return it to the sort. Well yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: think there's also there's an interesting cultural and emotional thing
Speaker 1: going on about the desire for preservation. Again, the desire
Speaker 1: for preservation of the of the physical body after death
Speaker 1: not being a totally new thing there. There's it kind
Speaker 1: of comes and goes at different times and places in history,
Speaker 1: Like it seems like it was less of a concern,
Speaker 1: you know, five hundred years ago in the United States
Speaker 1: or Europe. But uh is more of a concern after
Speaker 1: the reintroduction of embalming as a common procedure. But of
Speaker 1: course you find it as this hugely important and desirable
Speaker 1: thing in the ancient world. I mean, it was an
Speaker 1: attractive thing that pulled them in. Yeah, and like why
Speaker 1: is it so attractive? It doesn't occur to me naturally
Speaker 1: to find a good reason for that, but but there
Speaker 1: must be something going on there for a lot of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this idea of you know, of of of of
Speaker 1: creating this unlife. You know, this the space between that
Speaker 1: is uh, at least perceived to be incorruptible. Right. I
Speaker 1: also wonder too, in our modern celebrity culture, you look
Speaker 1: at like, what are some of the examples of celebrities
Speaker 1: that are the most worshiped. There are people who died
Speaker 1: young and left a beautiful corpse, right, Um, And I
Speaker 1: wonder if we get into that that similar idea there, Like,
Speaker 1: there's this idea that if you know, this particular Hollywood star,
Speaker 1: they died young and in a way they remain young forever.
Speaker 1: They're they're kind of embalmed. The idea of them is
Speaker 1: embalmed in our popular culture. They get on the Forever
Speaker 1: twenty seven poster. Yeah exactly, Uh, yeah, which is which is?
Speaker 1: I think it's it's a it's a different thing. It's
Speaker 1: not a physical embalming procedure, but it it essentially accomplishes
Speaker 1: the same thing. Play your cards right, and you get
Speaker 1: to come back as a hologram or you know, a
Speaker 1: character and a TV commercial as well. Well. You know,
Speaker 1: one thing I think we might be doing is using
Speaker 1: our social media accounts to create embalmed versions of ourselves
Speaker 1: as earlier, younger versions of ourselves to survive as we
Speaker 1: and our decrepit bodies grow old. You know, you don't
Speaker 1: even have to wait to grow old. I think every
Speaker 1: social media embodiment of ourselves is essentially a version of ourselves,
Speaker 1: that is, that has been deprived of any natural essence
Speaker 1: and value. It is already a uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: wraith we have unleashed on the world. The me on
Speaker 1: the Internet is the me I was when I was
Speaker 1: twenty five. It just like doesn't go anywhere after. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but of course this is this is of course we're
Speaker 1: cracking some jokes here, but of course this is a
Speaker 1: big concern for the future as the as the number
Speaker 1: of the dead on social media will inevitably outlive outnumber
Speaker 1: the living. Oh, I'm never thought of that before. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's I forget the exact date on it,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely going to happen. And um yeah, it's
Speaker 1: and uh and and and then we're going to find
Speaker 1: that our social media accounts, or at least the ones
Speaker 1: that have been around for any number of years, are
Speaker 1: going to be it's going to be an acropolis. It
Speaker 1: would be the underworld. Yeah, okay, should we call it there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll have to call it there, but it but it,
Speaker 1: I mean, it really does go to show that, you know,
Speaker 1: with new technology comes new ways of having to confront
Speaker 1: mortality and deal with death and grieving and bereave in
Speaker 1: all these things. You know, even something like Facebook, which
Speaker 1: when it was developed, I doubt anyone was thinking, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to look death square in the eyes
Speaker 1: over this one, but inevitably you do. Like that's just
Speaker 1: technology is a part of living and death is a
Speaker 1: part of life as well. So there we have it.
Speaker 1: You know, hey, maybe we'll come back to caskets in
Speaker 1: the future, come back to embalming. Uh, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. There's plenty within the broad world, the broad
Speaker 1: spectrum of invention, there are plenty of inventions that revolve
Speaker 1: around death. Um. If you want to check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of the show, head on over to invention pod
Speaker 1: dot com. That is where you will find them. And
Speaker 1: if you want to support our show, rate and review
Speaker 1: us wherever you have the power to do so. That
Speaker 1: really helps the show out huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 1: the future, for just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention is
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