Famous Remains: The Story of Three Cadavers

the way we treat human remains is part of what defines a culture and many archaeologists think that the ceremonial treatment of human remains is one of the markers of the beginning of human civilization according to the property environmental research council the united states puts as much steel into the making of coffins in a single year as it took to build the golden gate bridge we pour more reinforced concrete in the making of burial vaults in a year than it would take to build a two-lane highway from new york city to detroit clearly we take the treatment of our mortal remains seriously but not always so the strange story of what happened to three famous people after they shuffled off their mortal coil illustrates the complex relationship we have with and reaction we have to human remains it is a macabre bit of history that deserves to be remembered cromwell rose to prominence as a general in the period of english civil wars called the wars of the three kingdoms when parliament decided to try the imprisoned king charles the first cromwell supported the trial thinking it the only way to end the civil wars and was one of 59 members of the court who signed the king's death warrant however when the time of the execution came no officer wanted to sign the actual order to behead the king and be responsible for regicide it was cromwell who signed the order charles the first was executed by beheading on january 30th 1649. when the wars ended with a parliamentary victory a republic called the protectorate was created in 1653. cromwell was made lord protector the head of government for life but crumble only lived another five years died of an infection in september 1658 he was interred at westminster abbey with an elaborate funeral fit for a king but the protectorate proved unable to rule successfully without him his third son richard cromwell was appointed lord protector but he lacked his father's connections within both parliament and the army and rashford tried to extend the protectorate's power while he was never officially deposed richard cromwell was removed from power and in the confusing aftermath parliament restored the monarchy inviting charles's son charles ii to return after a promise of reforms creating a constitutional monarchy while the monarchy was restored in may 1660 charles ii was not officially crowned until april 1661 but the restoration of the monarchy created a difficult legacy for oliver cromwell who had signed the death warrant for the previous king charles the first as well as anyone who had participated in the trial understandably upset at both the execution of his father and the president that that execution set in terms of the divine right of kings charles ii and the new parliament had 12 members of the court that had tried charles the first tried for treason and executed but three of the ringleaders cromwell john bradshaw who had been the presiding judge at the trial and henry eyerton who was cromwell's son-in-law who had also signed the death warrant were already deceased not contend with merely hanging drawing and quartering the dozen regis charles ii also had the remains of cromwell bradshaw and ireton disinterred and symbolically executed publicly hanging their corpses in january 1661 their heads were then removed and placed on spikes in front of westminster hall where having been embalmed they lasted for some time cromwell's servant had remained on a spike on the roof of westminster hall until the 1680s when it went missing by some accounts falling after the rotted spike fell in a storm the head or at least what purported to be cromwell's had reappeared in a museum for curiosities in london in 1710 after the museum proprietor's death the head somehow ended up in the hands of a drunkard and purported descendant of the cromwell family who had a habit of passing the thing around in bars it was taken from him in payment for a debt and in 1799 was sold to another pair who hoped to display it the exhibition of the head turned out to be a failure but the family of the owner kept possession of the head until 1815 when it was sold to a private collector named wilkinson but then doubts were raised about the authenticity of the remains and at least one other pretender arose finally in 1934 two scientists a eugenicist and an anthropologist compared the wilkinson head to bust's portraits in the death mask of oliver cromwell and in a 104 page report it determined it with moral certainty to be cromwell's head the wilkinson family which had possessed the head in a wooden box since 1815 had it interred at a secret location at sydney texas college in 1960 the head of the once proud lord protector buried with the honors of a king went from being a warning to villains to a curiosity to a collection before finding their final resting place more than 200 years after the general's death oddly it was also the english civil war that affected the mortal remains of catherine parr queen consort and sixth wife of henry viii catherine parr had been twice widowed already when she caught the eye of king henry viii in 1543 the 52-year-old king had had his fifth wife catherine howard executed in 1542 he suffered from a number of issues with his health and had become increasingly irratible 31 year old parr had developed a romantic relationship with thomas seymour brother the king's third wife jane but when the king proposed she felt that she had to accept placing country above her personal concerns henry and catherine were married july 12 1543 she was a popular queen and helped to reconcile henry with his daughters mary and elizabeth and in 1544 acted as the king's regent while henry campaigned in france henry died january 28 1547 leaving catherine a large stipend as queen dowager but she renewed her relationship with thomas seymour and married him a mere five months after henry's death a move that alienated both henry's daughter lady mary and king edward in 1548 she became pregnant a surprise since she had not conceived a child in her first three marriages she and thomas moved to an estate in gloucestershire called suddenly castle accompanied by a ward lady jane gray catherine gave birth to a daughter who she named mary on august 30th catherine died six days later of an infection comedy at the time usually called childbed fever she was entombed under the chapel of sudley castle it was said to be the first protestant funeral held in english in england lady jane gray who had later briefly become queen after the death of edward was chief mourner there is no record of what happened to her daughter after the age of two and she is gently assumed to have died in childhood her husband became implicated in a plot against the king was executed in march 1549 the remains of the queen consort wrapped in wax cloth and encased in a lead coffin under an obscure chapel were nearly forgotten nearly a hundred years later the castle became a basis of royalist support for the english civil war the castle changed hands in the fighting and the chapel was used by the parliamentarians as a slaughterhouse the castle was severely damaged in the war and in 1649 it was slighted that is deliberately destroyed by the parliamentarians to prevent it being used as a military post the former queen was now entombed underneath a forgotten ruin in may 1782 234 years after queen catherine was entombed as described in work by 19th century historian agnes strickland a group of lady sightseers visiting the ruins of the chapel noticed a block of alabaster and dug beneath it less than a foot beneath the earth they found the lead and coffin of queen catherine they opened holes in the coffin and found their remains to be in a remarkable state of preservation then they reburied the coffin coffin was uncovered again that summer by the person renting the land who investigated photo to find that under the cloth the skin on the queen's arm was still soft and white but merely opening the form-fitted coffin and exposing the remains to air meant that the remains would not stay so preserved now that the location of the remains was known the coffin was opened again by curious sightseers in 1792 the coffin was opened by a group of what has been described as ruffians and drunkards they did significant damage to the remains by some accounts of dismembering the corpse and taking all the queen's hair as souvenirs in 1810 suddenly castle was sold to the duke of buckingham and chandos who had catherine's remains removed to his family tomb by then the corpse which had remained so well preserved for over two centuries had decayed to nothing but a skeleton in the mid 19th century the house and chapel restored and an ornate tomb with the marble effigy was created for catherine parr's remains she was moved to her final resting place the most ornate of the tombs of any of henry's six wives in 1863 but by then all that was left of her remains was described as brown dust but as strange as the story of queen catherine's remains is it is not nearly as peculiar as that of the wyoming outlaw george parrott not a lot is known about the early life of george parrott he was born in france in 1834 and his nickname big nose george was because he famously had a rather large nose which ironically resembled the beak of a parrot there's no clear record of how or when he immigrated to the united states or what led him to the life he chose but by the 1870s he was part of a notorious gang of outlaws in the american west the gang were petty high women who robbed freight wagons payrolls and stage coaches in the wyoming montana and dakota territories in august 1878 parrot and his gang had hatched a plan to rob a union pacific train by sabotaging the track on an isolated stretch hoping to cause the train to derail a work crew found the damage and the plot was thorted and a posse was put on the outlaws trail two lawmen a deputy sheriff and a union pacific detective tracked the gang to their hideout with the gang ambushed and murdered the lawmen the following february the gang scored its most famous robbery capturing a wealthy merchant they knew was carrying money to buy merchandise despite the merchant traveling with a military escort reports vary but parrot and his gang made off with as much as fourteen thousand dollars but that big score was george parrot's last in 1881 he was in a montana bar and he had too much to drink and boasted about the murder of the two lawmen in 1878. realizing that a reward was involved someone contacted the law and parrot was arrested in miles city parrot had reason to be afraid it was taken by train to rollins wyoming to stand trial for the murders another gang member charlie burris called dutch charlie who had also participated in the ambush of the two lawmen had been pulled off the train in the town of carbon before he could get to rollins to stand trial a group of vigilantes demanded that he can fast and when he refused they lynched him from a telegraph pole on his way to rollins in 1881 parrot was also pulled off the train and threatened with hanging to save his life he admitted to the murders and gave details of the crime he was saved from lynching but when he reached rawlins he was quickly convicted and in april 1881 was sentenced to death by hanging desperate big nose george planned an escape he had managed to secretly cut through a bolt of his leg shackles and when a jailer named robert rankin came to check on him at night he assaulted the jailer beating him with the heavy leg chains but rankin's wife heard the commotion and according to newspapers at the time quickly arrived on scene with a sex shooter and held the prisoner until help arrived when the news spread through the town that parrot had attacked rankin a mob formed according to the quincy daily herald on march 24th big nose george was taken by a party of men out of the jail at 10 55 there being no convenient trees a noose was thrown over the crossbar of a telegraph pole the noose was placed around his neck and george was forced to climb a 14-foot ladder his last words reportedly were i will jump boys and break my neck but it wasn't that clean george had managed to free his hands from the ropes that had been used to bind him as he hung on the rope he grabbed the pole trying to hold himself up his legs were locked in iron so he could not grip with them slowly his strength failed and he slipped down the pole until the noose tightened and he slowly strangled it was a gruesome end for a bad man but what happened to his remains was even more bizarre than his demise with no one to claim the body george's remains were taken by two doctors thomas mcgee and john osborne who decided to study the corpse to see if they could determine the physical characteristics that explain george's criminality during their efforts they sought off the top of his skull to examine his brain skulltup was given to dr mcgee's teenage assistant it's not really clear what experiments were performed on the unfortunate remains of george of the large proboscis but at some point skin was removed from the cadaver and sent to denver to be tanned sources differ on what all was made from the leather of big-nosed george some say gloves some claim a doctor's bag but there's certainty that part of george was used to make a pair of two-toned shoes and as an added macabre twist when dr osborne in 1892 became the first democrat to be elected territorial governor of wyoming he wore his big-nosed george skin shoes to the inaugural ball newspaper stories in the 1930s indicated that the osborne family still had the shoes but it was unclear what had become of the rest of george's remains in 1950 a crew digging a foundation in downtown rawlins uncovered a whiskey barrel that included some human bones and the bottom half of a skull some townspeople recall the story that the top of georgia school had been given to dr mcgee's assistance in the time since the assistant lillian heath had attained a medical degree becoming the first licensed female doctor in the state of wyoming not only was dr heath still alive she still had the top of george's skull which he had variously used as an ashtray a pencil holder and a door stop lillian traveled to rollins where the top of the skull was found to be a perfect fit with the part of the skull found in the barrel the lower part of the skull the shoes made from his skin and a death mask of the big nose bandage are now on display in the carbon county museum in rollins wyoming the top of his skull the manacles that he wore while being hanged are on display in the union pacific museum in omaha nebraska well newspapers at the time say that the rest of georgia's remains were interred the location of those bones has never been revealed the odd story of what happened to the human remains of oliver cromwell catherine parr and big nose george parrott illustrates the complex relationship that humans have with human remains sometimes revered and sometimes reviled the reaction to the abuse of these famous corpses reveals the human fascination with the hereafter all three of these sets of remains while treated differently upon death ended up becoming curiosities and their story deserved to be remembered if for no other reason than how we humans treat our dead says much about the living i hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets have forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section i will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on facebook instagram twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring.com and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 163,047

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy, world history, oliver cromwell, catherine parr, george big nose parrot

Id: 69_gvNRBFFg

Length: 15min 24sec (924 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020