When he was done with them, Hewson simply buried whatever was left of the bodies in the basement, rather than sneak them out for disposal elsewhere and risk getting caught and prosecuted for dissection and grave robbing.įranklin was probably aware of the illegal studies going on in his building, says the Benjamin Franklin House, but it’s doubtful that he was involved himself. Bodies could be smuggled from graveyards and delivered to the wharf at one end of the street, or snatched from the gallows at the other end. The tenant was a trusted friend, the landlady was his mother-in-law, and he was flanked by convenient sources for corpses. Researchers think that 36 Craven was an irresistible spot for Hewson to establish his own anatomy lab. … A steady supply of human bodies was hard to come by legally, so Hewson, Hunter, and the field’s other pioneers had to turn to grave robbing-either paying professional “resurrection men” to procure cadavers or digging them up themselves-to get their hands on specimens. Per Mental Floss:Īnatomy was still in its infancy, but the day’s social and ethical mores frowned upon it. Still, in Franklin’s time, anatomy lessons were a dark, ethically ambiguous business. “The most plausible explanation is not mass murder, but an anatomy school run by Benjamin Franklin’s young friend and protege, William Hewson,” said the Guardian in 2003. But the truth, it turns out, isn’t quite so dark. Forensic investigations showed that the bones dated to Franklin’s day.įranklin was a noted revolutionary and powerful freemason- the Grand Master of Masons of Pennsylvania-so it’s easy to wonder what dark secrets Franklin may have hidden in his basement chamber. “From a one-meter-wide, one-meter-deep pit, over 1,200 pieces of bone were retrieved”-remnants of more than a dozen bodies, according to Benjamin Franklin House. In 1998, conservationists were doing repairs on 36 Craven, looking to turn Franklin’s old haunt into a museum. More than 200 years later, 15 bodies were found in the basement, buried in a secret, windowless room beneath the garden. In 1776, Franklin left his English home to come back to America. J.For nearly two decades leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin lived in London in a house at 36 Craven Street. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States Display images created in PhotoshopCS2 as JPEG2000s Files saved as 300 ppi uncompressed TIFF. Original scanned on Kirtas 2400 and saved as 300 ppi 8 bit grayscale jpeg. July 2019Ĭollege yearbooks University of Utah-Periodicals The yearbooks are presented as they were originally created and have not been edited or censored-to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices and biases never existed. Insensitive and offensive portrayals of race and gender were wrong at the time these publications were originally printed, and they are wrong today. In some cases, these publications contain insensitive and offensive language and imagery that does not represent the views or values of the University of Utah. These documents contain facts and milestones about the history of the University of Utah. The University of Utah has made former and current yearbooks from various campus entities available in print and via its digital library archive. Request archival file or update item information Title
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |